A COP SAVED my life once, at some risk to his own, at a time in my life when I sure as hell wouldn't have done it for him. I never thought life would come to something like that, but it did, so anything's possible. Well, almost anything. I hated cops. Cops were the enemy. I was thirty one before I ever saw one act like he wasn't. I'm gonna to tell you about two cops; he's second.
In 1967, during the aptly misnomered "Summer of Love," I was 18. I joined a loose knit organization of anti-government activists, called New York Provo. We took the name from the Dutch Provos. True pioneers, they were, greatly admired. We were based in the Lower East Side. We were never more than a handful, though we had many friends. We had a .38 revolver, a Russo-Japanese War surplus 7.7 rifle, a bullhorn and a mimeograph. We set out to overthrow the government. In retrospect, it seems that we were overly optimistic. However, to put our optimism in perspective, consider how many of our generation set out to subdue Viet Nam.
The guns were mine. The bullhorn and mimeo were Dana Beal's. Never once did I consider the guns to be offensive weapons; I know how to count. The guns were for personal defensive in a neighborhood where preparedness pays off. The degree of danger varied from block to block, and on some blocks from building to building. In some buildings it varied from floor to floor. One need to be able to adapt to the terrain. Terrain varied from mission to mission, and from day to day. In retrospect, I think the rifle was silly. Some guy offered it to me cheap; I figured, oh what the hell. Really, I should have bought a pistol grip pump. I wonder sometimes if the guy was an agent. A-year-and-a-half later they set 7th St. Bernie up in a gun deal. A deep cover moved into his building and started selling him pot. After a little over a year Bernie let down his guard and got himself popped. They do things like that sometimes.
The commonest, most popular carry weapon in the neighborhood, at the time, was a very flat, lock blade pocket knife called a K-54. Their use was uncommon, but their presence was reassuring. The most commonly used weapons were fists and blunt instruments, pretty tame stuff, civilian stuff. That's the way it was, back then. Gun fights were rare enough that I only saw one the whole summer. They were common enough that while it was happening, though I was not the only one in the place to look up, I was definitely the only one who stopped eating to watch. I'd never seen a gun fight before. I'd eaten fried chicken twice that week. It happened out back of a soul food and methadrine joint at A and Tenth called the Cave. A lot of the customers never stopped talking, though presumably, some of the topic changed. Nobody hit the deck. What the hell, they weren't shooting at us.
In those days most people didn't normally carry guns on the street like today. The Provos didn't. We didn't need too. Besides, the world we wanted can't be created at gunpoint. A gunpoint world, we already had, even back then. Hell, we had a missile point world. This is what we didn't want. We wanted something better. I still do. It still can't. We still don't have it. Some of us never gave up, though. Neither should you. We are in for a protracted struggle. We can out endure Babylon. It's going to be worth surviving the wait. Survival is predicated on successful self-defense.
The bullhorn and mimeo were offensive weapons. Our first big move was a counter-attack. In May, a brawl had broken out in Tompkin's Square Park between some Puerto Ricans and some Freeks. Most people didn't join in the fighting, but the cops did. They waded in and beat on everybody that they could, whether they had been fighting or not. We found this to be disturbing. We brainstormed the problem with anybody in the 'hood who would. We all agreed that we needed to do something to unite the two communities. Aside from the moral and political issues involved, there was the matter of our personal safety to consider.
We figured that Freeks and Puerto Ricans, at least those of us who hung out in the park, had three main things in common. We liked music, we smoked pot, and the cops pushed us around. We decided to throw a party to celebrate our commonalty. We got a permit to use the band shell in Tompkins Square and recruited some local garage bands, half of them Latin, half psychedelic. We planned to give away a half pound of weed, rolled up into joints. This was Dana's idea. A smart guy, that Dana, faults not withstanding. He cooked this plan up on some blond Lebanese. A. J. egged him on. We made leaflets to invite everybody. One side was in English, the other in Spanish. We set out to leaflet the entire Lower East Side. This was kind of ticklish, since tension ran high and some blocks just weren't safe. The scariest part was Avenue D, real roughneck turf, no place to daydream.
Since I get on well with roughnecks, I took Avenue D. Since Danny Perone had more heart than brains he came with me. Danny and I were partners before we met Dana. Some people say I still have more heart than brains. Time will tell. I think I'm fairly timid, as critters like us go. I've never been philosophically opposed to backing down (gracefully, if possible), if that's what the situation calls for. It's the mammal in me. I've backed out more than one door. I never hunt predators unless they insist. Sometimes you have to.
We started at 14th St. and headed downtown on the west side of the street. I hear that it still looks pretty much the same today. How do you look today, Danny? Still alive?
