Dissolute Idealism, The College Years

It was a time of possibilities, a time of optimism and noble causes. It was a time of new ideas and precarious ideals. It was 1964.

I was 21 and still living at my parent’s home but I was never there. I was a full-time student at Cal-State Long Beach, I was working at Disneyland, I was volunteering at an inner city tutoring center and I was falling in and out of love. I was, for all intents and purposes, living in my car.

I prized my car simply because it was mine but it did not translate to tender loving care. The car was seldom washed, it was filled with trash, books, papers, hamburger wrappers and coffee stained paper cups. The ashtrays over flowed, the headliner was ripped and taped but it fit the times. It was my world. I existed on cheeseburgers, fries, black coffee and cigarettes. I was thin and appeared even thinner because I wore all black, stirrup pants, black boots and black turtle necks topped with a ratty old trench coat, rain or shine.

I listened to folk singers under the campus trees and tried to understand what was going on in Viet Nam. My brother was in basic training we knew he was going. Jane Fonda called the boys in uniform “baby killers” but I knew that couldn’t be right. Tim was just a baby himself, he wouldn’t hurt a fly. But still I wondered why we were there. Pete tried to explain it to me. He was finishing up his graduate work at Berkley and he would call me from a pay phone there to a pay phone on my campus that way we both could talk as long as we liked and then walk away without paying. We didn’t see the immorality of our actions; Ma Bell could afford it, right?

I marched and partied all night at the state building in support of the freedom riders in Alabama. Every morning I bought a newspaper as soon as the coin-op dispenser was filled and then piled the rest on top of the news rack so no one else would have to pay. That wasn’t stealing it was “power to the people”. It wasn’t how I was raised, it isn’t how I live now, it was a part I played complete with costume and studied rhetoric.

One night I sat at the reception desk at the tutoring center answering phones until long after dark. Mine was the only white face to be seen, inside or out. The director walked me to my car and said, “I’ll be glad when we don’t need you little white do-gooders any more”. I looked up at him in confusion and he grabbed my shoulders and tried to kiss me. I backed away and he called me a bigot.

It was 1964 and as Bob Dylan said, “The times, they are a-changing.”