September, 1963. Merced Hall, the boys’ dorm at San Francisco State College, a six story block of concrete. The floors are concrete. The ceilings and all the walls, both interior and exterior are concrete. There’s nothing about the dorm that isn’t concrete, except evenly spaced rectangular windows.

Next door at a slight angle sits an identical edifice, Mary Ward Hall, the girls’ dorm. Between the two structures and off to the side stood the cafeteria, a low faceless building. Surrounding this architectural wonderland was a mix of landscaped shrubbery and a concrete plaza.

For the majority of occupants, the dorm was a first step toward adulthood. Some boys grow up slowly. I, at a very tender seventeen, was still a child.

The first day, settling in on the second floor, residents were wandering and getting to know one another. A small crowd gathered in the room of John, an imposing fellow, much of him chest and shoulders.

John was annoyed by music booming from the next room, soul music, Little Johnny Taylor et al, sound penetrating concrete, windows and doors. Banging on the wall he yelled “Hey, turn it down”. Apparently nobody in the next room heard. John knocked again, louder. “Hey, turn it down would ya?” The volume seemed to go up slightly.

John glanced around the room, his eyes settling on a three foot long board, one end of which was imbedded in a gallon can filled with concrete. A small reflector on the other end once warned motorists of some hazard such as a ditch before it was turned into an art piece.

John hoisted the artifact up to shoulder height and taking a few steps across the room rammed the wall with such force the entire building seemed to shake. This was followed by a crashing sound in the next room, followed by silence, followed some time later by a knock at the door. John’s roommate stepped forward, opened the door and was confronted by two formidable looking young black men. The guy in front was holding a straight edged razor.

“Which one of you honkeys am I goin’ to cut?”

Everyone pointed at John. “That honkey there”.

John smiled. “Would you put the razor away before you hurt somebody.” There was more back and forth and John ultimately apologized. Then the guy with the razor somewhat apologized, explaining that in West Oakland the razor would be routine. An hour later we were out front throwing a football around. Bill, the guy with the razor, could throw a perfect spiral a mile.

Back in the dorm we stopped in the lobby where there was an old upright piano. Bill took a seat and played and sang an R&B form of Barrett Strong’s “Money”, grinning at John when he came to the line “I want money”. The situation ultimately worked out to everyone’s benefit.

A group was gathered in the hallway when John entered from the stairwell sporting a plaid jacket and tam o’shanter. “I’ve found a way into the gynaeceum”. Later three individuals scaled a fence onto the roof of the lounge and crossed to an open stairwell. From there one went down with a smoke bomb leftover from the 4th of July and two went up to the fifth floor where an unlocked door provided access. Wearing masks they entered and were confronted by a young women draped in a towel who screamed. They proceeded past her to a fire alarm which they pulled. Other young women emerged from rooms lining the hallway and cursed as the masked marauders made their exit. At the same moment fire alarms in the boy’s dorm went off and a stereo began playing loud music out one of the windows.

Fire fighters arrived and struck a casual disposition. This was obviously not an emerging conflagration. Ralph, the Head Resident of the dorms, was a Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) officer destined for the Air Force. Yelling through a bullhorn he insisted. “The building is cleared for occupancy. Return to your rooms immediately.” About then smoke emerged from the stairwell. It took another 30 minutes for the firefighters to find the source by which time the party was well underway.

A week later Fred, the resident for the second floor, called a meeting. “There’s a rumor going around that there’s going to be a food fight tonight. I want you guys to know, I’m wearing my white tux to dinner and if any food gets on it somebody will pay.” Each floor had a local resident, usually a graduate student who did it for room and board. We all liked Fred and assured him that we had heard nothing about any food fight, which was true and if there was going to be one we surely would have heard.

That evening a young woman had loaded a tray and two plates high with meatloaf, mashed potatoes and boiled greens, all covered with as much turkey gravy as the plates would hold topped with cake and custard. She sat looking pensively at the tray of food. She then stood and yelled “Sheeeiiittt”, raised the tray high over her head, inverted it, and threw it upside down on the table. There was an explosion of food in all directions. Remarkably none of the plates broke.

The dining hall erupted and food flew in all directions. We, the 2nd floor gang, the inveterate trouble makers, walked outside to the patio, trays and plates intact, and finished our meal. A panty raid is good clean fun. This was nasty. Food was left dripping from the ceiling. It’s like things were turgid and ready to blow and they blew.