It was a short walk from the squat at 9th and B. I hear that block of 9th St. is still pretty heavily squatted by types not unlike myself, except that they're young now instead of then. They sure live like I did. They even riot in the same park. I wore a baggy shirt and tucked a Smith & Wesson Bodyguard in the back of my belt. It was the only thing I owned that was worth any money, so naturally I kept my mouth shut about it. I like the hammer shroud, it makes for a sure draw. In a pinch, you can shoot while it's still in your pocket and the hammer wont snag to get you killed. No one recommends this. Sometimes, you have to. Nobody knew I had it; it was my little secret. The other Provos would have been extremely pissed, because we had all decided the best approach was to be nonthreatening. I didn't plan on threatening anybody. I just didn't plan on getting stabbed, either.
Danny didn't know I was armed (and I knew he wasn't), but he showed no fear for our safety at all. We had a great plan and everybody'd like us and that's all there was to it. No problem. It turned out he was right. Everybody we talked to thought we had just the best idea ever, and hell yes they'd be there and they'd bring all their friends, too. We made a bunch of new friends. This beat the hell outa getting stabbed.
Even today it takes heart to walk down certain streets without a gun, even in daylight. But people do it every day, and never think twice about it. Danny showed more heart than I did that day. I felt very silly for having packed. In retrospect, I think that I wasn't. If you go for a stroll through roughneck turf, you ought to be prepared. If you're not, don't blame me for what happens.
Next Saturday, the park was full. Merriment abounded. A Provo named Charley Ramirez dressed up like a Puerto Rican and slung a conga drum over his shoulder and strolled into the park. The cops never looked twice. Another Puerto Rican with another conga drum, going into the park, so what. Near the band shell, Dana reached up inside the drum and pulled out a half a pound of joints; we passed them around. We had stayed up all night at Elaine's place, tripping and rolling and trying to figure out just what exactly Bob Dylan had meant by that line about the "weatherman." A. J. always thought it meant "Weberman." He had a lot of different ways to prove it. Charley never had to prove anything.
As the leaflet had suggested, others had brought their own pot to give away. A great cloud of smoke enveloped us all. As we had predicted, the cops were scared to wade into a unified crowd to arrest anybody. They're not as brave as they look. Or as dumb. A splendid time was had by all. It was a great confidence builder. Many alliances were forged that day, and not a few romances. To the best of my knowledge, it was the first smoke-in in American history.
It became a regular event. It attracted a couple performers who later became famous. Mostly it attracted people from the neighborhood who wanted to get along. As we had predicted, there were a lot. Soon the camaraderie and community became so strong that it became very difficult for the cops to push people out of the park at night. Eventually the night came when people pushed back, and chased the cops down Avenue A. No one incited it, it was totally spontaneous. It went on for days.
One night they tried to intimidate us out of the park with flashing lights. I guess they thought we were stupid. (Let 'em, I say. It gives us an edge.) They completely encircled the park with patrol cars almost bumper to bumper, with dome lights but no sirens on, and drove very slowly in a circle. It was an eerie sight. However, nobody was in the park. It was raining a fine mist, and we had all taken the night off. I guess the cops hadn't noticed. We watched from the darkened Provo office on Avenue A, where we had been fixing the Gestetner by candlelight. (Hey, you try this. Let me know how it turns out.) I saw this tactic used in 1984 in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park in an attempt to psyche out an illegal encampment during the Democratic Convention. It didn't work there, either, and eventually the SFPD gave up and declared us legal.
At one point, some of the wimmin, dressed fairly provocatively, took a tray of hot coffee in Styrofoam cups over to where some of the horse cops had Avenue A and St. Marks Place blocked off. Every one of the bunch was gorgeous and brilliant. They posed a little and batted their eyes and told the cops what brave men they were, how strong, how noble, how . . . handsome they were . . . how . . . chilly . . . they must be . . . would they like to . . . warm up . . . a little? How about some nice . . . hot . . . coffee? Would the nice horsey like a sugar cube? In a rare flash of brilliance, the cops chased them away.
Eventually the cops won out in Tompkins Square. The park has these fences that were specifically designed to contain rioting. They were erected in response to an anti-draft riot during the Civil War. Ever since then, the terrain there has favored the cops heavily. A couple Julys ago, this whole Tompkins Square riot scenario played itself out again, except that this time they also chased people down Saint Mark's Place with a helicopter. Some things change, some don't.
