I did a “teen of the week” feature: the kid who organized a “Teens for Goldwater” club (step one, he hoped, to becoming Arizona’s senator); the boy out deer hunting who bagged a cougar from ten feet; the girl with a Julie Andrews voice who played the female lead in the school production of Carousel. I was on hand with my camera at their final rehearsal when John Rait—who played the male lead on Broadway—strode in from the wings, shunted aside the befuddled student playing Billy Bigelow, and joined her in a tear-jerking “If I Loved You.” He kissed her as passionately as he had kissed his own Julie Jordan on the Broadway stage.
And when the News merged with the Herald in October and we became the Glendale News-Herald, I did a full-page photo essay showing local folks reading the first combined issue. Not accidentally, Miss Ann Garretson was one of those “randomly chosen” readers.
Ann
Early Fall 1964, Glendale. I plunged into teaching with the fire of Carrie Nation and Margaret Sanger. I’d teach these kids to love literature and to write with passion. That first day, I hauled 140 papers home to grade. I wrote comments on every one. It took me three nights. Even if I limited myself to five minutes each, it meant at least ten hours of work—on top of creating new lesson plans daily. One month into the school year, piles of ungraded papers had mushroomed, commandeering every horizontal surface in my apartment, threatening to bury me.
I had requested the decelerated classes (as they were called) during my job interview. I wanted to work with kids who needed extra help. Thus began my education in real life. My decelerated classes were the same size as my regular classes. Too many students for one-on-one tutoring. And they were not longing for my benevolent touch. They were less motivated and less able to express themselves—the products of eleven years of our society’s not-so-benign neglect. Many lived in poverty and faced crippling conditions at home, like the kid who crept in late, half an hour or more, every morning for my eight o’clock class.
Sometimes Felipe didn’t show up at all. I should have called him aside and asked him how I could help him arrive on time. I should have done everything possible to open his eyes to literature, to worlds he had never imagined. But I didn’t. Rather, I pleaded and scolded. He shrugged and made jokes. The class laughed. I became impatient and aggravated.
It wasn’t until the end of the school year that his counselor mentioned over lunch that before Felipe came to school each day, he carried his father, a double amputee, out to the car and drove him to physical therapy. I was stunned, then haunted that my harangues had added to his burdens, that I hadn’t taken the time to understand his challenges or didn’t have the maturity or teaching experience that would have prompted me to find out.
Most students in my decelerated classes were Mexican Americans. I liked them. They kindled warm memories of my own Alamosa High class-mates—kids who opened a small window into a different culture for me, where extended families wrapped their children in a mantle of love and humor. At the ranch, my cousin and I used to pile our siblings into the pickup and go hang out at the little store at Las Sauces, a Mexican American settlement a short jaunt down the road. We shared a common love of wide-open grasslands under endless blue sky.
The appalling truth was that being Mexican American in Colorado and Arizona branded kids as less capable, even when they were really bright. Too many teachers had accepted that racist stereotype, and by the time the decelerated students arrived in my senior English classes, they were perilously behind their Anglo peers.
The system had failed them. I didn’t know how to change it.
In addition to the required Arizona Constitution class, I signed up for two more college classes: Modern Literature and Transformational Grammar. What was I thinking? Fortunately, Terry and I managed a reconciliation around our Arizona Constitution class and met for “study dates.” That helped a lot, but the other two classes were eating me up.
Soon, the passion for our new jobs overshadowed all else. Early on, Terry scooped the big city Arizona Republic on Glendale’s controversial new city employee union. The union president invited him to their meetings. Terry came back with tales from the garbage men about abysmal working conditions—low pay, antiquated equipment, and an epidemic of debilitating back injuries. Together, we honed his drafts, me pressing him for details, pointing out errors, and suggesting alternate wordings.
In less than a month, Terry became the paper’s primary editorial writer. I read those drafts, too, toning down his sometimes vitriolic rhetoric.
