Kansas City, 1965 - Y.T. Erp, Jr. can't wait to leave for college at the University of California, Berkeley to escape not only the work, but especially all the phlegm-brained idiots at his father's aerospace company. Leaving behind a pregnant auburn-haired cheerleader, a sensuous red-headed siren plotting to usurp his familial ties, and his two best friends - one who ends up in Vietnam and the other in the Weather Underground - his and "trip and " on the wild side of the Generation Gap takes him from the psychedelic scene of Haight-Ashbury to the F.B.I.'s Ten Most Wanted list. Meanwhile his father is consumed by the task of managing his unmanageable phlegm-brains in the quest to help fulfill a President's challenge to and "land a man on the moon. and " As the cultural and political maelstrom known as the Sixties tears father and son apart, sending each on his own odyssey through love, war, capitalism and rebellion, the Erp family matriarch battles to keep her loved ones together and safe with the help of her best friend, the Erp Industries, Inc. janitor known as the Sugarman.