Life / My Generation
The Campus Revolution
Old Man Ash
There is a future me, I can imagine: whether in this same house is immaterial. Somewhere, writing, or sitting by a fireplace, waiting for a listener. Some young guy with thirty dollars in his pocket looking for a pot of gold, or a place to get away from it all. Scarcer and scarcer, I imagine. And he finds, this wanderer, me no longer wandering, and asks me a little of how I came to be in that place.
"I suppose," the old man said in a voice that was at once tentative and authoritative, "you've never heard of me. That's just as well."
"Why's that?"
"You won't have preconceptions, like these young reviewers who come around trying to milk their pet angles on me."
It was true; I had none. It was simply an old man, whose name, Charles Ash, had no meaning for me. He looked a little ashen, I thought, bent in his rocker, his legs covered in a woven shawl. A snug cabin in the woods. A fire sputtering slowly in the stove behind him: a cat curled on the rug. You can tell something about a person, it occurred to me, according to whether they have a dog or a cat - or no pet at all.
"So good," he went on. "You won't mind hearing a little story about me, then."
"No, I wouldn't mind." But I had a sudden premonition of danger, as if I'd agreed to a wizard’s conditions on some kind of deal. What was I in for, anyway? Was it knowledge I could handle, was it some dark burden that would be shifted onto my shoulders?
"But - " he faltered; "I don't exactly know where to begin. Why don't you ask me a question, to get me started. You see, I'm so used to these reviewers, with their ready-made lists of questions, all these questions. And you - you come with nothing, looking for the way to the town. From England, you say you are? Very well, tell me something about yourself and I'll be reminded of a tale of my own. Let's trade stories, shall we?"
"You first," I was about to say.
But the old man beat me to it. "You first."
I agreed, and began with the last wound I'd received from this arrow called life.
"Asshole," I heard Nick say into the microphone. Did he really say that? And was he referring to me?
I suspected so. Still singing and strumming away, he turned his head to look at me. Drifted back while the others played on.
"Uh oh," he said finally as he realized I'd stopped vocalizing and was looking perplexed and hurt. "I've blown it again. Did I ruin your night?"
"I'll get over it, in a day or so."
"Yeah, you'll get over it." He moved back to the mike. I started packing up my stuff to go.
Two days later, it was gone, out of my system. Something that had happened to someone else, not me. A history, a fragment of gone history.
And the next week? I was like, hey, let's jam. Let's pick it up where we left off - or on some whole other jag.
I figured by sharing that particular episode of my personal journey, a little wounding, it might get him to open up.
His jag . . . sophomore year in college.
Except he told it not as of himself, but as his post-graduate self might have fictionalized it, in the person of a Willie not-Ash-but-Gray. Somebody, in any case, whose naive fancies and inevitable woundings and philosophic recoveries were the same as his.
The Campus Revolution: Sophomore Song
Come September, and I was eager to cultivate a new image. I was moving to another suite on the first floor of Bissell Hall, to an eight-by-ten cubicle all my own. I would create a den of my own fancy, consonant with the theme of my new passion in music: Electric Ladyland. Dot, perhaps, was my electric lady - though maybe not so very electric. Raw voltage was to be furnished by Hendrix, the unquestioned king of rock-and-soul. The transcendental, yet primal mood created by his masterpiece was, I felt, an exact expression of my own longings, my own emerging desires, my aesthetic taste and my inner vision of the world. Previously unknown dimensions of being were being unleashed in my consciousness by the social and cultural movement of the time, and by the direct appreciation of the new music with the aid of such accessories as stereo headphones and psychoactive drugs. These personal discoveries had begun to flower in the spring term, and had been put under wraps during the summer in Baltimore. As the new college year approached, I was more and more eager to blossom into this new, emerging identity, to create a living space for fertile growth yet to come.
I spent a chunk of my hard-earned cash to buy a real stereo system, with large, separate floor speakers. this was the core of the new environment. On cold, cinder-block walls, I would hang red and black burlap, to soften and intensify with a gypsy mood. On the linoleum floor, a red shag rug. On the single bed, a tiger-striped spread. For mystic light, a red bulb, and a large red candle. Incense and a poster of Jimi would nearly complete the scene. The dope, of course, would follow.
Though I began the fall term ensconced in my new Hendrix-haven, I was hedging my bets on the new self-image. I rushed the fraternities, opting for Sigma Nu, the same Greek house my brother had joined at Georgia Tech. My primary rationale was to provide "something to do, somewhere to go" with Dot when she came up on weekends in her new little Pinto. Sigma Nu had cocktail parties every Friday afternoon, kegs of beer every Saturday night - sometimes Friday, sometimes Sunday - sometimes Wednesday. . . . It was a drinking house - but then so were they all. It was a bit of a jock house - though not in a big way, as some were. My new brothers were more of the ex-jock type, those who took life less seriously now. Those whose priorities were drinking, skiing, having a good time on the way to business school or banking jobs. Womanizing was also a worthwhile pursuit, but definitely took second place to fraternizing. This, after all, was Dartmouth, and the male mystique was still king.
Witness Fat Sarge, otherwise known as "The King" of the House. No ladies' man, Fat Sarge had a wide, frog-like head squashed down on a fireplug body. His flushed complexion was crowned with reddish, close-cropped curls. His broad smile spread with thin lips over a gaping maw that more often than not opened for beer - which he lifter in his scepter, a red rubber toilet plunger brimming with brew.
"Yeah reely-o'reet," he'd croak, "tell me about it. I mean, are we shitfaced, or what? Take a look at that bunghole on the keg we just kicked. Any drops left? I'll lick 'em up." And the tongue would dart out, searching . . .
The resident "freaks" were few: Mad Dog, who had a violent appetite for any drug but chiefly for alcohol, and Hairpie, a more benevolent soul whose primary passion was blasting electric guitar noise into the street from a high-powered amplifier placed like an air conditioner in his window. With the exception of these couple of upperclassmen, the House was more or less straight. The new pledge class offered more possibilities for substance abuse than the beer-soaked walls of Sigma Nu had yet witnessed.
With the pledges I felt some affinities that helped drew me to cast my lot with them. There was Chris Denman, a Canadian by birth and a fellow lacrosse player; Terry Bell, who hailed from Rye, N.Y., right next to Mamaroneck; a Bissell resident we called Boomer, a diminutive Bronx native who idolized his New York teams; and a couple of freakish sorts who promised some high times to go along with the usual suds.
Our pledge hazing was mild by some standards. We only had to guzzle beer and baking soda, in order to vomit up our old selves before entering. To crawl naked on our hands and knees before the broom-whips of our masters, the elder brothers. To sing the praises of the House, and to serve the whims of our betters, for a nominal probationary period.
October saw the culmination of a year-long, escalating rivalry between the Baltimore and New York teams, in all three major sports. The earthshaking upset of the unbeatable Colts by the upstart Jets was history - a dark page for those in the Baltimore camp. The awesome corps in blue had been heralded even on the cover of Life magazine, their praises sung by Ogden Nash. But Broadway Joe Namath had shot them down in the third Super Bowl, in January, and nothing could be assumed, any more. the New York Knicks dismantled the division-champion Baltimore Bullets in the NBA playoffs a few months later.
After that, when baseball season began, my little friend and rival baseball fanatic, Boomer from suite 203, informed me that, okay, even if my Orioles were destined for a comeback in '69, they'd better watch out for his new Mets. Sure, the Metsies had finished ninth the year before. But they had a kid named Seaver and a hotshot named Ryan and a promising centerfielder in Agee and . . . well, look at the trend, Baltimore vs. New York.
Baltimore proceeded to win their American League Eastern Division by nineteen games. The amazing, Miracle Mets came charging from eight games back in August to take the National League East, and the stage was nearly set. The Western division champions were first disposed of in short order. Then the World Series began, with Baltimore's Buford clouting Seaver's first pitch out, and the rout, most thought, was on. Baltimore did win that first game, but New York came back to win the next four with a combination of superb pitching, unlikely batting heroes, and a string of impossible, game-saving catches in the field. I was sorely disappointed; Boomer was exuberant. But I can't say that either of us was very surprised at the Mets' improbable victory.
When the news of Buford's leadoff homer was flashed on the scoreboard, a mixed roar of approval and indignation rose up from the crowd. The football game in progress was already a laugher, with Penn playing patsy to the Big Green. Dot and I were sipping steadily from my chromed pocket flask, and by halftime we were drunkenly cheering along with the rest of the crowd at the dogs fucking at midfield.
An elite corps of campus police disentangled the obscene pair and chased them off the field. Then there was little to hold our interest but the blaring, beating band about to march into the stadium (serving either as objects of ridicule or a means to make us yell louder) or, to Dot's special amusement, the male cheerleaders, some painted Indian-style and strutting and dancing around, bare-chested in the cold.
