tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20501337582782682272024-03-13T22:31:38.809-06:00Dazzling GraduallyIdahoBerthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350472556112785687noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2050133758278268227.post-55471599843515953952011-04-15T13:56:00.064-06:002011-04-21T12:09:32.182-06:00If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (THE END)<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><i>PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS</i></b></span></span></span></div></div></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div></div></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/02/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part One)</a></i></span></span></span></div></div></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Two)</a></span></i></span></span></div></div></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_20.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Three)</a></span></i></span></span></div></div></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_22.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Four)</a></span></i></span></span></div></div></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_25.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Five)</a></span></i></span></span></div></div></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/04/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Six)</a></span></i></span></div></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/04/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_09.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Seven)</a></span></i></span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/04/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_10.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Eight)</a></i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/04/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_12.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Nine)</a></i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The next morning we hitchhiked back to Indiana. There were other actions planned for that day, in fact one was scheduled for Dupont Circle where we were staying, but we had no appetite for further fruitless heroics. These "new obstructions," as the headlines in that morning's <i>Washington Pos</i>t called them, were to begin later than the previous day's actions, so it gave Jerry and me a chance to leave early and to avoid another senseless arrest. The day before they were arresting anyone who wasn't wearing a suit or a dress and we did not want to get caught in that dragnet. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We wisely stashed the Mao buttons, folded up our army coats and jammed them into our packs, then tossed our punctured gas masks in the trash as we left the Institute for Policy Studies. If we could have dressed like dorks, as John Travolta and Samuel Jackson were forced to do near the end of <a href="http://1000monkeys.com/img/vincentandjules.jpg">Pulp Fiction</a>, we probably would have just to avoid arrest. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVoOpSLK8dvD-5B2WeGu7yFyJ6vRb-c4nBP-5wrlscmgVRVO7eScGRZSEgsIisjwxaNCKBRHatsI6vigVhXdzE_BiaAth2iSrpXAwwjPZPdb3aHKYU_bZ0gLGp5YfeWHCE669hTCGq_Rk/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-14+at+11.33.51+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVoOpSLK8dvD-5B2WeGu7yFyJ6vRb-c4nBP-5wrlscmgVRVO7eScGRZSEgsIisjwxaNCKBRHatsI6vigVhXdzE_BiaAth2iSrpXAwwjPZPdb3aHKYU_bZ0gLGp5YfeWHCE669hTCGq_Rk/s320/Screen+shot+2011-04-14+at+11.33.51+AM.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We somehow caught a ride to one of the interstates ringing D.C., and after 30 minutes of numerous vehicles thundering</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> by just a foot or two away</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, a candy apple red semi-truck with a long, polished chrome trailer passed, geared down, then came to a halt a couple hundred feet beyond us. We had both hitchhiked a lot by then, and you sometimes heard about rides from truckers second-hand, but neither of us had ever gotten one. Truckers usually drove long distance, had food and water to spare, and one ride could get you all the way home. It was the gold standard of hitchhiking. When an arm shot out the window from the truck ahead and motioned for us to get in, we raced towards it along the shoulder of the road, our packs and sleeping bags banging on our backs, knowing we were greatly blessed. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The driver opened the passenger door and beckoned us to enter his world. He was a medium-built man in his 50s with grey hair and a big smile. He wore a blue work shirt, a red cap, and jeans. "Crawl in quick before Smokey sees us," he laughed. "When they're in a pissy mood they'll ticket a guy for picking up kids like you." The cab was roomy and impeccably clean. Rosary beads hung from a push-pin stuck into the cab's padded ceiling, and next to it hung a pine scented air freshener shaped like a Christmas tree. They swung back and forth in sync with the motion of the truck as we rumbled down the road. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"You look like all my daughter's friends so you don't scare me...anymore, that is," he said laughing, again. He seemed like the kind of man who laughed a lot. "People are just people," he said, and then fell silent for a moment. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"So where are you headed?" he asked. "Oh, by the way, I'm Tom," and he leaned across the wide, cushioned seat to shake our hands.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We introduced ourselves and told him we were headed for West Lafayette, Indiana. "You're in luck," he said. "I'm headed to Indianapolis so I'll make sure I drop you off north of the city and you can take I-65 straight home." This was too good to be true, just like when that ACLU lawyer with the bag full of hamburgers arrived to tell us we were being released. One ride all the way to Indiana was as good as anyone could hope for.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8mK6fvrunYNRH9fhdXoxqMVcF9r9iTiENtElm2vzbuDQL-zTwpxKFS3jN5BkxjpXXYZlk7q78x0YOODdDTeNTMznQ0gt8ybBQ1pcb5dwpI4MKFm3G4x_4Mz2wdv5j6Z-oUehONFWkgGE/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-14+at+7.42.52+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8mK6fvrunYNRH9fhdXoxqMVcF9r9iTiENtElm2vzbuDQL-zTwpxKFS3jN5BkxjpXXYZlk7q78x0YOODdDTeNTMznQ0gt8ybBQ1pcb5dwpI4MKFm3G4x_4Mz2wdv5j6Z-oUehONFWkgGE/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-14+at+7.42.52+PM.png" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Tom was not the prying sort and didn't ask us much more or feel obliged to make idle conversation when none was needed. He once let it slip that his daughter had passed away, and I wondered if he may have felt connected to her when he helped out people like us. I felt sad and grateful and tired, all at once. There was no way we could ever replace his daughter. After that, we spoke little and he turned on the radio but kept it low, and Jerry and I dozed in the cab, the big truck vibrating and jolting at each bump and imperfection the highway offered up. Tom would not laugh again for the rest of that drive which took over a dozen hours to complete.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I began wondering about the May Day action as I sat there, what I had accomplished, and why the war, the institutions, and the people supporting it were so imposing and impossible to change. We had gotten our asses handed to us again by the "system," just as the Vietnamese had with all their immolated grandmothers who were nearing the end of their lives and their grandsons in "black pajamas," cut down in their prime. </span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQQmcXj6BqfXv3Kgx_xiiX_GrNLg3zQtDpgDgTMRPBUF9ERVzq6FAdj73_6N-1itvAJSK9ud_J7rjPAKSMpou6rtrpDHy5Fjt_wji3_i8U7rzC6D8xmuXgdgWtiRix3SDksn1xicgGm38/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-14+at+8.55.41+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQQmcXj6BqfXv3Kgx_xiiX_GrNLg3zQtDpgDgTMRPBUF9ERVzq6FAdj73_6N-1itvAJSK9ud_J7rjPAKSMpou6rtrpDHy5Fjt_wji3_i8U7rzC6D8xmuXgdgWtiRix3SDksn1xicgGm38/s320/Screen+shot+2011-04-14+at+8.55.41+PM.png" width="315" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I recalled the moment when I walked down the hallway and into the courtroom the previous evening. The hallway was narrow with high ceilings that made me feel small, perhaps even by design; and it was filled with men who viewed me with spite. But every now and then one or two of them would smile. I wasn't sure if they were on my side or if they could not help but be kind on occasion. And the courtroom was surprisingly rough-looking, with worn, wooden floors of great vintage, meager plaster walls, and a old judge's bench that towered above me in an almost ludicrous fashion. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It seemed quaint and improbable that the entire machinery of government and all our sprawling "systems" could be reduced to these people in these rooms and hallways. They were such weak and unimpressive vessels for our soulless system to express its power through. The word "soulless" jarred my memory as it passed through my awareness and reminded me of <a href="http://www.allenginsberg.org/">Allen Ginsberg's</a> poem <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179381">Howl</a>, which I had read on a lark one afternoon at a friend's house, and how it described the careening, disebodied machinery of death that a system really was:</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks! </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men! </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgement! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money!</i></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2FAd81538xIBsAyVjZv7Al5AjfQ6KxAr4aAskq7wr7J2yKAnKIV5Foy0bdhWlfnr7FoiOBBiH-mutYRLpgsgsosP_xOO1YXj4laTrPA1bqxp8Mr9DFBhRJd_XNX9OT5Hci5Jw6i6Xlqw/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-14+at+7.53.47+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2FAd81538xIBsAyVjZv7Al5AjfQ6KxAr4aAskq7wr7J2yKAnKIV5Foy0bdhWlfnr7FoiOBBiH-mutYRLpgsgsosP_xOO1YXj4laTrPA1bqxp8Mr9DFBhRJd_XNX9OT5Hci5Jw6i6Xlqw/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-14+at+7.53.47+PM.png" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And then I remembered those uncoerced smiles from the people in the hallways, like the sun bur</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">ning through the clouds, just as it had done at the park in Dupont Circle</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> a couple days before. Those smiles and that sun...as if their luminescence could break a spell that had held you captive all your life... Then a moment of bright, shining clarity arose like an effortless act of nature. Those smiles and that sun were real, I knew, without even thinking, and the system I imagined to be running amok was not. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It was obvious. It was simple, but not simplistic. I had been spinning clothes in my mind upon the body of <a href="http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheEmperorsNewClothes_e.html">the emperor</a> when he actually stood before me nude. We all did this. I had seen the man behind the curtain and he was vulnerable to defeat. It was entirely reasonable to be afraid of people, and especially people united by some consensus, either accepted or coerced. But it was not reasonable to be afraid of things that did not exist.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This is not an academic distinction to make. When you imagine yourself to be reined in by something that does not exist, or to be serving something imaginary, you give up the only power you have over your destiny. You give up the power to choose and you merely respond to the dictates of something that is not real. It's insane. You become an instrument, just one more body in the army of the walking dead.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There were only <i>people</i> in that courthouse that night, and only hallways and offices that those people occupied. That's all that was there and that's all that has <i>ever</i> been there, or anywhere. There has <i>never</i> been anything else. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>People</i> have done it all! <i>There is no</i> <i>system making us do anything</i>! We are not just expressions of a machine-like logic. We do it <i>all</i>, and we are responsible for what we do. No one just follows orders, especially from things that do not exist. We all have choices. It only seems that we have no choice because </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">we are running on auto-pilot or because</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> most of our choices suck.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Has anyone ever seen a <i>system</i> before, or even a <i>government</i> for that matter? </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">No! </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">First things first, please. Don't complicate what is easy with hearsay and mental sophistry. Don't mistake a practical metaphor for something that is real. "Systems" and many other fearsome things are just a way of talking about the agreements we have imbibed without examination concerning the way things are said to work. They do not exist apart from our beliefs and actions. They are not real, tangible objects even though we act as if they were. They are not "out there," they are "in here."</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiAigE1McxYktPjnMk7-GKUdVAfoBucEq5UXmZlyrJDPhYdCHBZeXjjmQkYPTwDxo1CaIRzEt6UzFSe_agqEbMxVdniucxv1xppAdVxNH4uoxfIwnKoaIc3BPo84h-FFsemGrdORhOf5E/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-16+at+11.04.41+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="155" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiAigE1McxYktPjnMk7-GKUdVAfoBucEq5UXmZlyrJDPhYdCHBZeXjjmQkYPTwDxo1CaIRzEt6UzFSe_agqEbMxVdniucxv1xppAdVxNH4uoxfIwnKoaIc3BPo84h-FFsemGrdORhOf5E/s320/Screen+shot+2011-04-16+at+11.04.41+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Walk into any government building and look for the government. All you find is people. Walk into a bank and look for power. All you find is people. There is no there, there. It's just people thinking things and doing things and occupying rooms in buildings, and people can think and do different things. Nothing would ever change if systems were real, tangible things, and not merely phantasms of the mind. If systems were real we would always be their robots. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That judge, that ACLU lawyer, those angry-looking men in the hallway as well as those who smiled; they were all people, singular individuals just like me. There were no ghostly systems or clouds of ideas with lives of their own<i> </i>entering their bodies and animating their limbs and minds. When I looked at the Capitol or the White House, I knew there was no <i>government</i> or <i>system </i>inhabiting them. They were buildings with people in them and nothing more. Everything seemed so much less imposing from this view. All I had done was to see through the dream and discover what was really there.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikXL5gp6c39ODZl6WTtKt3q1KMr17qdBvs9jn2KcUureedJxvV9XFiS7kOcbNKhc57cpel9HWcgLfekRjt7FX3YNYJYbYWwdw1Ot8vWekV-aSwfBTXgNgg-KptjQNtJ3QdBtnTUyQD75k/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-14+at+7.48.43+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikXL5gp6c39ODZl6WTtKt3q1KMr17qdBvs9jn2KcUureedJxvV9XFiS7kOcbNKhc57cpel9HWcgLfekRjt7FX3YNYJYbYWwdw1Ot8vWekV-aSwfBTXgNgg-KptjQNtJ3QdBtnTUyQD75k/s320/Screen+shot+2011-04-14+at+7.48.43+PM.png" width="213" /></a></div><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It was so simple, too simple, and I fought the impulse to accept this insight as valid. And it was, indeed, an insight and not merely an idea. It had come to me all at once, fully-formed, and not logically in sentences over time, with one idea building upon another. I have had to put it into words to talk about it after the fact with knowledge I have today, but that is not how it made its appearance. It was something that was too obvious for words. After all, does an actual flower need the word "flower" to justify itself? </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the end, I dismissed this insight as something pathetic and flawed, a product of my immaturity and inability to get with the program, the rules of which everyone else had agreed upon and were more than willing to serve. Everyone else had figured out the social cues and had learned how to think and how to behave and that is what I had to do as well. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Everyone acted as if they had no choice and were simply doing what these disembodied systems and ideas told them to do. When the "economy" <i>demanded </i>they jump they asked the economy how high. When "justice" <i>reasoned</i> that they kill, they asked justice how many. Don't argue with "them," just do what "they" say. It's your "duty." </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And the "economy" and "justice" and "duty" were these real things with boundaries, weight, and feelings, just like people. Maybe more important and real than actual people themselves. And you had to serve these great entities, respect them, and feel rightfully dwarfed by the awesome power they wielded over you. Sometimes you had to sacrifice people for the sake of these gods we were duty bound to observe. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It would be ridiculous to just assert that these gods were merely ideas bouncing off the inside of our minds and that we did not have to worship at their feet and do their bidding. How could a mere 19-year-old hope to stand in the way of gods with such magnificent powers? Why, if that were the case and none of these gods existed, we would be free to do almost anything we could imagine, and that couldn't be good, right? </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Many years later I read a book entitled <i>Engaging the Powers</i> by the theologian Walter Wink. I understood him to be saying that the principle source of cruelty in the world is the belief in things that do not exist, and that when we act on behalf of these things that do not exist, we necessarily act without reference to genuine human need. Acting without reference to genuine human need in the service of an idea is so mindless that it is the sin qua non of Satan himself. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But Satan is not a thing, a force, or spirit. Satan is our thoughtless choice to serve as the instrument of a machine that does not really exist, and at the expense of people who do. Now I finally knew I had been right, as I rumbled down the road in that semi-truck so many years before. Someone else had had the same idea as me. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain </span><em style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">alienated majesty</span></em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">." In this case at least, I can attest to this truth.</span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2I9D1V_-9YvQYDNlAWWzP2nnPsCQuuXJlqVEtRugtYH0Z17vxoOgQY1xMYp-o-LrQPttqCoU2eJ0GF8IjSFnZVhvdJ-64vT7SX3_0azV9XLAJmoCFA8Jt89JgY1f2aLBRHArfvzEeEu0/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-15+at+5.01.21+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2I9D1V_-9YvQYDNlAWWzP2nnPsCQuuXJlqVEtRugtYH0Z17vxoOgQY1xMYp-o-LrQPttqCoU2eJ0GF8IjSFnZVhvdJ-64vT7SX3_0azV9XLAJmoCFA8Jt89JgY1f2aLBRHArfvzEeEu0/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-15+at+5.01.21+PM.png" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">During the Vietnam War, when some saw </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">a communist enemy that needed to be destroyed instead of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">a grandmother in flames fleeing her grass hut, that was Satan marching through the world. When others had a moment of clarity about that war and saw that same grandmother in flames instead of a communist enemy, that was God's saving grace. But neither God nor Satan did anything, in truth. We did it all and we continue to do every bit of it everyday, and no resort to any system or guiding idea that "made" us do it can get us off the hook.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Today, the great god to worship is the "market," the great transcendent deity that will solve all our problems and right all that is wrong with the world. When you see people on the streets that are homeless, or you find yourself without health insurance, or without a job, for market's sake don't try to do something that violates the "logic" of this god. Market will provide. But go looking for "the market" and wherever you go you only find people hiding behind words and refusing to take responsibility for what they have done by caring more about things that do not exist than about people who do. Just be selfish, the temple priests of the market tell us, and market will provide. By the way, how's that been working for you?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"Sorry, I can't do anything about it. The Market has spoken." Funny how you only find a person uttering those words. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Tom the truck driver did as he promised and dropped us off north of Indianapolis. Jerry and I hitchhiked back to West Lafayette, Indiana without incident. Tom, I am sure is now dead, and Jerry and I are nearly 60. Forty years later I wish I could say that I live the truths I write about as faithfully as they were experienced when I dozed in out of consciousness in the cab of that truck back then, but I cannot. I seem to be a work in progress and never quite complete. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Just remember this. T</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">hings that do not exist cannot change, but people who <i>do</i> exist can. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> That is the only hope we have, and it's a good one because people are far more real than things that do not exist.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2-q5xbkd-2k_YYhW6mnDJJl06Wk2ThKN0dRXjV2CzNntgx5R16ormkUQIx5ZYW1KpFXqjLivqnHD4gsbo4ZEsYrrkf8vTsArRsNjUuQZdaQEYoPSqgJgak02S1i186jTyq9itFIci3Xc/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-15+at+2.32.19+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2-q5xbkd-2k_YYhW6mnDJJl06Wk2ThKN0dRXjV2CzNntgx5R16ormkUQIx5ZYW1KpFXqjLivqnHD4gsbo4ZEsYrrkf8vTsArRsNjUuQZdaQEYoPSqgJgak02S1i186jTyq9itFIci3Xc/s320/Screen+shot+2011-04-15+at+2.32.19+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div></div></div>IdahoBerthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350472556112785687noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2050133758278268227.post-16203981640976741632011-04-12T13:51:00.144-06:002011-04-13T18:17:20.853-06:00If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Nine)<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><i>PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS</i></b></span></span></span></div></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/02/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part One)</a></i></span></span></span></div></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Two)</a></span></i></span></span></div></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_20.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Three)</a></span></i></span></span></div></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_22.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Four)</a></span></i></span></span></div></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_25.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Five)</a></span></i></span></span></div></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/04/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Six)</a></span></i></span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/04/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_09.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Seven)</a></span></i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/04/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_10.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Eight)</a></i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">The bus turned a corner, took a tremendous jarring bounce, then swooped down a tunnel into what had to be a parking area under a police station. None of this had been in my plans.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">We were hastily dragged from the police bus, processed at a row of portable booking tables in a busy hallway, then tossed into a large and harshly lit cinderblock holding cell. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">Jerry said it had to be a drunk tank or something of that sort. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">It was twenty by forty feet, and already jammed when we got there. The noise of so many people talking and shouting at once was painful. There must have been nearly 200 of us in that cell and it reeked of tear gas that had soaked into people's clothes. Tear gas smells 50 times stronger than the most piercing vinegar, with hints of black pepper and onion thrown in to make your eyes burn and tear. E</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">veryone had terrible, throbbing headaches from the gas, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">but our bandanas finally came in handy as something other than radical fashion accessories. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">There were a half dozen free-standing toilets lined up against the longest wall of the cell, and we</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"> soaked our bandanas in the toiletwater then knotted them around our faces to filter out the gas. It was better than nothing and it made us look like fierce, street-fighting outlaws in jeans and olive-drab army jackets.</span></span><br />
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</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheTQAwFQhxNO8tK_MqPoi7etFFbG1Nt4jO38U0wQj7sTUt2WIed2Zpyj8HaZSjeeA3QF-W8R8S-CEfzjpk0Bi00BkHDtwFGtOjQ0_NEMXEi10XvtnK81hNQwtyLE4Vi2lCFOM8XuGdJJM/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-12+at+2.17.21+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheTQAwFQhxNO8tK_MqPoi7etFFbG1Nt4jO38U0wQj7sTUt2WIed2Zpyj8HaZSjeeA3QF-W8R8S-CEfzjpk0Bi00BkHDtwFGtOjQ0_NEMXEi10XvtnK81hNQwtyLE4Vi2lCFOM8XuGdJJM/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-12+at+2.17.21+PM.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><br />
