Mike Breiding's Epic Road Trips: 1985
Mike Breiding and the 60's
An interview for English II Class with Prof. Yoder
by Sean Michael
NOTE: Best viewed with a tablet or larger display.
"The past is not dead, it is not even past."
William Faulkner
During the summer of 1979, while on staff at Oglebay Institute's Junior Nature Camp, I met a camper by the name of Sean Michael.
47 years later, on the 12th of December, 2025, Sean, now Dr. Sean Michael, Professor of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning at Utah State University, emailed me the following document.
Below is the text Betsy transcribed from the 1985 original sent to me by Sean. The original is here.
MIKE BREIDING AND THE 60's
-An interview.
Sean Michael
English II
Prof. Yoder
In 1965 Michael Breiding was just another 12-year-old taking part in sit-ins. He tagged along with his older sisters, happy to be a part of their organization. They were both members of a new counter-culture. This faction, commonly known as "hippies", was politically active in the struggle for peace. They staged activities like the Gentle Thursday rally in an attempt to make their peers aware of the point they stood for. They were met with a society still caught up in the Hoover and McCarthy's anti-communist whirlwind. If the local response was not total apathy, it was outright violence.
As Michael remembers it, Morgantown and the nation saw Vietnam as another Korea: a mom and apple pie war to beat back the commy horde. The country supported the war for the most part, even in the instance of the draft. There was little media coverage as yet, especially so in the dead zone of a '60s West Virginia.
In a town where the majority of the blacks were in one way or another affiliated with the university, racial discrimination was a daily occurrence. Mike recalled one group's attempt at desegregation of a local barber shop. A lawsuit was brought against Herb's Barber Shop (located at the current site of the Foxfire in Sunnyside) for refusing to cut a negro's hair. Such activities did little to ease the animosity between hippies and straights.
Because his mother was unabashedly against the war, Mike was faced with dissension from the elders of his life too. At fifteen he was kicked out of St Francis Junior High for an unwillingness to adhere to their strict dress code. [1] The sisters found his beads and long hair outside the acceptable limit (it should be noted that long hair as Mike described it was just touching the ears and cut straight across the eyebrows). The family's political views were handled with just as little sympathy by the nuns.
In 1968, fed up with the local hostility, the Breidings moved to San Francisco. [2] The Bay Area was a hotbed of drugs and the psychedelic movement, which was now in full swing. This group, which revolved around the Haight-Ashbury District, was home for drugs, dropouts and the music of rock legends such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and the Jefferson Airplane. Mike began to see what was going on in the world. He recalled an incident at Berkeley when students stormed the administration building in an effort to have the ROTC removed from campus. Then governor Ronald Reagan solved the problem by ordering in Army Reserve troops. This violence-oriented problem solving prevailed throughout the times.
After several years of getting stoned and hanging out on the street, Mike realized it was time to do something. He got his hair cut and got a job. At a time when minimum wage was around $1.50 an hour, he was making $3.70 as a handyman's assistant. [3]
As time went by the yearning for home grew. The Breidings returned to West Virginia with the dream of buying a farm and living happily ever after. The dream fell thru when members of the family went different directions. Today Mike has very strong opinions about our government and the society we live in.
When he came back to the University City he found fashion du jour had taken in the long hair that had once been such controversy. The frat boys who had once abused him, now supported ear length cuts for their chic. Today, he says, this is all the more apparent. People are threatened by anything different and react critically. Once they are accustomed to it they accept it as their own. Because of this chain of events the youth today, and most of those since the hippie movement, take no initiative. They are afraid to step out of line or voice their opinions. Much like the 50's, they are content to go to school, party and let the government run things. It is precisely this "leave the driving to us" attitude that scares Mike. He put it this way, 'With all the shit they've pulled in Watergate and South America, how can we trust them.... they won't admit anything unless they're caught red-handed".
When asked about movements similar to those of his day, he said there are none. Today they are all self-centered, not putting their energy to any practical application. Society as a whole is into itself: indifferent to what is going on around it. [4] "The famine in Ethiopia is the biggest thing happening today, but in six months everyone will have forgotten it".
1965 was a wave about to break in the eyes of Mike Breiding. Our country was about to begin seeing the government as it was, not as it had been projected. The entire idea of well-educated, clean-cut whites was about to crumble. But as Mike sees it, people remain the same, even if the look of society changes. There may be different lifestyles in vogue and different personnel running the government, but in four years it all will change.
