JIMMY'S PLACE

The main conflict in Jimmy's Place is not likely to start a book rush except in our senior citizens' retirement projects. ging sociology teacher goes to visit a wilderness area below Big Sur where he had twice camped out forty years ago in his youth. Lo, a superhighway is being constructed. Also, two real estate developments are in mild competition there: Jimmy's Place, a roadhouse and motel for unmarried lovers, and the Pacific Ocean Retreat, a rest camp for early golden agers. Some of the spryer golden agers like to trip over to Jimmy's Place each day for a couple of slugs at the bar. Otherwise, Jimmy is determined to take over the Pacific Ocean Retreat and turn it into a golf course to give his roadhouse-motel a high tone. He's great for the superhighway too. Back at the Retreat everyone is against the encroachments of civilization. Will Jimmy get the Pacific?--he's a Sicilian and Sicilians have a notoriety as bandits. Well, our elderly sociologist, who is trying to find his lost youth, sides with leaving nature undisturbed. Meanwhile, the roadbuilders are blasting rock. The plot is resolved by a deus ex machina millionaire who buys Jimmy's and changes it into the ranch it once was forty years past. The highway gets rerouted and Pacific Ocean Retreat is saved, but some readers will still prefer Beefeater's to Geritol.