A few days later someone had puked out of a sixth story window of the boy’s dorm. A dark stain, the color of red wine, made its way down to the fifth story window where it pooled on the sill and from there made its way down to the fourth story windowsill. At each level the stain grew narrower until it came to an end at the first floor. Alcohol was not making a good showing.

November 22, a small crowd gathered in the plaza between the dorms. “JFK’s been shot.” Students gathered around the TV in the lobby and watched CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite announce that President Kennedy had died.

A family friend sold me my first car, a 1941 Chevrolet which Bill had christened the Jolly Green Giant. In December of 1963 I parked the Jolly Green Giant in my folk’s driveway and purchased a 1954 Ford Mainline. It had a six cylinder overhead valve engine and a three speed manual transmission with an overdrive. The Ford got 28 miles per gallon at 70 miles per hour. The car had a powerful radio with an eight inch permanent magnet speaker in the dashboard. The Beatles were dominating the airwaves.

Winter break I drove the Ford to Mexico with a couple of dorm mates, Mark, a rich kid from LA and Zooey, a euphemism for Bill O’Conner, pulled from the book Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger. Spanish being Zooey’s first language it made sense to let him do the talking.

Once across the border, we drove directly to Ensenada and pitched our tent on the beach. Early the following morning we were awakened by trumpets and drums. The Mexican National Guard were marching up and down the beach. They eventually stopped and one of them approached.

“Buenos dias” he said. “Que tal?”

“Visitamos desde Espana” Zooey replied and nodded at Mark. Mark knew enough Spanish to know that didn’t sound right but he nodded.

“Que estan haciendo aqui?”

“Viajamos. Estamos bustamos refugio de la riqueza.”

“En una hora nos vemos. Le mostrare todo. Mi nombre es Rodolfo. El Lobo.”

“Bueno.” Zooey introduced us.

Rodolfo walked back to his pals and they continued playing their instruments while marching up the beach.

Later we were gathered at a cantina where Rodolfo told Zooey “No debes dormir en la playa. Conozco un lugar agradable.”

We drove to what was supposed to be a fine motel. There was one common bathroom for the entire complex, the toilet being a hole in the floor. Mark, Zooey and I bedded down, two on the bed and one on the couch.

“Zooey you are such a liar.” Mark said. “What are you telling people?”

“Nothing weird.”

“You’ve got us pegged as royalty. Right?” I replied. “I’m like some Portuguese millionaire or something so my Spanish isn’t too good? What are we doing in this place by the way?”

“Is anybody else itching?” Mark asked. We turned on the light. The entire room was crawling with bugs. We gathered our things and moved back to the tent on the beach.

The next day we drove further south. We eventually came to a palapa made of palm fronds mere feet from the surf. Home sweet home in paradise. The wise thing would have been to stay there for a couple of days and start north. The wise and sensible thing was not to be. The map indicated that the town of San Vicente was only a short distance to the southeast.

We came to a single building standing alone. Inside there was a general store and a couple of tables where a few people could sit and drink beer. Outside was a fuel pump. A local fellow wandered in, seemingly out of nowhere, ordered a beer and sat down at one of the tables.

“Que pasa?”

“Nada mucho.” I replied.

Zooey glared at him and said “Buscamos a mujeres”.

“Estan en el lugar equivocado, caballeros. Me llamo Manuel.”

We drove a few miles west on another dirt road where we found a nearly identical place, with a few additional tables. We each bought a round of tequilas. Then another. “Who are they” Mark slurred motioning toward the kitchen. Two hombres had entered through the rear and stood in the kitchen doorway. I clumsily took out my wallet, pulled out some cash and fumbled it into my shoe. Bad idea in plain sight of the hombres in the doorway.

Mark stumbled from the table and out the front door. I wasn’t far behind.

Some time later the front door of the cantina flew open with a crash. Zooey and Manuel were running toward the car as fast as two drunks could run.

“Arrangue el carro! Start the car! Start the car!” I started the car. Zooey jumped in the back seat on top of Mark and Manuel jumped in the front seat. Doors slamming we were underway as fast as six cylinders could go, throwing dirt and gravel everywhere. A couple of gunshots rang out.

“What the hell was that?”

Zooey yelled “They’ve got guns. Go! Go! Go!”