Besides the added excitement generated by the World Series, this was just another football weekend at Dartmouth. Social life on campus (such as it was) was built around football, beer, and a lot of general animalizing. "Wah-hoo-wah!!" Women were mocked and grossed out by obscene language and behavior, as a matter of course. if they showed up regularly, as Dot did, they learned to shrug it off. The primary object of a given night was to drink the House keg dry. If there were kegs still on elsewhere after that, roving bands of revelers would bounce from house to house along Fraternity Row, till every keg was "kicked." If their job was left undone in the morning, a sudsy breakfast would be on tap. Cocktails started at noon, and continued till the tapping of new kegs. Live bands and loud records played constantly, providing a raucous counterpoint to the thumping of the big bass drums of the marching band.
Dot arrived in Hanover virtually every weekend, the first half of fall term. We enjoyed the 'tails parties, the basement kegs. She was a pretty fair beer-drinker. When the football team was away, and few other dates were in sight, she stood her ground in the house of men like a trooper. We also spent a fair bit of time in the dorm, where she'd camp in my cubicle with me, living out of her suitcase. We spent long hours in bed.
We grew increasingly closer, talking glibly of marriage, of having kids. We even had them named: Ted, and Alice. That was before the movie, of which Bob and Carol joined our pair as the title. I was still thinking of becoming a lawyer, and the conventional lifestyle beckoned when Dot was in my picture. She took the odd puff of marijuana, but generally stayed away from the non-alcoholic drugs. Her values concerning drugs and politics were close to those of her family, my family, conventional society. Though I was experimenting more with drugs and had some definite prejudices against the current government's conduct of the war, I couldn't formulate any coherent alternative or method of change for the society as a whole. So while Dot and I had some searching discussions on these controversial subjects, our minds were not set at odds. We took comfort in our more primary identities, two students in love.
As the term wore on, Dot found her studies slipping and spent more weekends at Green Mountain. When she wasn't around I tended to stick with my old dorm buddies, becoming more involved in their recreational activities - smoking marijuana, and, with increasing abandon, "dropping" mescaline. It took me an evening's research in the medical library before I would consent to trying that particular "hard" drug. I found no evidence of danger, but lots of intriguing references to mystical hallucinations and revelatory visions. I learned that mescaline was the active ingredient of peyote, the sacrament of the Native American Church. I tried it. After sampling the harmless, cartoon-like hallucinations and revelatory visions of the multi-layered fabric of reality, I liked it. I tried it again. And again.
A bunch of us took to dropping every weekend, sometimes mid-week as well. A drop meant an all-night trip, followed by a day of "coming down," a gradual return to quasi-normal earth-consciousness. Each new trip, we were as excited as a bunch of kids embarking on a new adventure - cajoling friends to join on the spur of the moment; deciding how much of a dose to take; putting on good music; waiting . . . perhaps taking more, out of impatience or sheer boldness; experiencing the first "fringles" (those fuzzy, tingling sensations of getting off). The synthetic mescaline we generally scored, in the form of long yellow tablets called "yellow submarines," was reputedly mixed with speed. Soon our leg muscles would indeed be speeding along, bopping rhythmically up and down in place on the floor. With astonished eyes we would see the walls begin to waver, to buckle and flow, to come alive with shapes and patterns that were or were not there. The music itself would begin to dance, to draw cartoons before our eyes - open or closed, it didn't make much difference. We'd laugh at everything; for life, as Hendrix sang, was but a joke.
Like a gang of kids, we chased each other around the dorm, playing zombies or pelting each other with the latest munchy-food: Screaming Yellow Zonkers. “You are what you eat,” said Tiny Tim, and so we became what we ate: screaming yellow zonkers. The straight students attempting to study on weekends in our dorm - whether stolid seniors or naive frosh - must have thought we were crazy. Maybe we were.
Coming down developed into a kind of group therapy, especially when we got into the heavier-duty tripping on acid. The higher we went - to the realms of power that made us feel in our elevated consciousness that we were in some way literally "sitting on top of the world" - the farther there was to fall, to come back home. We helped each other in the journey. The "we" was essential throughout: tripping was not meant to be, and was not generally enjoyed in practice, as a strictly private experience, but as a mutual enhancement of private revelation, or as a whacked-out social event.
As in the fraternity house, so in the dorm: the normal mode of recreation for upperclassmen was drinking. It was the Class of '72 that was infested with the dopers, the raging clowns who partied all night and stank up the whole place with the pungent aromas of burning weed, hashish, even the odd bit of opium. Our rooms were the ones sporting candles, incense, headphones, giant upside-down American flags, psychedelic posters, mushrooming record collections, beads, floor cushions, waterpipes. Ours were the Ivy League haircuts gone to seed.
Our backgrounds were normal enough: the Bissell drug crowd included Warren, the Texas high-school football star; Barney, the son of a Boston police chief; Brian, the son of a steel executive; not that everyone in our class, our group of friends in the dorm, or at the frat, were going freaky. Plenty stayed away from the evil influences that were subverting us. And that was okay. But more and more our social associations revolved around the question of "who's got the stuff?"
More often than not, the answer was Steve Hapgood. He'd already been busted in New York State, but that didn't stop him from bringing in a steady supply of grass, hash, and psychoactive pills. His second-floor room was the setting any night of the week (with plenty of afternoons thrown in) for good music and dope. Sex, drugs, rock-and-roll: of that notorious trio we were definitely short on the first; so, we asked ourselves, giving into the temptations at hand, “what can ya do?”
The Class of '72 was a class caught squarely in the middle of a giant, historical transition. The old values, priorities, social games and political structures were being challenged all over the world. We were in the vanguard. We knew it was happening, and happening fast; but it was happening so fast, that we couldn't foresee where it would take us, or society as a whole. Our bull sessions often touched on this nebulous, but irresistible theme of "the revolution." How violent did the means need to be, to effect change? How far-reaching, and long-lasting, would the superficial cultural changes, the hair, clothes and lifestyle patterns, prove to be? How far were we, as individuals or collectively, willing to give up the security of our class ranking, in the larger social sense of "class"? Could we toss away those privileges of affluence and status that were guaranteed to us if we played by the old rules? Increasingly, as the college years passed and we each moved closer to the choices of a lifetime, the question of the day became: how loyal would each of us remain to the ideals, the rhetoric, the new values of the "now" generation when the crunch came and we were faced with the real possibilities of being thrust out on the street without our upper-middle-class life support system (i.e., the check from Daddy or the grant from Ma D.) - in Dylan's phrase, “like a complete unknown / like a rolling stone"?
As much as we could, we put off a final decision on that touchy subject. The classes above us were still opting largely for the traditional careers: business, law, medicine. It appeared that if any revolution were to be carried out, we would have to put our own drugged heads, our own lean bodies on the line.
One senior who'd found himself in the midst of all the young freaks in Bissell 102, was beginning to feel the senior blues with a difference. Every member of the graduating class, it was well known, would feel the grinding gears of the final year, as fall faded into winter, and winter zoomed into spring. It was bad enough for the straight cats bound for the grad schools and banks. The real shock would come for humanities majors like Dana, who would be toting into the real world a head full of pipe dreams, poetic fancies, paranoia, and stone confusion.
Dana had dragged his heels, throwing his lot in with the wild-eyed sophomores, and now he'd be forced out of the magic womb all of us were just starting to enjoy. With no solace but the company of a bunch of kindred cloud souls, already he was having to think about such bringdowns as an honors English project - itself a mere diversion before the larger realities struck home: the draft, a career, a job, a way to make it out there in the all-too-real world.
Dana played a sensitive guitar. He wrote inspired verse. He was an impersonator of a thousand and one mythic characters of the angelic and demonic and all-too-earthly, cosmicomic stages. He'd done ballet, could sketch and paint. His room was adorned with all manner of visual gypsy fashions, from art-nouveau to day-glo; it was festooned with bead curtains, candles and incense, baroque theatre posters and knickknacks, rainbow ribbons, all sorts of bells; we called it the Clown Palace.
Dana turned me on to my first acid. The Clown Palace, naturally, was the drop point. On that occasion Warren, also an acid virgin, stepped in for a joint and we talked him into joining us. In another hour we were giggling, laughing, rolling over in nonsensical mirth. The walls were undulating, streaked with day-glo ribbons of our own imagining to wrap around the ones "really" there, as ribbons of light and sound emanated from the speakers of Dana's stereo featuring Steve Miller's rock-blues guitar. We could have stayed in the Clown Palace and seen all there was to see all night, but we went out for air about ten and wandered over to a neighboring dorm.