Footnotes
1.
It was my brother Sutton, not me who was expulsed from St Francis School. Sutton remembers it thus.
I was in my first semester of junior class. 15? I'd say. It was (the expulsion)for "long hair", bad attitude, & distributing my little flyers (which had 2 names I believe) to classmates. They were going to let me come back if I towed the line. A priest there, Father Marold I think, gave me a Pep Talk, but he was really cool & eventually supposedly left the priesthood. I rode off on my Vespa never to be seen again. That's how I recall it.
Then, sometime in the summer of 1967, my father received a letter from Father Mueller, who was the pastor of St. Francis, giving my father notice none of the Breiding family would be admitted back into the St. Francis schools. My mother had several run-ins with Father Mueller and referred to him as a "bald-headed Nazi."
When that letter came, my sisters Joanie and Susan had already graduated from St. Francis High School and were attending classes at West Virginia University. Sutton had already dropped out. That left me and my younger brothers, Wayne and Bill, who were the banished ones.
When August of 1967 rolled around, Bill and Wayne attended Suncrest Grade School, and I ended up at Morgantown Jr. High School. What a tumultuous transition that was for us—from the rarified environment of a parochial school to what seemed like pandemonium in the public schools.
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2.
There were 8 Breidings. My mom fled Morgantown to San Francisco in March of 1968 with 5 of her 6 children (Susan, Sutton, Michael, Wayne, William) to escape her husband's tyranny. Joan, the oldest, and her boyfriend Julian Martin, later drove to San Francisco.
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3.
The hourly rate of $3.70 was what I was paid while employed at Cost Plus Imports, not working for handy man Tony Zandona. Cost Plus Imports was a Teamsters union shop, thus the high, entry level wage. $3.70 in 1971 is equivalent to about $30 in 2026 wages.
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4.
A widespread famine affected Ethiopia from 1983 to 1985.The worst famine to hit the country in a century, it affected 7.75 million people (out of Ethiopia's 38–40 million) and left approximately 300,000 to 1.2 million dead. 2.5 million people were internally displaced whereas 400,000 refugees left Ethiopia. Almost 200,000 children were orphaned. More...
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Background Information
The author, Sean, and I still keep in touch. I first met Sean at Oglebay Institute's Jr. Nature Camp circa 1979. At that time I was on staff and Sean was a camper. He later became a Counselor-in-Training (CIT) but did not stay in the program long enough to become a Counselor.
Sean and I have been talking back and forth about this time line, and it is fuzzy for both of us. But, we think we got reacquainted around 1986.
That happened when I mentioned to then Landscape Architecture (LA) professor at WVU George Longenecker I was looking for some help with landscape design at the new house on the outskirts of Morgantown Betsy and I recently built and moved into. George suggested I put up a notice on the bulletin board at the LA department, and perhaps I might get some help that way.
LA student Sean saw the notice and contacted me about the work. At the time I did not know he was enrolled in the LA program.
Sean was full of enthusiasm, and his ideas were creative and interesting and really got us on the right track. As I recall (remember, this was 40 years ago), we were having a tough time coming up with a plan to get us from the parking area to the front door. The parking area was at least 10-15 feet above the front door and around 40 feet away. We needed help!
(Summer of 1984)
In the beginning - driveway construction. Behind the 'dozer would eventually be the parking area and pole building. The locust pole cribbing on the left was placed to keep the fill (old asphalt from the Dorsey's Knob road widening) in place when it was dumped and then spread and compacted.
It was crude, but it worked.
Here is what our place looked like in 1986. I took these shots from a two-seater owned and piloted by Richard "Chico" diPretoro. Chico was a Prince among men, and I miss him to this day.
The pond seen here was on the property of Charlie and Ginny Baer. They owned 20 acres and in May of 1984, sold us 5 of those acres for a house site and plant nursery. Since the "Back to the Land" days of the 60s, I dreamed of having a little bit of land and building a house. Charlie, Ginny, and of course me darlin' wife Betsy now made that dream come true. Over the 27 years we lived there, we had many enjoyable skinny dips and party swims at that pond, which Charlie referred to as "Baer Bottom."
