Lies and Poetry and Blood on Campus

CHAPTER 117

President Nixon announced he was ordering troop withdrawals from Vietnam. Soon the media was reporting that the Army First Infantry Division was coming home. This was the Division Joe Rubio served in and our expectations grew he might be deactivated from that war sooner rather than later.

He wrote me on January 24 concerning this rumor.

“I better tell you a little about this supposed to be pullout of the 1^st Division. The latest word we heard was if you weren’t about to go home anyway you wouldn’t be going. What they are doing is taking people from other divisions who are just about finished their tour and putting them in the 1^st division for the pull out. The amount of first division people going is about 2%. The rest of us will be transferred to new divisions. I know for the people back home this will be very disappointing, many of us feel the same way. The thing that gets me is how they can tell all the people back home these things knowing they aren’t true. Oh, some of the 1^st Division is leaving, but all of its men are staying and being put in new units. So now all I can do is resume my old count down and hope the time goes fast. By the way I am down to 163 days now.”

In February, Eugene McCarthy appeared on the “Today Show”. “Clean Gene” was the first person I heard that verified what Joe had written, that the withdraw was not a true withdraw because the troops who came home were coming home anyway because their tour was up.

Joe noted on the plus side he had been promoted to E-5 Sergeant. His brother John arrived in Germany on January 10.

At this point in my life I had become very left wing politically. I was frankly almost an anarchist and Joe’s reveals about what was going on in the Army only made me feel more antigovernment. Adding to my distrust and disgust with our leaders was the trash crisis then going on in Philadelphia. The collectors had gone on strike when the Mayor named a new Commissioner without consulting the union. Trash and garbage was piling up about the city and spilling over the pavements. Meanwhile, there was no decent school system in the city, no smooth transportation and no entertainment to speak of, and a policeman named Rizzo was becoming far too powerful. I viewed Rizzo as a threat to freedom and justice and that he was wrong in thinking his heavy handed tactics would cure crime.

Becoming ever more radicalized, Lois and I became active with the Social Action Council through the First Unitarian Church in Center City. The first Sunday we walked into this institution we found ourselves not in a usual Sunday service of hymns and homilies, but in a rehearsal for a planned Vietnam protest in Rittenhouse Square. It was a die-in, where we participants would lay scattered about the park representing the dead killed in the war. It was still the waning days of winter and the grounds and pavements of the park were icy cold to lie upon as if a casualty.
Lois and I got very enthusiastic about a program to buy Black Action Bonds in support of Black Capital. We viewed it as one of the best ways possible to aid the African-American community since we believed their plight was mostly economic. It was the program's idea that if we Whites and the church participated with this bond objective we would help the Black community to reach economic equality with society as a whole.

As far as I know that program faded into failure, but that particular church is still actively leading social protest and holding fast to the philosophy of the late 1960s. More recently they have taken up the cause of Black Lives Matter.

Many people today think the country is about to explode; In 1970 it did explode; in fact, there were a number of bombing as Sping was blooming: two in Maryland, one in Pittsburgh, one in Wisconsin, three in California and four in New York all within later weeks March. On the 13th alone there had been 400 bomb scares in New York.

 It snowed Easter morning at the rate of 2 inches an hour before changing over briefly to rain and hail, then back to snow that dropped another 5 inches of the white stuff. I still had no job and a car that would not start. My dad came into Philly and picked us up and we stayed at my parents through dinner. Dad took us home around 8:00 PM.

It was an unpredictable stormy March in mores way than one.

It was a month later, on April 14, that I attended the premier at Quince Pie (I believe they actually spelled it Pye). My article on it was published a week later in "Philadelphia After Dark".  It was around this same time I received a letter from Young Publications requesting I send them some poems to be published in an anthology they were planning. My poetry had been published here and there, including readings on a weekly radio show called Personal Poetry. Hosted by David Allen. It was broadcast on WEFG-Stereo out of Winchester, Virginia. It was my guess the editors had learned of my poems from that.

The Anthology was published later in the year, a 301 page hardbound book sampling a number of American poets. It was called Dance of the Muse: A Treasury of Modern Poetry. It was published by Young Publications, Appalachia, Virginia and edited by Jeanne Hollyfield. Two of my poems were included in the volume, “Touching” and “Song in the Graveyard”.

In early May I received a letter from Joe Rubio asking what I thought of Nixon sending troops into Cambodia. I didn’t write him back immediately because I couldn’t afford stamps.

Meanwhile, the violence in the states continued to percolate. On May 4, students at Kent State in Ohio held a protest against the U.S. incursion into Cambodia. Several members of the National Guard, who were there to keep order, opened fire, most shooting into the ground, but some fired into the crowd and four students were killed and nine additional were wounded, one of whom was left paralyzed. This garnered much media coverage and became something of a symbol of the times, especially the image of a female student on her knees wailing over a fallen body lying on the pavement.