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</div></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">The time dragged on and my pants were full from being knocked around</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"> by riot police</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"> during our arrest. I kept trying to find a discreet way of taking them off without embarrassment but I could not so I had to live with it. At least the tear gas overwhelmed the fruits of my dishonor. We were in that cell for almost fourteen hours and I do not remember ever being read my rights or gaining access to a lawyer. More people kept shuffling in and the cell got tighter with every new wave. And as more arrived another wave of tear gas came with them, and we all lined up to drench our bandanas in the toilets anew. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">I basically hung with my friends and talked to a few other people most of the time. Some had been in D.C. for two weeks and had attended the previous week's half million person march, camped out at West Potomac Park for days, taken part in other actions that week, and were planning to go out the following day to get arrested all over again. That was not my plan, if I were to get out at all. Actually, being released seemed unlikely. No one knew what was going on and release was by no means assured. I also had this small thing I had to attend to called "college" and I knew I had to get back.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7IDFXYnF9ZArxNMZGdw2QGIbfDbEiuvk-h9qhd5xXjxk5wbysVzGeZVRk9UDQlcOmdqzj9pnF4FEL-GNVUHBn2_1U0oAauu951B-Feir6YKjYyRqlfQlveM_INgcqdm9-Ua-rE2WCDFc/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-12+at+11.58.18+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7IDFXYnF9ZArxNMZGdw2QGIbfDbEiuvk-h9qhd5xXjxk5wbysVzGeZVRk9UDQlcOmdqzj9pnF4FEL-GNVUHBn2_1U0oAauu951B-Feir6YKjYyRqlfQlveM_INgcqdm9-Ua-rE2WCDFc/s320/Screen+shot+2011-04-12+at+11.58.18+AM.png" width="320" /></a></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">It got boring. I wondered what I was missing outside and I was pissed about it. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">When new arrivals joined us they said the city was an armed camp and that they had never seen anything like it. We learned that our jail had filled up so quickly that most people were getting shuttled to an emergency outdoor detention center at a Washington Redskins' practice field near RFK Stadium. When that filled up they were bussed to the Washington Coliseum. Some people really had played cat-and-mouse with police and troops all day before their arrest. They had disabled cars by yanking out wires from distributor caps, pushed other vehicles into intersections and abandoned them, and tossed trash cans in the way as well. Some just clogged the streets with their bodies, as we had hoped to do. We were supposed to explain our actions to the citizenry we inconvenienced but I understand that precious little of this actually occurred. Entire sections of the city lay under clouds of tear gas, and tanks and troop trucks streaked through the streets. Newsweek would later remark that the government response seemed more appropriate to Saigon than to D.C. Still, 95% of everyone got to work on time. The action had truly and totally failed.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">The women in an adjoining holding area started singing after a while and one male "movement heavy" shouted, "Quiet, our sisters are singing to us!" But that may not have been true. Did these women really feel obligated to shore up our resolve? Were we men really that much of an object of their concern, and d</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">id the world really revolve around us that much</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">? Maybe they were just singing to themselves. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">Men in the movement had always held themselves in high regard, and a huge element of machismo and sexism had been present right from the start. "Chicks" were still seen as decorations by a lot of movement heavies, and women rightly resented it. Some women had momentarily taken over the stage at West Potomac Park during the rock concert two days before to justly rail against their subordinate status, but the sound system was so bad it was hard to hear what they were saying. To our credit, most of us in the cell ignored this man's melodramatics.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
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</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqF_KGYDoFus8CLKRs_SjayQ0qS8dIbGh2jtoDLm65Tfq08o5Yb2ZwPtxzMRJPBDynGVWj_4-cNSi7_UkKwWVOKf6UfvxfNEgEGwG_ves41N2Lm0RHmJLcu2KWVanGJZs8N3CRfMTC9K8/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-12+at+12.06.04+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqF_KGYDoFus8CLKRs_SjayQ0qS8dIbGh2jtoDLm65Tfq08o5Yb2ZwPtxzMRJPBDynGVWj_4-cNSi7_UkKwWVOKf6UfvxfNEgEGwG_ves41N2Lm0RHmJLcu2KWVanGJZs8N3CRfMTC9K8/s320/Screen+shot+2011-04-12+at+12.06.04+PM.png" width="204" /></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">Around eight o'clock that night we were herded out of the holding cell, down long brick corridors painted dull gray, and back to the buses in the garage under the jail where we had previously entered that morning. The busses were idling and their exhaust fumes just added to the headaches we still had from the tear gas we had inhaled all day. We sat there for an hour, then our busses rumbled up the tunnel to the street and out of the underground garage, winding their way through now empty avenues to the rear of a large court house. Once again we sat in the busses behind the building for an hour. We were then unloaded, marched through a somber-looking back entrance, down stark high-ceilinged corridors filled with stern-looking men in suits and police uniforms, then herded into a dark, antique holding pen that was secured with a tall and imposing sliding gate made of cold brass lattice. </span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">We stood there like sardines jammed upright in a can for another hour and saw numerous people just like us--wearing jeans and army jackets and bandanas--slogging out of the court room and walking to a bank of pay phones directly across from us. They were calling their parents or friends and telling them they needed two hundred dollars to get out of jail (which is the same as over $1,000 today). Many were angry and more than a few were crying. Our spirits sank. Damn...</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">Then came the great miracle of that day, one of the great miracles of my life. </span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">When you experience a miracle it is often hard to explain to others why it seems so significant in your eyes. A miracle often appears at an intersection of so many unpleasant events occurring all at once that the light and grace it represents seems intentional in a way you cannot explain. When you try, lacking the ability to re-create or elaborate the depth and significance of every thread of experience, feeling, and thought at that moment, you invariably fail and people will just nod their heads politely, unaffected, and say that it must have been "nice." This was not merely nice.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">The strongest and most beautiful black man you have ever seen, wearing a handsome suit and with the deepest and most sonorous voice you have ever heard, walked up to the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">sliding metal gate we were caged behind saying, "You can stop worrying. You're all going to be freed. Charges have been dropped." He held up a large shopping bag bursting with hamburgers and smiled broadly saying, "Courtesy of the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">American Civil Liberties Union." God had let his people go! We shrieked with joy and we grabbed the lattice and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">shook it so hard</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"> that fifteen heads atop their suits and uniforms turned and glared in our direction. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">You just have no idea of the relief I felt. I fought back the tears. I was so grateful. I couldn't believe it. At that moment--and to this day--if I had to lay down my life to save that man I would.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">He passed the hamburgers through the gaps in the metal lattice gate and everyone got at least two. He told us that the ACLU had spent hours talking to a judge and that he had agreed to let us go. The next day, the Washington Post would report that Chief Judge Harold H. Greene of D.C. Superior Court had ordered the police and the National Guard to justify how they could arrest 7,000 people without even recording their names or any details of where they were arrested or why.</span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSEBBiuBDMNs_ROLvKsZS_9yFRd3uoSEWE0N7vkOeNUDtoXR7gDFjuI2V_LSFFeDaXwVOsNEX5tnUog5naHDPES-QmruC1nP_B1esO1klC01NmJG0KTDxzhI2mzW2FzueEZwoV8Yi6dLI/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-13+at+11.10.32+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSEBBiuBDMNs_ROLvKsZS_9yFRd3uoSEWE0N7vkOeNUDtoXR7gDFjuI2V_LSFFeDaXwVOsNEX5tnUog5naHDPES-QmruC1nP_B1esO1klC01NmJG0KTDxzhI2mzW2FzueEZwoV8Yi6dLI/s320/Screen+shot+2011-04-13+at+11.10.32+AM.png" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">When we left the courthouse and walked outside--down the broad stone front steps this time and not through the back door--we were mobbed by throngs of supporters that cheered as if we were rock stars. And they were not the kind of people you might have expected. They were not wild and wooly freaks like us. They were <i>normal</i> people. Congresspersons, pastors and priests in clerical collars, Federal workers, and housewives. They cheered for us trouble makers, and they cheered because they too had experienced a profound moment of clarity about the utter moral evil of this war and they were happy we had tried to do something about it beyond what had been tried before. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">One congressman shook my hand and told me we had all been brave and that the city had needed our action. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">Others rushed up the steps and invited us to stay at their homes overnight. They would be honored by our presence, they said. It was amazing. We thanked them all, but headed back to the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">Institute for Policy Studies to be re-united with the rest of our friends. It was after midnight when we returned.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><div style="font-family: Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">When I got back to the Institute I spied some reporters and a congressperson talking to the heavies in the study. I sighed with resignation regarding my own deserved obscurity, and lumbered up two flights of winding, old-fashioned wooden stairs to the office </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">where I'd stashed my pack</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">. I noticed my gas mask had been punctured with an ice pick by the police and I was not surprised. I also took off the underwear I'd filled earlier that morning during the police assault, and not knowing what to do with them, I tossed them behind the desk of one of the radical intellectuals who occupied that office. I am sorry I did this, whoever you were, but any other method of disposal at the time would have been even more embarrassing. Besides</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">, you know who I am because my mother had sewed my name in those underpants anyway. Yeah, that was what it was like. Downstairs, movement heavies were chatting with their peers from other fields, while upstairs I was stashing my soiled pants from view behind the desk of man ten times my intellectual superior. Always the bridesmaid and never the bride.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><br />
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</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><b>TO BE CONTINUED</b></span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span></span></div></div>IdahoBerthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350472556112785687noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2050133758278268227.post-1550265308183727312011-04-10T15:58:00.028-06:002011-04-12T10:21:51.699-06:00If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Eight)<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><i>PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS</i></b></span></span></span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/02/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part One)</a></i></span></span></span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Two)</a></span></i></span></span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_20.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Three)</a></span></i></span></span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_22.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Four)</a></span></i></span></span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_25.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Five)</a></span></i></span></span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/04/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Six)</a></span></i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/04/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_09.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Seven)</span></a></i></span></div><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 15px;"><em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I fell asleep on the floor of a small office that had room for only two or three others that night, the shade drawn to block out the street lights glaring in. I was unaware of this at the time, but at that precise moment 15,000 additional troops and police were arriving by convoy and airlift into D.C. to arrest us on-sight, with or without provocation. There were only maybe 20,000 of us left by then. Almost one heavily armed soldier or cop with the entire repressive machinery of the state at their disposal would confront every one unarmed activist that had only their bodies and their hopes for protection.</span></em></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">About twenty of us left the Institute for Policy Studies at 4:30 AM on Monday morning in four separate affinity groups and we all took a different circuitous route. Our mission was to block the intersection of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">Pennsylvania and Constitution, a few blocks from the Department of Justice and the FBI. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">If we had taken a fairly direct route at a brisk pace down </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Massachusetts to </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">9th St., then from Pennsylvania to Constitution, we would have gotten to the intersection in 45 minutes at most, even quicker if we jaywalked and ignored stop lights. We were young and daring and we could walk fast. But we were not going to jaywalk our way into jail when we had more a more important mission to accomplish. </span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEita-wfsi5TEK6I3beO5Gf3luLSzB4uJ-GdGRPkufSJ82l1yXCenN0IbqNMF9T4xsoLrHGhzqYTcnIxXTtOpyRYyfhFGrJ1lFumXWnTb3K7qYtP8JOkCQmXePlFhIelz28SuJs2ktv_c0w/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-10+at+3.38.33+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEita-wfsi5TEK6I3beO5Gf3luLSzB4uJ-GdGRPkufSJ82l1yXCenN0IbqNMF9T4xsoLrHGhzqYTcnIxXTtOpyRYyfhFGrJ1lFumXWnTb3K7qYtP8JOkCQmXePlFhIelz28SuJs2ktv_c0w/s320/Screen+shot+2011-04-10+at+3.38.33+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It was rightly assumed that twenty people with gas masks walking together at 4:30 AM down major streets in a highly-publicized exercise of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_action">direct action</a> might attract too much attention. It was hoped, however, that four groups of four to six people each with gas masks zig-zagging up and down different side streets for an hour and a half </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">would meet the challenge of getting us to our corner unscathed. We were all supposed to meet up at the same time at the intersection of Pennsylvania and Constitution around 6:00 AM and merely keep crossing the street back and forth until we had enough people to fully shut it down. Our understanding was that many other affinity groups leaving from still other sites would meet us there at that time.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 18px;">The mild chill in the morning air from the rains the day before did not dampen my optimism for success. I expected to play a game of cat-and-mouse with the police for most of the day, to set up make-shift barricades, then return to the Institute for Policy Studies to watch the news of the day's events just in time for dinner. I really did.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 18px;">I had no idea where I was going so I merely followed Chook, the anarchist mad man, who had procured a map from the movement heavies on how to get to the intersection in a round-about way. All of us, Jerry, Amos, Doug, Steve and Chook and I kept pretty silent most of the time. We were trying not to attract attention, as if that were possible. It was dark as hell but there was no one else out on the streets. We didn't even see a cop car. Hey, this thing is going to work out fine, I thought. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 18px;">We walked down leafy streets, past tall row houses and by businesses, all under the glow of street lights reflecting off damp sidewalks. We appeared to be very exposed, yet we felt so invisible. We went in circles. We back tracked. We would come to a red light and just stand there obediently on a completely still and empty street corner, red bandanas, Mao buttons, gas masks and all, waiting for the light to change. It was like we were just ordinary citizens out for our morning stroll at 4:30 AM. "Top of the morning to you, Professor Kant." "And top of the morning to you as well, Meister Bert." We weren't breaking any laws. We were just out...walking, right?</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: sans-serif; line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Federal troops totaling 10,000 had entered the city overnight but we didn't see any. Not one. At </span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Andrews Air Force Base </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">transport planes bursting with paratroopers had been landing every three minutes</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When you toss in over 5,000 D.C. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">police and</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> 2,000 </span><a class="mw-redirect" href="http://www.blogger.com/wiki/United_States_National_Guard" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; text-decoration: none;" title="United States National Guard"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">National Guard</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> and other security forces,<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 10px; white-space: nowrap;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I marvel in retrospect that we saw no one remotely close to that description as we ambled quietly and unnoticed to the corner of </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">Pennsylvania and Constitution</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19px;">. Every park, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19px;">every monument, and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19px;">every traffic circle (like Dupont Circle, which we had assiduously avoided due to our fairly good instructions for getting to the site of our action) were being protected by heavily-armed men. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19px;">I guess there was a reason our government was successful in killing so many of those over-matched peasants in South East Asia. They understood the element of surprise. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19px;">When we came within sight of the intersection my pulse quickened and I could feel my heart pounding in my chest and beating in my throat. Nearby the Justice Department and the FBI buildings rose ominously from street level above us. There were already twenty people just like us slowly crossing the street and our additional group swelled their numbers. There was not a whiff of the man anywhere.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19px;">We had barely entered the intersection when we were surrounded by 30 to 40 riot police with visors down and clubs drawn. They had been hiding! The bastards! Hey, we hadn't done anything yet! They scorched toward us with amazing fury. They shouted and some of us screamed. They encircled us quickly, holding their batons horizontally to their chests by each end then thrusting them forward and bashing into us with the force of a freight train. People stumbled and fell over, we were trampled under foot by hard, thick boots, then crushed into a small, tight clump of moaning humanity so compressed we could not breathe. In a few moments they started to peel off those on the outside of the clump and literally toss us into a large, idling police bus. How had they been able to hide that thing from sight? It was gigantic! </span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhA2cKVEa6083rpsP0Jj9GHmpMNx8Hojmhg08r88i-9C_8pxNFEcjOuHrfbqcHvzZ9qPEN0RTZgDEKWb7MbGSeW0IjA56lL3hFJEis2nXLtJq3YuK-A-rcSdHECx6id3UJ4w1XQAJaKT0/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-10+at+4.02.14+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhA2cKVEa6083rpsP0Jj9GHmpMNx8Hojmhg08r88i-9C_8pxNFEcjOuHrfbqcHvzZ9qPEN0RTZgDEKWb7MbGSeW0IjA56lL3hFJEis2nXLtJq3YuK-A-rcSdHECx6id3UJ4w1XQAJaKT0/s320/Screen+shot+2011-04-10+at+4.02.14+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19px;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">This was at 6:00 AM. Two hours later 2,000 people had been arrested and by 11:00 AM 7,000. At Dupont Circle, where we had spent the previous night, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">a Marine battalion with tanks was stationed, their barrels pointed out at the populace. D.C. was under military occupation. Anyone wearing jeans was arrested, and numerous people just on their way to work were caught in the dragnet. My former babysitter, a Republican stalwart who had moved from my small town in Indiana to do clerical work at the CIA, later told me that she did not go to work that day because she was sure she would be arrested just for leaving her home.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I was brokenhearted on that short ride to jail. We all were. We had accomplished nothing. We hadn't even broken a law or stopped traffic for a minute. They had arrested us so early and easily we hadn't even been teargassed. We had set up no barricades. There had been no cat-and-mouse. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">A lot of good that damn gas mask had been. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">I wished I had gone with the people from Connecticut I'd met the day before and blocked that residential intersection with the telephone poles we'd seen lying in a vacant lot. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I was also mad at myself and ashamed. When the police had charged and knocked us down with incredible force, t</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">hey had literally knocked the crap out of me and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I had shit my pants, right in the same underwear on which my mother had written my name on a small tag which she had sewn above the Fruit of the Loom tag in the back. She had not wanted my clothes to get lost in the shuffle in the dorm laundry room at Purdue. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">Note to self: when next time confront forces of repression, go to bathroom first. The bus turned a corner, took a tremendous jarring bounce, then swooped down a tunnel into what had to be a parking area under a police station. None of this had been in my plans.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>TO BE CONTINUED</b></span></span></div>IdahoBerthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350472556112785687noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2050133758278268227.post-57518365852336479692011-04-09T10:36:00.040-06:002011-04-10T16:05:28.890-06:00If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Seven)<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"></span></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><i>PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS</i></b></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/02/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part One)</a></i></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Two)</a></span></i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_20.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Three)</a></span></i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_22.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Four)</a></span></i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_25.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Five)</a></span></i></span></div><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/04/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may.html"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Six)</span></i></a><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;">So after the clash at Georgetown with the riot police, and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;">thanks to the leadership of the movement heavies I was emulating, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;">I made my way with my friends to the Institute for Policy Studies on Dupont Circle to regroup. That night we would discuss tactics, sleep on their floors, and the next day attempt to bring Washington D.C. to its knees.</span></span></i></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When we got to Dupont Circle we discovered</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #444444; line-height: 22px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> a pleasantly green, round, tree-ringed park with a tall </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">white marble fountain at its center.