We focused on other things. We had a free store and a string of crash pads. We put out a daily newsletter. We fed people. We attacked the Ninth Precinct one night, in retaliation for a raid on a crash pad in which several minors had been captured. We started a peaceful picket. Abbie Hoffman made it into a full frontal assault. He got through the front door and demolished the trophy case in the lobby before they brought him down. Abbie just loved to get arrested. It would prove later to be good advertising for his books. He always got out of jail quickly. I always did wonder how. He sold a lot of books. We used to print his leaflets on the Gestetner. Xerox wasn't available yet.
We were instrumental in organizing a caravan to Washington that October to "levitate" the Pentagon. This was the first mass action against the Viet Nam War. 350,000 people came. That's a hella mass. Danny and I gave away two shopping bags of joints. A couple hundred thousand people marched over this bridge singing "I'm Not Marching Anymore." Scores of pleasure craft anchored in the river to watch. Helicopters hovered overhead. The war went on anyway.
In November, Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State, came to New York to give a speech at a hotel uptown. Fifty-thousand people showed up to protest. Why should Rusk care?
The cops started arresting people en mass. People were letting themselves get arrested. We felt this to be simply deplorable. Get arrested on purpose!?! Why? To show off how righteous you are? That's kinda self-centered, aint it? What's the use? The system don't care how many people it has to arrest. You can't choke the system, it has too big a throat. You can't appeal to its better nature, either, it doesn't have one. Forget that shit. We didn't have to prove we were righteous to anybody. We knew. We had to prove we meant business. So we started a riot. It was the right thing to do. When conditions are auspicious, starting a riot is easy as pie. We had it planned out first. That's the right way to do it.
I know it was illegal. So what? If the law gets in the way of doing the right thing, screw the law, do the right thing. If we were wrong to do this, then the Minute Men were wrong to shoot it out with the cops at Concord and Lexington, and Jesus was wrong to run the money changers out of the temple with a whip. If you got a problem with this, tough shit.
We slipped on our masks and whipped out the bull horn. We switched off the tasks of holding it above the crowd and holding the mike. The mike and speaker were joined by a coiled cable just like a telephone and its hand set. It bounced like a slack tight rope as we moved through the crowd. As we picked up our speed, that cord fairly twanged. We wove down the sidewalk. The crowd was thinner there than in the street. We could move fairly quickly. The cops didn't dare come into the crowd after us. I don't blame them. We were half a block from the front line where people were getting arrested, when we began to chant.
"Let's go trashing! Let's go trashing!"
We were headed downtown, away from the cops. Immediately we had three or four thousand people with us. People were ready. All it took was a spark. If people don't want to riot, forget trying to incite them. We moved away from the main crowd by a couple blocks and took off at a dead run. We broke every bank window we passed. Nobody looted, not one of us. We were making a point, not trying to enrich ourselves.
Now let me make this perfectly clear, I was not trying to further Communism in any way. I hate Communism. I just don't let hatred blind me, that's all. I try not to let anything blind me. Usually it works. I was sticking up for some little guys who were being bullied and were fighting back. That's what you're supposed to do. If the rest of America had stuck up in '45 for the Vietnamese like we started to they never would have turned to the Commies in the first place.
The cops were taken completely off guard. They had no idea something like this would happen. At most, they had planned for a frontal assault, as that's what they were deployed against. They only had so many guys. They didn't know what to do. If they all went after us, that would leave 50,000 people (and the Secretary of State) unguarded at their rear. If they let us go, they'd be in big trouble with the captain, the mayor, maybe even the governor. Heads would roll. Pensions would evaporate. While they dithered, we gained 15 or 20 blocks on them.
All the way I kept thinking how nice it'd be if the rest of the 50,000 people had followed our example and were lynching Dean Rusk, or better still, had split into two, three, many flying columns just like ours, and were roaming through mid-town and running amok. It could have happened. We should have brought more bullhorns and sent them off in different directions, all at the same time. We didn't think of it. We had no experience at this sort of thing. We were making it up as we went along.
There had been some violence at the levitation of the Pentagon, but it had mostly been them beating on us. They started it. They did a better job of it, too. To the best of my knowledge, the Rusk demo was the first time we swung first. It had to start somewhere. Things being what they were, it was bound to catch on. In a few years, America was, in Kissinger's words, "in a state of near civil war." Then, and only then, did American troops withdraw from Viet Nam. Giap said we were better than a second front.
Eventually, they sent the horse cops after us. Who else? We made it to 42nd Street before they caught up with us. There was a Marine recruiting booth on a sort of an island in the street. There I was, deconstructing it with a 4-foot two-by-four. I remember swinging to smash the last of the plate glass. Just before it shattered I caught my reflection. I looked good. Except for one thing. Just over my shoulder I could see a horse cop riding me down at full gallop. His club was back, beginning its swing, and about to split my head. This looked not so good. I spun on my heel and swung up to parry, all in one move. I made it in time. The glass shards were still tinkling. It was reflexive move, and purely defensive. It was one of my better moves, really. It was pure Mifune. I looked really good. That's not why I did it. I did it to save my skull. I like my skull. It's my favorite one. I use it a lot. It looks good in one piece.