Little Hall was another of the new residences, one where we seldom went to socialize. But Warren knew of a party there, “somewhere on the second floor." We were waylaid by a party on the first floor which was spilling out into the hall. Into the bathroom, to be exact, where several unclothed female bodies were seen to appear and disappear. The shower was running, and male laughter echoed within. We peeked in. It was a shower party. Water was splashing everywhere. Hands were soaping bodies, bodies danced and laughed, the steam played pictures in the air. Music pulsed from the open room across the hall. We kept our clothes on and went into the room. Seated around in a semicircle of couches and chairs were a dozen people, three or four women included, all nude, passing joints.
"Welcome," said host Dwayne with a big smile and an Alabama accent. "Why don't y'all take off your clothes and have a seat?"
We actually behaved in quite a civilized manner. It was, in essence, any Alabama cocktail party on the veranda, the guests holding mint juleps instead of joints, wearing white pants and shoes or lemon chiffon dresses instead of buff. But where Dwayne got those women, and the wherewithal to undress the whole party, who knows?
We'd run across Dwayne, another '72, in the spring during an outdoor smoke-and-sun study session on the grass between the dorms. He was remarkable for his suave social grace, his gentle and easy laughter, yet also for a keen intensity of spirit - usually channeled into dreaming up the next occasion for partying. Dwayne spoke fluent Russian and ate acid like candy. This night he was straight - except for the joints he kept rolling from a pound bag of grass.
Warren, Dana and I dutifully disrobed and sat there chatting a little, listening to music, passing the endless joints that went around. When the novelty of the occasion wore off, we trippers headed up the stairs for more intense conversation and musical explorations with Warren's friend and another party of trippers. I spent hours (or so it seemed) cross-legged on the floor, nearly hidden under the stereo table, with headphones on - afraid of the unpredictable currents of social intercourse perhaps - grooving to some new Jethro Tull, and yet more grass . . .
So it went, to the end of term, smoking, tripping, partying, still able to shift gears for entertaining Dot, or getting shitfaced with the bro's. I managed to squeeze some bookwork in somewhere. The courses I was taking were of moderate interest, my work in them somehow respectable. Besides introductory Government and English, my double track, I'd branched into the philosophy of Religion, where I indulged in some purely speculative comparisons between Kierkegaard and Quakerism.
The Friends Meeting, during this time, had come to offer a stabilizing center for my changing life. Sunday mornings I could recover from the week's classes and reading and the couple of hard nights' partying with a long walk out toward the golf course and a cool, silent hour of worship in Meeting. Getting my head back together, so to speak. These were intelligent and down-to-earth people - including a number of professors, like Peter Bien - who shared "alternative" values without delving into a superficially hip lifestyle - in fact living a quiet revolution all along without resorting to drugs, rock music, unfettered sex or any of the other trappings of my generation's movement. Often the hours there were uncomfortable, as I rehashed the dilemmas of my time, my life, my pliable personality; sometimes with the spurs of others' spoken revelations, sometimes with silence alone; yet I always walked away refreshed by the unraveling of psychic burdens, and the kind company I met there.
Professor Bien showed himself even more wise and articulate than I'd known him to be from the field of literature. When it came to current events, he spoke with a controlled but passionate fervor. I would turn to him when the time came for draft counseling.
"How would you like to come home with me for Thanksgiving?" Dot proposed in the course of a mid-November phone call. "I think my parents would like to meet you."
"Oh, ah, hmm." I had to think. Dot's father, the Wall Street bond broker, was, I could guess, not exactly my type. What would we talk about? Government? Literature? The War? Religious philosophy? Football? - ah, there was something. "I guess so," I said. "I mean, sure; why not?"
"Don't worry, he won't bite. Just don't bring up anything about the war, and you'll be all right."
"The war? You mean he's in favor of it? With his fellow patriotic Americans getting shot to pieces over there for nothing? With - "
"Oh, I know. Wall Street's another world. He says it all depends on the market. The war pushes the numbers up, so they're all happy. Anyway, I just know last time I said anything about it, he blew up. So I'm just saying . . ."
"All right, all right. No politics, sex or religion, right? Does he follow football, by any chance?"
Actually, I was flattered by the invitation. It was more confirmation that this girl was serious about me. True, she'd already given me her body - but that was right off the bat. This invitation had more implications, for the longer term.
It wasn't easy. The long drive south was fun. Sleeping in the same house, down the hall from Dot, led to mutual fantasies of a clandestine rendezvous in the night, we later confessed to one another. But supper itself . . .
"So. I hear you work on Wall Street. What's that like?" - as if I can't tell. The bulging veins on the half-bald forehead, the long-clenched jaw muscles, the florid complexion . . .
"Ah - uh, hunnh - (swallow) - well, it's okay, I guess. It pays the bills." He looks up and glances at Dot's mother with a little smile. She turns to me and says,
"And you, Dorothy tells me you're studying to be a lawyer."
Suddenly I feel the longish hair creeping conspicuously down my back, beginning to writhe like a nest of snakes . . . no - not now - an acid flashback while eating turkey in present company!? I change the mental gears; must concentrate on the subject at hand.
"Yes, that's right. At least, that's what it looks like at this point. It may change, though. Two and a half more years to go, I could learn lots of other interesting things."
"Oh, what are you majoring in?"
The father steadily eats, eyeing more turkey. "English," I say. "I mean, we don't have to declare a major yet, but that'll be my choice."
Dot gives me a surprised look. She starts to speak, hesitates, then comments, "I thought you were going to major in Government." She's right. That is, on the ride down I built my case for that choice. A sound foundation in the premises upon which laws were written . . . but just before the long weekend I got back two mid-term papers, one in English and one in Government. I'd researched like crazy to write a sober analysis of a British common-law case-study involving capital punishment, and gotten a C-plus. In English class, on the other hand, when I'd written a comparative character study on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, I'd enjoyed myself in tossing off a five-page essay in an evening's work, and come out with a B. Faced now with a paragon of the unimaginative, businesslike approach to life, I'm thrown back to the symbolic richness of literature, where fancy rides free and language nurtures inner values, not rules.
"Well, English is considered equally as good a preparation for law school as a major in Government," I answer truthfully. The father looks at me. I go on: "You know, its a facility with language that's at least as important in law as knowing the ins and outs of the legislative process."
"Hmm, yes, that's right," he mutters, mouthing more turkey. He doesn't look particularly happy.
Dot remains silent. When I glance across the table at her to gauge how she's reacting to all this, I notice her brow all knitted with little lines. Her mother picks up the dangling conversation.
"Oh, well, that's interesting. Do you know, that's what I took when I went to Smith. English." She smiles proudly. Her husband glares at her.
Dot snaps, "Yeah, and look where it got you." Dot has the luxury of not having to declare a major until next year.
"What do you mean?" Her mother suddenly looks wounded.
"Well, stuck in this house, doing nothing with your life. Who wants to live like that?"
"You don't know at all. I go out, I, I - "
"Shop, and play golf, and go to the ladies' tea," Dot sings in a sharp tone.
"That's uncalled for, young lady," says her father, gruffly.
"Well, she does. That's all she does."
Her mother starts to speak but chokes it back and leaves the table. "I can't believe it," she turns and blurts halfway to the kitchen. "I work all day in the kitchen, two days, preparing this wonderful meal for you and your young man, for Thanksgiving, and this is the thanks I get, a lot of lip from a - "
I brace myself for the word "whore," but Dot coolly cuts her off. "Go on in and have another drink, Mom."
Her mother stalks away into the kitchen, out of view. We hear the fridge door open, ice tinkling into a glass.
Her father says nothing, looks at Dot with a frown, then at me with a weak smile.
"Women," he says. Then - "Say, you're from Baltimore, right? Those Colts are doing pretty well this year, I notice . . ."
"God," says Dot, her hand to her head. "I'm getting another migraine."
"So what's this about majoring in English?" Dot asks me on the ride back north to New England.
"Oh, you know. It's just easier, I mean, easier for me, I think, and more interesting, than that drab seriousness of the Government course. It's really just as good for law."
Dot keeps her eyes on the road, saying nothing. Finally, "Do you still want to go to law school?"
"Yes," I lied.
The truth was, I'd begun to question the whole idea. I just wasn't sure any more. For three years it had been the thing I told everyone I was going to do. And everyone, of course, did ask. I had to say something, and something respectable, that I could dream of for me, to match my talents and interests. Now that I had new interests - drugs and rock and roll, for instance - what career could I match with them? Well, at least poets were creative, made offering to the selfsame altars as the stoned avatars of the new awakening. Not that I myself would be a poet, necessarily . . . but perhaps a teacher, a professor, like Peter Bien.