The road, like most roads in Baja, was unpaved and slightly elevated from the surrounding desert. Being elevated it was badly rutted from erosion. The hardened adjoining sand was a better driving surface. In the dark of the night our only choice was to stay on the road and endure the ruts. I put the car in second gear and floored it. The Ford leapt and bounced violently. And then, I could see an irrigation pipe, nearly a foot in diameter, stretched across the road. And why not? What person in their right mind would be out driving around at this hour?

I held the car’s speed steady. Top speed for second gear, about forty. The first thing to hit was the bumper. The nose of the car vaulted into the air. The next thing that hit was the back wheels. The car ground its nose into the dirt, then back into the air, now running about 20 miles per hour. The chase car stopped at the pipe.

Manuel directed us to his home, a steel Quonset hut. He invited us in and I figured I’d better go along to see that we leave. We met Manuel’s wife. The house was immaculately clean and tidy.

Back in the car, Mark was asleep in the back seat. We started out again and I realized the Mainline was stuck in second gear. We drove to the palapa on the beach and fell into a comatose state. The next morning we bathed and did our laundry in the surf and cleaned the car as well as we could. I reattached the transmission linkage with grass stems. A few miles down the road we found some wire for a more permanent fix.

In Ensenada we ventured into a dime a dance club. A cowboy was paying the mariachis to play for he and the young woman with whom he was dancing. When he ran out of pesos he took a seat at the bar, pulled out a large bowie knife and drove it into the wood. He then glared around the room as if to say “Nobody dances with her. She’s going home with me.” It was no surprise by now when Zooey paid the mariachis a buck and asked her to dance.

Mark and I looked at each other and without a word headed for the door. We had walked down the street a short distance when Zooey came running up and joined us, looking over his shoulder.

“How’d that go?” asked Mark.

“Not so good.”

In Tijuana we stopped at a notorious nightclub. A rock band was playing. Ladies were dancing nude on a small stage. Other ladies were milling around. Mark and I figured this as a quick stop, to say we’d been there. Zooey had other ideas. He and an attractive young woman disappeared out a side door.

Time passed. Ten minutes, twenty, one hour, two.

“My beer is flatI” I said.

Later on our way back to the tent Zooey announced that he was in love and intended to bring her back with us. “We can hide her in the trunk.” I promised to pick her up on the way out of town.

The following day I bought a sombrero and four bottles of tequila which we hid in the trunk. While arguing over the price of a couple of pieces of jewelry with a gentleman on the street I felt the ground move slightly from side to side under my feet. Looking down the street and out onto the beach beyond, some distant giant had grabbed the earth and was shaking it like a rug. Waves coming our direction reached us and the ground wobbled. People came running out of every building yelling “Ay temblor!”. In a half minute the earthquake ended.

“How much you want for that?” I asked

“One hundred fifty pesos. Is a real bargain.”

“I’ll take it.”

Driving back to San Francisco we encountered occasional rain and discovered that the Ford’s windshield wipers had stopped working. During a few rain squalls we’d lean out the windows to see the highway ahead.

“I can’t believe we’re still alive” Mark said.

“The guys with the guns?” I replied.

“Yeah”.

“If they’d wanted to kill us we’d be dead. They have more sense than that. They wanted to terrorize us and convince us to leave.”

“And not come back” Mark added.

Remarkably, the radio still worked great. The Beatles were at it again. It won’t be long now, now, now, now, it won’t be long. All my loving, I will give to you. I fixed the windshield wipers, sold the Ford and went back to driving the Jolly Green Giant.

In Philosophy class we read Marx, Kant and Descartes. In Humanities we read the Old Testament, the Iliad and the Odyssey. I fell behind.

On campus there was an office of the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps. The Progressive Labor Party wanted them gone and organized a sit-in demonstration. I joined about twenty students, seated on the floor in the hallway. The campus police politely asked us to leave. We politely refused. Everyone was carried out on stretchers, one by one, and gently deposited on the lawn. No charges were filed, the building was locked, it was late and everyone went home. How different things would be in two short years.

In March students from UC Berkeley and San Francisco State began picketing the Sheraton Palace Hotel in San Francisco in protest of racially discriminatory hiring practices. I joined a few times but was mostly busy elsewhere. Ultimately a hundred demonstrators were arrested.

All students were required to study a foreign language to graduate. Having grown up in East San Jose my Spanish was OK but scientific disciplines wouldn’t accept Spanish as a viable foreign language. The thinking was that not enough science was published in Spanish, which wasn’t true. Science majors typically studied German.