Fear is strength.
Our weapons connected at each other's mid-point. Mine took his right out of his hand. It missed my skull by more than enough. Momentum carried him past me. A galloping horse has a lot of momentum. Don't get in front of one. Their shoes are hard, too. I could have wasted his kneecap as he went by instead. It would have been a lot more dangerous, but I might have been able to pull it off and also duck the club, if I was lucky. I still had some luck left back then. Though I much prefer peaceful negotiation, I've never been philosophically opposed to wasting a kneecap if that's what the situation calls for. But did it? I would have thought not, had I time to think, but I hadn't. Time to think is a luxury.
We had set out to destroy property, not to fight cops. The plan was to move away from the cops as fast as we could, trash as many banks as we could, and then, just before the cops caught up with us, disperse. We figured they'd be afraid to disperse to come after us, and most, perhaps all, of us would get away. It's a good plan. It's worked for centuries. It still works.
People had apparently wanted to waste rich people's cars, as well as their banks. So they did. It looked like fun. I joined in. Impulsive of me? Perhaps. I put a coupla thousand dollars bodywork bill on a Mercedes, in five seconds flat. It felt good. Fuck the rich. It was their war and poor people died in it. They wanted us to die, just so they could make money. How dare they? Instead, we fought back. That's what you're supposed to do when people want you to die. When people want you to die, you should fuck with them hard, preferably the way that works best. When the rich fuck with you, I say hit 'em where it hurts them the most, their most vital organ, the wallet. Trashing their cars hadn't occurred to me before, but really it should have.
I'm not usually impulsive, unless it's one of those nights when I've planned ahead to spend the night being impulsive. I hadn't. We'd planned our moves very carefully. We hadn't planned everything, though. I don't think it's possible. That's why it's good to have flexible plans. Somebody else had planned on trashing cars. Maybe trashing the banks hadn't occurred to them.
Nah. Trashing banks occurred to a lot of people.
It became a very popular pastime for a while, especially among the young. It's really quite fun. It's esthetic, cathartic, fitting and just, an unbeatable combination. What a rush. You haven't lived until you've trashed a bank. Remember all the time you spent standing in line waiting to cash a too small paycheck while the cops were outside giving you a parking ticket? There is a way to get back – trust me.
(Don't try this at home, kids.)
We knew that the banks ran everything, including the war. We knew that all they cared about was making money. We figured we'd just run up their glass bill until it cost them more money than they made off the war, and they'd call off the war. We were naive, but only about the price of glass. The cops, of course, sided with the banks. They know which side their bread's buttered on.
I didn't have time to think about the guy's kneecap. I reacted without thinking. He had the strangest look on his face as he saw me swinging back at him. How dare I? He was a kind of Irish-looking basic dragoon, old enough to have made detective by then had he been born with any brains. No such luck.
Our eyes locked. The wood cracked like a line drive with a man on third. My mind was empty. My forehead was flat. My focus was total, not on his eyes. My arms just did it. Musashi would have been proud. I did it like you're supposed to. It worked like a charm. That's what happens when you do it right.
Crack!
As soon as the club flew, I looked up the street.
"I was on the pavement, thinkin' about the government . . ."
It was coming straight at us at full gallop, swinging clubs at our heads. This was because the government serves the banks, not the people, and for no other reason.
No time to think.
I knew it would come to this. I should have brought it up at the meeting. No way would people disperse in time. We were having too much fun. I sure was, and this was where it had brought me. Too much fun? It can be done. I had time for one very brief thought before I had to do something. There was no way I could out run them with them at my back. I didn't have to think to know that. I spied a construction site across the street. It had a chain link fence around it. There was a slit in the chain link.
Aha!
I got on the good foot.
If you have never sprinted sideways through a charging mass of horsemen, while they try to split your head like a melon, you are missing out on one of the major adrenaline rushes of history. It beats the hell out of getting shot at or busted. It's better than crashing a scooter, too. And cheaper. Rioting in general gets one's blood up in a manner unlike any other, and greatly surpassing most. It's way better than sex. For one thing it lasts longer. It's particularly good if your head doesn't get split in the process.
As stimulating as history can be, you could never tell it from reading a public school text book. School wants you bored for a reason.