One evening early in December a rumor flashes around the dorm: something is going on down at Parkhurst Hall, the administration building. Campus radio has announced earlier that a small demonstration was planned to protest the continuation of ROTC, an army officer training program on campus.
I put on my hat and ski jacket and walk down at a brisk pace toward the Green. A huge crowd is gathered outside Parkhurst, covering the lawn and spilling out onto the sidewalk and street.
I see Barney there already, at the edge of the crowd, looking on. "What's going on?" I ask him.
"Occupation. They're in the main office. Been there since four o'clock. They've been talking with the executive dean. Ten minutes ago they carried him out, still sitting on his swivel chair. Word has it that the National Guard's been called in."
"Wow. Who's doing it?" I look up at the hall. A rank of stern, unshaven youths with jean-jackets and wire-rimmed glasses stands defiantly on the steps and hangs from the first-floor windows of the building.
"SDS," Barney says. "Supported by an ad-hoc committee against ROTC." He calls it by the lingo, "Rotcee."
In the next half hour, nothing much happens. A steady stream of speeches issues from a bullhorn wielded by the occupation forces, heard by a crowd that hoots its approval and stamps cold feet in the snow. Then the New Hampshire Guard arrives. The blue-helmeted riot troops pull up in their trucks and unload with military precision into a formation circling the crowd. Clear visors down, black batons held at the ready, they stand awaiting orders. Behind them stands a chartered bus, chuffing away in the cold night at idle, the real weapon in this serious game. Its New Hampshire license plates read, "Live Free or Die."
A burly officer walks through the crowd to the steps of the hall and talks privately to some of the young men sitting on the steps. Barney tells me that probably thirty people are "sitting in." The spokesman confronting the officer waves his arms around vehemently; the officer stands his ground. It is obvious the protesters are being given an ultimatum: leave immediately or be carted away to the state capital, for at least a booking and likely a brief stay in jail. The bus stands there at ease, still chuffing. Maybe, I consider, the choice isn't obvious. Maybe they are already under arrest.
The press has also come out in force for the occasion. These days, such demonstrations have been sweeping the nation's campuses and are hot news everywhere. A woman reporter from a nearby radio station sticks a mike in my face and asks, "And what is your opinion of what's going on here? Do you support the protesters?"
"Yes, I do support their cause. I think the military has no place on this campus. But I have to say I don't agree with this method of protest. It's going a little to far."
"Thank you for your comments," she smiles, and takes her tape machine elsewhere.
I feel famous, for a moment, wondering if my immortalized voice will make it onto the air. I look over my shoulder, at the line of troops. The young Guardsman immediately to my rear glances at me briefly, without expression, and looks away. He's probably a year out of high school, choosing six years in the Guard over two - or less - in Vietnam.
As I stood there I reran that reporter's tape in my mind. Actually, I reconsidered, I was rooting for the protestors, and hated to see them getting arrested. But I hadn't put my body on the line. How could I risk an uncertain future - as a lawyer, or a teacher - with a career-threatening criminal record? "The Revolution" had a thrilling ring to it and felt, in the making, important: but where was it headed? What did it really mean? The radical students, while lacking a long-range practical program for change, had made their choice, taken their stand against the war, on faith. I couldn't really condemn them but neither could I join them, at least not yet. I stood and watched as they were hauled away.
Winter term, 1970. I'd had to choose my courses before Thanksgiving. I was now committed to another round of social sciences, along with more introductory English. The outcome, too, would follow the pattern of the fall, with C's in Government and Sociology, and B in the English survey. The real turning point of my academic career came, however, in the Government course, entitled, "The American Political System."
Professor Gude was a swarthy little man with the energetic spirit of an investigative journalist, which he'd been before turning to academia in hopes that some of his passion for justice would rub off on us impressionable youth. He succeeded in part with me, but the desired effect backfired. I became so disillusioned with the system that I saw no place in it for what was left of my ideals, and gave up hope in it altogether.
Professor Gude had just returned from a term of fieldwork in Chicago, which culminated in a personal investigation of the murder of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. Before dawn on December fourth, Gude told us, Chicago police had stormed Hampton's apartment, guns blazing, and killed him as he lay asleep in his bed. The chief of security for the Chicago Panthers was found to have been a police agent acting under the direction of the FBI. It wasn't bad enough that the Founding Fathers had kept slaves. Now the slaves were free, but if they exercised any real political dissent, the orders went out the same as always: Off with their heads.
My renewed cynicism was not eased by the basic premise of the course as a whole: that politics in pluralist America fundamentally depended upon the interplay of interest-group pressures; that it primarily consisted of a constant jockeying for power by special-interest groups through high-powered, well-financed lobbying and backroom tradeoffs. My simplistic dreams of seeing ideal government (never clearly defined in my young head) come about through the enlightened laws of democracy died in that course on compromise. It was just too messy, too fraught with competing factions - with the weight of power residing in the establishment, holding the status quo.
But over in English, where the course began in the Romantic Age, a whole new world opened up for me. In literature I was finding expression of my values - truth, justice, compassion. And the forms of expression were sublime. Wordsworth and Shelley spoke directly to my soul, of human potential without compromise except with the language that gives it life. With my conventional middle-class upbringing, I was exulting in these newfound intellectual visions and had to explore them with all the grandiosity of youth.
As the subject came naturally to me, I could even write English papers and essay questions while stoned - an indispensable advantage at the time. The incisive awareness produced by hallucinogens actually seemed to help in literary work, giving deeper insight to see connections, interpret symbols, and intuit patterns and intentions behind literal text. That happened to be the same kind of penetrating awareness that, when galvanized into action, was turning the political world, indeed the American culture, upside down. Enabling more and more people to see behind the Government's war rhetoric, for example.
"Hey, whatchou boys doin up there?"
It was four in the morning, not yet dawn.
"Fuck, it's the campus police," we whispered. Their flashlights were waving up at us on top of the ski-jump platform. We’d gone out for a little jaunt in the open spaces of the Dartmouth golf course, over a hard crust snow, and coming back by the the ski-jump, were inspired to “get a little higher.” We were already tripping on acid.
"Hi there. How ya doin." Barney was always the talker. And we could trust that he knew how to deal with police.
"Oh, we're doin all right. It's you boys we was wonderin about."
"We're doing fine," I ventured. "We just came up for the view."
One of the police (they weren't real police, only hired hands for on-campus matters) laughed - "Heh - in the dark, in the middle of the night?"
That argument stumped us.
"You're not going to do anything - crazy, are you?"
"Who, us?" Barney sang out giddily. "Like what did you have in mind?"
"Like jumping."
"Oh - ha ha - " We all broke up. It was the old Linkletter myth again. That everyone on acid flies off like Art Linkletter's daughter did out of a tenth-story window. But how did they know we were tripping on acid - ?
"Well, you boys just better come on down now."
"Wha' for?" Barney started to protest.
"Okay, officers," Steve offered. He'd been busted once for selling pills in New York and didn't want any more trouble than necessary. He was carrying a couple of joints in his pocket; I wondered whether he'd try to ditch the stuff or take a chance they wouldn't search us. "We're coming down."
Which we were. No more fancy colors or wild rhapsodic visions of "sitting on top of the world" this trip.
"That's right, good. Come on we'll run you back to the campus. What were you doin up there anyway, this time of the night?"
"Sight-seeing," Barney quipped.
Barney and I held our laughter as best we could during the patrol car ride they gave us back to campus. Dana wasn't in a laughing mood, though, sitting between us in the back seat with a dark expression on his brow. He'd become paranoid, he confessed later, that the police were taking us to the hospital to shoot us full of Thorazine. That would have brought us all crashing back to Earth in a hurry.
Instead the kindly gentlemen let us off at Bissell and said good-night, an hour before dawn. We lingered awhile in the cool air, sharing a relaxing joint, until the first yellow light appeared, like sour milk, in the east over the bristling, mocking trees.
We stood gazing at the painting in the sky.
"Hey you guys," Steve said. "Transcendent monkeys. I've got a nice chunk of Moroccan blond upstairs. Anybody up for it? Replenish some of that New-Hampsha’ granite, 'in our muscles and our brains.'" He was bastardizing the college song, "Men of Dartmouth."
I filled in the refrain, borrowing from Dylan: "'Everybody must get . . .' busted up on good green granite." From then on, hash, for the three of us, was "granite."
The highlight of the winter term was an off-campus event, a concert at a Boston club called the Tea Party, with Quicksilver Messenger Service. It was a smoky cave, filled with flashing rainbow lights and searing guitar music, a crowd of bouncing enthusiasts urging on our gods . . . a classic scene of the psychedelic rock era. On the way back there were half a dozen of us packed in an old black hearse outfitted with cushions, curtains, stereo blasting a replay of the concert. The driver stopped for a shabby-looking hitchhiker standing in the snow just outside Boston. He looked kind of straight, with his short hair and greaseball clothes, so we held off on the smoke for a while, though it was still thick in the air. He asked to be let out only a few miles further, and we went on our merry way up the New England Thruway.