Russian was also acceptable. I figured Russian would be easy. I began to wonder though when the first day of Russian Language 101 all the students were speaking Russian. Their parents were immigrants. The entire semester, four and a half months, I was behind. I flunked every test. I reviewed my errors and continued to learn though I never caught up. Near the end of the semester, Dr. Sorokin asked me to meet him in his office.

“What kind of a grade do you need to stay in school?”

That was a surprise. “A ‘B’ would help”.

“I’ll give you a B. But don’t think that means you should go on to Russian two.”

The academic year ended without event. When paying attention the experience was enjoyable. San Francisco State attracted interesting faculty because of the location. The only fiend not returning would be Bill Loving who had landed a full ride scholarship to UC Berkeley

June 1964. Canning fruit was big business in San Jose. Early summer, forty or so hopefuls gathered daily in front of each of the major canneries. A superintendent would emerge and either say “Nothing today” or point around the crowd and say “You, you and you.” Being “you” meant you went to work on the fruit grader dumping lug boxes full of apricots.

I had landed a job at the Cal Can cannery briefly the previous summer so I could skip the mob scene and start at the season’s beginning. It was hard work, dumping lug boxes. Another guy and I took it as a challenge and dumped like crazy which resulted in our being placed on the “pie line” where the poor quality fruit was to be made into jam. There were three lights. Red meant stop. Yellow meant keep going at the same speed. Green meant go faster. I don’t know if the yellow light even worked. The green light was always on unless the system jammed. One of us would dump boxes of fruit from a pallet to a chute and the other would pull the empty box and stack it on an opposite pallet. We could dump one thirty pound box every five seconds.

The bosses appreciated our enthusiasm. I was promoted to forklift operator in the empty can department, working the night shift. This meant a raise and long hours. I was now in the Teamster’s Union making enough money in two months to live well the rest of the year.

Cans were carried on pallets that measure four by five feet at the base and four feet tall. The preferred forklifts in the empty can department were Clarks. They had a mast capable of reaching the third pallet of cans in a stack. There was one speed forward and one in reverse, both equal in gearing, so they went backwards as fast as forward. Most driving was done in reverse. A four cylinder Continental engine was powered by propane because much of the work was indoors and propane exhaust was considered breathable.

When the factory was working full bore, as it usually was, forklifts were always running behind, always trying to catch up. When driving on the edge, things are bound to happen. One day I pulled two pallets of cans off a stack of four and took them into the cannery. I returned to the yard, picked up what I thought were the remaining two pallets and started toward the cannery entrance at top speed. A shadow on the building was the first indication that I had in fact picked up cans from the neighboring stack. Whereas I would normally be carrying two pallets one on top of the other, I was carrying six pallets and was only yards away from a low entrance with a teetering tower of eight ounce cans taller than the entire building. Going in reverse the forklift made it through the door no problem. The tower of cans however hit the building going full speed and rained to the ground in a tremendous crash. A hundred thousand cans hit the ground. They hit the wall, they crashed into conveyer belts and rolled under machinery in all directions. Cans headed into the cannery and out into the yard. Crashing changed to rattling and banging and tapered off into tinkling and then subsided to the other noises of the cannery. In a matter of minutes the White Tornado Crew, a gang of Spanish speaking migrant workers, were on the scene with brooms and bins. “Don’t slow down” yelled the foreman. “Keep ‘em coming. Keep ‘em coming!” I drove full speed back and forth through cans sending them flying in all directions.

The leader of the White Tornados was a powerful man named Paco. Paco drove a MacDonald forklift around the cannery carrying a large bin. He would hoist 55 gallon drums full of waste over his head and after emptying them into the bin would bang them on the edge like most people would handle a small bucket.

Paco and his friends would bring little tacos, fresh corn tortillas with beans and other things rolled inside. They would stack about twenty into a carefully folded towel and a half hour before lunch put the stack on the top of one of the streamers. For supper they’d have fresh hot tacos.

I figured I’d show them up. I carefully unpacked a small bottle of red wine, a baguette, some apple slices and a block of ripe Camembert cheese.

Paco who was across from me at the table looked at the cheese. “What’s that shit?”

“Camembert cheese. It’s a French delicacy.”

Paco was not impressed. “That’s disgusting”. He proceeded to share an account complete with elaborate gesturing of fishing rotting, bloated, exploding corpses out of the Rio Grande river.

I spent the summer of 1964 sleeping in my parent’s basement by day and working in the cannery by night. Cynthia would come by sometimes. I might be asleep. The door to the room would quietly open admitting filtered sunlight. Clothes silently fall to the floor. A dream?