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Wide walkways lined with flowers led to the hub where the fountain stood, and between them damp grass warmed in the sun. It was late afternoon, the rains had ceased momentarily, and light poured in between the clouds and through the trees. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Three classical carvings representing the wind, the sea, and the</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #444444; line-height: 22px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> goddess of the stars wound around the fountain's shaft. Water </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 22px;">glittering in the sun </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #444444; line-height: 22px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">poured over the sides of the imposing stone basin that the carvings and their shaft supported</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #444444; line-height: 22px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The entire outside of the park's circle was lined with benches, and on one side of the park chess tables sat where a few brave enthusiasts played.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #444444; line-height: 22px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqazlS9_JIvtvS6pq0MSXlIqyFNnjX1LSAeKf8895MpJbau3yXmBQZJnNoZiD-SyskNCmWl6M1SkkNFu7-kKRwoF32H_EZ0MneTfuUWPndQVDtJILRVw4Fcm83LZfoaMbf0J-uimOfXnU/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-08+at+9.28.24+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqazlS9_JIvtvS6pq0MSXlIqyFNnjX1LSAeKf8895MpJbau3yXmBQZJnNoZiD-SyskNCmWl6M1SkkNFu7-kKRwoF32H_EZ0MneTfuUWPndQVDtJILRVw4Fcm83LZfoaMbf0J-uimOfXnU/s320/Screen+shot+2011-04-08+at+9.28.24+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #444444; line-height: 22px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Scores of intimidating policemen also ringed the park, obviously there to keep people like me from camping out. They were not faceless riot police with their protective visors pulled down, but they were not meter readers either, and they struck a very disquieting pose. One of them kept eyeing me suspiciously for any hint that I might sit down in the park. All the while he observed me he was twirling a police baton with stickers </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19px;">plastered all over it that</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> said "The King is Coming." </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19px;">Our eyes met and I was determined not to flinch. "What does 'the king is coming </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">mean?" I asked, with my long hair, my red bandana, and my army coat with a Mao button on the pocket and a gas mask hanging off my belt. He narrowed his eyes and stared at me menacingly, "You'll find out soon enough tomorrow," he shot back. There was no token of respect in his bearing that opposing armies sometimes have for each other. It was obvious that he loathed me with every fiber of his being and it cut me to the core. In retrospect, I should not have expected anything less. I am embarrassed to admit that I really was that naïve.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The streets radiating like spokes from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dupont_Circle">Dupont Circle</a> were densely lined with tall attractive row houses, stores, and embassies. It was, and remains, one of the most impressive areas in Washington D.C. Our destination, t</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">he <a href="http://www.ips-dc.org/">Institute for Policy Studies</a>, was a left-wing think tank housed in a huge </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">four-story Romanesque</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> brick structure. It</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><em style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">sat</span></em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">on the northwest corner of </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">20th and Q Streets amidst a profusion of tall, narrow dwellings exuding substance, history, and prestige. The Institute's building was the former home of </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">George Alexander McIlhenny, the wealthy president of the Washington Gas-Light Company.</span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc5_IMSPWI2eE-RxYsCavYUWLQo8DWP_Fdcqzgogwl1iENpSXuLdtbII4aeRwe0e0iZt3YQhaYJ5tW6j2sOriyZOZT4S9IM_0sz5nZ4RDRhZMKsVSO_ZMfXUlNddBQ2C9Ujt22QCfGxns/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-09+at+10.15.39+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc5_IMSPWI2eE-RxYsCavYUWLQo8DWP_Fdcqzgogwl1iENpSXuLdtbII4aeRwe0e0iZt3YQhaYJ5tW6j2sOriyZOZT4S9IM_0sz5nZ4RDRhZMKsVSO_ZMfXUlNddBQ2C9Ujt22QCfGxns/s320/Screen+shot+2011-04-09+at+10.15.39+AM.png" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Mr. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19px;">McIlhenny's old home</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> retained much of its original appearance outside, but the interior had mostly been converted to utilitarian office space. It </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19px;">was crammed with people. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It was loud and boisterous and a light scent of tear gas was in the air, carried in on those that had been gassed in the police assault in Georgetown that afternoon. These were not the mere concert-going hippies who had come to get high then had fled home when the police attacked and drove us from West Potomac Park earlier that morning. We were all volunteers and we knew what it meant. </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">No one had conscripted us, or ordered us to be here. We were young and we were the shock troops you find in every revolution. People just like us had </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">stood in front of tanks in </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><em style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989">Tiananmen Square</a> in 1989 and dared them to run us over. We read <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense_(pamphlet)">Common Sense</a> in 1776 and were winter soldiers with Washington at Valley Forge. We shouted </span></em></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2010/07/no-pasaran-they-shall-not-pass.html">¡No pasarán!</a> and gave our lives to halt the fascist advance in Spain in 1936.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><em style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We read, we sang, we loved life and we wanted to live it fully, just as others like us do everyday in internment camps, in occupied territories, and behind barricades confronting both dictators and the tyranny of ordinary democracies that have betrayed their purpose and destiny. </span></em></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><em style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That night we learned that our affinity group and several others would be quietly winding our way to the Justice Department to block a nearby intersection around 4:30 AM. A few famous people came by to wish us us well and to talk to us. </span></em></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_von_Hoffman">Nicholas von Hoffman</a>, t</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><em style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">he well-known journalist and former activist-colleague of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Alinsky">Saul Alinsky</a>, stopped in as did a couple other men in coats and ties which I later learned were members of Congress. All these people had had a moment of great moral clarity about the war that cut through all the lies and obfuscations the government fed us to keep us believing that leveling South East Asia was both moral and in our national interest. They were much older than we were, and seemed to be a part of the "establishment," in some respects, but we were united in common purpose against the great evil this war represented. Our cultural and age differences were surmounted by this common purpose that might otherwise have kept us apart. </span></em></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><em style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></em></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><em style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I fell asleep on the floor of a small office that had room for only two or three others that night, the shade drawn to block out the street lights glaring in. I was unaware of this at the time, but at that precise moment 15,000 additional troops and police were arriving by convoy and airlift into D.C. to arrest us on-sight, with or without provocation. There were only maybe 20,000 of us left by then. Almost one heavily armed soldier or cop with the entire repressive machinery of the state at their disposal would confront every one unarmed activist that had only their bodies and their hopes for protection.</span></em></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjflub7nJb7VvEO0Sb0gT50t1OcbeE-W5O6Rvp84q_yjSxqsosi4tj5AwDrBrd7bmJFvmoJQJKT7P9pIzlLa0lM1c3aJ_NI3XoHplbHlTdXxHymDbvFy5bjgjNtTPXqGySWqktvM4D-D9k/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-09+at+10.29.06+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjflub7nJb7VvEO0Sb0gT50t1OcbeE-W5O6Rvp84q_yjSxqsosi4tj5AwDrBrd7bmJFvmoJQJKT7P9pIzlLa0lM1c3aJ_NI3XoHplbHlTdXxHymDbvFy5bjgjNtTPXqGySWqktvM4D-D9k/s320/Screen+shot+2011-04-09+at+10.29.06+AM.png" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><em style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><em style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/04/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_10.html">TO BE CONTINUED</a></b></span></em></span></div>IdahoBerthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350472556112785687noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2050133758278268227.post-86827674015292930862011-04-02T13:34:00.036-06:002011-04-09T11:30:50.286-06:00If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Six)<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><i>PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS</i></b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/02/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part One)</a></i></span><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Two)</a></span></i><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_20.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Three)</a></span></i><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_22.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Four)</a></span></i><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_25.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Five)</a></span></i><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i></i></span><br />
<div style="display: inline !important; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Jerry and I ran to the front because we wanted to be in the thick of it. "Hey guys, it's a women's march, fall back a bit OK?" said one woman with a wink. I got the feeling that there was a lot of conscious theater involved in this action and that these people were pretty skilled at what they were doing. The crowd chanted, "Run Yankee run Yankee run Yankee run. Women of the world are picking up the gun!" </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">Toto, I thought, I've a feeling we're not in Indiana anymore.</span></i></div><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Perhaps it is time to check in. Some may feel uneasy with what they have read. I do not blame them if they do. I feel uneasy writing it. Although this time in our nation's history was not entirely ugly--the sky was still blue and flowers still bloomed--the war and the rage concerning it were ugly indeed. It deformed us all. I, for one, am not comfortable writing about waving enemy flags, defying all decorum, and giving up on the hope </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I had been taught that America represents. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I entered this great movement against the war far downstream from the purer well springs from where it had begun. This made a big difference. I had tossed my inner tube into a river that had once been fairly pristine, then had become magnificently swollen, but which was now receding by the time I had leapt into it from the shore. It had gathered a lot of debris and I was a part of this debris.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;"> </span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPgYjDzkxTuHX3TTvoybt-F3E9O4o8oEz3yGAOpJla8_ItqnrUsuw2d9UYmgIKgYSYTVO-vmL1wQLbKOKGhI8025gaT7Z4MZK6-lVpcdJn75Mqj-nEIzzXNCQc6OL1lWHXKvF847TbmrE/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-02+at+1.30.36+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPgYjDzkxTuHX3TTvoybt-F3E9O4o8oEz3yGAOpJla8_ItqnrUsuw2d9UYmgIKgYSYTVO-vmL1wQLbKOKGhI8025gaT7Z4MZK6-lVpcdJn75Mqj-nEIzzXNCQc6OL1lWHXKvF847TbmrE/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-02+at+1.30.36+PM.png" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I had earned the right to be personally alienated from our culture for reasons I do not wish to share, but I had not earned the right to be as alienated from my country as I appeared to be. Others had earned that right but I had not. That kind of alienation is something one experiences first hand, not something one adopts. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;">This is a difficult admission to make. But I do not think that I was unique in this regard in relation to the people entering the movement at this time, six or seven years after it had begun. It was as if you knew something was surely wrong, but your recognition of this wrong was mediated by things you had imbibed second-hand, not through direct experience. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;">I met precious few back then who could authentically articulate the horror this war represented, the evil our nation embraced in prosecuting it, and the despair they felt in being unable to stop it. The scope of my experience was very, very meager. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;">Many did have profound moments of clarity about the war, but for that to happen y</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;">ou had to see what was really going on and to believe that what you saw was true--period. You had to be simple, in an almost meditative sense. I can't claim to have been one of those persons at the time.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;">When you saw the most powerful nation in the world destroying a small rural country that posed no threat, that is what you had to see. And you had to allow your heart </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;">to reverberate in</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;"> the horror of this recognition unhindered. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;">You could not see, instead, a great narrative about american freedom versus communist tyranny, when what was actually happening was an old woman running from a grass hut, her hair and clothes aflame, screaming to her grandson for help. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;">What if she were your grandmother and you were her grandson and this was her last moment on earth? How could this be right? You had sat on her lap in that hut as a child and listened to her stories about the very fields in which you played, about sunny days and about her first kiss under that tree right over <i>there</i>, that now were all in smoking ruin. Her torturous death was not merely a result of "collateral damage," or an unfortunate mistake. Her suffering and your loss were not words; it was all real. It happened every day. This war took place in the neighborhoods of real people all the time and not on battlefields per se. How could her life, your memories of her, and your village that had been here for generations be reduced to nothing in an instant, by an "operation," staffed by young men who had pinned baseball cards against the spokes of their their bicycle tires to affect the sounds of motorcycle engines only years before? Multiply this by 2,000,000 times. This is what we had become.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4fZLhFe_cwOIsWjboAU9BYdZ8ESqB7dlINSNVdcSU2SWKWbEv0i66z5aPfW0WDiNANWuAiAhyWxz1WZlTDslh_c_MgzoPFLORsbU9ffOzqLMIVhKobYdTMuy-DUkwxS8o5oGfj1u8aNU/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-02+at+4.49.36+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4fZLhFe_cwOIsWjboAU9BYdZ8ESqB7dlINSNVdcSU2SWKWbEv0i66z5aPfW0WDiNANWuAiAhyWxz1WZlTDslh_c_MgzoPFLORsbU9ffOzqLMIVhKobYdTMuy-DUkwxS8o5oGfj1u8aNU/s320/Screen+shot+2011-04-02+at+4.49.36+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;">You could not rest content with the phantasms of your mind alone. You had to see what was <i>really</i> there. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;">When you realized that we had more respect for our garages than the grass huts of the people we burned to death from the safety of the skies, and that we valued our cars in those garages more than we did the people in those huts, that is what you had to accept. And when you saw a</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;"> piece of rope on the ground, you could not mistake it for a snake, and magnify its danger beyond anything it could truly represent.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;"> </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;">I had not experienced this genuine moment of clarity at the time and I merely followed in the footsteps of those that had. Many of them had dropped out of the movement by this time, a movement which now had its own seeming momentum on which I was happy to be carried, unreflectively, and in faith that it was right. Just as those who supported the war had a duty to perform, a set of rules to follow, and a tradition to uphold, so did I. Both groups were on autopilot in a way.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;">I know I helped contribute to the next 30 years of conservative backlash by my actions. People like me alienated many. But we were never implicated in killing 2,000,000 people in Vietnam either. We were disrespectful and self-righteous and foolish often enough, but we never contributed to an evil of that magnitude and it is wrong to see a moral equivalence between the two. We never would have had high expectations for our country that could be violated if these high expectations had not been drilled into us our entire lives. We were taught and raised too well. The problem with principles, I guess, is that oftentimes people believe them and get angry when they are betrayed.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;">So after the clash at Georgetown with the riot police, and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;">thanks to the leadership of the movement heavies I was emulating, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;">I made my way with my friends to the Institute for Policy Studies on Dupont Circle to regroup. That night we would discuss tactics, sleep on their floors, and the next day attempt to bring Washington D.C. to its knees.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9Q_OBEA8dPqkDi3euegMZeuKtpz9yZjeZuxOlOT0CqbqHJeHU8SkvXiv_aVjsFBqOniez_MzAksDeAQasbOr_zYenCTyKzkxEGaufg5lbx6EJIyPZYfoiukTDUEoWGSl_CaF_cTnpt8s/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-02+at+4.44.02+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9Q_OBEA8dPqkDi3euegMZeuKtpz9yZjeZuxOlOT0CqbqHJeHU8SkvXiv_aVjsFBqOniez_MzAksDeAQasbOr_zYenCTyKzkxEGaufg5lbx6EJIyPZYfoiukTDUEoWGSl_CaF_cTnpt8s/s320/Screen+shot+2011-04-02+at+4.44.02+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;"><b><u><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/04/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_09.html">TO BE CONTINUED</a></u></b></span></div>IdahoBerthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350472556112785687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2050133758278268227.post-8014824259499951242011-03-25T22:13:00.037-06:002011-04-09T11:33:16.314-06:00If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Five)<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><b>PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS</b></i></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><b><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/02/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part One)</a></b></i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><b><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Two)</a></b></i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><b><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_20.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Three)</a></b></i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><b><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_20.html"></a></b></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_22.html"><b>If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Four)</b></a></i></span><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;">Within twenty minutes we stopped and Scott opened the back door to the U-Haul. I could smell water immediately and hear flags cracking in the wind</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; line-height: 20px;">.</span> It was like going from black and white to color in the Wizard of Oz. Light and color and the fragrant scents of spring flooded in, overwhelming the darkness and dread that had captured us for 15 hours or more. We were crossing the Potomac River and the bridge was decorated with red and black flags. Long hairs were everywhere, people had signs and banners, and joy had captured us all. We were driving into West Potomac Park, we had gotten to D.C. safe and sound, it was morning in America, and we were going to make history.</i></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhukbIyv2LdEPRQhGDm_N4-dS4EJhVN_a367CNQ53Q3SkQhbi9UJAE9YZqbgXEdpxy9rHAhTuNL7d0OjGJl1CmjCAoOdNN1AnlBGFfFrkw2_JDGDs4AYeeuc04fAUkaQnF-5hxgmbU8qOY/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-03-24+at+9.47.46+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhukbIyv2LdEPRQhGDm_N4-dS4EJhVN_a367CNQ53Q3SkQhbi9UJAE9YZqbgXEdpxy9rHAhTuNL7d0OjGJl1CmjCAoOdNN1AnlBGFfFrkw2_JDGDs4AYeeuc04fAUkaQnF-5hxgmbU8qOY/s320/Screen+shot+2011-03-24+at+9.47.46+AM.png" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">West Potomac Park, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">adjacent to the National Mall</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 15px;">,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> was filled with 45,000 people and it was a counter-cultural carnival of noise, color and excitement. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A rainbow of people and issues were represented. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Beach Boys were rocking out on stage, there were men on stilts dressed as Uncle Sam, jugglers, movement heavies like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbie_Hoffman">Abbie Hoffman</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Rubin">Jerry Rubin</a>, hippies galore and gay people of immense variety. Several men in one group wore fully loaded Boy Scout merit badge sashes. There were tents everywhere and flag poles defiantly flying what were considered the colors of this nation's enemies, mostly the flag of the National Liberation Front, commonly known as the "Viet Cong." It was not an ideal PR gesture to win over the uncommitted, nor was it a staid event managed by an old left <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard_party">vanguard party</a> committed to minding its P's and Q's. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The collapse of the more youth-led wing of the anti-war movement in 1969, represented by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_a_Democratic_Society">Students for a Democratic Society</a>, had created an opening that was filled by more explicitly structured and disciplined groups. The weekend before May Day, a</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> march in D.C. that had been largely spearheaded by the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Workers_Party_(United_States)">Socialist Workers Party</a> drew 500,000 participants. This group </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">opposed tactics such as c</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">ivil disobedience or anything that</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> exceeded the constraints of legally permitted protest. They even opposed linking opposition to the war with other social and political issues to avoid alienating anyone that might be against the war for any reason. This strategy was driven by what the participants in May Day saw as the futile hope that one more big demonstration might make a difference. But it didn't matter. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">"Most everyone I know is tired of demonstrations," long-time anti-war activist David Dellinger said at the time. "No wonder. If you've seen one or two, you've seen them all. Good, bad, or in between, they have not stopped the war, or put an end to poverty and racism, or freed all political prisoners." </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The May Day action, as its literature explained, was different from a demonstration where you marched down the street, listened </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">passively</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> to speakers and went home. It was about </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">action not congregation, disruption not display. Its understanding of non-violence did not preclude creativity or militance. The goal was to blockade major streets and roads and to make the Monday commute in to D.C. impossible. The leaders of May Day 1971, the May Day Tribe as they were called, were generally spokespeople, and it was up to decentralized geographical regions and hundreds of "affinity groups" of up to a dozen or so people to locate their targets and decide how to act. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Our one day in the encampment that Saturday was like attending a highly-politicized rock festival, with lots of people partying and </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">getting wasted but with a far more serious intent underlying this fun than was usually the case. The idea that all these people would then change gears and clog up the streets and bring the city to a halt seemed brilliant. If the youth culture could take a political turn, this action could be replicated elsewhere with great affect. I of course didn't realize that things similar to this had been tried before, only with with less planning and militance. This time we were told, by the "movement heavies" we linked up with when we got </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">there, it would all be different. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">As Jerry and I sat on the back of the U-Haul taking in the vibe, we were approached by a young guy with long hair and some oddly-wrapped PVC pipe. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">Jerry, smart, witty and strong, was a great friend I'd met at Purdue my first week there. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">The guy with the pipe told us that what he had was a pipe-bomb and that it was for sale. Now this was a militant demonstration, but it was non-violent for a reason. We automatically assumed the guy was a rip-off artist who thought we were stupid or a police agent trying to stir up trouble to entrap us so we could be arrested well before acting on our mission. We didn't know what that would be yet because the "heavies" hadn't told us. We told the guy to fuck off and leave us alone. This was not the last time we would encounter people like this.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">Later, military </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">helicopters buzzed low over the crowd, trying to intimidate us. It still amazes me that some people were so well prepared that they launched helium </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">balloons with thick enough ropes tied to them that they could get snared in a helicopters' propellors. It was sheer genius. They drove the helicopters away. </span></span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">Finding it convenient to leave for a while, Jerry and I linked up with an affinity group from Connecticut and decided to take a look at their target intersection because we still did no know what we were really going to do. We left the park with them and drove over to an iffy residential neighborhood. It didn't seem like the kind of route someone would take to get to government offices and that we'd only be inconveniencing ordinary people in a poor neighborhood as they tried to get to work. For the first time I realized that not everyone we would stop from moving around was working for the war machine and it bothered me. As we poked around in a weed littered vacant lot we found numerous old telephone poles lying around. One of the guys from Connecticut, a sharp and funny man with a rapid-fire speaking style urged us to ally with his affinity group to block the nearby streets using these poles. It was a great idea, I enjoyed the energy of this new friend we'd just met, and my concerns about the people in the neighborhood subsided, perhaps too quickly. We we made plans to meet nearby early on Monday morning. Remember, this was Saturday afternoon.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">When we got back to the park we told our friends about meeting the people from Connecticut and a number were interested; but it was mostly the friends we thought were not quite as heavy as ourselves. That worried me. The "movement heavies" we'd met in Illinois--and had gone out of our way to meet up with in D.C.--said there were bigger and better plans than that for us and that we'd all find out about it Sunday. I was not sure I liked these people that much anymore. They were such condescending know-it-alls and I liked the people from Connecticut much more. They seemed more like my friends and me only better informed. I preferred to cast my lot with them, but events conspired to create a different outcome. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Sunday morning before dawn, rain was pinging on the U-Haul's metallic roof, and then we heard bullhorns. We awoke in haste to find line after line of riot police with nightsticks drawn and tear gas ready emerging from the trees. Armored with shields and plexiglass visors, several hundred of them ringed the encampment, demanding our immediate exit. Overnight the May Day Tribe's permit to stay in the park had been revoked. The police fired tear gas and started knocking down tents, but they left a gap for people to escape if they wished, and many fled in the direction of the Lincoln Memorial and the Reflecting Pool. Police were stationed in all the other city parks to keep affinity groups from coalescing elsewhere. In the end, probably half the entire crowd just left town and went home, significantly weakening our forces. From the looks of many of them, they probably were just there for the fun part anyway and had not really intended to stay to confront the war machine on Monday.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Actually, it amazed me that we were even allowed to be there as long as we were. Some people had been in the park for ten days. I did not realize however, that there were many supporters in local and national government--and elsewhere--who were just as disgusted by the war as we. They were responsible for the May Day Tribe being able to legally occupy the park as long as they did. We would meet many people such as these in the next couple d</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">ays, but for now we knew we had to haul ass and get out of the park before our value to the movement was compromised through arrest. The heavies told us that we should head over to Georgetown University and that there was going to be a militant march we wouldn't want to miss. My closest friends and I grabbed our gear quickly, Scott left to return the U-Haul, and we hopped into some cars to head over to Georgetown for the march.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When we got to Georgetown it was total mayhem. Armed with NLF flags and banners, the crowd was screaming at the police and tear gas canisters careened through the crowd spitting toxic fumes. The police charged with clubs drawn and drove motorscooters through the crowd, running down protestors and breaking their legs. People were bloodied and shrieking in pain and it was my very first demonstration ever. I could not believe what I had gotten myself into. The action was led by the Gay and Lesbian contingent of May Day, a vital part of the advance planning for the event. These people just refused to be walked on any longer. They were tough. But while talking tough, they were not violent. Only the police were violent. Jerry and I ran to the front because we wanted to be in the thick of it. "Hey guys, it's a women's march, fall back a bit OK?" said one woman with a wink. I got the feeling that there was a lot of conscious theater involved in this action and that these people were pretty skilled at what they were doing. The crowd chanted, "Run Yankee run Yankee run Yankee run. Women of the world are picking up the gun!"</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Toto, I thought, I've a feeling we're not in Indiana anymore.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><b><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/04/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may.html">TO BE CONTINUED</a></b> </span></i></span></div>IdahoBerthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350472556112785687noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2050133758278268227.post-44856713938592565682011-03-22T22:19:00.045-06:002011-04-09T11:35:09.393-06:00If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Four)<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><i><b>PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS</b></i></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><i><b><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/02/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part One)</a></b></i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><b><i><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Two)</a></i></b></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><i><b><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_20.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Three)</a></b></i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><i><b><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_20.html"></a></b><br />
And when the truck came to a complete stop then rolled backward, crashing into what had to be a police car, we were tossed against each other violently and the sense of panic really set in. We were near Richmond, Indiana at the Indiana/Ohio border and we were such losers that we had not even gotten out of our own state safely. In a few minutes the sliding door was rolled up, we were blinded by the head lights of numerous police cars and their flashing lights, and a cloud of marijuana smoke billowed out into the faces of half a dozen Indiana State troopers.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It was a flat, nondescript strip of Interstate that could have been anywhere. It was twilight and getting darker by the moment. Our doom seemed obvious. There was no way this could turn out well. The police cruisers were impressive stacked up behind us and the police themselves looked more impressive still, as the flashing lights atop the cars cycled across their faces. For the sake of honesty, I will not exaggerate and tell you they had their guns drawn dramatically because they did not. They did not know what they were up against in this respective ship of fools we were, but they had thought we may be dangerous enough that they had arrived in force.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Amos had been driving the U-Haul so he had to deal with the police. Amos was a short, intelligent guy with long wavy hair who hailed from Israel. He had moved to England for several years then to West Lafayette, Indiana where his dad was a professor at Purdue. Amos' mom was very interesting. She was this small, unassuming Jewish mother who seemed like anyone else's mom only foreign. She had been born in Russia and had fled over the Ural Mountains to escape from the Nazis during the Second World War. She had spent two years in a British detention camp on Cyprus after trying to enter Palestine, something the British discouraged at the time. She had also been a member of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun">Irgun</a>, a Zionist paramilitary </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">group that operated in Palestine until 1948. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I am certain she was the only mother of any of my friends who knew how to handle a </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-47">Kalashnikov</a>. She always offered us cookies when we came over for a visit</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">With the harsh glare of the lights from the police cars trained upon us, the total darkness of the U-Haul's cargo area was dispelled in embarrassing fashion. The truck was a complete mess, as you would imagine, with all our gear haphazardly stored and pop bottles and food wrappers strewn about. We had sweated a fair bit so it probably didn't smell too sweet either. Putting our best foot forward always.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I could finally see Paul, who is now the director of research for a pharmaceutical firm, wearing his treasured jungle safari pith helmet to which he had affixed a red star. There was Maggie, with a red bandana tied around her neck, who became an activist-journalist covering the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intifada">Intifada</a> in the occupied territories of Palestine, and the Iraq War from the perspective of the Kurds. Maggie used to slip me free food at a grill just off the Purdue campus when she worked there, and she was for several years a professor who split her time between Cairo and the U.S. Maggie had raven dark hair and a light caramel complexion unlike anyone else in her family. She used to make jokes about her mother's one-night-stand with a tall dark stranger. And then there was Lucas, the slender hillbilly intellectual from West Virginia who sported a modified <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh">Ho Chi Minh</a> beard and who hung posters of Marx, Engels, and Lenin in his room at school. Lucas and his farmer roommate--with the Budweiser posters--never really got along. Lucas later taught at Harvard and Duke. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We also had four or five former Eagle Scouts with us as well as several former apostles of Ayn Rand. So we and all these others too numerous to mention had a front row seat as Amos and the officer in charge discussed our precarious situation.</span><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"Do you know why we stopped you?" the trooper asked. "I have no idea," Amos answered innocently. "By the way, it's a bit smoky in there isn't it?" said the cop. "Oh, some people never took the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_and_Health:_Report_of_the_Advisory_Committee_to_the_Surgeon_General_of_the_United_States">Surgeon General's Report</a> seriously, I guess," Amos panned. We all laughed. Oh, this was rich. Even though we were all going to jail we were loving this exchange.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"Well, we stopped you because you were gassing up in Richmond and someone at the gas station heard people talking in the back of the truck and someone else told them to be quiet." That would have been me. Damn, I suck, I thought. "So this 'someone' at the gas station gave us a call and we just had to check to see that you kids were all OK, and that no in this truck was here against their will," he said. "Oh, we're all peachy officer, and we're all here voluntarily aren't we folks?" Amos said laughing, turning around to address us. We roared with laughter again. "Things were just great until you stopped us," said Paul laughing. Paul always had the broadest smile and even when he was being a smart ass he was disarmingly charming about it. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"Is that so," said the trooper, mostly to himself. "I bet you were." We were just waiting for the shit to hit the fan. Although we were laughing we were really, really scared.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"So where are you kids headed?" asked the officer. "We're going to a demonstration in Washington, DC," Amos told him, without artifice, without flinching, and with pride. "Renting this truck is the cheapest and easiest way to get there and it keeps us safe from the dangers of hitchhiking." The cop stood there for a moment and just seemed to be taking it in, deciding what action to take next. Car after car and truck after truck roared by loudly as we sat there breathless, waiting for the hammer to fall. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"Well, I'll tell you what," said the trooper. "There's certainly no law against against exercising your constitutionally-protected rights, but there are laws against drugs." He paused, and you could feel our collective spirits sagging so much I thought the truck's springs might break. Here it came. The search, the hassle, the humiliation, and jail. I had never been to jail and I don't think anyone else had been to jail either. Damn, and this trip had seemed like such a good idea at the time... I could hear Three Dog Night in the background of my mind singing, <a href="http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/boogienightsvol2/mamatoldmenottocome.htm">"That ain't the way to have fun, son..."</a> </span><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"So, I'll tell you what," he said, his face silhouetted against the spot lights and head lights and flashing lights of the cruisers parked behind him. " I know you kids have a lot of drugs in this truck. I can smell the marijuana but I'm sure you also have a lot of acid, and heroin and speed and other kinds of pills in this truck and if you all just pass it forward to me I'll put it in a big pile right here in front of us and destroy it, then I'll let you go."</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">You have got to be kidding, I thought. How could he think we were such hopeless drug addicts? We just had a couple joints on us. We didn't do all that other stuff, except for maybe the acid on occasion and we only used speed to help us study for finals and even frat boys with "Love it or Leave it" stickers on their cars did that. No one did heroin or popped pills. We had read the Readers Digest while waiting in doctor's offices all our lives and we knew this stuff was bad. And no one believed this trooper was just going to let us go. We were in a stand off, but there were 20 plus of us and a half dozen of them and they thought we were crazy drug addicts and revolutionary firebrands. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"Well," Amos said, "there's none of that going on here. But if there were I don't think that by now anything would be left for you to discover." The officer just stood there looking at us amidst all his lights and cars and the impressive array of force he had at his disposal. He looked at us long and hard....</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"I think you're right," he said. "Just get the hell out of here and do it quick." We were happy to oblige. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We were astonished. We had won. I guess he did a quick cost/benefit analysis and gave it up as a lost cause, especially given our numbers and his fear regarding our response. Not that we would have done anything, but he didn't know that. People like us had been pretty well demonized in the minds of some and we had willingly fed that image too often. I'm not sure what happened about the truck rolling back into a police car and not being nailed for that, but we were too damn happy about the outcome as it were to ask. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"Call the FBI and tell 'em the hippies are shipping 'em to Washington in U-Hauls," he yelled to another officer, as if there were some Command Central of the anti-war movement that ran everything with an amazing level of precision from top to bottom anytime it wished. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Amos shut the door of the U-Haul, then hopped in the cab and slowly pulled back on to the Interstate, heading out of Indiana past the "Welcome to Ohio" sign which we saw had only been only a hundred or so feet in front of us before we had been intercepted. </span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivOOFT4wopTdEWzifFQT1ep5RCWYOZN2KHqPKQJLYJu4qFVOZpGLQNoaLmgJys-B5s5SYfIQDpdtow-ajsz6PGn5zaO5ImJy-zbpy0ddRm-7Vdgik9j_02qf-VH29Vw1HzxnXW5f_K8po/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-03-22+at+9.11.28+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="154" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivOOFT4wopTdEWzifFQT1ep5RCWYOZN2KHqPKQJLYJu4qFVOZpGLQNoaLmgJys-B5s5SYfIQDpdtow-ajsz6PGn5zaO5ImJy-zbpy0ddRm-7Vdgik9j_02qf-VH29Vw1HzxnXW5f_K8po/s320/Screen+shot+2011-03-22+at+9.11.28+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We took turns riding in the cab with the drivers--three abreast--and my turn came as we crawled through West Virginia. I fell asleep on the shoulder of Chook's friend Mary, and she didn't push me aside. The fragrance of her </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patchouli">patchouli oil</a> filled me with wonder.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 15px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Her soft shoulder and that scent made me feel happy and safe in an unsafe world. A couple hours later I had to crawl back into the darkness of the U-Haul and slept there as well as I could with 20 other people crowding up every square inch of space. Mary's shoulder had seemed much more inviting.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A few hours later Scott, a long-haired engineering student who had taken over the driving duties, started shouting hoarsely from the cab in front, "We're here, we're here. I'll open up the back door so you can see this place when it's safe to pull off!" We shook ourselves awake and the excitement built. The truck was pretty stuffy and we stank. We passed around the remaining water and some of us splashed a little on our faces to freshen up.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Within twenty minutes we stopped and Scott opened the back door to the U-Haul. I could smell water immediately and hear flags cracking in the wind. It was like going from black and white to color in the Wizard of Oz. Light, vibrant color, and the fragrant scents of spring flooded in, overwhelming the darkness and dread that had captured us for 15 hours or more. We were crossing the Potomac River and the bridge was decorated with red and black flags. Long hairs were everywhere, people had signs and banners, and joy had captured us all. We were driving into West Potomac Park, we had gotten to D.C. safe and sound, it was morning in America, and we were going to make history.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKAlSg-rOIy2hVma7fhVjXngLfLOkoAJin1SBzEeKzPZxWg6t77s3Nr6s1NQsLTAQW4BIKx_Sut9o8qpREqBoj8Tx0-7u1sAXaNLPy9ziJb6pzbzIZUvHADPFLlP8FBQzz53AwHpUsmRU/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-03-22+at+10.02.14+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKAlSg-rOIy2hVma7fhVjXngLfLOkoAJin1SBzEeKzPZxWg6t77s3Nr6s1NQsLTAQW4BIKx_Sut9o8qpREqBoj8Tx0-7u1sAXaNLPy9ziJb6pzbzIZUvHADPFLlP8FBQzz53AwHpUsmRU/s320/Screen+shot+2011-03-22+at+10.02.14+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><i><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may_25.html">TO BE CONTINUED</a></i></b></span></div>IdahoBerthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350472556112785687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2050133758278268227.post-69264291316400113472011-03-20T17:15:00.035-06:002011-03-23T11:42:55.741-06:00If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Three)<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may.html">IF MY THOUGHT DREAMS COULD BE SEEN: MAY DAY 1971 (PART 2)</a></span><br />
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<a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/02/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">IF MY THOUGHT DREAMS COULD BE SEEN: MAY DAY 1971 (PART 1)</span></a><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We lumbered out of West Lafayette, Indiana for the actions in Washington DC in a huge orange and white U-Haul truck filled with 20 plus people on Friday April 30, 1971. The truck, of course, was entirely enclosed and unless you were in the cab this trip would be taken in utter darkness. Yes, I skipped class that day. I had sort of given up on what many considered the real world anyway. There was so much drama going on, and meeting Ted had brought it to such a boil that I felt I had more important things to do. My thought dreams were simply larger than the world I had come to know. Ted did not come with us and no one expected him to. He had seen enough drama in Vietnam. </span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-jmfF8us7HpoALnQWnldz3RlX-RzqrV6U5qbNUwhYOPHaPlNIBOojuWAkPkJKtV7av7csE9JtcB9RCI3oawp_8RqKmDk8dqf9OKvxflYW13KXcF-syzNWGWeX7v8SN1uGf2KxoGpsB-0/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-03-20+at+1.45.42+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-jmfF8us7HpoALnQWnldz3RlX-RzqrV6U5qbNUwhYOPHaPlNIBOojuWAkPkJKtV7av7csE9JtcB9RCI3oawp_8RqKmDk8dqf9OKvxflYW13KXcF-syzNWGWeX7v8SN1uGf2KxoGpsB-0/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-03-20+at+1.45.42+PM.png" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Only a handful of us had attempted anything this ambitious or faced off against troops and police before except for our friend Chook. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Chook was the oldest brother of our friends Steve and Doug. He was an intimidating anarchist wild man with round <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky">Trotsky</a>-like wire-rimmed glasses and <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;">Medusa-like</span> long blond hair. He looked like someone you wouldn't want to fuck with. Chook had briefly attended school in Illinois and got caught up in revolutionary direct action such as street fighting and other things that are best left unmentioned. When we visited some of his friends at the Champaign-Urbana campus of the University of Illinois a few weeks before May Day, his friends had the impressive, wood-carved Chancellor's Chair in their dining room, having procured it in a raid on the student union one night some weeks before. It was sort of like Animal House only everyone carried the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotations_from_Chairman_Mao">Red Book</a>.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I was pretty much in awe of these people. They had an air of knowing things I did not and they were fully steeped in the anger of feeling betrayed by everything they had once held dear. Some had travelled to Cuba to cut sugar cane with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venceremos_Brigade">Venceremos Brigade</a>, a group of young Americans who defied the travel restrictions to Cuba to work for free in support of this thorn in the side of their U.S. government. Most of them were four or five years older than myself and had endured years of assaults on their idealistic notions of what America was or at least should be. They were what was called at the time, "movement heavies" and they were more than a little full of themselves. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A couple of women Chook knew from Illinois, Shelley and Mary, were travelling with us in the U-Haul and my half dozen or so closest friends and I were going to meet up with the other movement heavies these people knew and ditch everyone else we'd come with once we got to Washington DC. We wanted to be heavies too, and we thought some of our travelling companions were not heavy enough for us cool kids. We may have been a bit full ourselves as well.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Keep in mind that the demeanor and appearance of demonstrators had changed markedly since the initial actions against the war in the early- and mid-sixties. In the initial stages of the movement men wore sport coats and women nice dresses to underline the fact that ordinary people opposed the war. As failure upon failure mounted and counter-cultural values came to predominate, demonstrators started looking like assault teams of mountain men and women.