Heads were cracking all around. I didn't see whose they were or even if I knew them. No time to look. I dove through the slit, not a second too soon. Just as I made it to the fence, somebody else more foresighted than I, pitched what appeared to be a shoe box full of marbles in front of the horses. It broke their charge. They stumbled, balked and pulled up short. I took the long way home. It was very long. This had not been my most graceful back down.
I lay on the couch in the back room of our free store on First Street, smoking and thinking. Should I have gone for the kneecap? Nah, I thought, I had done the right thing. He was doing his duty as he saw it. I was doing mine. Nothing personal. Besides, I hadn't had the time to think it through. Stragglers straggled in. Some were messed up, swollen and limping. Eventually Fat Steve crawled home with 17 stitches in his head. He was a real mess. I decided I was wrong – I should have crippled that son of a bitch on the horse. I didn't change my mind for twelve years.
A compromise move would have been to go for his forearm instead of his club. It would have been a much safer move than ducking the club and trying for the kneecap at the same time. It would have been almost as safe as parrying the club like I actually did. It would have broken his bones. He was certainly trying to break mine. It would have been a good move, from a purely tactical perspective. I didn't make it. I don't like compromise. Who does? Sometimes you have to. Besides, I hadn't had the time to think it through.
Our next stunt was a big free meal on the steps of the welfare building on Thanksgiving day. I didn't go. I went to see my folks in Pennsylvania. I did drive around one day collecting some of the food.
Two weeks after I got back, we all got busted. The cops raided four places and popped twenty eight people. They passed out charges ranked according to who they wanted to fuck over worst, apparently determined on the basis of who had the biggest mouth. They wanted Dana the worst. He got an acid sale charge. It was a "heinous" crime said the judge, denying his bail drop. All I got was a 15-lb. marijuana sale charge. Some people got let go entirely. A couple of them we had never seen before, they had just come by the free store to get some clothes and were there at the wrong time. I distinctly remember never having seen the front of my Public Defender's head. He mumbled. I was sent back to the Brooklyn House of D.
The cops stole our money, my guns, the little bit of weed they actually found, and I don't know what else. Some cops make a custom of stealing pistols. They carry them on patrol. When they murder somebody, they plant the stolen gun on him and escape prosecution by pleading self-defense. The court always plays along with them. The cops call these guns "blow away throw aways." I have often wondered whose death my S&W played a role in. Who was he? What did he do?
They let all the Provo wimmin go. Mistake. That's how we finally made bail. Never underestimate wimmin. Wimmin will come through. Wimmin are smarter.
Elaine? Maria? Gladys? Janet? Red? Where are you today? Are you still alive? I wonder about you sometimes. Get in touch. I could tell you some stories.
Elaine bailed out Dana. He owed her one big.
The truth of the matter was that we actually were selling pot and acid to finance our activities, in not unlike the way our opponents, to this day, sell heroin and cocaine to finance their activities. Somebody had to come up with all that rent. Then there was the Gestetner itself. And the truth of the matter was that I, at least, was fairly lame at it. They could have caught me fair and square. They didn't bother. They didn't even bother to bring some along and plant me. They just filled out a form. The day they said I was supposed to have made this sale I had actually spent driving around in a VW bus with Dana Beal and Bob Carlisle picking up food for the free Thanksgiving dinner. Dana lammed out for the mountains of Mexico the minute he made bail. Bob was out on parole for having tried to blow up the Statue of Liberty. Later, I hear he joined the Panthers and got framed for conspiracy. Not the best witnesses.
I jumped bail. Danny and Susanne and I went to Boston. Three weeks later we got popped again. They said they were looking for hash. We'd sold the hash. They tore up the furniture, and found nothing. They charged us with "lewd and lascivious cohabitation." I don't know why they didn't charge us with being drunk underage – we were pretty well blitzed at the time that they got there. I guess it was because a morals charge looks worse on your record than a drunk charge. Almost everybody gets drunk. Most people are willing to cop to it. Most people are not willing to cop to getting lewd. I do. If you don't like it, too fucking bad.
Next morning the screws at the jail woke prisoners up by throwing a string of fire crackers into the drunk tank, down at the end of the tier. They laughed their asses off. They also stole my money. A Public Defender said that if I pled guilty to the morals charge I could get six months suspended and two years probation. The terms of the probation were that I had 24 hours to get out of Massachusetts and couldn't come back for two years. Now it just so happened that getting out of Massachusetts had recently become one of my very most favorite ideas ever. I signed the paper. They let me go, right away.
I figured that what with computers not being in use yet, the bench warrant from New York (for failure to appear) just hadn't caught up with me yet, and I had lucked out. State lines were a lot more meaningful in those days. Paper is slow. In retrospect, I must consider that they may have let me go in order to see where I would go to.