July of 1964 The Beatles released Hard Days Night, the movie and the album. There is really nothing I would rather do, cause I’m happy just to dance with you..

Richard Magnoli, a friend from high school was dating Kathy Chestnut. They were a tall, dark and handsome couple. Kathy, Richard, Cynthia and I often went to the beach or took in a movie as a foursome. On one occasion Kathy and Richard were in the back seat of the Jolly Green Giant, pretty well through a flask of bourbon. Kathy lit a cigarette and took several deep drags.

Richard yelled “God what a stink”. Kathy had lit her cigarette backward, setting fire to the filter. Their conversing was often animated. Things like “You don’t really care about me. All I am to you is a jizz receptacle.”

As luck would have it, I ran into an old friend, Pat Colla. We had dated for a while in high school but we were awkward and nothing ever came of it. But now was different.

At work I was visited by Pat. We ate lunch in the car. We kissed.

“You know I have a girlfriend right.”

“I know Cynthia if that’s what you mean. We both work at the phone company. Not sure I’d call her a girlfriend.”

“Really? Well, that’s not much of a surprise. I’m gone all week.”

We laughed and kissed again. Dark eyes, fair skin and wavy black Italian hair, Pat was a stunning sight. The big song that summer was Dancing in the Streets by Martha and the Vandellas. A person couldn’t hear that song without feeling compelled to dance.

A friend of my father’s, John Thorne, an influential lawyer in San Jose, was holding an office party at his snazzy office. A young man who was there with his girlfriend, being suspicious of her possible involvement with John, became vocally belligerent. He and I ended up across the street. I was attempting to calm him down and he punched me on the chin, a limp punch. “Oh come on man” I said. “Let’s go for a walk”. We circumnavigated the block and he left.

When I returned to the party my dad who had witnessed the whole thing glared at me. “You let that guy hit you and didn’t hit him back?” As a young teen dad had boxed in logging camp smokers for small change and a meal. Turning the other cheek was to him inscrutable.

In July 27 1964 the U.S. sent 5,000 more military “advisers” to Vietnam, bringing the total number of United States forces in Vietnam to over 20,000. In August North Vietnamese PT boats allegedly fired torpedoes at a US destroyer in the Tonkin Gulf off the coast of North Vietnam. The supposed attack served as rationale to escalate the war.

In September of 1964, the beginning of a new academic year, John and I rented a house by the ocean with Tom and Jim, dairy farmers from the central valley, patriotic boys of German descent. We found an antique TV in the basement with a tiny screen.

Each night we’d gather and watch the news from Vietnam. The police action was turning into a full blown war. Tom and Jim would argue the government case. Myself and John, the case against. The news was graphic. People being shot and burned to death.

“We, our government… we have no right. It’s aggression.”

“We’re at war whether we like it or not. Our guys over there deserve all the support they can get.”

John and I got into a little scuffle over who was going to get through a door first. “Let’s go up to the gym” he said, “I’ll show you some of my moves.”

At the end of World War II a number of Japanese Americans settled in San Jose. My mother, Mary, helped with bake sales and other fund raisers for people who were re-settling out of concentration camps. Through her contacts I managed to get into judo classes at the temple. I knew throws and rolls. John on the other hand was on the varsity football and wrestling teams.

On the mat, I attempted an o-goshi hip throw. It didn’t work. John grabbed a thigh and an arm and hoisted me onto his shoulders. He spun several times and raised me into the air over his head and dropped me on my back on the mat. It felt like I’d been hit by a truck.

“Very funny John.”

“That’s a wrestling move. One of my favorites. The ‘flying windmill’. I like that little judo move you tried to put on me. Cute.”

John drank much of a case of beer and drove off in his car. Tom, Jim and I decided to look for him. As we drove past an intersection, we noticed that a house a half block to the left appeared to have lost one of its corners. We backed up and started toward it when John’s robin egg blue 1953 Ford came backing out of the front of the house, pieces of heat ducting, lumber and stucco falling off the top and hood. I jumped from the car and ran toward the Ford. John turned the wheel toward me and floored it. I jumped out of the way and he roared off dragging pieces of the house. We followed for a couple of blocks until steam started pouring from under the hood and he could go no further. We took John back to the house, bleeding from a gash in his head and numerous abrasions. “What the hell happened” I asked.