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The way a person dressed and groomed themselves carried profound symbolic significance. Just as demonstrators in coats and ties signified critical acceptance of society's rules, the counter-culture style signified a near total rejection of the entire fabric of what was taken for granted. Long hair on men and casual, oftentimes ragged clothing on both women and men, signified a refusal to being tamed by a society than no longer made sense or held your allegiance. What good was deferred gratification when you were being led to slaughter or you were slaughtering others on someone else's behalf? My closest friends and I were on the stern but wild and wooly side of this <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics">semiotic</a> divide. We all had long hair but we didn't sport flowers. We wore olive drab army surplus coats and boots and red bandanas tied just beneath our left knees. The coats, boots, and bandanas inferred both an ironic rejection of a society that lived through the use of force and a warning that we might feel obliged to act in the same manner if pushed. There was also a lamentable machismo in all this that embarrasses me but which I must admit I found empowering.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But don't take all this dour heaviness too seriously. For all our hubris at the time and my hubris in this recollection, there was an undeniable innocence to this journey. Regardless of our posturing and all my passion, we were happy and optimistic and not terribly aware of what we were getting into. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The trip to DC was going to take twelve to fourteen hours if everything went well. And h</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">ere we were, locked in total darkness in the back of a U-Haul truck, singing, laughing, passing weed, and telling stories, just as if we were going to yet another rock concert.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The brothers Steve and Doug and Chook, as well as our friends Amos and Joe, had all gone to high school together in West Lafayette where most of their parents were professors. Jerry and I, another close friend, had sort of joined their already existing world. We were as tight as any group of young men could ever be. We never would have used the term, but we loved and cared about each other and would have done anything possible to aid each other. In many respects we were a gang--a "collective" or "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affinity_group">affinity group</a>" if you want to get technical--though we were a rather benign gang as gangs go. The other fifteen or so people with us were also friends, just not friends to whom were quite as much attached as we were to each other. We were more political and aspired to a bit more than our friends whom we conceitedly imagined to be mere hippies.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But little over two-and-one half hours after our departure our entire trip appeared to end. The truck slowed down unexpectedly and pulled off on to the side of the Interstate. We started asking each other what was going on and the panic began to build. Between the cracks in the gigantic sliding door at the rear of the U-Haul we could see flashing police lights shining through. A collective gasp rose from us. And when the truck came to a complete stop then rolled backward, crashing into what had to be a police car, we were tossed against each other violently and the sense of panic really set in. We were near Richmond, Indiana at the Indiana/Ohio border and we were such losers that we had not even gotten out of our own state safely. In a few minutes the sliding door was rolled up, we were blinded by the head lights of numerous police cars and their flashing lights, and a cloud of marijuana smoke billowed out into the faces of half a dozen Indiana State troopers.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>TO BE CONTINUED</b></span></div>IdahoBerthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350472556112785687noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2050133758278268227.post-65428172755636168512011-03-18T14:26:00.060-06:002011-03-20T11:44:42.594-06:00If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part Two)<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/02/if-my-thought-dreams-could-be-seen-may.html">If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part One)</a></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Sorry for the long time between posts but I've been busy. Here is the newest installment of the trip to Washington DC for the great May Day action against the war in Vietnam in May of 1971.</i></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As we finalized our plans for May Day I met Ted. Ted was a high school buddy to many of my friends and a Vietnam combat soldier who returned home merely days before we left. We'd rented a large U-Haul to accommodate twenty and bought gas masks and Mao buttons to theatrically enhance our weak credibility. Still, everything seemed surreal but for Ted. Ted was not a prop in the adventurous coming of age story I was living in my mind. Ted was real. And with his presence came insights for which I was not prepared. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ted was lean, blond and joyful, with a mildly somber undertow I am not sure was intrinsic or a result of the war. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"When I landed in Saigon and the tarmac was covered with body bags," he told us, "I knew I had made a mistake." </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ted arrived in Vietnam a couple days after President Nixon invaded Cambodia on April 30, 1971, almost a year to the day before we met. The war was going poorly and had not gone well for years, yet Nixon had expanded its carnage into still another land. College campuses exploded, h</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19px;">undreds of schools were shut down by student-led strikes,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> and protesters were slain by authorities at both Kent and Jackson State. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Safely seated on plush leather couches in a quiet, sumptuous sitting room of Purdue's Memorial Student Union and listening to Ted intone, the war seemed so far away. It was late at night, and but for Ted's almost confessional tone, the only other sounds were the breathing of the four or five of us who were there, and the click, click, click of heels in the hallway outside. For Ted, though, the war was still more real than that room. Only days before he had been in Vietnam, and now he sat with us sipping a Coke.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"When I got home my parents gave me a gift," he said. "A push-button electric tie rack so you don't have to reach two inches around to get the tie you want. I didn't want to be rude but I told them I couldn't accept it and I had a hard time telling them why. I mean, is this what I fought for, to protect a country that produces something like that?" </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I didn't know Ted and had only just met him, but even without the huge disconnect this gift represented, he didn't seem like the kind of person that had much need for ties. How could his parents not know this, I wondered. How could they not seem to know him at all? Of course I knew my parents were no different. They held notions of who I was and what I should be like that were hugely variant from who I was and what I imagined myself to be. Life had changed so dramatically since they were growing up that our respective generations had been raised on nearly different planets. They knew hardship, the Depression and the war, and all we knew were the boom times that had followed. We had expectations and dreams that could never be reconciled with their own. We just didn't know each others' experience well enough to really know each other well. We couldn't. And in addition to that already existing chasm, here Ted was, removed by mere hours from a war zone, and dropped back into a world that just chugged along indifferent, immersed in its baleful distractions, habits, and trivialities.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ted spoke of how strange it was to be back home, in this room with us, and how present yet invisible Vietnam was to him still. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I am proud of the questions we asked him that night. We didn't pry for painful details that no one should be asked to share. As it was he shared a lot </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">with little encouragement,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> and as much as we ever could have wished to know. There was something sacred about it. He needed to talk and we needed to listen. We needed each other in a way that was bigger than us all.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"When I got my notice I had 30 days to report and I decided to go to Canada. I went to Detroit to cross over the bridge into Windsor and it was hard not knowing if I'd ever be able to come back," he said softly. "In the motel I was staying at I saw a John Wayne movie and though it sounds dumb I realized that I was an American and I couldn't risk never being able to come back home. So I traveled back as fast as I could and reported to basic training with only a few hours to spare."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">He spoke of his best friend dying when he merely leaned his M-16 against a wall and it misfired. It went off, he was there one second, and then he was gone forever. Ted fell into silence for a moment then began to reveal more. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Some of these are things I could write about but I will not. They are too personal and would descend into voyeurism. Ted's words were only meant for us and I think they should remain that way, even though I have his permission to share them. I just don't feel right about it. Boundaries can be a good thing at times, and I think this is a good time to erect one.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ted was both the first man I met that had been in Vietnam as well as the most memorable. I have met numerous others since and have never wanted to know their stories, not because I didn't <i>really</i> want to, but because I don't feel I have the right. Even though I knew all along that someone had to be doing the fighting, I was never really angry at our fighting men then and I am not angry at them now. I hope they are no longer angry with me. I was never one of the "hippies" Stallone's character Rambo spoke of who spit on returning soldiers at airports when they came back home. I try not to see the men who served in Vietnam patronizingly as victims or dupes, nor disparagingly as killers. Most didn't want to be there as it was. Perhaps I am in denial and want to hold my country's rulers accountable but not the people who acted on their orders. Still, I just can't judge these men. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">They probably judge themselves more sternly than I could anyway. I'm like that with myself and I don't think I'm much different from anyone else. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And I was not far removed from my very small world as it were--the world of my parent's home and my small town--where I was used to doing what I was told because that was what I was supposed to do. No one gets much training in resisting unjust authority and knowing the difference between power that is exercised properly and power that is not. I was then no different from anyone else in that regard. I was making it all up as I went, on the fly, and reinventing the wheel every day. After all, I was wearing a Chairman Mao button without any understanding of the moral complexity that entailed. I was only 19 and the average age of a combat soldier in Vietnam was 19 as well. We were all just boys in too many ways to recount, and we were all doing things we could never take back.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So with all of this in mind as I wound my way back to my dorm room at Wiley Hall on that soft, spring night, past the school's red brick buildings and through a gauntlet of tranquil sorority houses with fragrant flowering trees, I slipped into a deep, dark <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;">reverie</span>. I has just read George Orwell's book about the Spanish Civil War, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_to_Catalonia">Homage to Catalonia</a></i>. The Spanish Civil War was one of the last places where the march of fascism might have been halted before World War II but that resistance had failed. In the last paragraph of the book Orwell recalls his return home to the safety of England writing, "</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It is difficult when you pass that way...</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> to believe that anything is really happening anywhere...</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Don't worry, the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">milk will be on the doorstep tomorrow morning, the New Statesman will come out on Friday. The industrial towns [of Spain] were far away, a smudge of smoke and misery </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">hidden by the curve of the earth's surface. Down here it was still the England I </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">had known in my childhood...</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">out of it by the roar of bombs." And, of course, they were.</span><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I started to cry. I thought of all the people in Southeast Asia </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">at that very moment </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">who were flinching and fleeing from the roar of our bombs, and of all the men like my new friend Ted who were forced to rain down these bombs upon them. I feared for the retaliation, for the justice, that might someday rain down upon my country for its arrogance. I was determined to throw my body onto the machinery of death to stop it, and in only two or three days I would. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">TO BE CONTINUED (no really, it will) </span></div>IdahoBerthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350472556112785687noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2050133758278268227.post-22472955175484065492011-02-20T14:55:00.042-07:002011-04-21T20:32:48.064-06:00If my thought dreams could be seen: May Day 1971 (Part One)<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Sixties were over, but I wanted in. I was lolling around in early 1971 in an ornate sitting room of Purdue University's</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> spacious Memorial Union, a school Time magazine called a "hot bed of student rest." A</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> leaflet stating, "If the government doesn't stop the war, we will stop the government," had fallen into my hands. This was my big chance. I had grown up with the Vietnam War and the many actions taken against it, but I had been too young to take part. I was in college now, I had grown my hair long, I wore an old army coat and bell-bottom jeans, and I even knew people who painted flowers on their faces because they had seen photos like that in Life magazine. But even now </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I was missing out by attending a conservative school, and this great adventure of travelling to Washington D.C. to shut down the government was my chance to finally make a mark. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">One-third of my life had been spent as a mere spectator, watching the nightly news as our nation thrashed in turmoil day after day, year after year. The killings of students at Kent and Jackson State had happened not much more than six months before. I had witnessed the carnage in Grant Park at the Democratic convention in Chicago from afar, and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">had watched the Columbia University uprising on TV. I remember seeing James Simon Kunen, a Columbia student who had taken part in the sit-in, on a TV show while I was visiting my sister in upstate New York. He was earnest and impassioned and I knew at that moment that I had more in common with him than I did with the program's churlish host who mocked him. I had also read a book about the socialist icon <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs">Eugene V. Debs</a> in my idyllic small-town library around the same time. Debs' life made me feel certain that cooperation was better than conflict in meeting our daily needs, and I experienced a breathtaking and rapturous vision of all humanity uniting in common purpose as I read that book. The world seemed entirely new to me at that moment, and I continued to feel that way from then on. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Whenever I think of peace and wisdom I remember the scent of that library reading room and its comfortable sofa chairs.</span><br />
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</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwytdn-d0h7JAHSRb_F0H14PCk7CBRwzrmIwB9Dwsq5UUc4qWoEcQ3FRdrw65X5hmSweSrBiwbbAG6e0ar41hN4xmqv0aUtv_oDqygWEtCh30GMvPteH3rQkZldR1YeaA6MOHnXg4hB9U/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-02-15+at+5.15.04+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwytdn-d0h7JAHSRb_F0H14PCk7CBRwzrmIwB9Dwsq5UUc4qWoEcQ3FRdrw65X5hmSweSrBiwbbAG6e0ar41hN4xmqv0aUtv_oDqygWEtCh30GMvPteH3rQkZldR1YeaA6MOHnXg4hB9U/s320/Screen+shot+2011-02-15+at+5.15.04+AM.png" width="242" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">If you were not alive in the mid-sixties--and even if you were--it can be hard to understand the level of rage engendered by that war. Much depended on the state of your awareness and when you had become aware. If you were old enough and politically astute, and you were already a part of "the movement" or touched by it, you believed in the chosen status of your generation. You had seen President John F. Kennedy assassinated, you had witnessed or endured attacks on civil rights activists that had escalated to murder, and yet you believed in the promise of America. You already knew more about the complicated and contradictory nature of our nation than many had learned in a lifetime. Then the Vietnam War occurred. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The war was a terrible interruption in what many thought might be a difficult but inevitable march towards a new and more just society. You already had an extremely nuanced feel for your country and its mythologies by 1965, but the next several years would take you places you never imagined possible. The war began small and grew and grew and grew. And as you learned more about it you realized it was not an ordinary war like your father had fought, where one large army squared off against another. This was a war where one large army attacked ordinary people in grass huts, and where small children were burned alive as they raced into their homes to rescue their treasured toys.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The disparity in firepower was unimaginable. You knew that more bombs were being dropped at a far higher rate on this small rural nation than were dropped on areas hundreds of times larger during the Second World War. There were massacres, carpet bombings, and body bags on the tarmac as you landed in Saigon to do your patriotic chore. It was nothing at all like what you had been taught your nation was about. You knew the death tolls were nightmarish and the war served no practical end, but the war went on and on. The fact that they were the communist enemy seemed insignificant when you looked at everything else. They weren't the Russians--with immense resources and a nuclear arsenal--they were poor people living in grass huts. You couldn't cooperate with this kind of evil, with this kind of madness, that linked these two different situations together simply through the use of a word.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Finally, two million Vietnamese would die due to our prosecution of this war, and the Pentagon papers would reveal that 70% of our reason for being there was to save face. Two million people died so our leaders could save face. What nation on earth could do things like this and still wake up in the morning and shave as if nothing were really happening?</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Ours did.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">You felt betrayed because the liberals you might ordinarily trust were prosecuting this war, and the Republicans whom you distrusted supported it even more. You were backed so far into a corner that it radicalized you. And the war went on and on. You couldn't trust your country or your government to do what was right or even practical. And you yourself seemed to have little effect on the war no matter what you believed or did. You became bitter, and were in some ways ruined for life. You could never think of your country or its people in the same way again. Marches, rallies, sit-ins, none of it worked. A large share of the public was deaf and were more likely to rely on a phrase like "My country, right or wrong" instead of any evidence. And when public opinion later turned to a huge majority against the war, it still didn't matter and Nixon was re-elected in a landslide. It was insane, and it drove many into despair. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"The movement" had died in some ways due to infighting a year or so before, but I didn't know this. I was signing up for something that was losing many committed supporters to burnout and disillusionment and I possessed neither their experience nor their insight. I was a wannabe. I just knew which side I was on but I wasn't sure exactly why. I was making it up as I went and trying to act as if I knew what I were doing even when I did not.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As I looked over the plans in that sitting room with my friends, my eyes widened and I smiled with anticipation. How would we prepare? How would we get there? What would we do once we did? I could hear Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young singing "four dead in Ohio" in my mind as we studied the leaflet, and wondered what fate we would meet in DC. and how it might change us all.</span></div>IdahoBerthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350472556112785687noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2050133758278268227.post-21903395718942343732011-02-13T22:32:00.048-07:002011-02-19T13:40:08.207-07:00This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part Six, The End))<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
<div style="font-family: Times; text-align: justify;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>CONTINUED FROM:</b></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/02/this-train-aint-bound-for-glory-this.html"><b>This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part One)</b></a><b><br />
</b></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/02/this-train-aint-bound-for-glory-this_04.html"><b>This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part Two)</b></a><b><br />
</b></span><br />
<a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/02/this-train-aint-bound-for-glory-this_163.html"><b>This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part Three)</b></a><b><br />
</b><br />
<a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/02/this-train-aint-bound-for-glory-this_07.html"><b>This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part Four)</b></a><b><br />
</b><br />
