The first time I was arrested was on the Vietnam Moratorium Day, Wednesday October 15, 1969, a day before my nineteenth birthday, and three days after the fall baseball season – and what turned out to be my baseball career – both ended, with a tournament at Yale.
That day all across America schools went on strike to protest the Vietnam War and in Springfield, Massachusetts each of the three colleges held quiet, almost prayerful services on their campuses. Later, again quietly, we all joined together and marched down State Street to Court Square to hear the featured speaker, the daughter of Wayne Morse, one of two senators to vote against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that got America officially into the big muddy of Vietnam. The place was packed.
Sharing the stage were two other people, a local middle-aged woman and a young red-haired college dropout from Williams College, both of whom were in the midst of organizing poor people into something called The National Welfare Rights Organization. A year later that group would change its name to ACORN and forty years after that the young kid, Wade Rathke, would be Fox News' poster boy for all things wrong in America. Rathke's partner, Barbara Rivera, mother to future State Representative Cheryl Rivera, was loud and passionate and turned a rather solemn crowd into a chanting mass of people who were as angry about welfare mothers not getting their checks on time as they were about bombs being dropped on Hanoi.
On the march back up State Street to Winchester Square and a teach-in for peace at Hope Church, we passed the Welfare Office and someone, probably Rathke, had the idea that we ought to liberate it. Liberate from whom he did not say. So, a dozen of us peeled off from the protest, walked into the building, told everyone who worked there to leave (which they happily did), and then we stood looking at each other trying to figure out what to do next. We worked hard to seem strong and brave and fearless but inside we, or at least I, was wishing and hoping someone would say, "I'm done. Let's go home." But no one did and I stayed.
After about half an hour and a warning to leave, the police broke down the doors, stormed in and arrested us. As we were dragged out of the building a full-fledged riot flashed as bricks and stones and Molotov cocktails were thrown at our Paddy wagon. Loud crashes and the smell of smoke made me want to be in jail where at least we would be safe, which wasn't exactly the case.
At the old York Street jail, the last place in Massachusetts where an execution by hanging was held, we were fingerprinted and booked two-at-a-time and I and my partner, a gigantic shot-putter from Colombia named Louie, were told to give up our belts and shoelaces. The police told Louie to hand over his glasses and he said, very quietly, because as large as he was, was as gentle as he was, "I need my glasses to see," to which the police replied, "Fuck you asshole," rammed him head first into a brick wall, and Louie bled. I stood stunned before I was escorted to my tiny jail cell where I was welcomed by a magnificently drawn picture of a five-foot tall, vein-laced, throbbing, sperm-spewing cock. Until we were bailed out, I did pushups and sit-ups to keep from going nuts.
We all went to court the next morning, and this being the sixties and that particular day being the day of my birth, my friends in the courtroom serenaded me with Happy Birthday, which brought the judge stomping out of his chambers, pounding his gavel and bellowing, "This is a court of law. It is not a circus. I will clear the courtroom and you WILL go back in jail." Christ, I did not want to go back to jail.
My second arrest happened the next night, Friday, when I and four friends I had been arrested with, all very large and strong black guys, thought we ought to have a meeting off campus to talk about lawyers. Two blocks from our destination we were caught breaking the citywide dusk to dawn curfew that was imposed because of the riot we had started two days before and were arrested again. Until that moment, we all thought we were invincible, but being thrown face down on the pavement of a pitch dark Walnut Street in the middle of Six Corners, kicked into a spread-eagle position, fingers interlocked behind our heads, police revolvers stuck in our backs, I began to think that maybe it was better to be invisible.
A term or two later, after the baseball coach stopped talking to me and I became confused and miserable – all I ever wanted to be was a baseball player – I quit school, got a job in a factory, met a girl, and argued with her father about the war, "If you think you can do any better maybe you should run for office," so I did. I took out papers and ran for School Committee in my town. The election was held the same day as the first Ali – Frazier fight. Ali lost. I lost. I got nine votes more than my draft lottery number. I was twenty and my first-ever vote was for myself. In the morning, I drove west with two friends.