Half an hour into New Hampshire, we heard a radio news report, about a hitchhiker who'd been found killed just off the New England Thruway. Police were following up a lead that he'd been seen earlier getting into an old hearse. Our blood froze; the driver gunned it.
"Hey, whaddya doin?" Barney yelled at him. "You wanna give the cops an excuse to pull us over?" Once again, Barney carried weight in such matters.
"Never mind," Chip told him, still accelerating. "If they're going to be looking for us anyway, the sooner we get off this highway the better."
We rolled into Hanover still clammy with paranoia that we'd all be taken in for murder. Or at least, busted for all the dope they would find when they rounded us up.
Winter Carnival came and went, a blur of activity that Dot and I shared like old hands, this time. We watched the frosh with our benign and patronizing humor, yet still envied the upperclassmen with their consummate ease. Anyway, the world was our oyster: we weren't going anywhere else, too soon. We were just where we wanted to be, with each other, without another care. On Sunday we were blessed with a blizzard that put off her departure for an extra day, an extra night together.
She drove up for a visit again the next weekend, and again a Sunday blizzard descended, closing her highway back to Green Mountain. Incredibly, this happened yet again on the following two weekends, giving us an ideal schedule of three days together, four days apart, for a solid month. We were more convinced than ever of our star-crossed destiny, a charmed couple.
Our sexual passions proceeded full steam ahead - except, or course, for that old problem, the nagging fact that our union was never fully consummated. The bodies of mature adults, mating: but the inhibitions of children, holding back, not yet ready to procreate.
On March first John Kemeny was inaugurated as the new College president. It was a signal change from the previous quarter-century reign of John Sloan Dickey the Third, now retiring. Kemeny was a math professor, of such talent that he had once worked with Einstein. At Dartmouth he'd developed the College computer complex, created the computer language BASIC, and introduced computer programming to math, science and social science courses even at the freshman level. Kemeny also shared Einstein's passion for world peace. In his inaugural speech, delivered in a thick but carefully articulated Germanic accent, he promised to phase out the Dartmouth ROTC program. His speech was interrupted by a standing ovation with long and loud applause from the assembled College community, largely students: the Establishment was on our side! Next day, the arch-conservative Manchester Union-Leader reported in its lead editorial that Dartmouth's new president was a "lemon."
The third week of March, there was a big end-of-term party in the Sigma Nu House. There'd be a live band in the living room. A keg on in the basement, with another in reserve. Thing were slow getting started, though, in the hour after supper, so I took a walk with Dot - back to the dorm, where I thought I might spice things up a bit with a tab of mesc. Dot didn't want any, but didn't object to my dropping; at least, not vocally. I wondered if it might divide us too much, but decided that with all the boozing to come, the effects of our various intoxications would even out.
As for my House brethren, the same anything-goes philosophy prevailed, especially among the other sophomores. My lacrosse buddy, Chris Denman, for instance: he wasn't much of a freak, having grown up at West Point, but he liked the odd toke with his beer. We had a good time that night, joking and yelling and dancing with each other's dates. He and Dot seemed to be hitting it off in particularly friendly fashion, disappearing together with increasing frequency on trips to the basement for beer. For my part, I enjoyed dancing with Chris's saucy little companion, Nancy.
The band played on, the kegs flowed, the crowds came and went, and before I knew it, Dot was nowhere in sight. Nor Chris. Fat Sarge lay sprawled on the living room couch, passed out. Likewise Hairpie, slumped in a corner on the floor. Downstairs the bar was deserted; the jukebox blared on, mindlessly, echoing through a wasteland of spilled beer, broken plastic cups, cigarette butts.
I supported Nancy lolling on my arm. "I'm ready to call it a night," I slurred. "How 'bout you?"
"Yeah, sher. Where're we goin'?"
"You stayin' with Chris?"
"I was. Looks like he's not incherested."
"I know what you mean. Dot's taken off somewhere, too. They're probly together."
She hugged me closer, her little fingers plying into my waist. We stumbled off into the night, across the slush to my dorm. I had to make room for Nancy by closing Dot's open suitcase, pushing it off the bed and out of the way. We stripped and nestled together under the covers . . . making a clumsy sort of "love," both of us blitzed. I felt some hazy guilt but not enough to keep me from doing with her a rough facsimile of what I would have done with Dot in her place. Finally alcohol and fatigue caught up with the mescaline edge and I drifted off to sleep.
In the morning I opened my eyes to see Dot standing in the doorway, looking down at us.
"I came to get my suitcase," she said flatly.
I looked at Nancy, still asleep beside me, or faking it. "We just slept together, that's all - " I began.
"Don't bother. It doesn't matter anymore."
"What do you mean? Where did you go last night? I looked all over for you."
She hesitated, looking at the floor. Then to me: "I went to Chris's. I spent the night there. Since you looked like you had other plans for the night."
I glanced at Nancy again, still out of it. "With her? You've gotta be kidding. I was just dancing with her, for Christ's sake. Just like you and Chris. You think I'm serious about her?"
"I just know what I see." And she clicked the catches shut on the suitcase and carried it out the door.
I couldn't stay there in bed with Nancy any longer. I got up and dressed, apologizing to her for the scene, telling her it wasn't her fault. I couldn't believe what was happening. I paced around, went to the bathroom, paced some more, muttering half out loud. Nancy had heard it all, but had nothing to say; she just got up and shyly dressed. I asked her if she wanted me to walk her over to Chris's. She said no, she'd just go out for a walk herself.
I didn't know what to do, where to go. It was past breakfast time at the dining hall. I walked into town for a bun and coffee, then determined to set things straight with Dot. We'd gone too far together to break up over one little episode like this. I went up to Chris's room on the third floor of Massachusetts Hall, where I found Dot on her way out, walking down the hall.
"Dot," I said, "look. I don't think you understand what happened. And I don't understand it, either. Can we talk about this?
"All right," she said, standing there, suitcase still in hand. "What do you want to say?"
"I just can't believe that a simple mistake like this couldn't be set right."
"Maybe it's not so simple."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't think it's worth it, really. It's over."
"But Dot! Why? Because of this little - incident? I didn't do anything you didn't do."
"That's not the point. The point is . . . it happened."
"And so, what?
"That's it. There's nothing more to say."
And she walked past me, down the stairs.
I let her go - I had no more choice in the matter. I went down the hall to Chris's room, knocked on the door.
"Yeah, come in." I opened the door. Chris looked up sheepishly from the couch he was lying on. He sat up. "Oh, Will, yeh, come in."
I shut the door behind me, walked over slowly and sat on an armchair facing him. "Chris, I'm not mad at you. I think we both fucked up. But what happened?"
"Did you manage to talk to Dot?"
"I tried. I didn't get much out of her. She just said we were finished. Just like that."
"Well, it's maybe a little deeper than you think."
"What are you talking about? We were going great. We had our kids named already, for Christ's sake - Ted and Alice."
"Look, it seems that whatever you were doing, she was unsatisfied."
"You mean - what did you two do last night, anyway?"
"We were pretty drunk. What did you and Nancy do?"
"We fooled around a little in bed, I guess. I was pretty much out of it, too."
"Well, I have to tell you we did more than 'fool around a little.' I think that was your problem with her. You just didn't go far enough."
"We fucked like crazy, all the time."
"I hate to get personal, but that's not the story I got from her. She said she wanted to - badly, man - and you never really gave it to her."
"We talked about that! She agreed, she didn't want to get pregnant! And now - with you - on a one night stand - "
"So why didn't you just use a rubber?"
That took me aback. "I dunno. Dot mentioned it once. We talked about it. But neither of us really liked the idea. And I guess I didn't want to take any chances."
Though we did take our chances, anyway, relying instead on premature withdrawal. Was I just too chicken to ask for condoms at the drugstore counter? Or did I truly not trust them, after witnessing the agony of Danny's hometown friend Andy when his girlfriend Sonia had become "almost pregnant." She went two months without a period after their romantic encounter over Christmas, freshman year. And he'd used a condom, Andy had told me.
Whatever the excuse, for all the long weekends Dot had been snowed in and shacked up with me, for all our talk of marriage and perfect love, our sexual life had remained incomplete. The most promising "lasting relationship" I'd ever been involved in was over.