On top of his weekly newspaper production, he helped me catch up on the mountain of work that came with recording grades, tracking progress, and even lesson planning.
He, too, aspired to teach someday. One night I cried out in frustration, “How can I ever get these kids tuned in to Victorian lit?” We kicked ideas around. “Make it a game,” he said.
At school, I split the class in half, pitting one team against the other, telling them it’s their version of TV’s popular GE College Bowl, and then began firing questions. By Friday, hands were shooting up so fast I couldn’t tell whose went up first.
Sharing the excitement and challenges of our work brought us ever closer—the Colorado Daily all over again, only better. As Halloween approached, our enthusiasm spilled into and revived our Sunday night dinners and led to an occasional movie or hike in the desert.
We got together at my place, never his. I’d been to his quaint one-room cottage once. That was enough. When we first entered his “home,” he flipped on the light and banged the wall.
“What’s that about?” I asked.
“You have to wait for the cockroaches to scatter. There’s a million of ’em.”
“Roaches?” I hesitated.
“Yeah, this is the desert. What do you expect for $60.10 a month? They won’t hurt you.”
“But they’re filthy!”
“Yeah. But it’s the scorpions you have watch out for. Last week, while I was dressing, I dropped my shoe and a three-incher scurried out.”
That was another thing: Though Terry and Jack were both skinflints, I knew Jack would never stoop to live in such a dump. Nor would I, regardless of which one I married.
To humor Mom, I squeezed in dates with a few other men. I wasn’t looking for someone “better than” Terry or Jack, but a date now and then seemed a good test of my judgment. So when I was asked out, I accepted. Each was a one-shot ordeal:
The air force pilot, first lieutenant. Training at Luke Air Force Base on some new supersonic fighter jet, he soared through the skies at Mach 2.3 (1,751 miles/hour). He swore he could fly faster and with more agility in his cape than in his plane.
The corporate lawyer. Not yet a partner and dealing mostly with real estate transactions, but he’d be a famous trial lawyer someday, he was sure of it. He didn’t converse—he delivered points, counterpoints, and closing arguments.
The up-and-coming oilman. Every well he drilled apparently spewed gold bullion, not oil at all, so much that he had to build his own King Midas vault. Nonstop talk about money got boring halfway through our only date.
I couldn’t generate any more interest in their jet planes, legal cases, or oil wells than they expressed in my teaching career. Plus, they all smoked, and I came home smelling like an ashtray. Worse, every single one seemed interested only in sex, money, liquor, and sex.
Each fiasco endeared me even more to both Terry and Jack.
Terry
Wednesday, 28 October 1964, Glendale. Damn draft board! For two years, they had stalked me like a coyote on the scent of a wounded fawn. They had refused to classify me a conscientious objector, but at least they had deferred me from the draft while I was a student.
Now this. Today’s mail brought SSS Form 223: “Order to Report for Armed Forces Physical Examination.” The draft board ordered me to show up at the Rio Grande County Courthouse in Del Norte, Colorado, on Wednesday, November 18. Then they threatened me:
If you fail to report for examination as direc
ted, you may be declared delinquent and ordered to report for induction into the Armed Forces. You will also be subject to fine and imprisonment under the provisions of the Universal Military Training and Service Act, as amended.
In March, before I graduated, I had informed them I’d been accepted into the Peace Corps. They’d responded with SSS Form 300, “Permit of the Local Board for Registrant to Depart from the United States,” granting me permission to leave the country until October 1, 1966—as if those old fogies on the draft board had any right to bar me from leaving.
When I moved to Glendale, I wrote to them that I wasn’t going to the Peace Corps after all. I sent my new address, a copy of my April 1963 letter asking to be classified as a conscientious objector, and a request for SSS Form 150, “Special Form for Conscientious Objector.” I’d heard that draft boards wouldn’t even read CO requests unless they were filed on that particular form.
