by Mendy Sobol
That changed in 1969. Richard Nixon won the presidency in ‘68 by promising a “secret plan” to end the war. Nixon, like Lyndon Johnson before him, was lying. Nine months after his inauguration the violence continued, escalating daily. When our senior year began, the feeling in the air was skittish and electric. The mood of returning students and incoming freshmen, buoyed by Woodstock only a month before, dampened quickly with a sense of dread as real and heavy and lead gray as the New England sky. Tensions were briefly relieved, but ultimately heightened, by weekly peace marches to Federal Hill and the J.F.K. Courthouse. And for the first time, Toby and I marched with our classmates under the banner of the SMC, the nonviolent Student Mobilization Committee.
On a Wednesday in mid-October, we boarded a Greyhound filled with SMC members headed for Boston. Abbie Hoffman, leader of the Youth International Party, or Yippies, was speaking on the Boston Common, and thousands of antiwar protesters were expected.
From the fringe of the crowd we could see Abbie, full of the joy of being young, alive, and funny as hell, his Massachusetts accent thick, his voice echoing like a ringing bell. “If you don’t believe in revolution, think about our foundin’ fathuh, Paul Re-vi-ah. Less than two hundred ye-ahs ago, right here in Bah-ston, he looked up at that old Nawth Church, saw the lantuns burnin’—‘One if by land, two if by sea!’ So young Paul, he jumps on his motorcycle, poppin’ wheelies ‘round and ‘round Copley Square, shoutin’, ‘The pigs are comin’! The pigs are comin’!’ ”
Everyone was laughing, clapping, cheering. Then, up from the Charles River side of the Common, the first tear gas canisters landed. Cops, on foot and on horseback, charged the crowd. In full riot gear and gas masks, their battle line advanced through the choking haze, a double phalanx working its way at right angles from Beacon and Charles Streets, trapping us between its flanks, batons swinging up high and down hard on legs and backs, shoulders and heads.
The crowd shuddered, then broke. Abbie kept speaking, his shouts of “Don’t let the pigs break up our meetin’!” drowned out by screams and the clatter and thud of running boots and horses’ hooves on bloodstained cobblestones. At first, I stood my ground. But when the nearest cop got within ten yards, I backed away. A girl, no more than fourteen, rushed past me, waving a peace sign poster in the cop’s face. “Fucking pig!” she shouted. He raised his billy club. I took one step forward. The girl dropped the poster and covered her head with both hands. I didn’t know what I was doing, didn’t know what I was going to do, but I took another step toward them. Too slow. And as the club arced above her, gaining speed, the cop’s eyes shifted to me, his lips moving behind his face shield.
“You’re next!” he said.
I froze.
A man, big and bearded, moved between us, grabbing the cop’s arm, catching him off balance, throwing him to the ground.
Toby.
The girl ran left; Toby and I ran right. We crossed the Common, dodging protestors and police, stumbling down stairs, seeking safety in the Park Street trolley station.
The station’s dim yellow lighting cast a confusion of shadows as hundreds more pushed down the stairs after us. On the overcrowded platform, everyone was staring at the tunnel for the headlights of an approaching trolley, everyone hoping for escape. The fading smell of oil, ozone, and hot metal, a distant rumble, and a pair of receding red taillights said otherwise. It would be a long wait for the next train.
“Fuck!” a woman yelped, and tumbled onto the tracks. Hands quickly reached out, hauling her up onto the platform. Blood flowed from her gashed forehead, and as the rescuers pushed people away so she could lie down, three boys fought for balance at the platform’s edge, then fell. The crowd jostled and swayed, some moving closer to help them, some backing away. A man with hair down to his shoulders and a guitar strapped across his chest stepped on my foot as he stumbled into me. Clawing at the man for balance, finding only empty air as he staggered away, I fell to my knees and pitched forward, hands above my head, too high to break my fall. And for the second time that day, Toby saved me, quickly scooping his big hands under my armpits, yanking me to my feet.
My knees throbbed. My heart felt like it was hammering its way out of my ribcage. And suddenly, my eyes were burning. I rubbed them furiously, squinting through tears at Toby, who was rubbing his, too. Around us, people began coughing and choking. “Tear gas!” someone shouted.
Then everyone was screaming.
In panic, they pushed up the stairs against the wave of people fleeing downward. Toby looked at me, his watering eyes reflecting the station’s lights. “We gotta follow the tracks. Walk underground to Boylston Street and the bus station.” I nodded, and together we jumped from platform to track, leaving screams, tear gas, and panic behind, running toward what we hoped was safety.
