WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE REVOLUTION?

In the 1960’s (you might remember them) when emotions were raging, when the war in Vietnam was going full-tilt, we were bombing Hanoi and National Guard troops were shooting students at Kent State. Stories about the arrests of dissidents and flower children filled the news. Students in off-campus college newspapers like the Berkeley Barb were advocating changes—subtle ones, like the overthrow of the United States government for example.

I had my first experience of seeing my name in print in a byline for an article I’d written in the Syracuse University off-campus paper. The article, advocating a change in what we thought of as the "oppressive university administration," was sufficient ground to have me kicked out of school. A telegram (you remember those yellow pieces of paper) from the Dean’s Office appeared in my mailbox on a Sunday informing me that the Academic Committee (whoever they were) had decided to drop me from the university.

I thought what "chickens" they were to have kicked me out of college by telegram. (The medium was the message.) I found it hard to believe that just because of something I’d written, I was considered a dangerous dissident of some sort, although I never would have defined myself using that word—dissident. I’d never marched, never held a placard for any cause, but those were scary times for administrators and I guessed "they" (whoever "they" were) were frightened enough by the article to see the seed of an uprising being planted. But, the reality was that I was only a freshman and hadn’t yet had time to formulate a political (or any other kind) of personal ideology (except, of course, my imagined one of me as Che Guevara).

I did, however, have the opportunity to meet "them" when I requested a face-to-face meeting with the Dean and some associates. After all, as a fully paid-up student "I had rights." Although I don’t remember now what my argument was, it worked and they let me back into school on a provisional basis. Of course, I now had the fodder I needed for further articles in the newspaper, which I hurried to write shortly after the meeting. As soon as I saw the stories published I quit the University to pursue my career as a "full time revolutionary" or at least as a writer working for the Revolution in what I thought of as the beatnik tradition. (Gregory Corso, Laurence Ferlinghetti—those guys.)

My next step was to rent a room in a boarding house on Cape Cod armed with a typewriter, a bottle of whiskey and some packs of Camels (unfiltered) to write the "Great American Novel." So the Revolution was alive and well (at least in my head). But the draft cut my writing career short because I’d quit college and lost my deferment (you remember those). I decided in my twisted way of thinking that being drafted could be folded into the ingredients of my revolutionary dough. I thought that even being in the Army could mean I would be going underground for awhile, where I would see, first-hand, what was really going on with the war and the government.

I was sent to Vietnam, which was like a bad trip that lasted a year. After that mind-blowing experience I found myself in Santa Monica in a crash pad on the beach. (I doubt you’ll find crash pads in Santa Monica these days.) But living in the city and working in a bookstore felt claustrophobic and oppressive and not at all revolutionary so I bought a VW van, got a girlfriend and a dog that we named Henry David Thoreau, which seemed at least somewhat revolutionary.

I painted the words "You are Me" across the rear of the van. I thought they were words John Lennon had written for a Beatle’s song, "you are me and we are we and…" I was never quite sure if the quote was correct. (Remember how that was…never being sure what the words to a song were because your head wasn’t quite clear enough to hear them?)

We were pulled over, every few hours it seemed, by the CHP ("Reagan’s Raiders") and spent a lot of time standing around watching them search the van for dope. Because I’d grown a beard and let my hair grow over my shoulders and my girlfriend wore dresses made out of Indian bedspreads, we were instantly identified as hippies and considered "a threat" (to what, I was never certain of). I guess to "them" I must’ve looked like Charles Manson. It didn’t seem to matter that every other white guy with long hair and a beard in his twenties did as well. What made less sense to me was that just a few months earlier I’d been living in the jungle in Vietnam fighting for my country and now just because my hair was long I was "suspect." After awhile I stopped announcing that I was a Vietnam Vet to the cops—it seemed to scare them even more than the Charles Manson look.

We landed in Santa Barbara (in Isla Vista actually) where we witnessed one of the Bank of America riots. It was truly frightening; the "pigs" (you remember that derogatory term) seemed to be everywhere. Drugged up hippies were setting fires and protesting in the streets at night. But we didn’t dig the bad vibes of the scene so we split for Haight Ashbury only to find that "The Haight" had already happened. "No sweat," we were tired of the "City Revolution" anyway. All we really wanted was to find some peace and quiet someplace in the country. We thought that maybe we’d find the Revolution hanging out there—you know, "on the land."

So we headed up the coast spending nights along the road until we made it to Arcata where we camped in the woods behind Humboldt College and sneaked in to listen to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi lecture about peace and love. Filled with renewed spiritual vigor, we felt the need to move on (moving on was all part of it—wasn’t it?).

We made it to Eugene, Oregon (a college town where the Revolution was definitely still cooking. There we met some fellow hippies (plenty had ended up around Eugene) who invited us to crash on their commune outside of town, a place deep in the woods called Coyote Creek where we made candles that we sold in town on Saturdays. We picked up surplus food at the Food Bank on Monday. Some thought accepting a handout from the government was hypocritical—but even revolutionaries need to eat.

But then a horse kicked our dog Thoreau rupturing some internal organs. We took it as a miracle that he survived his operation but also as a "sign" to move on again. We were forced to sell the van to pay the doctor so we hopped a train to Vancouver and then rode for five days across Canada while Thoreau recuperated in the Mail Car. The three of us ended up in Vermont where we were going to live off the land. There we picked blueberries for awhile but never really did—live off the land, that is.

Eventually the dog lived up to his name and headed off into the woods never to return. My girlfriend ran off to Ireland with a band and I flew to Spain to study with Maharishi. None of us were quite ready, it seemed, to join the "establishment." (That would take a few more years.)

But what about the Revolution? Where had it gone? I wondered if that was the Revolution we’d witnessed in Isla Vista—or maybe we’d been part of it on the commune in Coyote Creek? But I never knew for sure—it was like it had vanished into a cloud of smoke, or never really happened at all, except in my head.

Years later I wondered if maybe I’d imagined the entire 1960’s. But then I recalled that during those bigger-than-life years it had seemed as if anything was possible. As Maharishi used to say, "anything is possible—and anything means anything." But it seems the gap between what is possible and what actually happens in life is a huge one. Sometimes I think that maybe that gap is where the Revolution existed—and perhaps still does.

Posted by Tony at March 15, 2006 05:35 PM