“I fell out of the car going around a corner.”

“How could you fall out of a car?”

“I leaned against the door and it wasn’t closed, I guess. I don’t know. I fell out of the car and landed in the street.”

We put John in a cold shower and he was instantly asleep. We turned the water from hot to cold and did our best to clean him up. Then Jim took him to the hospital and Tom and I returned to the wrecked house. John’s car had gone almost completely through, leaving a gaping hole all the way to the opposite, back wall. Fortunately, the ground floor was comprised of a garage, the furnace and a couple rooms that were at the time unoccupied. We explained to the police that our friend had simply fallen out of his car and another friend had taken him to the hospital and we didn’t know which hospital, which was true if you leave out a few details.

The following week John came home with a small matchbox and a pack of cigarette papers. “Wanna smoke some dope?” he asked. Emptied onto a ceramic plate the marijuana looked like leaves of oregano. John carelessly rolled a cigarette, lit it, smoked some and handed it to me and I did the same, back and forth until it was just an ember. Waves of electricity poured through my body. Waves of light and sound.

I decided to go for a drive. The radio played “When you’ve got worries all the noise and the hurry seems to help I know”. Petula Clark was singing “Downtown”. Then came the glockenspiel, the celesta, the bells, the radiant silver bells.

I realized I was lost. But I figured I couldn’t be very lost because I hadn’t gone very far. Rather than driving any farther and getting further lost, I stopped, got out and walked across the street. Then walked back across. “Loster” I said to myself. The car. There’s the car. There’s a friend of Tom’s probably coming to study. “Hey” I called out. “Where do I live?”

“Huh?”

“Where’s my house?”

Chuckling he answered “You live half a block up the street. The pink house on the right.”

We managed to not start any fights or fall out of any cars or puke out any sixth story windows. What matter is it that I was temporarily lost? Why is this plant illegal and alcohol legal?

A band called the Beau Brummels was catching on. The tune “Laugh Laugh” was giving even the Beatles a run on the radio. Imagine my surprise when while visiting friends at the dorms I ventured into a neighboring room where Ron Elliott, a member of the Beau Brummels, was playing delta blues on guitar. It made no sense. This guy was famous. Why was he living on the second floor in the boy’s dorm?

On October 20th, 1964, George Lincoln Rockwell arrived at the San Francisco Civic Center to espouse the doctrine of his new spawn, the American Nazi Party. John and I decided to wander over and see what he had to say.

“You think he’s serious?” John asked.

‘Why not?” I replied.

“Because nobody’s going to take him seriously. Fascism in this country will be wearing a cowboy hat. This guys either nuts or he’s a put-on.”

He spoke from atop his truck, yelling insults at the crowd who responded in kind. At one point he yelled “I’m going to stay here until you dirty finks let me speak”.

This brought sneering laughter. On November 2nd, my birthday, Rockwell spoke again in the main auditorium at San Francisco State. The word had gone out that everyone would remain polite and walk out silently when he finished his hateful tirade.

I sat near the stage. Rockwell strutted out with his chest puffed up and began. “Would you look at all the pretty faces”. He paused nodding at the crowd. “You know what’s wrong with young people today?” He paused again then raised his voice to a yell. “You fuck in your cars and listen to nigger bebop”. He tucked his thumbs under his armpits and nodded approvingly at his own genius.

With that, the idea of a silent crowd went out the window. Everyone roared in agreement. “Yeah! You nailed it George”. Rockwell leaned back and nodded from the waist, a motion he must have copied from Mussolini. He might have delved into a little more history. A couple of years later George Lincoln Rockwell was assassinated by one of his own thugs.

On November 25th, 1964, a Wednesday night, Richard Magnoli, Kathy Chestnut, myself and Cynthia Smothers attended a concert at the San Jose Civc Auditorium. Bob Dylan came on stage and looked out at the theatre which was about one-third full. Being reserved seating, people were spread out. He announced over the microphone “Why don’t ya’all sittin’ up there in back come on down closer to the stage. I feel like I’m playin’ to an empty house”. The crowd moved down into the orchestra pit and we had a hootenanny. He sang and played “Blowin’ in the Wind” on his acoustic guitar, blowing a harmonica strapped around his neck. Then he announced “Joan Baez is here”. The little crowd went nuts when she stepped on stage. They did the show, alternating back and forth and improvising duets.