Betsy and I met Charlie and Ginny during our involvement with the local chapters of the Audubon Society and the Nature Conservancy. Charlie was a botanist and plant physiologist who taught the first ecology class at WVU.
Here we see a detail of the above photo. We put up the pole building first as a place to store building materials for the house. Had it not been for neighbor Mark Matheny, it would have been nearly impossible to get that pole building project started. Thanks, Mark!
As you can see, getting from the parking area to the front door was a bit of a challenge. Fortunately, Sean had some ideas on how to do that, and we ended up with a very nice platform at the top, then about 8 steps down to a winding set of platform steps to an entry deck at the front door.
Also shown above is the Mazda B 2000 PU, which I worked to death during the construction and landscaping. $5895!
This shot shows the various deck locations and the nursery beds near the fence line.
Jon Weems, who was at that time caretaker of the WVU Core Arboretum, helped me build and install lattice shade covers for some of the small rhododendron liners I had recently planted. Jon had/has a wealth of knowledge about native trees and shrubs as well as woody species used in landscaping. He was very helpful and encouraging during the early stages of the nursery development.
Jon took very good care of the WVU Core Arboretum for 38 years and retired on June 30th, 2015. Thank you, Jon!
All the decks labelled in the photo were eventually built, the last one being the covered one at the front door entry. When that was finished we enjoyed it so much I was wondering why we didn't get it done sooner.
Ok, back to Sean and some trashy wizardry.
The process for producing the final design was an interesting one. We set up a slide projector in the living room and used a wall as a screen. I then loaded a series of photos of the area where we needed a walkway, steps, and a deck. Sean placed large sheets of tracing paper over the projected images and began to brainstorm and sketch out his ideas on the tracing paper. This really helped Betsy and me visualize what it all might look like.
This process used a number of marked-up and discarded pieces of tracing paper before we started to feel like we were on the right track. Sean told us they (LA students) referred to the tracing paper as "trash" because that is where it all ended up sooner or later.
Below are a few photos showing the results of getting trashed with Sean.
Where once there were rocks and mud, now there is a winding walkway and steps up to the parking area. If Sean had not been involved I never would have come up with this design.
It seems like we used to get more snow back in the "old days." Usually the deck/walkway was easy to shovel because it was below grade.
One winter it went down to 23 degrees below zero and did not reach 0 degrees for a week. We had 16 inches of snow on the ground then. That low temp killed all of our Japanese maples down to the snow line. It was a terrible loss.
Betsy and I shared many memorable Christmases together, and we always had fun holiday parties. We had a lot of parties in those days.
Getting ready for winter.
Our back-to-the-land Odyssey was helped along by some other neighbors, the DiBartolomeos, who lived on the other side of the hill. They were generous, helpful, and, well, downright neighborly. Whether it was produce from Deanna's vegetable garden, fun times at their summer parties, or helping out with the firewood, they were always there when we needed a hand.
This nice stack of firewood was made possible when Dave D offered to help out by using the family tractor to haul logs up from down in our woods. A storm had up rooted two big cherry trees, and they would now be keeping us warm all winter.
Dave went down into the woods, cut the trees into bolts, hauled them up to the deck area, and then I cut them into 27" sections that I rolled over to the splitter they loaned us. And here you see the results. Many thanks to all the "DiBarts" for being such good neighbors and friends.
Here is one of the local half-wits I hired to help with the hosta digging and transplanting. He is standing on the front door deck with the winding steps to the parking area in the background.
The deck, walkway and steps went through many landscape iterations as I played musical plants.
L-R: Weeping Japanese maple, sugar maple, (transplanted with a bull dozer) weeping Katsura tree, hemlock hedge, "Caroline" rhododendon, and peonies.
From the raw machine work to the deck construction to the landscaping, it was tons of fun for everyone. Barely seen at the top of the steps is the parking area and our first all-wheel drive vehicle, a used Subaru Legacy. We purchased the Sube in 2000 as a replacement for our Mazda 323 that was totaled in an accident while on a cycling trip in Wisconsin.
The parking area and turnaround were originally all packed asphalt and limestone gravel. The place was always a mess in wet weather. Eventually we poured, with the help of neighbor Mark, a concrete slab to park on. Boy, was that nice! And then, Betsy's mom and dad (Art and Jeanne) offered to pay to have the entire driveway paved. Yippee! That sure made shoveling snow a lot easier.