Less than two weeks later, on May 14, students at Jackson State in Mississippi, a predominately Black College were also protesting the war's spread into Cambodia. When a rumor was circulated that Medger Evers' brother, Charles Evers and his wife had been killed, the students rioted, setting fires and throwing rocks at passing cars. Fireman trying to control the fires called for police backup. The Jackson police, Mississippi State Troopers and the National Guard descended on the campus. Chaos apparently resulted and the police opened fire, killing two and injuring 11. The Jackson State Massacre didn’t get the media attention that Kent State received and is sort of forgotten today, but it was one more indication of the tensions and violence of those times.

From my letter to Joe dated May 17:  We’re used to getting casually figures from Vietnam, now we get them from the home front as well. Four students at Kent State in Ohio, 11 at Jackson State in Mississippi, instances of confrontation, colleges closed down, construction workers attacking student demonstrators on Wall Street, etc, and so forth. Our country is losing its cool; going out of its collective head, who is talking sense anymore? Hardly anyone. And there isn’t a soul listening.”

On May 11 Joe Rubio became one of the troops sent into Cambodia, where he remained until the 14^th.

Have we really progressed much today?

Paul is Dead and so is My Beetle

Poet Dottie Waters was sitting on our bed, not for any nefarious reason, but trying to figure out the various clues that proved Paul was dead. It was early summer 1969, and Paul was Paul McCartney of the Beatles.

Our group had dwindled down by now. Dottie, Jim Tweedy, Lois and I were scattered about the room surrounded by Beatles’ albums. Joe Rubio would have been in on this, but he was sitting in a tent outside Saigon with bigger things to worry about.

“And here’s another clue for you all/The Walrus was Paul.” (“Glass Onion” by Lennon-

McCartney, 1968.)

This was supposedly a statement on Paul’s death, although it is contradicted in other Beatles’ tunes; for instance, in “God” by the John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band, you have Lennon singing, “I was the Walrus, but now I’m John,” and it is John who sings the song “I am the Walrus” in “The Magical Mystery Tour”.

It didn’t matter, the Paul is Dead Rumor had legs, as they say and whether Paul was dead was a mote point, the rumor was alive and wouldn’t die.

And there were tons of clues to Paul’s demise, too. People just like us, were sitting about in many bedrooms, dens and living rooms hashing this one out, even though logic seemed against the whole theory. One of the biggest indicators of Paul having left us was the cover of “Abbey Road”.

Here walk The Beatles in a row (funeral procession?). They are led, because John is dressed all in white, by the clergy. (John Lennon as clergy? That defies intelligence right there.) Next come the Undertaker, Ringo all in black. Then marching by is the corpse, Paul, his step out of sinc with the others, a “coffin nail”, held in his right hand, when he was left-handed, and he is barefoot. Finally, in somewhat worker’s clothes, follows George, the gravedigger. What more proof do you need? The license plate on the VW Beetle, perhaps, saying “28 if”. If what? Why he would have been 28 if he were still with us.  And above this, LMW, for “Linda McCartney weeps”. (Paul was actually 27 at the time of “Abbey Road” and Paul didn’t know Linda Eastman, let alone be her husband, at the time of his alleged death.)

“Oh, wait,” you may ask, “how could Paul be walking in his own funeral procession? And didn’t the Beatles make at least one more album called ‘Let It Be’”?  Those seems like  reasonable questions, you cynic, you; why couldn’t you take their advice and let it be?

To get the answers to your questions you must understand the rumer. The album “Abbey Road” was released in 1969. The photograph was taken on Abbey Road, a street running by the recording studio. Here is the gist of the Paul is Dead rumor and hidden in the lyrics of "I Am the Walrus".

Supposedly, Paul McCartney was killed in an auto accident (Yellow matter custard/Dripping from a dead dog’s eye”) in which he smashed into a van while high (Sitting on a cornflake/Waiting for the van to come”) after being distracted by a female hitchhiker he picked up. (“Boy you’ve been a naughty girl/You let your knickers down). John wrote the whole incident as code in the song “I am the Walrus, from which the above lyrics are quoted. In reality, John Lennon wrote the “Walrus” lyrics as pure nonsense on the theory they were so bizarre no one would even attempt to give them meaning. Ha, was he wrong on that one.

 This alleged accidental death occurred in 1966. Afterwards, the Beatles replaced Paul with a lookalike, who even got plastic surgery to look more like Paul. This is why “Paul” then grew facial hair, to cover his surgery scars until they healed. I think what truly amazes is  that people would think they could find someone who not only resembled Paul closely in looks, but sounded like him and could play a left-handed bass.

