It was rare to see a city so firmly and obviously controlled by women. Surely we are accustomed to seeing men in the most important public and social positions, but in _____, the usual was reversed. Aggressive, individualistic women were the majority and very much directed public thought.
In the late 1950s, when population stresses in the United States prompted a new trend of western migration, _____, a small northwest college town, began to attract people. The influx of people brought business, growth, and money. _____ prospered. A town of ten thousand became a city of fifty thousand over a period of twenty years. During that time, a constant flow of people coursed through _____. Many came. Many stayed. But also many left or kept going as it were. _____ had become a major stop, it seemed then, on the winding road of the American wanderer. Backpacks, bedrolls, traveling families, students, hitch hikers, bike riders, motorcycle enthusiasts, that class of modern day gypsy from a retired colonel and his wife in a Winnebago to just some kid on the bum for the first time, all were part of the crowd that filtered through _____.
Yet of all the diverse people that passed through _____, an unusually high number of young free-thinking females from the first wave of newly liberated women stayed to live in _____. There was no specific reason why these women gravitated to _____ , but once the trend was recognized it began to snowball.
In the mid-sixties, the atmosphere of _____ was still very much that of a small town. The market place was compact and the casual gathering places were few. It seemed one could know every face in town then in just a few months, so a new face stood out. This allowed the transplanted woman to easily recognize and meet her peers. Their similarities, as _____ newcomers and sincere disciples of women's freedom, made for rapid friendships among casually meeting strangers. This was the modest beginning of a truly grassroots women's movement. It was a slow and haphazard process in actuality, but the result seemed some wildly conceived sociology experiment.