I was left in a state of emotional shock, of numbing resignation to a long-unfamiliar, solitary fate. Yet out of it I was able to salvage some glimmering sense of divine grace in the way things had unfolded. I wrote to Dot twice, but when she didn't write back I let it go, for good. Somehow, despite the stupidity and miscommunication at the end, it seemed all right for us to go our separate ways. "Everything" - I remembered the immortal words of my mother - "happens for the best."
Winter term ended thus in a dreary key, with the consolation of that liberating sense of independence. I was not yet locked into the rest of my life, with a girl who would only get fatter and who had too much Wall Street money. Too much money? What a concept - but the scenario I kept turning over in my mind, the one I'd just abandoned (or been denied, take your pick) was not all that attractive, after all. Sure, we could have found a birth control method, and fucked our little heads off. We'd have moved into a big suburban house and had a bunch of fat kids. I'd have wheedled my way into a cushy job in New York or New Jersey with Dot's rich father. We'd have endured the endless round of cocktail parties, country clubs, and so on - until I ended with the inevitable ulcers and heart attack.
Over spring break I set about salving my wounded pride with a heavy dose of Herman Hesse. Steuart had started me with Demian, and I'd since read Steppenwolf. Now I took up Siddhartha and Narcissus and Goldmund, losing myself in Hesse's Black Forest visions, his characters so full of passionate intensity for life, for meaning, for spiritual truth. At nineteen, and ripe with my own emptiness, these were no mere abstractions, but nourishing substances I could sink my teeth into: soul-food.
I was able to stay on campus while the dorms were closed, by occupying a room at the House while the brother went home for vacation. It was a good time and place to retreat, to reflect, to lose and rediscover myself in those books, as I pretty much had the House to myself. Only two other residents stayed on over break, and they spent every day skiing.
Dana was also staying around; he had the luxury of staying at the ski cottage in Vermont owned by his father, a wealthy businessman. Before the start of spring term Dana invited me out for a visit.
It was a welcome contrast to the stale frat house, the dark foreboding realm of Hesse. With the heightened awareness provided by drugs, I'd come to experience a new, childlike sense of wonder and appreciation for the natural world: a sense that went deeper and lasted beyond the effects of the drugs themselves. Walking on the edge of campus, high or straight, with friends or alone, I would often stand in the woods, or in the open spaces, or beside Occam Pond, and glory in the innocent beauty all around me. In winter the ski hills appeared as close to heaven as I could imagine. The absolutely pristine, crystalline purity of the mountain air and the brilliant blue sky contrasted with the immaculate, new-fallen snow, the shaggy, dark evergreens, the unbroken vistas of distant peaks - never mind if it was twenty below.
It was through such scenery that Dana and I rode in his green VW beetle named Louis, our skis secured on the roof-rack, winding our way through the mountains to a precious chalet that might, I observed, have been made of gingerbread. The air was shimmering, almost balmy, and the white, fresh snow everywhere sparked in the dazzling brilliance of spring sun. Upon arrival we disembarked and exercised our cramped legs with the walk up the unplowed driveway, carrying supplies for a two-day layover. Continuing the Hansel and Gretel motif, Dana immediately stoked up the wood cookstove and set about making a cake.
"Wow, fresh chocolate cake," I marveled, my mouth stuffed full.
"Yeah. 'We must be in heaven, man!'" Dana hammed the familiar quote from the Woodstock soundtrack.
We sat side by side in two rocking chairs, gazing out the picture window to the mountains in the west, eating half the cake and talking of the future. Was there life, we both wondered, after Ma D.?
Dana thought he might go into teaching, for lack of a better alternative. "Teachers are still exempt from the draft, aren't they?"
I didn't know.
"Oh," he groaned. He slumped glumly in his chair, pasting crumbs onto his fingers and licking them clean. "Well, at least if I get into Teacher's College I'll have another year's deferment that way." He'd brightened a bit at the thought.
"That's true. And who knows? The war's gotta end sometime."
"One would like to think so." He sighed.
"So you're going to Columbia, are you?"
"That's what I hope. It's the only place I applied to."
"New York City - I don't know if I could handle that."
"Ah, I can handle it. I'm from Connecticut, remember."
"Yeah, but Connecticut, that's lollipop-land - "
"So, New York's the Big Apple. I'm made for it. You know what they wrote in my prep-school yearbook as a prophecy for my life? That I would own and operate a song-and-dance hot dog stand on route 91! Who knows, they may have been right on, when it all comes out in the wash."
"You know what they said I'd be, in my high-school yearbook?"
"No, what? Let me guess - a white rabbit - no, a fat, bandy-legged sparrow - no, I've got it, a young yak!"
"Yak-yak-yak."
"Boy Pupa?"
"Come on. No, nimbrain; they said I'd be a street-sweeper driver."
"Hmm."
"Think there's any truth to it?"
"You never know. The great personnel officer in the sky works in mysterious ways."
"Hey, maybe I'll get assigned to route 91, stop in every day for a hot dog."
"And a song and dance, too, remember. Only a small extra charge, of course." And with that, Dana jumps up and goes into his vaudeville routine, swinging an imaginary cane and singing: "With a reinforced heeelandtoeww...
"Where's that hook?"
Spring term began in all innocence but quickly fell to the entanglement of unforeseen events. I was full of hope for an improved performance on the lacrosse field, by myself and by the team. A week later, I caught a stick between the pads on my elbow, and my arm was put in a sling. During that first week, Bruce Jansen, playing a brand of politics considerably to the left of the Y.A.F., had approached me about a part in a guerrilla theatre skit. There was a rally and march planned for April 15 in Manchester. I'd hesitated, considered the risks and rewards, and agreed to take the part. Then I'd missed the first rehearsal because it conflicted with lacrosse practice. Now I was out of action from lacrosse, and faced a dilemma: I'd be free to make the next skit rehearsals, but felt too conspicuous, too hampered by the sling, to play my part properly.
I had to come to a decision. I turned the situation over and over in my mind. I tried to gauge the wisdom of fate, in the timing of my injury. Had I been hurt so that I could meet my commitments to the skit, without conflicts with lacrosse? Or had the injury provided me with a face-saving exit from an uncomfortable public involvement with radical politics? I chose the latter interpretation, still not quite sure. It didn't feel quite right, but then the other choice probably wouldn't have, either. I told Bruce he'd have to find someone else.
As if in compensation for my lack of visible commitment to the cause I believed in, I resolved my the April 15 tax deadline to withhold half of my income tax, in protest against the Government’s war budget. The amount I owed didn't amount to much; it was the principle I was after. I wrote a letter with my tax return explaining my action. I knew that I was essentially breaking the law, and that the Internal Revenue Service had the power to seize my assets (scant as they were) if they really wanted to collect the withheld tax. Okay, I thought. Let them do what they will. I cannot, in conscience, pay for a war that is morally indefensible.
Also at this time I was pursuing another avenue of personal protest, the application to my draft board for Conscientious Objector status. I sounded out members of the Hanover Friends Meeting for advice. Professor Bien agreed to write me a letter of recommendation, and advised me to request more supporting letters from my home Meeting in Downers Grove, Illinois. I felt that with the sage counsel and support of these Friends I'd have a good chance to win my case when it came up before the draft board, two years hence.
All the underlying political ferment afoot that spring was not lost on the attentive denizens of the Sociology Department. They undertook a wide-ranging survey of the student body, asking questions on everything from plans for graduate school to opinions on coeducation. The most telling statistical profile concerned student attitudes toward "what should be done regarding contemporary society," with the following results:
Preserve it as it is . . . 1%
Allow it to progress . . . 19%
Reform it . . . 68%
Ignore it . . . 6%
Destroy it . . . 4%
It's revealing of the temper of the time that this question even contained the last option; and even more revealing that four times as many chose the last over the first. That 4%, on this campus alone, represented a hundred and twenty serious folks. I was tempted by the option myself - it's easy, on paper - though I joined the unsilent majority in the end.
The first of May, 1970. The snow is gone. It's late morning. Outside Bissell Hall we line the walls, sunning ourselves and passing joints while we study. Out of opened dorm-room windows floats Jefferson Airplane, "Volunteers of America."
Lunchtime comes. We put our books away and amble off to Thayer Hall, still wearing just T-shirts and shorts, bare limbs swinging easily in the warm air. In the afternoon, we play intramural softball. I collect two singles, an RBI, and make a diving catch in left.
Then, on the walk back up from the ball field, the news comes from a harried messenger running by:
President Nixon has ordered U.S. bombers and troops into Cambodia. Cambodia, most of us already know, is a neutral state on the doorstep of Communist China. As soon as we get to a radio, we hear more details: The invasion was necessary, Nixon has announced, in order to destroy the sanctuaries of North Vietnamese troops. The response of the Chinese is guarded. They have called the situation "grave."