In response, they jerked my II-S student deferment and reclassified me I-A, “Available for Military Service.” They also sent the CO form. I had read the form carefully the first time they’d sent it and decided I couldn’t fill it out. It was too bureaucratic, all black and white, no shades of gray. Take question five: “Under what circumstances, if any, do you believe in the use of force?”
This time, I had to give them an answer. I responded with a short lecture:
The term “force” could carry several meanings, and thus is vague. If one believes (as do Mahatma Gandhi and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.) that love, as applied through nonviolent resistance, is the use of force, I must say I believe wholeheartedly in the use of force.
Every question was rooted in a preconceived bias that to be a conscientious objector, you had to be a card-carrying member of some government-sanctioned religious faith.
Question 1: Do you believe in a Supreme Being? Yes No.
Question 2: Describe the nature of your belief which is the basis of your claim . . . and state whether or not your belief in a Supreme Being involves duties which to you are superior to those arising from any human relation.
Question 3: Explain how, when, and from whom or from what source you received the training and acquired the belief which is the basis of your claim . . .
Whoa! How could anyone trace the development of a belief system to a specific source? What was I to answer—a bolt from God, who I wasn’t sure existed? The Methodist minister in Center, who didn’t understand how anyone could question the existence of God or refuse to “serve his country” with a rifle? Or how about Martin Luther King Jr., whose “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence” in Stride Toward Freedom certainly influenced me?
In September I had filed away the SSS Form 150 and went on with the business of putting out a newspaper and pursuing Miss Garretson. But this new “Order to Report for Armed Forces Physical Examination”—this was a serious threat I couldn’t ignore.
We got the News-Herald to press late Wednesday. I spent Thursday recuperating and sketching out a work plan for the following week’s issue.
Then I spent the whole damn weekend responding to the draft board’s SSS Form 150—not by completing it, but by banging out a five-page, single-spaced letter that rephrased the questions and detailed my beliefs that proved I was a conscientious objector.
The whole question of conscientious objection was cast in the context of participation in war. But SSS Form 150 skirted the key issue: killing—specifically, killing human beings. That was the basis for my claim. I believed it immoral to kill another human being.
Ironically, the incident that had sealed my conviction didn’t involve a human at all. It was seared into my soul by a rabbit, a female jackrabbit, an innocent doe. Like most farm kids in Center, I spent many an hour in the fields near our house with my .22-caliber Remington rifle, tracking “big game”—rabbits, magpies, tin cans, and beer bottles. One fall weekend in high school, I zeroed in on a sprinting rabbit and dropped it on a dead run. I sauntered over and knelt to inspect my trophy. She lay there panting, blood pooling, but not yet dead. Her eyes were wide open, red, pleading with me. How could you? they said. Why would you?
I never hunted again.
I didn’t include that story in my response to SSS Form 150. The three men on the draft board—a farmer and two small business owners from the nearby towns of Del Norte and Monte Vista—were, like my father, World War II veterans. They had “served their country.” They all belonged to the VFW. They owned guns. They hunted. I imagined myself meeting with them in person, relating that story. They’d look at me in disbelief: A rabbit? Jesus, kid, your dad was a fine man, well respected in this county. What the hell happened to you?
In my response to SSS Form 150, I bypassed the issue of killing. I answered in their terms, not mine, pointing out nuances that made it impossible to write simple responses. Too many nuances, too many shades. And here was the kicker that caused me heartburn—the SSS Form 150 required claimants for CO status to sign one of two statements:
(A) I am, by reason of my religious training and belief, conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form. I, therefore, claim exemption from combatant training and service in the Armed Forces.
(B) I am, by reason of my religious training and belief, conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form and I am further conscientiously opposed to participation in noncombatant training and service in the Armed Forces. I, therefore, claim exemption from both combatant and noncombatant training and service in the Armed Forces.
I couldn’t sign either. I rejected the draft on moral grounds, not religious ones. I wrote:
Under present law, no provisions are made for those like me who claim conscientious objection on moral grounds; thus, my appeal for such classification seems fruitless. However, I cannot be loyal to myself and submit to the draft. I am prepared to accept the penalties for violation rather than sacrifice my principles.