<a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/02/this-train-aint-bound-for-glory-this_11.html"><b>This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part Five)</b></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The train took a long time getting to Kansas City after leaving Pratt. It stopped numerous times in many small towns, waking us frequently and requiring us to lie on the floor of the engine cab to avoid detection the entire way. When we finally arrived in K.C. it was mid-morning, it was very cold, and there was three to four inches of snow on the ground. Multiple sets of tracks were stacked from one side of the yard to the other and over half of them supported entire trains. I was getting really tired of being on a train and waiting in train yards. But hitchhiking in snowy conditions was an obviously bad move, while riding in an engine cab was comparatively great. </span></span></div></div><div style="font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5OoVC9VbjbqcmYm0_iiFNOMQplcnyTKJAjEqGXr6Oqavqojs0hP3yO5UYpZSPAeWs9wAzXf0quhxUSrnkO0QfRjSkHZWC2p41Tx9jXex4tOzULjogAMXCTxPV9-X7ueM379tUvcgPVQk/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-02-12+at+10.30.29+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5OoVC9VbjbqcmYm0_iiFNOMQplcnyTKJAjEqGXr6Oqavqojs0hP3yO5UYpZSPAeWs9wAzXf0quhxUSrnkO0QfRjSkHZWC2p41Tx9jXex4tOzULjogAMXCTxPV9-X7ueM379tUvcgPVQk/s320/Screen+shot+2011-02-12+at+10.30.29+PM.png" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As we trudged through the snowy rail yard I wondered how things would turn out, and if Jack could restrain his odd behavior. He was recounting still more grisly war stories that I was not yet convinced were true. He would mumble incoherently at times, but only when I was the sole person around. It was as if he felt safe with me but could restrain himself when he was with others. I wasn't sure if he was doing the crazy act for effect or if it were really true. Either option had a down side. If he wanted to mess with me that was bad. If he was really unstable, that was also bad.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We eventually bumped into a young hippy-looking rail yard worker named Kyle. He was lean with shoulder-length dark hair and a sparse, unkept beard. We would have mistaken him for a rail rider like ourselves if he hadn't been wearing a long denim jacket like all the other workers in the yard. I couldn't believe a person like us could get a job at any place that was real. Everyone I knew in Indiana that had gotten a decent job had to shear their freak-flag. And this was a good job with union wages in the early '70s when unions still had clout. You have to understand the degree to which you isolated yourself from the normal world by growing out your hair back then. You were defying multiple codes of social conduct and notions of what was good and taking a stand on a side where you were constantly outnumbered everywhere you went. It was pretty insane when you think about it, but if you were so obviously compelled to voice your displeasure with the world by doing something this in your face, you had to expect adverse reactions and we did. You automatically expected to be excluded and actually felt proud when it happened. But sometimes it got old and you wished people would just take you for who you were and not for the signals of resistance you were sending merely by being alive.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We started talking and Kyle told us the next train we could hop to Indiana was headed to St. Louis first. "It leaves in nine hours," he said. Nine hours! Crap. That was nine additional hours before I could even think of getting home; and what would we do and where would we seek shelter all that time? The wind was whipping up the snow and it couldn't have been more than 2o degrees. Kyle said we could join him in the yardmaster shack for the day. Well, that was mighty kind of him, but they couldn't all be freaks and I was unable to believe we would be welcome by anyone other than Kyle. But I was wrong.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGK8Dapuo7BOnmfloCc7a8Qt7Jlnm_1Xrc86Fb_8AAOLUSEBXk03Ij1934zlnssg0CbCsBuI9MR1ODviEERr_-11Lc3eT_vR-g4XDtrYtmQsjLMj1dPHiuHiGm3iHIgIoynC2iy7aY1Pk/s1600/Yardmaster+shack.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGK8Dapuo7BOnmfloCc7a8Qt7Jlnm_1Xrc86Fb_8AAOLUSEBXk03Ij1934zlnssg0CbCsBuI9MR1ODviEERr_-11Lc3eT_vR-g4XDtrYtmQsjLMj1dPHiuHiGm3iHIgIoynC2iy7aY1Pk/s320/Yardmaster+shack.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The yardmaster shack was a long, narrow wooden structure holding several tables with newspapers scattered all over them. It was heated, it had a water cooler and a couple old refrigerators, and yard workers of many varieties cycled through it all day. A number of them were older guys my father's age, in their '50s or '60s, a few were black and almost all the youngest guys had long to longish hair. Everyone got along. They were unconcerned that we were there and one of the old guys even went home and got Jack and me some left-over fried chicken from the night before and a pie his wife made specifically for us. He'd called her from the yardmaster's phone and he drove home to pick it up at lunchtime. </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It was amazing how these men were willing to accept two strangers in their midst who were totally in their way and that they decided not only to accept us, but to make our passage through their world as pleasant as they could. After nine hours we packed up and went out into the yard. We asked the engineer of the train to St. Louis if we could ride in a engine cab and he said no, because the <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><em style="font-style: normal;">surveillance of the trains got thicker the further east you went. W</em></span>e finally crawled into an empty box car that was cold as hell and completely dark because we had to shut the door to keep from freezing. Jack and I said nothing to each other the whole way.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We got to St Louis the next morning and were promptly tossed from the yard and that was basically that. The train riding had ended. The further east we got things really did get less friendly. Hitchhiking was out of the question and we were too beat to try. Both Jack and I got on a pay phone and made collect calls asking our respective parents to wire us $20 each so we could just take the bus back home. They did. Jack and I said next to nothing on the trip from St. Louis to Indianapolis where Jack said goodbye and walked into the terminal mumbling to himself. He never lost it entirely while I was with him and he may not have been as ill as he seemed, but I'd been grateful not to be alone, nonetheless, during these five days that felt like five weeks. I still feel grateful now. I haven't thought about him at all for nearly 40 years until the last few days. I hope he found some balance and didn't descend any further into the darkness. </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I continued on the bus to Lafayette, Indiana and walked into the former house of ill-repute my friends and I rented on 5th Street some time before 9 in the evening. It was a plain two-story house with battered white siding, a long front porch, and train tracks running down the middle of the street in front. What a hoot if I'd been able to hop off right in front of the house. Oh well. I was able to reclaim my old room with the six-foot high, red and black Che Guevara silo I'd painted on the wall the year before. Che and I have since parted ways but that was a symbol I appropriated to feel more powerful about myself back then. The house had ten very small rooms and we each paid $11 a month to stay there. I was so happy to be home. I felt warm all over and I'd survived. I was with people I loved, and who loved me as well. And I'd met many more on the road. The world seemed like a friendlier place than I had thought before this journey.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">During this entire trip, where I had felt devoid of all protection and vulnerable to fate and to the whims of others most of the time, ordinary people acting out of simple kindness repeatedly came to my aid. I also found events themselves seeming to conspire to produce surprisingly positive outcomes every time things started heading south. </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Many years later I read that Albert Einstein considered an answer to this question the most important thing in life: "Is the universe a friendly place or not?" He said that everyone's life heads down one of two major paths depending on how they answer this question. I am absolutely sure that this is true. If you trust life and others you go one direction, and if you distrust life and others you go another. If you distrust life you think people are bad and you need to change them and dominate them. If you trust life you know people are good--or at least that enough of them are good to tip the scales--and that you can trust them and that someone or something always has your back. You may feel like a tightrope walker, but in some way you know you're operating with a net.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">How does this relate to Charlie, Nick and Jack and the kid jerked from the train by the Border Patrol? Their stories don't seem as happy as mine. I'm not sure how to answer this question, but I do have some thoughts. C.S. Lewis tried to answer the question as to why people can think the world is good and meaningful when so many bad things happen to others. Lewis said, in effect, "That is their story, and you can only make sense of life through your own experience and not through the experience of others." I don't have the right to decide for someone else if their suffering warrants their feeling defeated and alone. And I don't have an obligation to feel hopelessness and defeat when I witness their suffering. My obligation is to help. Anyway, in the midst of the greatest abandonment imaginable, many people feel nourished by forces beyond their comprehension. These forces are beyond my comprehension as well. I didn't think that way at the time. I didn't have words for it then, but my sense of things were headed in that direction all along.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So in my experience, which is all I have to go on, the universe is a friendly place and the people in it are generally good. Somehow, some way, things are better than they are worse. This is the precious miracle of ordinary life that is always staring us in the face whether we notice it or not. There are plenty of reasons not to believe this, but my experience exceeds the limits of these restraints. Call it optimism, call it resilience, call it God, leave it unnamed if you wish. It's one of those things I can't figure out with my mind alone. There are places my mind can't go but where my heart has no problem treading. I'm fine with standing on the edge of the chasm of existence and calling its bluff. And I know I'm not alone.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiAgovvVf-vHd3wopcHHwynx5WxtJ47CDqWaOQQxlMt8p0bTW-xMOvQJJZh-l0u1bynBON0pZZs1Grq5WnIWIG474iLXV0-9fRsQUpyUqKFAT-7BUiJo7LvpfetmmAhxRiOWNLTVcAlWE/s1600/bert+and+friends.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiAgovvVf-vHd3wopcHHwynx5WxtJ47CDqWaOQQxlMt8p0bTW-xMOvQJJZh-l0u1bynBON0pZZs1Grq5WnIWIG474iLXV0-9fRsQUpyUqKFAT-7BUiJo7LvpfetmmAhxRiOWNLTVcAlWE/s320/bert+and+friends.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Joe, Shelly, Bert, Nikki, and Patty in 1971</b> </span></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div>IdahoBerthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350472556112785687noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2050133758278268227.post-72451045127442151082011-02-11T05:53:00.103-07:002011-02-14T21:57:37.789-07:00This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part Five)<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>CONTINUED FROM:</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/02/this-train-aint-bound-for-glory-this.html">This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part one)</a></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/02/this-train-aint-bound-for-glory-this_04.html">This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part two)</a></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/02/this-train-aint-bound-for-glory-this_163.html">This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part Three)</a></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/02/this-train-aint-bound-for-glory-this_07.html"><b>This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part Four)</b></a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After I got back from the diner, our box car was picked up in less than an hour. We travelled without incident to San Antonio, Texas where we spent the night at the Gospel Mission, an unpleasant place where we were treated judgmentally and without respect. The Gospel Mission had little to do with the Christianity I had learned as a kid at the Presbyterian Church or at </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><em style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">St. Martin de Porres</span></em><em style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold;"> </em></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Catholic Worker house in San Francisco only days before. It wasn't like the Gospel Mission thought we were good people who had lost our way. They thought we were bad people who needed to change or be punished. There's a difference. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The truth is that they seemed to be serving people for God's sake and not for ours, so they never really saw us or connected with us and that gap between us was a painful thing to feel</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. They didn't really care about us and we knew it. They cared about The Word. We were merely bit players in a script, a necessary evil for them to live out a gospel that had been reduced to a joyless death march. They had no Good News for us. I feel bad saying this about them, but I have met others who filtered through that place and they had the same experience.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So, we took showers, ate a meager meal, got preached at and condescended to, then they tried to seize my last six dollars and fifty cents as payment for their heart-felt service to God, but not to me. I refused. This remaining pittance was my only cushion against total dependence and I promised to cause a ruckus if they persisted in robbing me so they relented and left me alone. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The people staffing the Gospel Mission were nothing like the Christ who had shined through the waitress at the Texas diner a few hours before. She just went with her instincts and her instincts were sound. These official Christians had an agenda that blunted those instincts and that made all the difference. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Mission itself was crammed high and wide with beds and odors and gloom, and the people staying there were diverse. There was the usual group of social dysfunctionals you'd associate with a shelter, as well as many people whom you would never expect to need its services. It was intimidating in its utter sadness, and I couldn't wait to leave. We woke up early the next morning and left without eating breakfast, something we really needed, but not under the circumstances in which it would be offered.</span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We hopped a train a couple hours later after some very kind assistance from a rail worker in the San Antonio yard. "It's getting cold where you're going," he said, "and you didn't hear this from me, but it's OK if you get in an engine cab. There's a water cooler and heat but don't touch anything and lay on the floor when you go through a town. Someone in a little shit town might call the cops if they see you." He was an ordinary man probably 30 years my senior and I was astonished at his kindness. Hadn't he gotten the memo that people like me were what was wrong with this country? The folks working at the Gospel Mission had. Once again, there it was in this railroad man, this simple instinctive kindness I'd come to expect from people who relied on their hearts instead of a rule book that did their thinking and feeling for them. Breaking the rules out of simple love for others is what got Jesus murdered, you know. If you've never heard this before then at least you've heard it now. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the end the four of us took refuge in of one of the six engines pulling this very long train; but Charlie, the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">Chippewa Indian from Minnesota,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> was not too good about hitting the floor when we went through small towns. He would sit in the engineer's seat and wave at people and smile while the other three of us lay on the floor. He laughed at us and called us, "pussies."</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Many hours later past midnight we were over 600 miles north of San Antonio in Pratt, Kansas and snow was falling hard. We were sleeping, the engine cab was well-heated, and we had fresh, filtered water in Dixie Cups if we wished. Life was treating us well. Suddenly the door was pushed open, cold and snow blew in upon us, and a nine-foot tall policeman weighing 500 pounds drawled, "Well, do you boys got yourselves a ticket?" Gee thanks, Charlie. Thanks for being a dumb ass and waving at people the whole damn time. The cop had a southern accent too. Why the hell did a cop in Kansas have a goddamned southern accent anyway? It was like something out of a movie, and just when things were going pretty well by our diminished expectations. We had already been punished by the Jesus Police at the Gospel Mission and now we were going to get another dose of it at the hands of the Real Police. I was furious at Charlie and scared as hell. </span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgUyO0uReS3XsxQ9wWBwzt1SXcu5EKhup8lojk9BYtCBrVd_KxMyJ6HALmy9eUc_i_YUakY0h_XL2WsqQn5UrTpQc4u7QvLQv8EPsm2tlW43iAvvWQj3BGemeU6-8z-Q9OsJLT19XEWpE/s1600/pratt4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgUyO0uReS3XsxQ9wWBwzt1SXcu5EKhup8lojk9BYtCBrVd_KxMyJ6HALmy9eUc_i_YUakY0h_XL2WsqQn5UrTpQc4u7QvLQv8EPsm2tlW43iAvvWQj3BGemeU6-8z-Q9OsJLT19XEWpE/s320/pratt4.jpg" width="310" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The cop squeezed us into his cruiser, and hauled us to the police station through a sad neighborhood of dilapidated homes. The streets were dark and empty, and layered in nearly a foot of drifting snow. Street lights back lit the snow, making it look like it was falling even harder than it was. I was so damn miserable. How the hell could I get out of this? He plopped us down in a small, blank room with a plain, metal desk and a door with a frosted glass window. The desk was freezing to the touch. The officer questioned us like we were some kind of big catch and it took more than two hours. It was so lame. He dumped out our knapsacks, rifled through our sleeping bags, and ran a check for priors on us. It was sheer malice. The railroad didn't give a damn if we were there, or at least its employees didn't. We'd had no intention of doing anything other than pass through Pratt, Kansas in a state of sublime unconsciousness, and we were no threat to anyone or anything. You can pratter on as much as you like about law and order and duty, but in reality this was senseless. It was spite <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><em style="font-style: normal;">masquerading as justice and nothing more.</em></span> I hated the bastard. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In an act of perverse irony he arrested Charlie the waving miscreant for failure to appear and jumping bail, as well as his partner Nick the boot sniffer who had a roach clip on him. The cop was looking for anything to bring more misery into our lives and Jack and I were next. What a way to spend your life, I thought, shaking down people who were already down on their luck just because you could. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But he had to let us go. We hadn't really done anything wrong aside from exist, and believe it or not, that was not a crime. He didn't have anything to charge us with because the railroad was none of his damn business and they didn't care. God bless capitalism, finally. I was so happy I couldn't believe it, then just as quickly I was miserable once again. He said he was taking us back to the tracks where he'd picked us off the train, and if we weren't gone in 30 minutes he'd jail us for vagrancy. He was savoring the chance to get one last crack at us. We knew that after two or three hours of being shaken down, the train was certainly gone and that hitching would kill us in this weather--literally--so we'd just have to go to jail. To <i>his</i> jail. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When we got to the rail yard the train was still there. Oh God! Jack and I couldn't believe it! It was a vision of all that was good in the world. We leaped from his cruiser and sprinted for the train, fighting through snow that was drifting nearly to our knees, and trying to surpress our jubilation for fear that he'd just find some other way to harm us in the end. We got right back in the same engine cab we'd been on before and the train jerked and started pulling out within seconds of our bodies hitting the floor. In breathless amazement we laid on that floor for the next several hours all the way to Kansas City. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The cab was so deliciously warm that I started thawing out from the cold brought on by the weather and the cold that was due to that policeman and to the official Christians from the Gospel Mission in San Antonio. I opened some Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup and ate it straight from the can. It was thick and salty and I chased it with a Dixie Cup of cool, fresh water from the water cooler. It was like Thanksgiving in a can. I was so grateful for our escape from Babylon and how it had been seemingly engineered. I was stunned into wonder. I didn't know about Jack, because we were hardly speaking to each other by then, and Jack was slipping deeper and deeper into the reveries of his mental illness all the time, but I was praising our good fortune and feeling as if we were being watched over at every critical juncture. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I took off my boots without hesitation and crawled into my sleeping bag. I didn't have a word for it at the time, but everything was Grace at that moment. The soup, the warm cab, the snow, the cop, the ministry of meanness in San Antonio, it was all Grace, and no one part of it could be taken away without diminishing any other part in return. I slept the deep sleep of one that knows he is beloved, as the train cut through the snow, the cold, and the night, shielding us from every possible danger until a new round of challenges resumed in the morning.</span><br />
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<b>LAST INSTALLMENT NEXT</b></div>IdahoBerthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350472556112785687noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2050133758278268227.post-68555587203744894252011-02-07T21:35:00.005-07:002011-02-08T21:23:42.683-07:00This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part Four)<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><b>CONTINUED FROM:</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><b><br />
</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><b><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/02/this-train-aint-bound-for-glory-this.html">This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part One)</a></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><b><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/02/this-train-aint-bound-for-glory-this_04.html">This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part Two)</a></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/02/this-train-aint-bound-for-glory-this_163.html"><b>This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part Three)</b></a></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><i>Although the box car was as dark as it could be, small slits of light shone through around the edges of the door. I stumbled to my feet and slid the door open to a blinding mid-day sun. It was dead silent. As my eyes adjusted I knew it had to be South Texas, a meager landscape of sagebrush, dust and bare, dead trees. I jumped down from the car and marched around and was shocked beyond belief. We were on a side rail off the main tracks in the middle of nowhere and the rest of the train was gone. Only one box car stood on this side rail, <i>our car</i>, and we were completely and utterly alone. That goddamned engineer had lied. He'd abandoned us in the desert after all. </i></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">Charlie, Nick and Jack stuck their heads out and uttered a collective, "Oh fuck!" They jumped down and dashed around the box car, frantic for any sign of life. In the distance we saw a small concrete structure with a few pickup trucks scattered around it. The tension lessened a bit. A least we weren't a hundred miles from a road or food or water. I volunteered to check it out immediately, hoping to get there before the bail jumper, the boot sniffer, or the crazy man got there first and spoiled our chances of making good first impression. I had only seven dollars left, I was over 1,300 miles from home, and I was too focused on surviving to be scared. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">I plowed through the weeds and the brush and made it to the building which turned out to be a small Texas diner with a eight to ten dust-caked trucks parked in a gravel lot out front. It wasn't much to get excited over, cinder blocks with a red neon open sign in the window, but I had never been more pleased to happen upon a crappy little dive in my life. I could see from outside through the window that it was a cramped little place with a counter and stools and fewer than a dozen tables. It was packed, and I finally started feeling scared. This wasn't the kind of place where I expected a warm welcome.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp5viaa_ZlyPJu0E3qxGguQEZkmKj1CNO_EVcErYCgV1HGYAZtWcLJfANYIzmDBk9Ger0LQOMrpJux1Oo1jSKQy4uZyn_hTFmZ7Ii55z45LUdAjTNP-1jgGnu5T_X6ZALDSuAxE2HzaKc/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-02-07+at+8.41.20+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp5viaa_ZlyPJu0E3qxGguQEZkmKj1CNO_EVcErYCgV1HGYAZtWcLJfANYIzmDBk9Ger0LQOMrpJux1Oo1jSKQy4uZyn_hTFmZ7Ii55z45LUdAjTNP-1jgGnu5T_X6ZALDSuAxE2HzaKc/s320/Screen+shot+2011-02-07+at+8.41.20+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">I walked into a room filled with smoke and a rumble of voices arising from men in Wranglers, cowboy hats and boots. Every head turned at once and the place fell quiet in an instant. I had been a spectacle at the Safeway in Indio, but I had gone downhill further since. Covered in dirt and with wild, tangled hair, I have never wanted to just turn tail and run any more at any time in my life than then. But I had no choice, and threaded my way through the tables and the cowboys to the counter. What could these people possibly be thinking? None of it could be good.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">I sat down on a stool at the counter, and when I sheepishly raised my eyes in utter shame to look at the waitress she said, "How can I help you son?" There was an immense tenderness and earnestness in her voice and her eyes. She was old and wrinkled and had that bluish gray hair that many older women seemed to covet back then. At that moment, the gratitude I felt, the pure grace I felt through her acceptance, pierced me. I barely noticed when the rumble of voices resumed, for she and I had become the only people in a world that now paid us no mind. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">"I'm stuck in a box car a half mile from here and I was wondering if you knew anything about the trains," I confessed. "Oh hon', don't trouble yourself. A train comes around every few hours to pick up those cars they've left behind. Can I get you something, dear?" How could she even think of treating me like this? How could she act like I wasn't everything no one wanted their child to become? "I don't have much money, I guess I ought to go," I said. "You don't have to leave hon'. Order anything you want and leave a little change on the counter, just enough to make it look good," she whispered. "You got an hour or two anyway," she said. Then she smiled. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">Never in my life had I expected something like this. I felt ashamed for judging her and everyone else in this diner so quickly. When you don't know what people are like and you're afraid, you fill in the blanks with your anguish and end up assuming the worst. Maybe the world wasn't as bad as I thought it was. Maybe I was just stewing in the contents of my own sour feelings and thoughts. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">I had a burger, a fry, and a Coke and left her fifty cents. She winked as I got up to leave. If the whole world were made of simple little waitresses in crappy Texas diners, this world would be pure magic.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">On the way back to the box car, as I trudged through the brush and the dust and the weeds, I saw something glitter on the ground. I bent down to find a small brass bell, no larger than my thumb, and on it was inscribed the word, "Hello." I shook my head in wonder. I had just been saved by a person, and now thin air was pitching in too? For a moment I entertained the notion that maybe there was a god, or that somehow the universe acted as if there were. I pocketed that bell, and carried it with me for three or four years, until I took out my key chain one day and it was gone. I guess it was someone else's turn to feel blessed and amazed. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><b>TO BE CONTINUED</b></span>IdahoBerthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350472556112785687noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2050133758278268227.post-77270924204752476882011-02-04T23:31:00.048-07:002011-02-06T21:24:33.469-07:00This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part Three)<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>CONTINUED FROM:</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/02/this-train-aint-bound-for-glory-this.html">This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part One)</a></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/02/this-train-aint-bound-for-glory-this_04.html">This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part Two)</a></b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">S</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">ilhouetted</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> in the </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">moonlight against the open door, and amidst the rattle and banging of the swaying train, I saw the slender kid with the wispy mustache and he seemed to be sniffing my boots. It was almost comical in its horror. I'd wondered how things could get worse, and they had. I also knew, however, that as strange as these people seemed, they certainly were not evil. So, I wasn't really afraid. I just felt so very, very alone. Every reference point to something normal or familiar was gone. But at least I wasn't in a coal car. Life was looking up! And even if these people were losers and crazy they had been kind to me, and had accepted me as if they felt I belonged. And when that thought sunk in, I cried a little harder, and was grateful to the wind and the clattering of the train that muffled my cries from discovery.</span></span></i></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That good hard cry exhausted me, and I slept deep and dreamlessly all night. It was far into the morning when I woke. "You've been asleep for the last four hours since we got here, man," Jack sputtered. His mouth was filled with cold Cream of Mushroom soup directly from the can. "Are we in Tucson?" I asked. He nodded yes and swallowed. "We don't even have to switch trains," he said. "We'll be leaving in about an hour." That seemed like good news. I climbed down from the box car, took a leak and stretched and climbed back in. There was nothing much to see. We were surrounded by box cars and the landscape was hidden from view. "Where's the other two guys?" I asked. "Charlie and Nick? Not, sure but they said they'd be back. They left their knapsacks here." Oh, goody. We were on a first name basis now.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtuZmK-3xV_qmRB-Cna-sCKXwsHBZudYpnUDfmBL7bFHVGs0_Z8U7sbmCSwkFA4ZTWtAJNLZFvD6RFhWwBb68qPBXTRGs1axPiwGSbjyu1rLD_oOp5gd9rNzQuH-bQbtE29p5FXEROvlc/s1600/soup.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtuZmK-3xV_qmRB-Cna-sCKXwsHBZudYpnUDfmBL7bFHVGs0_Z8U7sbmCSwkFA4ZTWtAJNLZFvD6RFhWwBb68qPBXTRGs1axPiwGSbjyu1rLD_oOp5gd9rNzQuH-bQbtE29p5FXEROvlc/s320/soup.jpg" width="246" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I felt unusually well after sleeping. Only hours before, my life felt like it was over. On waking nothing had really changed. I'd lost everything, I had no future, but nothing was really wrong anymore. It had all been in my mind. It's interesting how things can seem so bad when you dwell on them, but when they happen it's no big deal. About the worst stuff I could imagine had happened, but I was still alive. The sun was shining, and with or without me, life was forging ahead. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I felt an amazing sense of release. I wasn't in charge anymore. There wasn't a me that was living, and instead I was being lived. There was more freedom in this recognition than I can ever put into words. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Charlie and Nick returned with some red vines which they shared, and a few minutes later a frightened and hesitant young man from Mexico jumped into our box car. After some faltering attempts to speak to him it was obvious he knew no English and our Spanish was just as bad. He was a nice kid. He took an envelope out of his pocket and pointed to the return address which said "Chicago, Illinois." He smiled broadly, we smiled back, and we all sat down and that was simply that. We ignored the old hobo's warnings about Mexicans. It was obvious we were all exiles anyway, and that was all that mattered. As the train pulled away we slid the door wide open because it was actually getting warm. It was also the beginning of March in southern Arizona and we wanted to enjoy the sights.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As we thundered along, the views were spectacular. D</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">epending on our elevation, s</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">weeping vistas of cactus and desert arose then departed as thicker and grassier vegetation arrived. Only a couple hours out of Tucson the train slowly came to a halt in the desert. Light green border patrol vehicles rumbled up in the dust and finally stopped by our car. They picked out the Mexican kid right away, and led him from the train to a vehicle. "You're an Indian, right?" a man in a border patrol uniform asked Charlie. "Oh, yeah," he said. The agent nodded, then left to check the cars in front of us. He and a couple other agents checked every box car on that train and the time dragged on and on. They acted as if they had all the time in the world, and that's because they did. A train with empty box cars has no pressing destination when it isn't hauling freight. This was the flaw in our plan about getting back to Indiana so damn quickly by train. A train you can hop is a train that is slow. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As the tedious search continued, we jumped down from our box car for some fresh air and Charlie shot forward past the next couple cars and gave out a startling whoop. "Oh man oh man check this out! I've done this before and it's great!" he shouted, leaping onto an empty rail car for automobiles that was just ahead. We followed his lead and began to explore the empty, open rail cars. It was great not being boxed in by the walls of a regular box car. When the train finally jerked forward we stayed on these cars. It was crazy, dangerous fun. We took running leaps from rail car to rail car as the train increased in speed. It was like riding the biggest motorcycle in the universe and the landscape completely surrounded us. There were no roads anywhere and you felt like you owned the world. The sky, the desert, and the cactus seemed to shoot right through us, and the sun beat down and the wind was in our face. Slowly the train ground to a halt. In a few minutes a very angry engineer confronted us.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"Do you have any idea how fucking stupid this is?" he shouted. We were mute. It was true. "I can't just leave you here in the middle of fucking nowhere because it's wrong." Yes it was. "So get your fucking asses back in a box car or I <i>will</i> leave you," he said, seething. And we did.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The train was hours from San Antonio. Once it got dark there was nothing to do and it was too loud to talk, so one-by-one we all dropped off to sleep. I didn't remove my boots. Jack figured out how to slide the door shut without locking us in forever, so we closed it to keep out the wind and the cold. I curled up in my sleeping bag but my rest was more fitful than the night before. Every time I awoke I could feel the train vibrating beneath me. After a while, the movement ceased, and when I was finally awake I realized we hadn't been moving for hours. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Although the box car was as dark as it could be, small slits of light shone through the edges around the door. I stumbled to my feet and slid the door open to a blinding mid-day sun. It was dead silent. As my eyes adjusted I knew it had to be South Texas, with a meager landscape of sagebrush, dust and bare, dead trees. I jumped down from the car and marched around and was shocked beyond belief. We were on a side rail off the main tracks in the middle of nowhere and the rest of the train was gone. Only one box car stood on this side rail, <i>our car</i>, and we were completely and utterly alone. That goddamned engineer had lied. He'd abandoned us in the desert after all.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>TO BE CONTINUED</b></span></div>IdahoBerthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350472556112785687noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2050133758278268227.post-20922874001598935282011-02-04T14:18:00.012-07:002011-02-06T21:23:16.104-07:00This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part two)<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><b>CONTINUED FROM:</b> <a href="http://idahobert.blogspot.com/2011/02/this-train-aint-bound-for-glory-this.html">This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part One)</a></span><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><i>"A tramp is like Charlie Chaplin," said the 'bo. "A tramp will work a bit here and there then move on, 'cause he's restless. And then there's bums, who just refuse to work. I'm a bum," he laughed, through many missing teeth. "I refuse to work." </i></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">The two men regaled us with how they spent their lives. At the beginning of each month they would cash their assistance checks from Washington, and ride the rails south to California then east to Texas and do the same thing there. They laughed about getting one over on the system and shared other valuable tips.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">"If you strain paint through a white sock and put peppermint candy in it, it'll taste just like peppermint schnapps," said one. They also explained that Sterno was good for getting a buzz in pretty much the same way. "Only you got to use the red can," they told me. "The green can is army issue and they put shit in it that makes you sick." All in all, they didn't seem to be bringing down the empire with their extravagant lives.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhoyTToX1OMJ5CqWnNnzNZ91DZWj-GoUTY-KhWcJ6yDNxPLHT7RhMrImWsMSfPoeWBCyOFS-Mev5_cO6hRBDa0SBNsDT-D6cyZO0XsHQ28MTZV1JLadwPt8lOkWzv7Gu0ggTSdYZgxZsU/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-02-04+at+2.12.15+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhoyTToX1OMJ5CqWnNnzNZ91DZWj-GoUTY-KhWcJ6yDNxPLHT7RhMrImWsMSfPoeWBCyOFS-Mev5_cO6hRBDa0SBNsDT-D6cyZO0XsHQ28MTZV1JLadwPt8lOkWzv7Gu0ggTSdYZgxZsU/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-02-04+at+2.12.15+PM.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">Jack and I headed off to a grocery store to buy a few supplies before we hopped the train. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">Other men in the yard had told us to get condensed soup because it stored well and could be eaten without cooking simply out of the can. Yum. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">When we straggled into that bright, clean store we were really out of place. We looked like the Geico cavemen on a bad day. Mothers stared at us and herded their children away from us, and I couldn't blame them. We were disheveled and wind beaten from our trip over the mountains. My shoulder-length hair was matted and tangled beyond repair. We were smudged and powdered with coal dust, and Jack kept staring back at people like the goddamn loon he was. I was glad to get the hell out of there, and it felt strange to be seen as "one of those people." I'd had long hair for a few years by then and was used to not fitting in, but this was a whole new order of things. I was no longer just on the fringe. I had fallen off the edge of the earth.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">When we got back to the yard we crawled into an open box car and a couple other guys jumped in too. Gulp. Actually, they were OK, I guess, at least until we went to sleep. Both in their early 2os, one was a rotund and jovial </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Chippewa Indian from Minnesota who told us up front he'd jumped bail. I didn't bother to ask why. His partner was a slender, mousy-looking white boy with a cocky look, blond hair, and a pathetic, wispy moustache that wasn't worth the trouble. Then one of the two old 'bos</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> stuck his head in and waved goodbye saying, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">"See 'ya boys around, and don't forget to be real careful around blacks and Mexicans but help an old 'bo every chance 'ya get, OK?" And here I'd thought they hadn't cared. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">These kinds of people are routinely cast as villains in people's minds. They strike a pretty frightening visage, and you see them with signs asking for money everywhere you go. They live on the streets and in parks and by rivers--and even in shelters if you're not hassling them about god and their sins. But really, when you get to know them, for the most part they're sensitive, vulnerable men who just can't make it in this world. They've never fit in and they never will. They have feelings and they're fuck ups and that's the way it is. But was I<i> </i>really one of them now?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">When the train pulled out that night, we knew it was headed east and that Tucson would be our first stop. The box car rocked back and forth, shaking violently at times, and the wind whistled in through the door that we were afraid to close for fear of being locked in. The noise was deafening. I don't think I have ever felt more abandoned at any time in my life. How had I gotten here? I'd been normal once. I had once meant something to people. But I'd stopped being real, and now was a thing people pointed at. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">I had once had a mom, just like those kids at the Safeway. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">I curled up in my sleeping bag, and wept huge, hard tears for my mother. I was only twenty years old. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">S</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; line-height: 15px;"><em style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">ilhouetted</span></em></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> in the </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">moonlight against the open door, and amidst the rattle and banging of the swaying train, I saw the slender kid with the wispy mustache and he seemed to be sniffing my boots. It was almost comical in its horror. I'd wondered how things could get worse, and they had. I also knew, however, that as strange as these people seemed, they certainly were not evil. So, I wasn't really afraid. I just felt so very, very alone. Every reference point to something normal or familiar was gone. But at least I wasn't in a coal car. Life was looking up! And even if these people were losers and crazy they had been kind to me, and had accepted me as if they felt I belonged. And when that thought sunk in, I cried a little harder, and was grateful to the wind and the clattering of the train that muffled my cries from discovery.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><br />
</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><b>TO BE CONTINUED</b></span><br />
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</span>IdahoBerthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350472556112785687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2050133758278268227.post-51654851759041288722011-02-03T05:33:00.028-07:002011-02-14T14:10:23.228-07:00This train ain't bound for glory, this train (Part one)<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I was standing on an entrance ramp to I-5 somewhere in the scrub lands west of Bakersfield when a guy with longish brown hair in an army coat walked up. "See that train down there," he said, pointing to a line of idling coal cars where the land sloped down steeply from the highway. "It can take a week or so to get cross country hitching, but hopping a freight train can get you there in days."</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I liked this idea because you never knew how your rides would pan out. I'd thumbed 2500 miles from Florida to California in 48 hours six weeks before, thanks to a lucky ride from a whacked out junkie named Ed. He'd picked me up at the Mississippi and had driven non-stop until his hand-painted Studebaker Lark crapped out and died in the desert near Barstow. He'd spray-painted it with four or five cans of powder blue paint and why the police never stopped us I have no clue. But it had taken me 24 hours to get less than 300 miles from San Francisco to Bakersfield on my way back to Indiana. I'd been stuck in the dark and the cold for 12 hours in one spot alone and had finally been picked up by two men I was sure would rape and kill me. They seemed dangerous and weird and the back of their Pinto was piled high with hundreds of cellophane-wrapped sandwiches. When they invited me to visit their Children of God "colony," I flinched and pined for the good old days with jittery, carrot-top Ed. I'd heard of the Children of God. People went there and got mind-raped instead, and I had places to go. </span><br />
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</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The guy in the army coat was named Jack. After a while I realized he was crazy, but by then we were hundreds of miles from any highway, and hurtling over the mountains in a dirty, empty coal car that was vibrating madly and freezing us nearly to death. He was shouting very strange shit the whole time, trying to drown out the howling wind and the rattle of the train. When we came down from the mountains to a halt in Indio and climbed out covered in coal dust, he was babbling about being a Vietnam vet and, sure, it could have been true. But lots of crazy people used that to explain their weirdness back then, whether they were vets or not. We'd discovered we were both going to Indiana and <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">having a partner, even if he was insane, seemed better than being alone</span></span>. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The train yard in Indio was beautifully warm after that numbing rumble through the mountains. I was astonished to find that the culture of hobos was actually real. There were young guys like me who were just passing through, but there were legions of men who had embraced this life on the road--or been trapped in it--for many, many years. Two old guys I met in the yard were classic, cantankerous coots. One was missing the lower half of his right leg and said he'd lost it hopping trains. They were lean and haggard men, worn down by the ways of the road, yet choosing it over a world that everyone else yearns to conquer.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicb_X5vGWRdsSum3zoh1t5YdMEkToG-Nx-UhO2C1t1FNr3PVNrCC3kgejl-Adpbn5S4c4YoPdDLBYi1OA1LpAGbpkg_t0MGh-WXKpBQJ2qJ0Rdxsyp394doqaQzuN6AcZWCmu0cPOxPi0/s1600/tracks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicb_X5vGWRdsSum3zoh1t5YdMEkToG-Nx-UhO2C1t1FNr3PVNrCC3kgejl-Adpbn5S4c4YoPdDLBYi1OA1LpAGbpkg_t0MGh-WXKpBQJ2qJ0Rdxsyp394doqaQzuN6AcZWCmu0cPOxPi0/s320/tracks.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"There's tramps and then there's bums, my friend," said one, as we lolled around the yard, waiting for a train to hop that a railroad worker told us was heading back east. Yard workers were free with information helping us, either to ease us out of their way or because they'd grown to accept our presence. In many places there was a simple culture of tolerance and mutual support between yard workers and the 'bo's who had no real business being there. It was a culture that would nourish me on my way back home, and whose absence would sear me, just as yard workers warned. Not everywhere I'd go would be friendly.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"A tramp is like Charlie Chaplin," said the 'bo. "A tramp will work a bit here and there then move on, 'cause he's restless. And then there's bums who just refuse to work. I'm a bum," he laughed, through many missing teeth. "I refuse to work."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">TO BE CONTINUED</span><br />
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</span></div>IdahoBerthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350472556112785687noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2050133758278268227.post-7861311587512412072011-01-28T17:40:00.086-07:002011-01-31T22:12:16.063-07:00The Birthday Bike from Hell<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I was waiting for my birthday as I have never waited since. I was getting a bicycle and would be five and life could not be better. Oh, baby!</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">My birthday was about a month after Christmas and northern Indiana was brutally cold. It was so cold you could get an ice cream headache without eating ice cream just by walking to school. Fortunately, this was one of those rare birthdays that fell on a Sunday, and I didn't have to go to school. There are few things worse than going to school on your birthday. My birthday was always a letdown following Christmas anyway. But when it's dark and cold and your gift is a collared shirt <i>and</i> you have to go to school, they might as well send you off to the rubber plant clutching your Davy Crockett lunch pail and be honest with you. Your life is over kid, you're screwed. But I was innocent then, and my well-earned cynicism would have to wait until I was five years old plus one minute.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I had dreamt of this bike for months. When my parents said I'd get a bike for my birthday I started walking past the display windows of the Western Auto store by the courthouse and relishing their beautiful Western Flyers. They were like cruisers today, with big strong frames and fat tires and I wanted one that was red. You could fasten a cool white mud flap with raised black pinstriping and a big red reflector to your back fender and you were set for life. I decided not to spring for the optional streamers on the handle bars because that would make me look like a girl. I think streamers were actually standard on girls' bikes back then. This bike, however, was the boy bike of all boy bikes in my small town, and soon it would be mine.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFwsQdEsw5lnfwMmmw-C26XfDo7FgMPsEvn68QqvFJtj9X0du2E_LfEr1oW0vLULLfKRb5oa9mr97NEfPE0Vt2_5HcWBLyp3vDlDPm8KLZSSGL25s6ShGOBDhZRzpd2Yv7F4XnWU7KWsY/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-01-28+at+5.26.01+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFwsQdEsw5lnfwMmmw-C26XfDo7FgMPsEvn68QqvFJtj9X0du2E_LfEr1oW0vLULLfKRb5oa9mr97NEfPE0Vt2_5HcWBLyp3vDlDPm8KLZSSGL25s6ShGOBDhZRzpd2Yv7F4XnWU7KWsY/s320/Screen+shot+2011-01-28+at+5.26.01+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So as Christmas passed and my birthday neared, my yearning grew and grew. I would sneak past Western Auto more often </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">to relish my birthday gift. I was afraid I might see my mom and dad wheeling it out of the store, so I had to be careful and not spoil their attempt to surprise me. I would circle the courthouse, my stupid rubber boots squeaking on the sub-zero snow, to see if Dad's pickup was parked anywhere near. I also checked to see if a red Western Flyer in the store window had a SOLD sign on it but none of them ever did. I even wondered if they had already bought the bike and were storing it at a friend's. I searched for clues to see if people I knew were being evasive, but everyone seemed to keep mum. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Holy Feast of Bert's Big Birthday finally arrived. I woke up early, and it was miserably cold and dark. But my heart was warm with the fervent hope that only small children know. When I crept downstairs I thought I'd be swooning over the scent of fresh rubber tire wafting from my brand new bike, but I was wrong. My parent's faces beamed with pride, however, so I knew I had nothing to fear. "Go out on the front porch," said mom with a sweet, beatific smile. I tore to the front door and threw it open. My heart was pounding, my was mind reeling, and my moment had finally arrived. Oh, baby!</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">My bare feet stung on the freezing wooden porch but I didn't care. I veered right where I knew it had to stand gleaming in its own self-shining light, and there indeed stood my bike...But it was a plain, used, sun-bleached, baby-shit brown Schwinn with no mud flaps,<i> </i>and with streamers dangling from its handles...My father said it was a good "starter bike" and that he had gotten a great deal on it because it's previous owner was a little boy who had died......</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Yeah, laugh, laugh you fancy-ass bastards with your shiny NEW bicycles, and your rational, normal parents, and your pinstriped mud flaps with bright red reflectors. Laugh at 'tardboy riding his dead boy's bike in his stupid rubber boots. With training wheels. At least I wasn't wearing glasses. Yet. It even had a goddamned clown horn on it. Seriously. I can't make this shit up. I'm not that creative. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I would have cried for my mommy if she hadn't been standing next to me seeming so completely pleased with this foul token of malignancy they'd torn from the grasp of a poor, dead child. Make a wish foundation, my ass. Just let me be raised by normal people, oh please, oh please, oh please...Shit!</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the end, I'll admit, I came to love that bike, but the streamers had to go. A year and a half later my Dad raised the training wheels so slowly over time that he fooled me into riding without them. So I had him take them off one day and I tooled around the block under the maple trees on that brilliant June morning, sticking out my tongue at a mean girl who'd teased me about the training wheels for weeks. It's one of the signature moments of my childhood. Thanks, Dad, for that. You redeemed yourself there and well beyond that many other times.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And as for you lucky ones who got your nice new bikes and ended up not really appreciating them anyway, you can go fuck yourselves and fuck the bikes you rode in on. I'm tired of dodging you wannabes in your cycling tights as you spill out of the bike lane while you're riding six abreast. And if you need any help fucking yourselves, I've got a used clown horn I'll sell you and the owner isn't even dead. Yet.