On hearing these reports, we immediately thought it meant World War III - that the bombers would stray over the border; that the Chinese would retaliate, thus inviting further retaliation; that the major alliances would mobilize and begin a full-scale nuclear war. It was Armageddon.
The day passed; we were still alive. The night passed, restless and dreamful; the sun rose again the next day. Classes continued, if in somewhat of a hushed, subdued, automatic mode. Life, miraculously, went on.
It was a different story, on a small campus in Ohio, three days later.
During a peaceful anti-war demonstration at Kent State University, four students were gunned down by the Ohio National Guard.
The next day, President Kemeny took matters in hand and announced on campus radio that, in response to the recent escalation of violence at home and abroad, Dartmouth College would "suspend all normal academic activity for the balance of the week, in order to permit the entire community to engage in a thorough study and assessment of these critical national issues." A massive letter-writing campaign would be set up, to begin with. Speakers and written information, names and addresses, paper and envelopes would be provided at several locations around campus.
Students reacted to Kemeny's announcement with varying degrees of approval, shock, surprise, gratitude, jubilation, confusion, disorientation - the whole gamut. Those I knew were divided over how to use the gift of time the moratorium would provide. A couple of brothers at Sigma Nu went off to the beaches at Cape Cod. The heaviest druggies saw it as party time. Virtually no one wanted to stick with the books - though I, for one, had to admit I'd been enjoying myself with “The Modern American Novel” - Vonnegut, Mailer, Heller, and the rest. Besides which, they were already on top of what was happening.
All that week the dormitory bull sessions carried on late into the night, with The Revolution taking on new meaning as our favorite topic of conversation. Fraternity life shriveled to a few moribund clusters of depressed senior drinkers worried about what all this disruption might do to mar their transcripts and resumes.
Actually, we sophomores had to retain some academic detachment, as well; for the week of the moratorium happened to contain not only the deadline for choosing courses for the next fall term, but also the deadline for declaring a major. I felt fairly sure of myself and printed "English" in the space provided. And then I signed up for two of the required courses for the major, Lit Crit and Shakespeare. To round out the selection I backed off a bit with History of the Far East, thinking of a possible history minor somewhere down the road. It also happened to be known as a “gut” course, an easy B or A. Last and perhaps not least, I figured it wouldn't hurt to learn something about China - if we survived the present crisis until the fall.
Meanwhile the letter-writing campaign really took off. Students came in droves to lend voices to the general call for peace. Surrounding the letter-writing campaign were innumerable impromptu meetings, "teach-ins" and rallies, with speaker after speaker, faculty as well as students, denouncing the war and the shootings at Kent State. So far these outlets offered a safe, respectable means of protest, well suited to the reformist inclinations of the student body as revealed in the April survey. One could guess, however, that since May 1 those survey results stood on shaky ground, ready to shift to the camp of those saying, "Destroy it."
By the end of the week's moratorium, President Kemeny had evaluated the progress of the various efforts and announced a number of options for students to choose for the remaining month of the term.
We could go on with our coursework on campus. Or, we could drop any course and settle for full credit without a grade. Thus we were free to go home, call it vacation. But the thrust of the "gradeless credit" option was to free students to continue the impetus of the moratorium: we were all encouraged to get out there in the "real world" and work for an end to the war. To that end, a lobbying office was being arranged by a new College committee, the CPW, for a "Continuing Presence in Washington," at the seat of government. Any students wishing to volunteer work would be welcome there, with room and board provided at local billets.
Things were happening fast. The lacrosse coach called a team meeting to decide whether or not we wanted to cancel the rest of our season. In an emotional, gathered spirit not unlike a Quaker Meeting, player after player agreed that to continue the season as if everything were normal would not be right. Besides, someone pointed out, a good number of us would not be sticking around. That contribution brought forth a few chuckles. We ended with a silent group hug cementing our solidarity, coach included, and dispersed until the following spring.
Freed from normal responsibilities, I was forced to examine my true desires, abilities, motivations. Outside of English, my courses weren't inspiring enough to keep me chained to that familiar rock. I didn't really feel like lying around on a beach somewhere while the whole nation was in turmoil. The lobbying effort, on the other hand, sounded good. It appealed to my latent political idealism, to my Friends' tradition of witnessing ("speaking truth to power"), and to my lingering ambitions to work for social change through law. Besides, the nation's capital was a short hop from Baltimore, so I could spend some time at home as well.
Informing my parents about my plans over the phone, I found them skeptical but agreeable. What could they say? I had the courage of my convictions and the backing of my institution. They could only mutter to themselves and rail to me later about those "Communist professors whispering in your ear."
When I went to the campus office of the CPW to sign up for a spell of work in D.C., I was told that all the available jobs were already filled. It was a small office, after all. After some haggling, however, I managed to reserve a spot for a couple of days later in the month.
Great. Now, about those courses: I had a lock on a B in history, with only a final paper left to write; I would opt for credit and drop boring Geography; I'd continue with The American Novel but, intimidated by the heavy reading load, and wanting to play it safe, I'd take the credit without grade for it.
Then, what was there to do, but party? I was free to get back together with the remnants of the dorm gang outside on the lawn, smoking up, reading novels, and listening to Woodstock. The movie was due to premiere in Boston at about that time, and one night on impulse a bunch of us piled into a car and drove down for the opening.
Just inside the city limits we dropped some good organic mescaline and were ready for the ultimate trip. But on the way to the theatre on foot, we encountered the end of the line three blocks away. It was sold out. There we were, taking off on our grand trips in the middle of Boston, with no Woodstock. Oh well, Barney said, let's see what else is on. We found Fellini's Satyricon. "Anyone know if that's any good?"
"Oh, it'll be far out," said Dana, who would know.
Satyricon turned out to be every bit of a trip as Woodstock promised to be; only instead of music, its power was contained in its surrealistic visual imagery, its mythic events and phantasmagoric characters: the smoking red desert scenes, the gladiator versus the Minotaur, the five-hundred pound whore. It took our breath away, blew our minds away from the world that had loomed up so large: the political arena, the academic whirl. Life, Fellini showed, was more enduring, more provocative, more dramatic than the largest daily headlines. Maybe life itself was one big headline.
My job in the Washington CPW office consisted of compiling the voting records of members of Congress. It was an unglamorous role, that of a footsoldier in the slow battle for peace. No, I would not get to preach to our Nation's leaders about what their policies should be. I would keep my head in a filing cabinet. I was billeted in the home of a Washington lawyer of liberal persuasion. He, too, fought for justice "crumb by crumb," he confided over morning toast. One's patience, I quickly saw, could get pretty stale waiting for the ponderous wheels to turn in the mills of government.
After three days my usefulness was spent and I returned to Baltimore, where I'd stopped in for a day on my way to the capital. I'd managed then to arrange a date on the 24th with the local chapter of the Dartmouth Alumni Association. Now fresh from the Washington office, I was prepared to fill in these fellow “men of Dartmouth” on the progress there. In the cool privacy of the guest bedroom in my parents' air-conditioned apartment, I worked up a carefully organized presentation. I would survey the wide range of anti-war initiatives then current, emphasizing "what you can do." I would especially stress ways in which my audience, as upstanding, concerned and responsible members of the wider Dartmouth community (as well as of their own professional and civic circles) could apply the old college try to the cause of peace.
I kept my clean-shaven chin up, my longish hair neatly combed, and even wore a coat and tie, on my way to the slaughter.
No one had briefed me on the latest alumni opinion survey, which would show a split judgement on Nixon's invasion of Cambodia. It never occurred to me that for all my earnest conviction, my speech to these half-dozen select citizens would fall on stony faces and deaf ears. Only after I was finished and sat down to answer their questions, did I discover, with some veiled horror, that no one else in that executive suite wanted to end the war.
These were solid, conservative businessmen, patriots all. They were, they told me - each in their turn, with stern and resonant voices - veterans of the great just war against Hitler. Communism was a threat more evil yet. The misguided efforts of myself and my starry-eyed colleagues, right up to that radical new College President, were worse than naive - they were subversive, even treasonous.
Oh, yeah - I'd forgotten. I shut my mouth and opened my eyes again. Right. This is what it's all about. Politics in the real Amerika.
I recuperated at home for a few days before returning to campus to finish out the term. My parents naturally took the side of the alumni when it came time to rehash it all. I think they had some sympathy for their bloodied little lamb, however. My mother even asked me, one evening after supper, "Hey, do you still smoke that pot?" I'd always been honest with them about it, when they asked. It hadn't been a serious issue.
"Yeah, sometimes," I said.
"Did you bring any home with you?"
"Actually, I do have a little."
"What's it like?"