Retrospect is a curious thing. I knew we had been framed in New York, but I figured it was a local job since they're the ones we had been fucking with. So they fucked back with us. No wonder to that. Years later I heard about COINTELPRO and was forced to consider that the Provo bust was very likely a part of this federally coordinated program of similar operations that were going on all over the country at the time. Maybe not. Either way, New York Provo was destroyed.
Not to worry.
Two organizations, the Crazies and the Motherfuckers, immediately sprang up to take its place. This reflected an ideological faction split between those who favored street theater and those who favored violence. Later these tendencies fused. Yippie! was born. Abbie had avoided the net dropped on Provo. He did this, in part, by calling himself a "Digger" not a Provo. He stole this idea, as well as the manuscript of Steal This Book, from S.F.'s Emmett Grogan, who had recently visited New York. That's Emmett's version of the story, anyway. I believe it, but that alone don't make it true. We'll never know for sure. From us he copied the free store and chain of crash pads and started his own organization, which he called the New York Diggers, based on 10th Street. Eight weeks later, Provo went down.
If they wanted to know where I would go to, they could have made a pretty good guess. I went to my draft physical, in Pennsylvania. I was still a fugitive, and half-expected to get busted on the spot. I decided to risk it anyhow, just it to get the draft board off of my back. They were the feds, not New York State, and I figured (correctly?) that the two weren't in very close communication. Maybe they guessed wrong. I don't know; they're not telling.
This was back before the draft lottery. Everybody got called. When I got called, in February '68, the war was not going well for either side. They gave me a form to fill out. I checked boxes which added up to my being a Communist, Nazi, homosexual, drug addict Negro.
"Prove it," said the doctor. I extended my palm.
"Give me some drugs," I said, "I'll do them right here in front of you."
I would have, too. He said I was too crazy to fight in a war, and they threw me out of the building. I guess it all depends how you look at it. They wanted me to go to the other side of the planet and jump out of an airplane into a hail of machine gun bullets and impale myself on a sharpened bamboo stake covered with human shit, and all on the off chance that, while doing this, I might also be able to kill somebody (who I didn't even know, and who had never harmed me or tried to), so that somebody else (not I) could make lots of money. And they thought I'd go along with it. After what they'd done to me. You tell me who's nuts.
Susanne was pregnant. I married her and went back to New York to fix up my case. I figured this was what you were supposed in a situation like that. I learned this from my grandma. She had my dad when she was fourteen. She dropped out and raised him. You're supposed to look after your kids. I couldn't do that on the lam. First I went to Connecticut and got a New York lawyer and spent some money. Then I got a job in a brokerage house back office as a file clerk. I cut my hair, saw a shrink, told some lies, spent more money, was White, and got three years probation. First offense. It pays to be White in court. America has two totally different systems of "justice." Fred Hampton didn't do anything we didn't do and they shot him through the damn wall.
Probation was nerve racking. I had to sit out Chicago '68 in order to make a court date. I was looking at five-to-fifteen. Two guys stood on either side of the stoop of our building selling heroin. It was very cheap. At first. It wasn't just my building. It was everywhere. I stopped going to meetings and demos for a couple of years. If the Provo bust was a COINTELPRO op, it sure worked on me. I looked bad. I did questionable things. With a drug and a morals conviction, I had to give up my plans to finish school and become a teacher. They'll never let me get anywhere near your kids, let alone let me teach them history. That's why I'm talking to you instead.
A first hand account, by an active participant, is as good as history gets. Don't expect anything better. This story aint much, but at least it's basically true, which is more than you can say for a lot of people's versions. If I've garbled any of the details, I'm sorry; it's been a few years. It would have been better for history if I had written all this down right after it happened, while it was fresh in my mind, but didn't seem like a good idea at the time. I'm sure I left some parts out. It's still as good as it gets. If you don't like history, go out and make some.
The brokerage house job (Walston & Co., 54 Wall) was just the thing to convince the judge I'd gone straight. I had rather hoped that from inside I could somehow fuck things up, or at least liberate some enemy material. I did manage to get paid 12-hours wages for seven-hours work. That was fairly easy. I also spent a lot of time in the bathroom. Few things on earth are as deeply satisfying as taking a shit on company time. I would unroll the paper more than I needed and write, "We are everywhere," and roll it back up. Other times, I'd just nod.
