A bumpy ride through the counterculture of 1960s America...

After a childhood living on a dairy farm and atomic weapons bases, young John moves to the San Francisco Bay Area in time for his high school years. While his Naval officer father ferries troops to the new Vietnam War, John gets tear gassed in anti war demonstrations. The generation gap is a gaping chasm in his family. When his family sails off to Hong Kong to be missionaries, John is left behind in San Francisco.

The author smokes pot, climbs mountains, and loses his Virginity with an older girl, a brilliant scholarship student at Cal Berkeley. They are engaged, but she breaks it off when she realizes that he would rather go climbing or drop Acid than go to college.

After a half-hearted suicide attempt, he recovers from a nervous breakdown at his uncle's Arkansas cattle ranch. Years of homelessness follow.

Living through close calls on peaks and glaciers, hopping freights, and jail time, our hero fights loneliness, and yearns to find true love.

Lightbulb Coffee tells the story of the Sixties through the voice of a young hippie who found his way through the chaos of riots, homelessness, free love, and protest marches.