</span></div>IdahoBerthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350472556112785687noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2050133758278268227.post-34357404484197645412011-01-26T22:16:00.090-07:002011-04-10T22:17:50.906-06:00Mad naked summer night<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Sometimes things were so great as a child I could not believe my luck. I was seven, and a punishing August heat wave drove us from our home one night. No one had air conditioning then, and since it was too hot to stay inside, my parents opened our windows and prayed like pagans to the wind for relief. We camped out on our porch, fanning ourselves in the vain hope of cooling off and saw others doing the same. Before long, impatience and weariness with the heat wore us down. It started with clusters of adults chatting, then laughing, and finally beer bottles clinking in toasts in our neighbor's gravel driveway. Kids began to cluster too, and a tinkle of small voices grew louder until, like the miracle of the loaves, pop and chips and pretzels appeared, and kids of all ages arrived. Everyone was staying up late.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The sky was sprinkled with stars. Crickets chirped and fireflies blinked as we rampaged</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> blindly between houses, trees, and fragrant flowering shrubs. No one bothered to stop us and the night made everything new. There was no such thing as trespassing, or property, or propriety, because the boundaries we transgressed were concealed by the cover of night. The invisible walls between one yard and another that we honored and feared by day were forgotten, and we</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> became whatever we wanted and went wherever we wished. Our defiance was intoxicating. Boys and girls ran at full throttle, breathless, sweating and brushing into each other as the sacred shroud of darkness winked and blessed it all. The din of our parents' celebration echoed in the distance but they never intervened. O</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">n this most perfect of all perfect nights, true happiness roamed free.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdOnqPXwITGghwB3VSBhLcl1wm5g9Iavf-lOzGKDD_q-j-ER63uPGiAHGiyesIyY2xYrZfxt-x91rUMVQBWM7gMT3fW2ASzAXOBz-IOZXgUc86CAdvattwgJKEu7KWaL4HRgLhr-UJgU8/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-01-31+at+10.23.09+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdOnqPXwITGghwB3VSBhLcl1wm5g9Iavf-lOzGKDD_q-j-ER63uPGiAHGiyesIyY2xYrZfxt-x91rUMVQBWM7gMT3fW2ASzAXOBz-IOZXgUc86CAdvattwgJKEu7KWaL4HRgLhr-UJgU8/s320/Screen+shot+2011-01-31+at+10.23.09+PM.png" width="284" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Several older kids organized a treasure hunt and left notes in countless places. I still marvel at how quickly and how well they created this wonderful gift. We tore from one house, one yard, one block to another, shouting and laughing as our flashlights sliced through the night. We finally ended up at my front porch, with a gang of twenty or more. Everyone was searching in corners, in the milk box, and under the mat for a note. Then Patsy, who was probably no more than eleven or twelve, put her arm around my shoulder and whispered in my ear. I shuddered with delight. "Right there, Bert, right there," she said pointing, with a final tender hug. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">She actually knew my name. And I shuddered even more. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And in the middle of our porch in plain sight overlooked, stood a large paper bag filled with candy and cakes. I shrieked and grabbed </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">it, and held it aloft as my comrades burst into cheers. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We shared it under the stars in our front yard, and I knew this night could never be forgotten.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But it was. When morning arrived and I went outside, the world was recaptured by the lie. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Bacchus</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> had fled with his satyrs</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> and nymphs and it seemed like only a dream. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">O</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">ur neighborhood had no fences, but our yards were once again discrete, as were all of us. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> I asked a couple kids how they'd liked the party. "Oh, it was fine," they said, without a trace of excitement for the magic we'd felt the night before. Maybe it had only been magical for me. Was I the only one? Do people forget their trips to Narnia all or most of the time?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A couple weeks later Patsy's family moved. Her dad was transferred to New Mexico and they left our town for good. The day before they moved I saw her across the street and she waved goodbye and smiled. She actually remembered me<i>, </i>and I could tell by that look and that smile that she remembered the magic as well. Patsy, you dark-haired spirit of the night, do you remember that magic still?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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</span>IdahoBerthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350472556112785687noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2050133758278268227.post-77245844794717195142011-01-20T19:33:00.186-07:002011-01-30T16:38:39.620-07:00Saved on the Sly<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I must have been six or seven years old when Richie's mother pulled up in her Buick and told us to all pile in. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"I'm takin' you kids to be saved!" she croaked in that hoarse voice common to heavy-smoking women. "But don't tell your parents, OK? Let's surprise 'em!" </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Richie sat next to her smiling, and motioned for us to get in. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I'm just guessing I was six or seven because I think I would have been too smart to do this if I'd been much older. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">His mom was a once pretty now hardened woman who looked ten years older than she should. She wore black horn-rimmed glasses and was smoking Viceroys I'd bought her earlier that day. "Just tell Roy at the Texaco they're for Penny Jones," she had told me, and Roy handed them to me with a chuckle and went back to shooting the shit with his mechanics.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I was standing in front of my house with </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Diane and Jeannie when Richie and Penny drove up. The girls lived next door and we</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> had just finished playing </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">florescent light</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> in their dad's shop. The light cast a strange unearthly glow and made a mesmerizing buzz we loved. </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We were open to suggestions. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It was also a beautiful warm day, and only a few weeks into summer vacation. Our small midwestern town had leapt fully to life after the relentless rains of spring and getting out and around seemed like a good idea.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Richie lived a couple blocks from us and across the street from the Bible Baptist Church. He would have been called a hillbilly if he'd had an accent, but since he did not he was merely white trash which was fine. Richie ate laundry starch to quell his hunger pangs and his house always smelled of urine thanks to his two-year-old brother, Jesus. I thought it odd for his brother to have such a name, but I never asked about that or the starch. </span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Richie had told me about his small cinder block church a couple weeks before and how they watched film strips during sunday school. "You're so lucky," I said with envy. At the Presbyterian s</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">unday school</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> I occasionally attended all we did was arts and crafts.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"Yeah, today they showed us one about little kids who were caught smoking cigarettes and Jesus cut off their hands!" He seemed pretty impressed. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I tried to take it all in. I imagined little boys and girls with tears streaming down their faces, holding up their tiny blood-spurting stumps in horror. I imagined bone marrow in the middle of each of the children's stumps, like the bone marrow in the Sunday ham I'd just eaten. I even wondered about the artist who had drawn it, because it did not seem like something you would photograph. Like most kids I too was a literalist, and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">hoped Jesus didn't cast his net too wide when it came to </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">children</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> and tobacco. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I did not interrogate Richie or discuss the different vision of Jesus I was taught on my infrequent excursions to church. Making crosses out of popsicle sticks was starting to look pretty good.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So the girls and I climbed in the car and travelled crosstown to a field by the foundry where all the real hillbillies lived. There was no revival tent but, instead, a makeshift stage and some temporary stands. There were a hundred or so people and most of them were kids. I'm not sure how many had been Kidnapped for Christ but my guess is probably half. I had no idea of what was going on and remember very little.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There was a man with a southern accent and high, dark hair on stage who talked about God and how God always helped him out. He spoke of driving "coast to coast" and discovering that God had put more money in his wallet every time he opened it. Then he held up his hand and sighed saying "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus," and he fanned out one, then two, then three 20-dollar bills. I don't remember many oohs or ahhs when he did this. He was from an earlier pre-visual generation and while he may have only known radio, we had TV. Maybe we only had three channels and they were all in black and white, but we'd seen magic tricks on all three. He encouraged us to come forward to accept Jesus but none of my group did, even Richie, whom I presume had done it before.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When Penny dropped us off at home the shit hit the fan. "Where have you kids been?" my mother cried. "We almost called the police."</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"We've been getting saved, Mom," I told her. "Richie's mom took us to be saved." </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And then I told her about the cigarettes.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I wish I had been old enough to understand the gravity of what happened next. It must have been beautiful. My dad stormed over to Richie's, our former-boxer-turned-minister from the Presbyterian church paid a visit to the Bible Baptist Church, parents called parents and yelled on the phone, the Texaco was off limits, and I never saw Richie again. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Two or three years later, different people moved into Richie's house after his family had left town. I had my first paper route by then and when I went to collect for the previous week's delivery an old man opened the door and invited me in. As he shuffled around searching for his coin purse I noticed the house still smelled of urine. On the wall near the door hung a small sign saying "Jesus Lives Here." And indeed he had.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGZRitdZKvUogalLQYaatrBv-J30AnEJI9ELNNZrdqyMuSbJiuqd09JV1W13cvi6ANp13UjiCzupBsg0_hr9UB8O7v-EsqgVxnta8IQIMYSAdxpeluJP9AjONxRY1FBnD-e6FZyWuAW6g/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-01-20+at+7.54.23+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGZRitdZKvUogalLQYaatrBv-J30AnEJI9ELNNZrdqyMuSbJiuqd09JV1W13cvi6ANp13UjiCzupBsg0_hr9UB8O7v-EsqgVxnta8IQIMYSAdxpeluJP9AjONxRY1FBnD-e6FZyWuAW6g/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-01-20+at+7.54.23+PM.png" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div>IdahoBerthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350472556112785687noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2050133758278268227.post-39705011642973031372011-01-17T10:32:00.085-07:002011-01-29T16:44:43.078-07:00Hillbilly Heaven<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I grew up with hillbillies in northern Indiana. It was a leafy small town in the ‘50s with a large limestone courthouse and a colorful fair in the fall. Hillbillies had moved there from the south to work in the factories supplying Detroit. Adults said hillbillies had not come there to work. They had only caravanned to Indiana in their beat up Cadillacs to live off our lavish welfare state. </span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG2dSiivMVNnzEEcNoXeAWp0gWFZ6mf_58rvCUZ7IM0sSCA-Tv_kOrxzVR9IKprD85vBWt0r7lQAzVqez8iL1aKOmm8ByHuGoJ1cP7KV_33EgwRB_vQOHyLfVt7gc-mR-Av1qJHrcp-Wg/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-01-17+at+4.11.10+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG2dSiivMVNnzEEcNoXeAWp0gWFZ6mf_58rvCUZ7IM0sSCA-Tv_kOrxzVR9IKprD85vBWt0r7lQAzVqez8iL1aKOmm8ByHuGoJ1cP7KV_33EgwRB_vQOHyLfVt7gc-mR-Av1qJHrcp-Wg/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-01-17+at+4.11.10+PM.png" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Since this was an all-white town, hillbillies filled the niche that people of color filled elsewhere. Locals said hillbillies were lazy, stupid drunks who had too many kids out of wedlock. Hillbillies lived on the wrong side of the tracks, literally, and within walking distance of the factories they avoided. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Hillbillies had their own culture. They joined the Civil Air Patrol while other kids joined the Boy Scouts. When the Civil Air Patrol marched in the parade at fair time, I’d hear smirking comments I did not understand. They also liked country music. A hillbilly girl ran up to me on the way to school one day and got in my face singing “Hey good lookin’ whatcha got cookin’?” I was equally frightened and excited. If you had a southern accent and were poor in that town, you would never be accepted and a barbed wire fence of suspicion always blocked your advance. No one ever invited a hillbilly to a party, and I can't think of any that finally graduated. They were just absent from class one day and were never seen again. People barely noticed. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ralph, for instance, was poor and slow and prone to self-mutilation. On occasion he exposed himself to us. A girl once saw him do it and he was drug out of class to the office. Sonny was poor, slow and mean. I stood up to him in a fight one time and he backed down in shame. I was a hero to my classmates, but I felt bad for popping his bubble. As he slunk away his humiliation was obvious. No one ever feared him again. The fright he'd engendered was all that he had and I had taken it from him. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ruby was poor, slow, and large. She was tragically plain and always smelled of corn chips. Other kids said she had cooties. Her dad was a deliveryman, and she stole most of her food from his truck. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAGyGKQb0O6fF4yaPuHZTqrOU-o87Zd4R77edFgYnC_2kbvqwngDas4e4uAJI5m42tW4fQxuzFPIHmUxqxCb2f5L4OPsV8JmoyblpTpwuWvwal25qT3W5Az4uDXeQggvQ37VxF3eeIeZQ/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-01-17+at+4.14.44+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAGyGKQb0O6fF4yaPuHZTqrOU-o87Zd4R77edFgYnC_2kbvqwngDas4e4uAJI5m42tW4fQxuzFPIHmUxqxCb2f5L4OPsV8JmoyblpTpwuWvwal25qT3W5Az4uDXeQggvQ37VxF3eeIeZQ/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-01-17+at+4.14.44+PM.png" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">For Christmas in the third grade we were paired with other kids in a gift exchange and Ruby was my partner. I had asked for a brand new baseball with raised red stitching. When she handed me a humble rubber ball instead and said, “Here’s your present,” she smiled nervously, then averted her eyes with shame. At that moment the whole world stopped and fell silent. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I don’t think I have ever felt more deeply the suffering entailed in my own or someone else’s shame. It was staggering. She was robbed of every possible avenue of escape or denial. Her poverty and vulnerability were obvious to us both. I hated how she had been cornered, and I hated myself as well. I have since discovered the difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is feeling bad about the things you have done. Shame is feeling bad about being who you are. I was feeling guilt, while she was feeling shame. And then there was Shirley. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Shirley </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">was the prettiest and smartest girl in school. Everyone admired her and wanted to be her friend. For some reason, though, she never invited anyone over. I loved her more than anything I knew, and I was only eight years old. Whenever I thought of her, flowers bloomed inside me, so I was shocked to unearth her secret. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Undetected, and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">lured by the presence in the light behind her eyes, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> followed her home from school and saw her enter her home, a dilapidated hillbilly house near the smoke belching rubber plant where all the rest of them lived. She didn't have an accent, and she didn’t smell like corn chips, but she was poor and her parents were hillbillies. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I never told anyone, and I have kept her secret for 50 years, out of the love that a boy can have for a girl when he's only eight years old. </span><br />
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</span></div>IdahoBerthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350472556112785687noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2050133758278268227.post-82978210671990701612011-01-14T10:30:00.026-07:002011-02-02T05:21:54.074-07:00Living the dream in Tucson<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14px;"></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14px;"></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"></span></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The only good thing about the bad news from Tucson last week was remembering the great things that happened when I lived there. Among those things was baseball.</span></div></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">For fourteen years I’d dart down to Hi Corbett Field with my friends for Cleveland Indians spring training games. While snot still froze in your nose up north, Tucson bloomed with warmth and light. We’d discreetly pass herb high up in the stands along third base as a gentle breeze shielded our sin from discovery. Mountains loomed beyond the outfield walls, the sky was the bluest of blues, and palm trees rose up vividly against them. An occasional U-2 spy plane from the Air Force base would silently circle the field and the crowd would tumble into awe. We’d drink beer in the hot sun and grab Mexican food when the game was over. The entire universe conspired to make every game perfect. I always wished it were my Detroit Tigers I was watching, but at least it was baseball. It was someone else's dream, but it was a good dream. </span></div></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I bumped into rookie Cory Snyder once, picnicking with his parents under a tree outside that park. It was so sweet and innocent, one boy in a million living the dream for millions more. I chatted with Hall of Fame outfielder Frank Robinson when no one else was there and I tossed baseballs back to Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller as I walked around a practice field. He threw a ball back to me one day saying, “Keep it kid, you earned your pay.” I even taunted crusty old Cubs coach Don Zimmer--from a safe distance--and called him “The Gerbil,” just as Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee had done. He almost climbed into the stands after me. I guess it hit a nerve. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG1175UspmEHwu_PCnt9vShOaObXnXU8BckConK7lRxskB_3TFXTfm40C4LcESV8BPfVWhicp9Y_q4zZTBJlXlYFwq3X3TDQ2OYKl2y5YTFQSQ_LXwvzWfSJSvBAJ79rLM2Lz5KAlF2bA/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-01-16+at+9.57.34+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG1175UspmEHwu_PCnt9vShOaObXnXU8BckConK7lRxskB_3TFXTfm40C4LcESV8BPfVWhicp9Y_q4zZTBJlXlYFwq3X3TDQ2OYKl2y5YTFQSQ_LXwvzWfSJSvBAJ79rLM2Lz5KAlF2bA/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-01-16+at+9.57.34+PM.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I also discovered why some say baseball is a fantasy world. I’d peddled to the park on my mountain bike well before the game and there was no one there but a girl and myself. She was obviously there to meet a ballplayer, any ballplayer, but it wasn't what you'd think. She was simply life itself. She was radiant, athletic, intelligent, and kind. She was beyond the reach of words. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I knew I was nothing, still she spoke to me from her dream world as if I too were a part of her dream. She reminded me of <a href="http://www.philosophyblog.com.au/remedios-the-beauty/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6aa84f;">Remedios the Beauty</span></a>, from Gabriel García Márquez’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Hundred_Years_of_Solitude"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6aa84f;">One Hundred Years of Solitude</span></i></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, who walks through the world untouched by its hazards, and is reclaimed by the sky while folding freshly laundered sheets. </span></div></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I was dazzled, and I knew I had to leave, because something sacred would soon happen here, and I did not belong. Captured by her fragrance, some worthy dreamer would find her and together they would ascend into heaven to fold laundry for angels who comfort children on deathbeds and young men on battlefields who are crying for their mothers.</span></div></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I mean no disrespect when I say this, but baseball is as holy to those who know it as the Blessed Virgin is to those who have faith. I can't unravel the grace and mystery of baseball any better than I can unravel the the grace and mystery of faith. Both are gifts from God.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Scuttered by six or seven beers</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> by the time the game was over</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, I biked down alleys all the way home. I was only jolted from my stupor as I peed on a wall by a rich man’s house. Above me the sun warmed my face, and around me angels swarmed, shielding my sin from discovery.</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</span></div>IdahoBerthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350472556112785687noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2050133758278268227.post-43393190172756223792011-01-14T10:07:00.010-07:002011-02-01T22:41:03.099-07:00Oh Canada<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: black; font-family: Georgia; margin-bottom: 8px; margin-left: 8px; margin-right: 8px; margin-top: 8px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">I have always envied Canadians, and it started when I was small.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">We were on vacation in Kentucky at a rustic motel in the woods and it was 1959. The motel's small log cabins were set back from the parking lot in a stand of tall trees, and its gift shop featured lewd figurines of topless hillbilly girls whose breasts were whiskey jugs. A boy named "Artie" and I were playing in a grassy clearing amidst the cabins. I was having the time of my life, and dreaded the eventual goodbye. It was like Artie'd become my best friend in just an hour, the brother I'd never known.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">When it was time for him to leave, his parents emerged from their cabin. His dad was like a movie star and his mom was like a model, with stylish sun glasses and a colorful scarf wrapped around her head. They were so young and beautiful that I was astonished. Parents only looked like this on TV.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">"Artie, it's time to go," sang his mother, "and say goodbye to your friend." When she turned and smiled at me my heart melted. His two sisters, equally beautiful and having fallen no distance from the tree of their goddess mother, waved at me and hopped into their parent's new convertible with Ontario plates, folded down the top, and sped off down the gravel driveway toward a great life of endless vistas, prosperity, and Canada. When they turned onto the main highway, Artie cupped his hands and yelled, "see ya 'round Bert," and they were gone forever. Their plates were black and white and had a crown imprinted on them. God, they're like royalty, I thought. They might as well have been Princess Grace and Prince Rainier for all I knew.</div><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">Then during the Vietnam War I was envious of the Canadians I'd meet. I'd be at a party and the conversation would turn to "what's your draft number?" and some guy would invariably be Canadian and tell you he didn't have one. Heads would turn, the room would go quiet, and the envy was tangible. How lucky to be Canadian, I thought. You have all the benefits of being an American without any of the burdens of policing the empire and dying in a war. When the party was over the Canadian would leave, untroubled by a care in the world, and I would trudge out into a heartless night, worrying about the number 72, and hoping to avoid a terrible fate. Once again it was Princess Grace and Prince Rainier leaving me behind in a cloud of Canadian dust.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">And then there's Boxing Day, an extra day of Christmas. Sigh...</div></div>IdahoBerthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13350472556112785687noreply@blogger.com6