What began as an unlawful assembly during a spring break party Saturday night in Santa Barbara quickly became an emergency situation, leaving multiple sheriff's deputies injured, more than 100 arrested and many transported to the hospital.
What began as an unlawful assembly during a spring break party Saturday night in Santa Barbara quickly became an emergency situation, leaving multiple sheriff's deputies injured, more than 100 arrested and many transported to the hospital.
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Ok, will get the Kindle version.
Nikki,
More later. I'm in the thick of a deadline for a novel I'm ghostwriting, but ordered?? Are you referring to a paperback or hardbound version? I hope not because that's the old 2007 traditionally published version, of which there are a few copies still floating around, so I can't force Amazon to take the listing down. The Kindle version is seriously updated, so please, if you did order the physical book, cancel the order and go with the e-book. I know. I still like turning pages but I spent a year rewriting my epic and grimace to think of anyone reading the old version...
Hi Gary, thanks for your story. I have ordered your book.
The draft is slavery for sure. The world changed on 11/22/1963 and we had a lot to protest back then. It's hard to say about Isla Vista. It could have been just a rave but there is a lot of underlying anger with the college crowd. They know there is no economic opportunity in the US even with a degree. It's a concern for me because my daughter may be going to UCSB, we shall see.
Actually, I have a story that relates to the ‘70 riot in Isla Vista and was curious to see if anyone was connecting the dots. Sounds like not. They were very different events. We were rebels with a cause back then. Sounds like last week’s students were just having a rave.
My story is, from Laguna Beach, I had watched as students at UCSB finally dusted the beach sand off their feet and got into the free speech movement. You couldn’t help but wonder if they were going to surf and party their way through the sixties. Nothing wrong with that, but it was in such stark contrast to what was going on up in the Bay Area. I had a pretty good vantage point. My eldest brother did two years at UCSB, then transferred up to UCSC.
As backdrop, you have to remember that folks in Santa Barbara were still cleaning up the coastline from an oil spill the previous year. Reagan as governor? That was enough to piss anyone off. His jackbooted thugs had recently quashed the People's Park movement. Nixon as President? More angst. Angela Davis on the run. The Black Panthers being hunted down like animals. Vietnam lingered over the whole thing. We had a lot to get us motivated back then.
A few months after the riots, I escaped to Hawaii with $25 in my pocket and no return air fare. My thought was to work the restaurants in Waikiki for a spell and start bumming my way down through Micronesia. I ended up sleeping on a hammock in Hanauma Bay, with what amounted to a cannery row of tents strewn along the beach, populated by hippies. Among them was a man called himself Peter, and there beneath the rustling coconut palms, Peter told me he was just coming back from Micronesia, hanging out on the beach for a week or so, trying to get right with things. He was one of several people who had been indicted for burning down the Bank of America. Sick at heart about being on the run, his thought was to go back and face the law.
I remember Peter distinctly because he taught me how to use the I Ching that day, then did the oracle for me. Warning, it said. It does not further. All signs pointed to me being headed for trouble. Very ominous, but I was going too fast to stop and examine things at the time. The war was on my tail. Besides, who was Peter to talk? He was facing twenty-five to life.
Roughly nine months after Peter and I parted ways, I was arrested in Mexico for smuggling drugs. I remember those iron bars slamming shut and thinking, damn. If only I had listened to Peter. It was a hell of a fix. If I was fortunate enough to get out of that prison, I was still facing the draft. It was that or move into a cleaner, more efficient prison back in the States.
Well, I never saw Peter again and have always wondered what happened to him. It was hard to tell from afar how that trial turned out. It was a real legal circus. Plus, I was never entirely sure it that was his name. It might have been a cover. I ended up writing novel about my experiences back in the sixties. The Trip Into Milky Way. I wonder if Peter ever did the same about his? I suppose in sharing this tale, I’m curious to see if Peter, or whoever he was, stumbles across my blog and connects the dots from long ago.
As to the recent riot up in Isla Vista, I hate to tell anyone, get a cause. Most students I meet already have one. And as Nikki here suggested, perhaps it was a bunch of heathens from out of town. I would only say this, from forty year’s perspective. Trashing things for trashing's sake never amounted to anything. I'm as rebellious as ever, but in this very screwed up world of ours, dignity and purpose count for a lot with me. We were foolish back then, but even in burning down banks, we were trying to stand on higher moral ground. Don't just screw up the world. If you're going to go down fighting, do it for something where, twenty, thirty, forty years down the road, you can stand back and say, damn, I’m proud of what I did there.
It was the out-of-towners.
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