This rumor caught on and persisted and many people seriously studied for clues to prove. it. The incredibleness of this is it all occurred before the internet and social media.

In August we went with my parents to see the movie, “Love Bug”. I wasn’t loving my car  so much now, it kept breaking down. Disney films, such as the “Love Bug” were not Lois and mine usual fare, either. We had discovered the Art Theaters, such as the Art Holiday in Kensington, Walton Art in Germantown and the Abbe Art Cinema in West Philly.

This is an objection I have, the belittlement of words. I dislike the use of “adult” as in “Adult bookstore”, “adult language”, “adult situations” and so forth. What is so adult about them? Don’t they mean “sexual”, or more to the point, we are so ashamed of these things we don’t want our children exposed to them.  There was nothing particularly adult about that bookstore on Market Street.  It was just full of dirty books. The words sometimes contained herein were were very rudimentary, with an emphasis on rude. I mean, what is adult language anyway, just a lot of mostly single syllable words repeated at infinite, speech boring as a Kardashian.

So my other gripe is the use of “Art” associated with these theaters. What art?  You hear the term “art film” and it conjures up images of some European, shadowy story that is interesting to watch, but hard to understand. There is not usually much difficulty to understand these so-called “art-films”. We didn’t go there to ponder Bergmanian Symbolism (Virgin Spring, photo left); we went hoping to see some writhing naked flesh. We weren’t looking for brain stimulation, but stimulation a bit further down our bodies.

This experience was nowhere near the Globe, which we still went to about two times a summer. It did not have an atmosphere of fun or a night of misbehavior. These theaters were grim. The films ran continuous, so you found your way to a seat in just the light from the screen. The audience was generally sparse and almost all male. There were seldom any couples. There were seldom even two men sitting together. Those who were there sat spread out through the theater and new arrivals sought out a space away from others.

In the early days the films were mostly old striptease shorts interspersed with some Naturalist features. Nudist films lose the novelty very quickly. After five minutes of watching ordinary people walking around in the nude doing everyday things it gets very boring.  As one famous exploitation film producer once said, “How many ways can you shoot a naked person serve a volleyball?” The films tended to be grainy, with a lot of magnified dust particles and loose hairs flitting into the frame.

When you left these particular movie houses you always kept your fingers crossed that you’d find your car and it wouldn’t be up on cinder blocks. None of these venues were exactly in the best of neighborhoods, and it was only the pull of engaging in somewhat forbidden sex that drew us there. We really didn’t go all that often.

My world was going well during the last half of 1969. I had gone back to Temple that fall, taking Composition II, in which I would get an A, and a Psych course called “Personality & Adjustment”. I got a B. My overall grade point average was beginning to rise, making up for some lower marks I had gotten earlier.  I sort of bragged to Joe:

He (the professor) read excerpts from it (my composition) to the class as being the way an opening paragraph, a closing paragraph and dialogue should be written.

At this point (Early October) my job looked solid as well.  “My boss (Mary Cliffy) came along the other day" I wrote,  "and in a low voice told me the company was acquiring several new magazines and it would be a great opportunity for me, whatever that means. And then the employees have been spreading a rumor that I’m going to be picked as Assistant Circulation Director. It’d be nice, but I’d be surprised. I only hope with these kind of things so I don’t get a big disappointment. Can you imagine that, though? I’d be working with my present boss as a partner and reporting directly to the vice-president and President of the company?”

Joe wrote back that he had been taken off the machine gun and handed the company radio. I thought he was already the communications man, but he wasn’t. He was glad to do it because he felt the duty was safer than the gunner position, but first day on the new job he got struck by lightning. He was okay, but both the transmitter and receiver were fried leaving his unit without any communications for the night.
He told me he was put in for Spec 4.

Joe mentioned the start of the Christmas season with lights going up everywhere around camp.
They had begun stringing the holiday decorations here before Halloween was over.

Joe talked about President Nixon’s speech. I responded, “It was a brilliant speech. He really got a lot of the country behind him. Of course, he said absolutely nothing, except if it doesn’t rain the sun will shine. He’ll bring the troops home, if he brings the troops home. Is what it boiled down to, if you really think about it. Tonight Agnew was on TV trying to destroy any faith in the news media he possibly could.”

“I am almost brakeless in the car. And I can’t get them fixed for a week. Drat!“

As December passed, I happened into a doorway on one of my walks. There was a cramped office inside.  The people there published a tabloid called, “Philadelphia After Dark” They agreed to give me an audition and sent me out to review this new Raquel Welsh flick in town, called “Flareup.”

Meanwhile I had two troubles on my mind, and neither was a woman. My car was not running and I had just walked away from my job at North American Publishing.  I had told Joe about the car, but not about my sudden unemployment nor the possibility of writing for Philladelphia After Dark.