A few weeks later we saw James Brown perform at the same venue. We sat ten rows back, center, sticking out like four white sore thumbs. The show began promptly at 7:30. Bobby Byrd and the Flames sang spirituals, rhythm and blues, hymns, ballads and slave shouts.

James Brown stepped on stage and the crowd cheered. He took the bass in hand for a song. He was a gentleman, giving the bass player a break. Then he left for a song, then returned for a song and played the drums. There were no breaks. By rotating the talent they continued playing and building the mood until 10pm when the music stopped and the announcer stepped on stage. “Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you, the hardest working man in show business, Mr. please please please himself… James Brown”. The crowd roared and charged the stage. To see we stood on the arms of our chairs. James Brown glided across on one foot, grabbed the mike and squealed. He dropped into “I’ll go Crazy” which set the beat. Then came “Think”, he then massaged an emotional rendition of “Lost Someone”. Screaming fans climbed on the stage to be thrown by the squad out into the audience.

Students at San Francisco State were aware of what went on across the bay. The demonstrations at hotels and auto dealers continued and groups advocating for integration were going to be banned from setting up tables on the UC Berkeley campus, which brought about the Free Speech Movement in response. On December 3rd I stood among a crowd in front of the steps of Sprowl Hall, mesmerized by Mario Savio. “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus — and you’ve got to make it stop!”

We entered the building and milled around, stepping over each other and singing folk songs. Joan Baez showed up and led the crowd in a few. I reasoned that this wasn’t my fight and left.

In February of 1965 the US implemented Operation Rolling Thunder, the continuous bombing of North Vietnam that would continue for the next three years. This is when the US began using napalm, gelled petroleum that burns and sticks to anything it touches that would become the fiery essence of the war in Vietnam.

June of 65. Back at the cannery. My parents were out of town for the summer. They turned the house over to some young friends, Hal, Ninfa and Gilbert. Hal and Ninfa were a couple. The three were students at Brigham Young University when not in San Jose working in the canneries.

Gilbert, a top ranked amateur golfer, was attending college on an athletic scholarship. He moved from job to job, hustling the bosses. “You know where a guy can play some golf around here?” he’d ask in an exaggerated Mexican accent. “Oh man. You want to play some golf? Buck a hole? Oh sheet man. Let’s make it five.” Gilbert would hook one shot and shank another, then start to get lucky, then go to double or nothing and by games end he’d have snookered the lot well. Gilbert and I watched TV when nothing else was going on. He’d periodically proclaim “It’s a lie”.

Changing the oil in the Jolly Green Giant I got as far as draining it and a week later had forgotten and took off for a drive. The marvelous car actually ran for several miles until the beginning of a knocking sound. I opened the hood to see the cast iron engine block glowing red hot. That was the end of the Jolly Green Giant.

I answered an ad in the paper for a Norton Atlas motorcycle,, a brand new super modified TT race bike. I arrived to find the motorcycle situated in the middle of a living room. The tank, seat and fenders were all reduced in size to save weight. “It’s been bored and stroked to 900 CCs, A hot cam. High compression”. $400 was a steal. “I got it from my brother in law who owed me some money. Here it is. Just don’t ask me to start it. I guarantee it’ll run. You got to pay me first.”

I paid the guy and pushed the bike out onto the street and jumped down on the kick starter but it was seemingly frozen. I pushed it down the street, jumped on and popped the clutch in first gear but the back wheel just skidded. I came to a slight decline in the road and gave it a good run, hopped on, put it in first, popped the clutch and jumped down on the bike with all my weight. It coughed once and then exploded to life, nearly throwing me off the back. In the process of nearly losing my grip I held the accelerator open. As the engine reached red line the acceleration eased enough for me to turn down the throttle. The bike slowed to a stop and died. The motorcycle wouldn’t idle and had to be lightly gunned.

I purchased a pair of steel reinforced boots and mastered the technique. First push the kick starter to find good compression. Then stand and jump down on it with all your weight holding your foot on the kick starter with your knee slightly bent in case it backfired. The tail pipes were about two feet long. They curved down under the engine and fed into a couple of big mufflers.

At a gas station a guy introduced himself as the person who built the Norton and lost it in a poker game. He told me that he had put a lot of money into the bike and I should “take those mufflers off once just to scare the crap out of yourself.”

All that was left of the exhaust were two short tail pipes. Accelerating unleashed a series of explosions. When just idling along and not accelerating even with the muffles off it rumbled like low distant thunder, a pleasing sound. But when accelerating it was breaking the law at any speed.