I lost interest in heroin a lot quicker than Susanne. I was strictly a chipper. I don't like not being in control of my life. One thing led to another, and pretty soon it was ten years later and I had the kid and we were living on Alice Street in the middle of Oakland's Chinatown. It put my kid within walking distance of the Arts Magnet School. The rent was attractive. We were the only "bok guey" from Broadway to Laney. I loved it; I never should have left. Chinese people make great neighbors. I like 'em a lot. I learned how to say "bok guey" from a book. That tells you a lot about them right there. People grow gardens in the space between the sidewalk and the street, and nobody rips off the vegetables. That's how people are supposed to live. White folks got some catching up to do.
But try as I might, I could not get laid in the neighborhood. Once, almost I did. But the minute she he hit on me, out in front of Lun Kee, someone that might have been grandma ran out of Yet Sun and dragged her away by her ear. I get along with all kinds of people. Nothing like this ever happened to me before. I attribute it to racism. I don't hold it against them, though, I can see some of their points. The neighborhood was founded by refugees from a pogrom in San Francisco. Maybe this thing I'm about to tell you about wouldn't have happened to me if white folks had a better reputation, in which case I could have got laid in the neighborhood, in which case I might have stayed home that night, in which case I'd still be walking around today believing that I should have kneecapped that cop. That would have made me a different person today. I like who I am today, so some good did come of it. Even racism can have a silver lining.
At the time, I didn't know this. All I knew was I could not get laid in the neighborhood. I didn't like it. So I decided to putt on up to Berkeley and visit Rhiannon. She's the King of Elfland's daughter, that one. She's been known to glow in the dark. Smart, too. She always has the right answer. Berkeley was 12 minutes away. I figured, oh what the hell. I got on a modified Triumph whose peculiar handling characteristics are integral to the plot of this story. So I might as well tell you right now what they were.
This bike possessed a number of peculiarities, chief of which was that it had no rear shocks. This is not the usual way of Triumphs. Though the wheel base remained stock, the rear frame sub section had been replaced with a custom made, bolt on, hard tail assembly called a Paladin Special. Paladin was a Nazi little fuck. He was ugly. He smelled bad. But he was one hell of an engineer. He wrote pretty good poetry, too. His little invention enabled me to make right angle turns at forty miles an hour.
The trick is simple. Blast into the intersection. Just before you get there, get on the brakes. Lock up the back wheel and twitch your butt. Throw the bike into a fishtail. Aim the front wheel in the direction you want to turn. Slide. This is very easy to do with a really light hardtail. The rear wheel breaks traction like nothing at all. It's much harder on a bike with weight and shocks; you really gotta work at it. It's nearly impossible. That Paladin Special was so easy to fishtail, you couldn't even see my butt twitch, it had such a light touch to it.
The faster that you execute the maneuver, the greater the required angle of careen. The maneuver can be safely executed at an angle severe enough as to require the dragging of one boot to keep the bike up. The rear wheel describes an arc. The trick is to time it so that you are perpendicular to the cross street when you hit dead center of the intersection. At the point the cross street and the front wheel just come into line, goose it hard. The bike straightens itself out, and blammo, you're off up the cross street and still doing forty. At least that what it feels like. It's totally awesome, and not very difficult. The lighter the bike is, the better it trick works, so I took off the mufflers and bobbed the rear fender. It was light, very light. It was too light to ride in the rainy season because on wet road it would hydroplane, and was sure to slide into a wall or something and kill me. It was a dry season bike – it didn't even have a front fender. This is the factor the plot hinges on.
It was a pretty bike, with a Cerriani front end, and a saddle and pillion. It had reversible clubman bars in the up position, and two tall round mirrors that made it look like some venomous insect. It looked good in one piece. It vibrated at a frequency that engorged clitorises immediately, if not sooner. It dodged traffic and potholes nearly unbidden. This bike was so agile, it could have dodged bullets. It was a gazelle in a rhinoceros stampede, nimbler than a Norton Atlas. It thread many a needle, that one. It had a lot of low-end torque because I had swapped for a one carb head and ran a big Dellorto. This kept the top end down to just under a hundred but greatly enhanced the mid-range acceleration and right angle turn capability. Like a jet kangaroo from 20 to 80, it always got out of the way.
Dark awoke. Rhiannon grew lonely. The phone went off. Boing.
I jammed up the Jackson Street onramp, and headed north on I-80. The road was East Bay summer dry. Up ahead lay the Cypress structure. Years later, the Cypress structure fell down in a quake and you all saw it on television. Yeah, that one. While it stood, it curved majestically past the housing project we call "Stalag Nabisco." It's next to the cracker factory and looks like a prison camp. There's chain-link and barbed-wire everywhere. This is the housing project from which the people ran out and rescued all those trapped drivers right after the '89 quake. They showed incredible courage. Then the cops chased them away.