The Plymouth Reliant shown here was my first ERTmobile and that dates this photo to 2004. I bought the car from a neighbor, Mrs. Babitch, for $350.00. The roof rack was a discarded one I got from cycling buddy Laurel Klein. Laurel was my cycling mentor in my early days of road riding. She is sorely missed by all.
The bamboo? I still can't remember what my plans for it were, or what I did with all of it!
The front deck, walkway and steps were only the beginning of my deck construction mania. This deck was complete with benches, portable fireplace and our HillBilly Hot Tub.
Our HillBilly Hot Tub. It was most enjoyable to lounge in the tub with a drink and watch the snow come down.
In actuality it was an old enameled cast iron bathtub. I purchased it for the princely sum of $25.00 from our neighbors, the Plitt/Carlons. I plumbed hot and cold water to the already installed faucet, and Voilà!, a HillBilly Hot Tub was born.
While I worked on decks and landscaping Betsy was busy making our new home beautiful, welcoming and cozy.
I am still kicking myself for ever suggesting we move from this lovely house and our Hornbeck Haven.
~~~ FINIS ~~~
Mementos
Footnote № 1 above mentions Sutton Breiding being kicked out of St Francis School for having "long" hair. His writings might have been another reason.
This Letter to the Editor is a good example.
Footnote № 3 above mentions the Teamsters Union. I still have my union card from 1971.
Footnote № 3 above also mentions I worked for San Francisco handyman Tony Zandona. This would have been around 1969 while living at 2381 Bush Street.
These addresses were extracted from a microfilm copy of the San Francisco White Pages for September of 1968. It is located at the Library of Congress.
As you can see, there are two entries:
Zandona, Antonio 341 Winchester Daly City
Zandona Service handyman 2784 California Street
The California Street address (2784) above was where Tony had his shop and storage area. 2381 Bush Street, where I lived, was only 4 blocks away.
His shop was a funky old building with two huge swinging wooden doors at street level; one of them had a man-door cut out in the right-hand swinging door.
The Daly City address is my choice for where Tony lived. The main reason being it is just a short distance from the Cow Palace. Tony worked part-time as a bouncer at the Cow Palace, and I am sure he loved that job.
This listing was in the 1968 Edition of the Polk Street Directory for San Francisco and shows an "Antonio Zandona Jr." residing at 2664 California St., Apt. 6.
Considering the number of San Franciscans of Italian descent, it is not surprising there would be two "Antonio Zandonas."
I am not sure how I ended up working for Tony Zandona, but I think Bill Reed (of Morgantown) mentioned he had taken a job as a day laborer with Tony and he was looking for more helpers.
I didn't last the day on the first job—hauling large garbage cans full of soil conditioner from a truck parked on the street to the back of a Pacific Heights Victorian. Ugh. I wasn't cut out for that kind of manual labor. I told Tony I was quitting, and he paid me off, but not before giving me a hard time about it. Apparently, he did not hold it against me because he later rehired me to do less demanding manual labor as well as got me a temp job as an electrician's helper. I preferred the latter.
Tony was quite the colorful character. He had a big personality and physical presence. He always wore an old fisherman's cap that was completely covered with buttons such as these.
Most of the buttons were of a sexual nature or very suggestive.
One of his fantasies was about picking up young hippy chicks and "getting it on." Talk about a dreamer! But, as a horny 16-year-old, I could relate.
He also had a passenger-side notice affixed to the dashboard that read, "Ass, Grass, or Gas—Nobody Rides for Free." Yes, indeed—Tony was quite the character.
Afterthoughts
In 1963 the Breiding Family moved from Wheeling WV to Morgantown WV.
In 1968, my mom fled with her children to San Francisco.
In March of 1972, my mom, brothers Sutton and William, sister Susan and her boyfriend, Mike Taymor, and I left San Francisco for a back-to-the-land farm in Pocahontas County, WV, where I spent one year.
That 10-year span—1963 to 1973—still looms large in my psyche, and, as Betsy (and others) will attest, I take any chance I can get to talk or write about it. Even though most of the people I knew during that period are no longer amongst the living, thinking, talking, and writing about that time keeps them alive. I need that.
Published: February 2026