*****
March 1971
I'm sitting on the corner of my cot in the Christ House of Rest men's homeless shelter in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The cots are head-to-toe, wall-to-wall, in rows about three feet apart. The lights are too bright and there is a steady flow of Jesus music over the loudspeakers. Except for crosses, the walls are bare. It's dark outside, cold too, and slumped men stumble down the basement steps looking at the tickets in their hands to see which identical Army cot will be theirs for the night. The air is clean because we can't smoke in here. I want a cigarette. Everyone wants a cigarette. Rice and beans will be served in an hour. Cream of wheat comes in the morning.
Chip and Tony and I are on an adventure. For the past few nights we stayed with a woman in Oklahoma who opened her home to kids needing a place to sleep. We thought it would work this way all across America, and for the rest of the trip across America it will, but on this raw night in mid-March not a single person in Albuquerque has offered any such hospitality.
The guy on the cot three feet away talks to me.
"Buddy." I don't hear him at first. I'm thinking how I'm going to hold onto my wallet when I sleep.
"Hey Buddy."
"Hey," I say.
"Ever been to jail?"
Given his look and the look of most of the men in the place I'm almost relieved that I can say yes. "Yeah, a year ago."
"Walpole?" (Walpole is the Massachusetts State Prison.)
"Nope. Just county. How come you ask?"
"Your jacket. They give you jackets like that at Walpole. Yours is like mine. See?" he says pointing at his chest. "You sure you never been?"
"Never been."
"Where'd you get the jacket? County?"
"Ummm … my mother gave it to me last Christmas." I'm feeling small. Maybe even pathetic.
"Oh, your mom …"
"So, you've been to Walpole?" I ask.
"Did some time. Assault and battery. Didn't do it though."
"Oh."
"Got out last month. Travelling. How 'bout you?"
"Me too."
"Where you from?"
"Massachusetts. Springfield."
"Back home? Damn. You know a guy named Crazy George?" he asks.
"Jesus, who doesn't know Crazy George?" George is a student at a local college, American International, who looks more than a little like my new Walpole friend. He's a guy a lot of people buy pot from. He is very tall, wears small granny glasses on his hairy moon face, dresses in Army fatigues and was walking along with us up State Street on Moratorium Day but didn't go into the Welfare Office. George might be crazy but he's not dumb.
This is the weirdest thing. I'm driving around the country with a couple of friends and run into a guy in the next cot at a homeless shelter in New Mexico and he knows a guy I know from back home.
And life goes on …
*****
About three years later I have a job at the University of Maine at Farmington where I am the world's worst dorm director. I am congenitally disorganized. I lose things, keys especially, and that's a death sentence in dorm work. I don't really care if kids smoke pot and I don't really care if they drink, so long as they don't hurt anybody. I tend to side with the underdog, who in this case would be the students. I am told by my supervisor that I suck. I do suck.
But I also get to work in the counseling center with returning Vietnam Veterans. This I am good at.
The vets all have horrible stories and more than a few of them wake up screaming in the night reliving some gruesome scene. One guy, a big Yankee fan, used to give out Yankee hats to little kids in the village and when one of those little kids in a Yankee hat ran at him holding a live grenade my client had to kill him. Another guy cut a pregnant girl in half with a burst from his machine gun when she tried to shoot him at close range. I see a lot of vets in the counseling center.
There is a knock on my door. It is late. One of the vets stands in front of me and asks if he and his buddies can use one of the rooms in the dorm basement for a party.
"Sure. No problem. When?"
"Maybe next Saturday?"
"Just let me know." I pause. Something feels funny to me. I'm not sure what it is. A weird tingle. "You look kind of familiar." I say this very tentatively.
The vet steps back. He looks me over. Up and down. He waits a few seconds. "Yeah, you too."
I think he's Crazy George from back home – tall, Army fatigues, granny glasses – but he doesn't have enough moon-face. In my head, I run though all the people I know, all the places I've been, nothing comes up for sure. Finally, I ask, "Ever been to New Mexico?"
"Yeah."
"Albuquerque?"
"Yeah."
"Christ House of Rest?"
"Yeah." He stretches the word into three syllables. And then he burst out, "Holy Shit. You're the guy who ain't been to Walpole. Jesus, how you been?"
We do a quick, uncomfortable man hug.
I tell him I'm doing pretty well. That I went back to school, finished, went off to grad school and came back here to Maine for this job. "Where'd you go after Albuquerque?" I ask. But I look at him again and I know. The war.