In the early 1960s,
I was in high school studying French, struggling with chemistry, hating algebra
and the jerk who taught it, but loving English Lit and the teacher who taught
that. High school was nothing until my senior year and then I learned to party
and enjoy myself. The promise of just getting out of high school was enough to
liberate my spirit. It was the great age of liberation with the civil rights
movement and its innumerable clashes on the nightly news every day.
And then I
came out—to California, that is. Experiences in San Francisco and elsewhere in
California are what I associate with “what did you do in the 60s?” When the
‘60s began and ended is a matter of interpretation or maybe just mood. Like
many of the drug-induced experiences back then, the decade tends to wiggle and
undulate on and off the calendar. It is not contained in a simple ten year span
of time.
My political activism, however, was
short lived. I stayed on the fringe looking in. I was on the edge of the crowd
trying to escape the tear gas and bullets that summer day on Telegraph Avenue
in Berkeley, not in the thick of it getting beaten up by police. I was in the
back of the throng at the Altamont concert, kind of wishing I wasn’t there at
all, but thankfully not crushed in front of the stage and amidst some lethal
violence. I was stunned one day to see a friend appear in the bright California
sunshine when he ventured out of his heavily curtained, smoky sanctuary/den,
looking like a cadaver. But I wasn’t that drugged out cadaver and wasn’t headed
in that direction.
I would work for a few months and
then take off for a while, go hitchhiking, spend days climbing Mt. Tamalpais
and watching the ocean from a sunny meadow. I came to think that this is how
life ought to be. I would grow up, that is, settle down, commit to something,
have a career, later, I kept thinking. There was plenty of time for that.
My project then was to stay out of
the war and out of the army, a commitment based both on principle and downright
fear. The fear was as realistic as the principle was laudable. I was against
that war and couldn’t see myself joining in any war and when drafted to do so,
said, no.
The motivation for my and others’
actions did not stem entirely from a sense that we were acting out grand laws
of history as earlier revolutionaries might have but we came from a very
personal sense of what was at stake for us. Beyond mere egoism and
self-indulgence, it was an ethical standard based on me.
And there was music, always there was
the music. Rock music took on an artistry ranging from the Beatles’ tunes and
the poetry of Jim Morrison and the Doors to the blues of the Grateful Dead with
the exquisite guitar of Jerry Garcia and the hard rocking of the Rolling Stones.
From them I learned about Chicago blues, electric blues, hard and fast urban
blues.
So, where was I in the 60s. I was in
the city hearing black people tell their stories. I was on the all-night bus to
New York City for the first huge anti-war march. I was hiking through Point
Reyes on the Pacific Coast. I was filing appeal after appeal with my draft
board. I was discovering yoga and quiet and meditation. I was discovering brown
rice. I learned to bake bread. I was dodging cops to avoid getting arrested. I
was bouncing around Speedway Meadow in Golden Gate Park probably hearing the
Grateful Dead or Janis Joplin or Quicksilver Messenger Service. I was growing
up and life was good.
© 2 June
2014
About the Author
Nicholas grew up in
Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He
retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks,
does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.
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