"The sun had not yet risen that morning of July 1, 1977, when

I slipped behind the wheel of "Black Beauty," my '68 Cadillac

convertible, and headed north on I-5 to Camp Pendleton Marine Corps

Base. I had the top down as usual since it hadn't rained much in Southern

California since 1969. Camp Pendleton is perhaps the largest military base

in the world. It occupies 125,000 acres, or almost 200 square miles, in

Southern California. It has over seventeen miles of coastline that extends

from Oceanside north to San Clemente. It is home to as many as seventy

thousand United States marines."