I feel obligated to inform you that I will not report on Nov. 18 to the Court House in Del Norte, Colo., as directed by SSS Form 223: “Order to Report for Armed Forces Physical Examination.”
So on the first workday of the month—2 November 1964—I was at the Glendale post office the moment it opened. The hassle with my draft board was no longer a penny-ante annoyance. I needed written proof they had received my response. I paid an extra twenty cents to send my letter by certified mail. That, too, pissed me off.
20
The Dreaded M-Word
Ann
Thursday, November 5, 1964, Glendale. I arrived at La Cocina ahead of Terry for a change and chose a booth toward the back, the latest issue of the paper tucked under my arm.
Two days before, on Election Day, he had vanished into the News-Herald and worked late. That marathon day extended into Wednesday night: thirty-six hours straight.
When he slid into the booth next to me, his eyes were red and he sprouted a two-day beard. But our recounting of Johnson’s stunning landslide over Goldwater sent him soaring again. Our shoulders rubbing, we thumbed through the paper, and he recounted the dramatic turnout in Precinct 4: “I monitored it all day. Most voters waited in line more than three hours,” he said, as we pored over his front-page photo. “At one point the line snaked clear across the railroad tracks, and . . .”
Midsentence, he paused and turned to me. A goofy grin spread over his face. “It’s past time. We need to get married.”
His words hovered in the air like a helium balloon waiting to be caught. Or popped.
Surprisingly, I didn’t freak out. The bonds we had cemented by working together on his editorials and articles, my lesson plans, and our Arizona Constitution class—and by exploring Arizona many a weekend—had wrapped us ever closer. They would have squeezed out all doubt but for one issue. The draft.
His intransigence had me tied in knots. I didn’t disagree with him philosophically. But I had labored to tone down his preachy responses on the conscientious objector form, as well as testing his clarity on key nuances like the distinction be
tween combatant and noncombatant service. And I pushed him to get a lawyer—what good would come from going to jail?
When Terry refused to take the army physical, I feared they’d haul him off any moment. That worry wedged itself between every lesson plan, every paper I graded, every waking moment. Terry was equally apprehensive. If I wanted to talk to him, I had to call, let it ring twice, hang up, call back, ring once, and hang up again—just like at CU with the Atkins fiasco.
In the midst of my inner tumult, I had been drawn to Jack’s more mainstream thinking. Despite the wound his “c’est la vie” letter had inflicted, I still loved him. I fixated on that letter. He’d opened with “Dearest Ann,” signed it with “Love.” Should I blow on the embers and nurse them back to life?
No, I had concluded, life with Jack would force me to battle different demons.
Terry and I hadn’t mentioned the M-word since Labor Day. But now, our physical play outstripped springtime in Boulder. Good-night kisses began hours before he left my apartment. We explored each other’s bodies shamelessly. It seemed absurd to end each day with Terry trudging off to that roach-infested cottage. Or not once waking up to the joy of being side by side in bed together. Clearly, we were on our way to that act I had reserved for the man I married. I teetered at the precipice, wrestling with my own desire and trying to rein his in.
Physical intimacy aside, marriage no longer seemed the Rubicon I had envisioned it to be. Terry hadn’t inhibited my freedom or stifled my creativity. He had enhanced both.
As for the draft, I didn’t have an answer. I knew only that I couldn’t allow some distant draft board to decide whom I would or would not marry.
“Yeah, we should,” I said. “And soon.” It just popped out of my mouth.
For a moment, we sat there stunned, my last bite suspended midway to my mouth.
“Yes?” he said. “You said yes?” He started to hug me, but I warned him off with my eyes. Glendale was still a small town. And I was still a new teacher, out in public.
A Rendezvous to Remember: A Memoir of Joy and Heartache at the Dawn of the Sixties Page 35