Crown's Law Read Free Page B

community simply
as “Beach Road.” Most people assumed all who lived on Beach Road
were wealthy—given the price of beachfront property and the
numerous mansions visible from Pacific Coast Highway—but that
wasn’t actually true. Many people had bought property there in the
1930s and 1940s when a building lot could be purchased for as
little as $500. They built modest houses and still lived there on
pensions and Social Security in 1970.
    Others were very wealthy, which was the case
with the Crowns—at least, Helena Crown was. Helena Crown nee
Barkley—of the Boston, Massachusetts Barkleys—came from old,
East-coast money. Her grandfather had come to Orange County in the
1930s and bought a great deal of prime real estate, including
several lots on Beach Road. Helena eventually inherited the
property, and in 1960 she built two huge, Spanish facade houses
side by side. Each house spanned three building lots with the
fourth lot for a pool and other entertainment-oriented facilities.
Each lot had 40 feet of beach frontage, which meant that each
two-story house was about 12,000 square feet in size with plenty of
party space on their large redwood decks and pool lots. Each had a
six-car garage.
    The Crowns’ “home of record” was the
southernmost (actually easternmost, since it was a south-facing
beach) of the two; Helena rented out the other one—or, at least,
her business manager did. She had very little to do with it. Her
plans for Sam were that he’d become a famous lawyer or surgeon, get
married, live next door, and she could dote on her grandchildren as
she wished.
    Sam, of course, being 18, only looked forward
to the next weekend. His 18th birthday—July 5, 1970—was a big beach
bash, of course. It was a fun time for Sam and his friends, but a
worry for Helena. He now had to register for the draft, and to
avoid getting drafted, he had to get into college in September. She
couldn’t get Sam to sit still long enough to discuss whether he
wanted to go to Harvard, or Yale, or even the nearby University of
California at Irvine (UCI). He needed to enroll somewhere
immediately. Her husband had to be in Vietnam, but she didn’t want
her only son there!
    In August, the two had another big argument
about it, and Sam jumped in his sports car and roared off. Two days
later he called his mother and told her that he had fucked up
royally. He had gotten drunk, stayed that way for 24 hours, then
had enlisted in the Marine Corps. He was in San Diego.
    Helena called her husband John—after much
hassle getting connected to him—to see if he could pull some
strings and get Sam out of this mess!
    John told her, “He made his bed, let him lie
in it! Stop mollycoddling the boy! Let him grow up!”
    Sam Crown was in Vietnam before the end of
the year. Helena was mortified!
    ***
    When Sam first arrived in Vietnam, he found
himself daydreaming about how different his life could have been if
he had made other choices. At first, he wished he had been born
earlier—he figured he would have made a perfect hippie in the 60s:
play guitar, wear beads, drive an old van with peace symbols
painted on it, partake of lots of free love, smoke dope. That being
a pipe dream, he focused on a version of the good life he could
have had by letting his mother pay his way through college: play
guitar, screw a lot of coeds, smoke dope, surf, some studying. No
beads or painted van, though. Just his Porsche.
    After surviving his first fire fight,
Sam forgot about daydreams and what could have been and began
focusing on the present  and
staying alive.
    ***
    Sam didn’t clearly formulate his theory of
concentric realities until he found himself immersed in the
insanity that was Vietnam. The theory, as he conceived it, was that
the world was made up of concentric realities and you had to
recognize and accept the reality that you found yourself in or life
would become confusing and unbearable. It was better to accept your
situation, no matter how