The luminous world of the Mississippi Gulf Coast of the 1960's was there waiting for me, and I had come a long way to find it. The orange groves of Southern California were briefly my home, until the next teenage experience took me to New Orleans , almost 2000 miles away. The colorful world of The Quarter, defined by Dixieland jazz and the Mississippi River, opened the door to my next and final destination, the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where slate-blue waves lined a white beach, exactly like a post card. In the Southern salt winds of that glittering world, my coming-of-age story really began.