"Oh, it's ah . . . you just kind of feel good, kind of mellow . . . music sounds good with it, sometimes you can even see things, like pictures the music makes, in your head. Or you can see past some things you normally take for granted. Illusions . . . why, do you want to try some?"
"I don't think it would do anything for me."
"You never know. It affects people in different ways."
"Yeah, well, sure, I'd like to try one - some. Do you have to roll it?"
I'd never seen my mother so nervous, so tentative, like a schoolgirl. I got my baggie and papers and rolled us a joint. My father was in the bedroom watching TV. My sister Randall was in her room doing homework.
"Now you have to hold it in, for a while," I told her.
A lifelong smoker, she said she knew how to do it.
"No, this is different," I insisted. "It doesn't do anything if you don't draw it down deep and hold it in."
We finished the joint. She said she couldn't feel anything. I told her it takes a while.
Then my sister came into the kitchen to ask for a note for school because she'd been sick, and absent for the day. My mother put pen to paper, and marvelous things began to happen. The exotic line, the swirls of ink that curled out of that pen tip! Of course, it was only ordinary handwriting: but seen through the multicolored mirrors of my mammy's new hobnailed boots, it had become something magical and mysterious. Then she turned with shit-eating grin on her face and began writing upon my horrified sister's forearm. Evil weed, indeed.
"Mother, I can't believe it!" my sister said over and over, on hearing the explanation. Because of her cold she hadn't smelled the stuff.
My father heard something going on, came in to check it out. He gave my mother an incredulous look of reproach when Randall told on her. My mother looked sheepish and stoned. For the first time in her life she was at a loss for words. I defended her. "Oh, it's nothing. A little marijuana never hurt anyone. Do you want to try some?"
My father, already weary of wrestling with the bear of alcohol, shook his jowls vigorously. "No way, man. Not for me," he grunted. "Stuff leads to heroin." And he walked back to the TV, still grumbling and shaking his head.
Back on campus it was an easy coast to the end. I caught up on the novel-reading and wrote my final paper on Catch-22, an old favorite of mine. That would have put me in roses, but the A I earned for the course didn't count since I'd already chosen the ungraded credit instead.
For the final history paper I worked up a whole, facile philosophy of life based on creative and rational optimism. In a breezy style that was at once cool, confident and naive, I made sense of the world and spouted pages of self-evident truths about it - self-evident, at least , for me at the time.
Perhaps it was the broad scope of the course title, "American Intellectual and Social History," which, overlaid on the still-smoldering campus revolution, gave me license to wax authoritative on that brave new creature, the Woodstock Nation: "The ideology connected with the Woodstock Nation is diametrically opposed to the mood of Middle America. The current polarization of mood involves such pillars of American tradition as money, individualism, work, religion, and sexual norms. Many people no longer take them for granted; all are being challenged."
And just what did this new, Woodstock Nation philosophy consist of, then?
I took a stab at it, turning the personal into the universal: "One strives in living to attain happiness. Therefore, it is wise to apply one's ideology to one's life so that maximum happiness in the mind and intellect can coincide with maximum physical satisfaction."
And just how can this utopian reconciliation be achieved?
Through the magic of drugs, of course. (After all, my generation had grown up with the advertising slogan "Better Living Through Chemistry" ringing in our ears.) I thought long and hard before bringing this new-found secret of life to the cold, examining light of an academic treatise. But the professor himself had longish hair, and a mustache besides. He might understand, I thought. So I forged ahead: "The individual, through detachment, can see himself as an integral and well-provided-for part of nature. This feeling is very pronounced under the influence of LSD. At the same time that one feels apart from the world, one feels a part of the world. The result is a feeling of extreme contentment and peace of mind. Everything makes sense and fits in its place in the scheme of things. Through detachment and contemplation, harmony and happiness are able to be realized."
Along with these pronouncements about individual bliss, I recognized a necessary responsibility to the improvement of society: through communication (media, teaching, the arts) or through personal example. Stubbornly, I even retained some faith in politics: "Either as a lawmaker, a lobbyist, a voter, or a judge, one may help decide the fate of the human condition."
In conclusion, however, I was forced to come to terms with the pathetic prospects for change in America, and to share the observation Sinclair Lewis had expressed in Main Street, a full half-century before. "Alas," I lamented, "for the foreseeable future there will remain in America, it seems, a Great Silent Majority of people living empty, mechanical existences:
a savorless people, gulping tasteless food, and sitting afterward, coatless and thoughtless, in rocking-chairs prickly with inane decorations, listening to mechanical music, saying mechanical things about the excellence of Ford automobiles, and viewing themselves as the greatest race in the world.
When summer came I went to work in a factory. My uncle worked for American Totalisator - was in fact an inventor of the racetrack odds calculator - and he helped me get hired on. The factory two blocks away from my parents' apartment in the outskirts of Baltimore shipped daily allotments of "code" to all the racetracks in the country. These were little aluminum plates stamped with a new arrangement of symbols each day, for each track - so that all tickets punched through at the windows at that location would have a unique, recognizable code impossible to predict and counterfeit in advance. My job, with seventeen other flunkies, was to sit at long, common tables "counting code": counting by fives and tens and bundling stacks of code plates together with paper and rubber bands, and packing them in little boxes for shipment to the tracks. All day long. Every day. Brooks, Bill Meyer, Vince, Kenny, Teddy, Dink, Kratz, Deems, Chester, Hillbilly, Schaffer, Ernie, Eddie, James, Joe Romano, Bob Haas, Pumphrey, and me. It was like a prison block, with its own pecking order. Big blond Kenny with the slicked-back hair and black T-shirts, and his sidekick Vince were on top. They kept up a constant chatter, often at the expense of zeroes like Bill Meyer, or the demented Brooks.
"Hah, Brooks," Kenny would drawl as Brooks entered the room. Brooks was tall and emaciated, leaned forward and shuffled as he walked. Brooks would say nothing.
"Hah, Brooks," Kenny would repeat. No one else said a word. "Hah Brooks. Hah Brooks. Hah Brooks." The sound of clicking code. Brooks would sit down, start counting.
I got along okay with these guys, thought they were funny. "I can see you like your coffee like you like your women," Kenny would tell me at coffee break, nudging me in the ribs.
"How's that?"
"Hot and black."
He couldn't understand how I survived up there in the north woods without women. But he had the solution. He would bring up a trailer full of prostitutes, make a bundle for himself and satisfy everyone's "needs." I would be his front man, to organize it when I went back in the fall. "How about it, Gray?"
I declined to commit myself.
The taxman, meanwhile, was on my trail. He never got around to cashing my ticket at the Totalisator pay-window, nor at my local bank, because I caved into his pressure first. It began with threatening letters . . . then phone calls . . . and eventually came the knock at the door. The sweating, balding man in the rumpled seersucker suit sat down at my parents' kitchen booth and convinced me that I'd pay one way or another, so it might as well be now. I looked at my parents standing by, sobered by the presence of the G-man but unwilling to intervene. It was in my hands. I was getting weary of the whole, hopeless affair and so sent the revenuer out of my life with a check.
That burden out of the way, I settled down to enjoy a normal, everyday workingman's summer in Baltimore, eating steamed crabs, following the Birds. The summer of '70 was another Oriole summer, and I went to the stadium to root them on about once every week. They won for me eight or nine times out of ten.
The real highlight of that summer was reserved for the king. Jimi Hendrix, live, at the Baltimore Civic Center, in the heart of downtown. I went with a friend I'd met at the apartment pool. Frank was a pretty straight guy, a plumber's apprentice from Pittsburgh. But he liked good music, and he didn't mind if I dropped a little acid on the way to the concert. He was driving.
It
was quite a surprise to see the Civic Center packed with blacks. I'd thought
of Hendrix as the king of psychedelic rock, and forgotten his roots in funk,
and blues. The show itself was another surprise. The previous summer I'd
seen the movie, Monterey Pop, showing the Hendrix of 1967 performing all
the stage antics that propelled him to fame: picking perfect notes with
his teeth, dancing obscenely and setting his guitar on fire. Now he stood
before me on stage - backed up by his black "Band of Gypsies,"
Billy Cox and Buddy Miles - motionless, playing all the songs I knew by heart,
but without visible emotion. He could have been a concert violinist standing
there, tearing out unbelievably heart-rending solos in virtuoso style. This
was not a stage performance. It was music, pure music. He played on through
the obligatory encore, a funkadelic "Star-Spangled Banner"; the
emcee informed musicians and audience that the show had to end at the midnight
curfew; and it was over. On the car radio driving home, Frank and I heard
the legendary sounds of the late great Otis Redding, who had shared the
spotlight with Jimi at Monterey. In two more months, Jimi Hendrix, too,
would be dead.
