“Peace, Love and Rock n Roll!”: A Review of My Runaway Summer by Larry Schardt

 

(Year of the Book, 2022). ISBN: 978-1-646491-56-8

Larry Schardt, known and loved across the highways and byways of America for his mantra, “Peace, Love, and Rock ‘n’ Roll!” is an educator, motivational speaker, and champion of “Success that Rocks!” who has been motivating audiences for thirty-five years, thirty of which he has spent at the venerable home of the Nittany Lions, Pennsylvania State University.

A prototypical Hippie—albeit in pressed shirt and neatly knotted tie instead of tie-dye—Larry runs writers’ retreats and is the author of the bestselling book James Conner: The Triumphs of a Football Hero, which BookAuthority voted amongst the top 25 all-time-best sports books ever written.

My Runaway Summer, however, is not a sports biography. It is Larry’s poignantly personal, open, and passionate account of a memorable summer he spent in his early teens.

I first met Larry “Rock ‘n’ Roll” Schardt at the WV Writers Conference in the summer of 2013. I was immediately taken with his enthusiasm, charm, intelligence, and signature greeting.

I am honored to say we have been growing our friendship ever since.

We also have a good bit in common. Both of our fathers served in foreign wars (World War II and Vietnam, respectively) and came home from those faraway beaches and jungles with PTSD, a great deal of anger (often directed at their sons), and the not surprising habit of self-medicating with alcohol. While Larry escaped to the Jersey Shore—the story he tells in this moving and inspiring memoir—I grew up there.

The book begins with Larry’s personal definition of a hippie, followed by “Reflections of the Era,” featuring quotes from Neil Young, John Lennon, Jerry Garcia, Jimi Hendrix, Charles Bukowski, and Tom Robbins.

With the stage contextually set, Larry’s Summer of ’70 begins. The astute reader will notice that each of the twenty-seven chapters and back-matter sections take as their title a popular song (or two) from the era. Chapter 1 uses two—“Aquarius” (The 5th Dimension) and “My Generation” (The Who).

As expected from any solidly structured story, My Runaway Summer’s Act I begins in our hippie-hero’s Ordinary World, where we find him “in the weeds.” Larry’s father has just slapped his face and slammed him against the wall. This is far from an isolated incident, but it’s the one that leads fifteen-year-old Larry to “answer the call of adventure” when some friends at Mt. Lebanon Park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, talk about getting out of the city and away to either the hippie headquarters that was Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco or Ocean City on the Jersey Shore. Amid the trance-inducing chords of Jimi Hendrix’s cover of “All Along the Watchtower” blasting from a speaker atop a van (can you feel the vibes?), Larry decides he’s got to get away, and the call of bikini-clad babes, surf, sand, and live Rock ‘n’ Roll at the much closer and more attainable Jersey Shore is just what his soul requires.

Hitching rides beside a local dude named John, Larry is understandably hooked into almost every emotion imaginable—from excitement to fear to worry about how his mother will react when she realizes he is gone. Then there’s the whole hitchhiking phenomena and everything with which it comes, including the “plague of paranoia”—cops, the Establishment, and the ever-present System. Present-day Larry does a masterful job of inviting us to “take the ride” with him down the Pennsylvania Turnpike through his evocative, highly spirited prose (which reminds me of my all-time favorite spiritual questing book: Dan Millman’s The Way of the Peaceful Warrior).

After some close calls and high-tension encounters, Larry arrives in Ocean City—one of the most fantastic of the dozen or so fantasy landscapes that dot the Jersey Shore—with all of two dollars in his pocket. As a longtime resident of the fabled beaches “Down the Shore”—mostly in Point Pleasant and Manasquan, less than ninety minutes almost due north of Ocean City—I know the magic of those places intimately—and money makes the carousels and carnival rides go ’round.

To make matters worse, John—who is now revealed as a master manipulator—leaves our hero high and dry.

What’s our hippie-hero to do? Find some food, manage his limited money, secure himself a job… and MEET SOME BIKINI-CLAD, FLOWER CHILD BEAUTIES!

Larry, having courageously crossed the threshold into his Act II Initiation, encounters all of the obstacles, allies, and adventures we have come to expect in our favorite coming-of-age stories, not the least of which is dealing with the smell of funnel cakes on an empty stomach! (Those who know will nod…)

He even meets THE GIRL—a flower child named Anne.

It’s here that Larry Schardt’s storytelling skills shine the best and brightest. As he struggles against ever-mounting odds to make his dream of escape more than just a 48-hour respite from his home life, Anne—and her mysterious, complicated life—are always on his mind. She becomes his Mission within a mission.

All of us have been there, and these early experiences of love are often our deepest, most precious memories of our tumultuous teenage years.

As escape devolves into exasperation within a couple of days, Larry—despite half a dozen diverse and amiable allies coming to his immediate but ultimately inadequate aid—encounters the police, makes an uncomfortable phone call home, and experiences something 180 degrees from the freedom he so innocently craved.

But even as his Runaway Summer comes to a crashing conclusion, we see the seed from which the buried soul of a frightened, beaten down teenager has burst forth into the “Peace, Love, and Rock ‘n’ Roll!” hero who wrote this inspiring book.

As you can tell, I took great pains (which really was a pleasure) to withhold all the major and minor plot points that make this memoir worth the read. I will do so again with the “Epilogue: Eternity Road… the Balance,” except to say: It’s never too late… for understanding, forgiveness, and love.

That is the gift of Larry Schardt. He dances to the tune he touts.    

Each chapter has one or two evocative photos—either stock or obtained by special permission from the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission and others—which bring the East Coast hippies and happenings of 1970 back to vibrant life in all their flower-child, rock and roll, revolutionary and positively radical belief in a better world brilliance.

Oh, yes. One last, important thing: Proceeds from the book are donated to shelters for runaway youth.

How’s that for dancing to the tune you tout?