Vehvis is an only child who still lives with his parents, at the foot of an extinct volcano in Finland.

“Science tells us that LSD use does not cause chromosome damage, but look at me,” he said, confidentially.

Vehvis’s parents met at the Woodstock Festival in 1969. We’ve all heard the horror stories. Drugs. Free love.

“My Dad was the guy in the tophat selling LSD. They put his picture in Life magazine. We have it framed. He sold enough to be able to dodge the draft and move to Finland with my Mom.”

“He’s forever telling me that I was conceived during a Carlos Santana solo. Then he goes, ‘That’s as good a time as any, Son.’ If I hear him say that one more time, I’m going to shoot myself.”

“Oh, he doesn’t really mean that,” Vehvis’ Mom told me candidly. “But back to the story. We had to get out of America. What a nightmare that place was. Hippies floor to ceiling. And then I married one!” she laughed.

“We were in love,” Vehvis’ Dad admits, “and Vehvis was on the way. We decided to name him Vehvis, which is Finnish for ‘one-hundred watt guitar amplifier.’”

“Mom was in America visiting relatives in upstate New York, when she was swept along in a tide of people going to the festival. One minute she was having an icecream on the sidewalk, and the next minute she was swept along in a tide of unwashed pot smokers. There was no way out.”

“When they got back to Finland, Dad started a home-based sardine business. Then I was born. Mom would can the sardines in the kitchen and make just enough money so Dad could buy fish hooks and gas for his Trumpet, one of only a handful in the country. It was tough for a while, but they made it. We always had food on the table. Gosh, I wish I could find a woman like her.”

“Dad has always let me wear the hat anytime I wanted to. It’s a little moth eaten, but I still wear it on special occasions, like when I get a bike motor going for the first time.”