I was cooking along about 75 m.p.h., pacing traffic, coming up on Stalag Nabisco and thinking what a hell of a place for an earthquake, because that's what Californians think about when we're riding on structures like that. I was leaving plenty of room all around me and not trying to pass. I rode like a wimp in those days. I was sole support of my kid and I didn't want to die till he knew how to feed himself. Jones kept his mother too busy to feed anybody else. Jones is like that. Jones is hungry. I had to not die, it was not a viable option. Most people feel that now is a bad time to die, but in my case it really was true. Of course, that's what they all say.
Up ahead, next to Stalag Nabisco, in the exact place where so many died in '89, a car, perhaps two, had burned. I don't know how or why. The fire was out. The ambulances were gone. The tow trucks were working. The fire truck was still there. So was a CHP cruiser. So was the water, an inch deep and all over the road. The CHP had put out one of those flashing light signs that said, "Slow to 40," so we all slowed to 50 and spread out a little.
An inch of water on four lanes of pavement at 50 m.p.h. poses little problem to a car, even on that curve. Me, on that bike, it would have killed for sure. I'd have slid right into the cement guard rail and splatted bloody goo. I might have had time to lay it down and I might have come out of laying it down alive, but probably not. At the very least I'd have been mangled for life. I was angled towards the guard rail in such a way that I'd might have caromed instead of gone splat. It would have been worse. A splat's over quick. A good carom can last for the rest of your life. Even on a good day, you don't want to lay it down at fifty in front of a cement wall unless you absolutely have to. Sometimes you have to.
Bike wrecks are peculiar in that you can die at five miles an hour if you happen to bounce in the wrong direction. On the other hand, I once saw Evel Knievel botch a ramp stunt at 115 and walk away barely limping. It's largely a matter of luck. I used up the last of my luck back in '69 in a ditch outside New Haven. But that's another story.
A CHP officer was standing around talking to a couple of firemen, about half way from the flashing sign to the water. He must have been a biker when he wasn't working. He knew exactly what circumstance had in store for me. He knew I couldn't see it, and so wouldn't know to take evasive action. He did the only thing on earth that stood any conceivable chance of slowing me down in time. He did it so quickly that there's no way he could have thought it over first. He jumped right out in front of me waving his arms. This took brass fortitude and a most righteous heart. I could see he was yelling. I got hard on both brakes and got totally sideways, careened over hard. I was dragging my left boot to keep the bike up, and headed straight at him. I couldn't go around, there was no room. I could either hit him or the rail or the fire truck. I opted to hit him. You would too.
By the time I got to where he was, I had it down to about twenty five. He jumped out of the way at the very last possible instant. He made it. I brushed his uniform with my tail light as I slid past. Had I struck him, we'd both have broken bones, at the very least, probably our necks. Had I been daydreaming, or loaded, or a tenth of a second slower for any reason at all, we both would have been looking death in the teeth. Never ride loaded. Never. Don't even ride mad. It's not like a car – you need your whole brain. Riding in traffic is a martial art. You must center your chi at the point of your combined center of gravity. This is an out-of-body experience by several inches. Focus is vital.
As I slid past him I could hear him yell, "Water!" at the top of his lungs. If I hadn't been seated, my heart would have dropped out my asshole. If I'd been wearing a helmet, I wouldn't have been able to hear him. I got off the brakes and snapped the bike upright, not a millisecond to soon. I hit the sheet of water upright and head on. Had I not heard him, I'd have hit it sideways and gone down for sure. Fuck helmet laws. It's my head, goddammit. I want to hear.
The fenderless front wheel threw up a rooster tail. It hit my Climax goggles like a cold shower hits a hangover. I was immediately blinded. I leaned my head out of the rooster tail and looked up ahead. There was an awful lot of very slippery wet between me and dry pavement. I held on and hoped for the best. What else could I do? I hydroplaned, but not enough to die at it. Eventually, still alive, I hit the dry part and wobbled a only little. I had cleared the guard rail by more than enough. This wasn't luck. This was: the cop stuck his neck out to warn me.
I straightened out the wobble and picked up the revs till I was pacing traffic again. I had kept the bike up, but I couldn't hold the shakes off till I got to Berkeley. I pulled off at Emeryville (the very next exit) and shook pretty hard. I was dripping sweat. I had bitten my lip. It took a very long time to get calm enough to feel safe in the saddle again. It wasn't my closest encounter, but it sure as hell ranks.
I had to completely rethink my position on cops. It took a while to sink in. They're not all the same. They're individuals, just like us. Cops aren't the enemy, the system is the enemy. Cops are just guys at work, no worse than any, and no better either. If they had other jobs they wouldn't act like they do.
Well, maybe some would.