The two-hour bus ride to Butler was the only time Toby and I were together when neither of us said a word.
Chapter Four: Paul
December 1, 1969. Before that night there were lots of ways to get drafted. There were also lots of ways not to get drafted. The Selective Service System was good at filling its quotas with poor men, especially poor black men. It was better at finding ways out for rich men, professional athletes, and anyone with money and connections. They got student deferments, employment postponements, and medical exemptions, or secured coveted positions in the National Guard. Of the three future U.S. Presidents who were eligible for the Vietnam War draft, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump, none were drafted. Of the four future Vice Presidents who were eligible for the Vietnam War draft, only Al Gore served in Vietnam. The rest avoided military service.
Now, the government told us, things were going to be different. Now draftees would be determined by lottery.
Toby and I sat in the lounge at Parker House, our old freshman dorm. Three-dozen young men, all born between 1944 and 1950, and a handful of young women, milled around, snacking on popcorn and making small talk. The room smelled of stale beer, pot smoke, and unwashed college students. Outside the large double-hung windows it was black, the kind of featureless darkness that accrues in the dead of winter. Inside, bare incandescent bulbs cast yellow light, throwing long shadows into the corner where Toby and I sat, twenty feet from the black and white TV that would soon be the center of attention.
“Shhhhhh!!!” The Parker House president waved his hands at his sides, palms down, calling for quiet, while the dorm’s R.A. turned up the TV’s volume. The screen showed a bunch of old men in dark suits and ties. They stood next to a big glass cylinder. The cylinder held 366 blue capsules. Each blue capsule contained a rolled up slip of paper, and on each slip of paper was a date, one for each day of the year from January 1 to December 31. Representative Alexander Pirnie, a Republican from New York, drew the first number.
Pirnie handed the capsule to another old man, who broke it open and unrolled the slip of paper. “September 14,” he said, and handed the paper to a third man, who said, “September 14, zero-zero-one,” and stuck it on a large poster board next to the number 001.
Thirty days from today, on January 1, 1970, every American male born on September 14 in the years 1944, ‘45, ‘46, ‘47, ‘48, ‘49 and ‘50, all of them from age 19 to 26, would be called first to serve their country. For many, that would mean Vietnam.
“No fucking way!” the R.A. said.
Friends quickly dragged him aside, offering reassurances.
“Canada, man. I’ll go with you!”
“My brother’s a doctor. He’ll get you a medical exemption!”
“Tons of guys are getting out as conscientious objectors. Apply for a C.O.!”
The R.A. buried his face in his hands. The lottery continued.
“April 24, zero-zero-two.”
“December 30, zero-zero-three.”
“February 14, zero-zero-four.”
Sometimes a date was called and there was no response, because no one in the room had that birthday. Sometimes there were groans, sometimes curses.
When they called, “June 5, zero-two-eight,” two friends, one black, one white, pulled out a pack of matches and set their draft cards alight, dropping them into an ashtray to the sound of cheers and chants of “No more war!” and “Fuck Tricky Dick!”
Things had quieted down by the time they announced, “May 9, one-nine-seven.”
“Holy shit,” Toby said. “That’s me.”
But before I could say anything, the old man on the TV was pulling out the next capsule.
“August 14. One-nine-eight.”
My birthday.
“Hey, cheer up, Tesla!” Toby said, thumping my back with one of his giant paws. “We can sit next to each other on the plane to ‘Nam!”
“Let’s get outta here,” I said, grabbing my coat.
“197 and 198’s not bad,” Toby said as we walked up Taylor Street to our apartment. The sidewalks were slippery with patches of ice, and our breath sparkled in the night air. “Everyone’s saying they won’t have to go higher than 150.”
“C’mon, Toby. You know that’s bullshit. The government’s lying about that like they’re lying about everything else. We need a plan.”
Toby pulled out his wallet, opened it, and took out his draft card, the small piece of paper that, for tens of thousands, had turned into a death warrant. “We could burn these suckers!”
“Yeah, we could, Toby. But we still need a plan!”
“Well, here’s my plan. I did four years in my military high school, and I ain’t never goin’ back. So first, I’m gonna use up every minute of my student deferment….”
“Christ, Toby, we graduate in June!”
“Yeah, and maybe the war will be over by June. But if it isn’t, I’m goin’ C.O., or medical, or… or… fuckin’ Canada!”
“What good will that do? We can’t stop the war by running away.”
“So what’s your plan, Tesla?”
“I dunno. I’ll resist. Y’know, not show up for the physical, fight it in court, go to jail if I have to.”
Toby rolled his eyes. “You better talk to your mom first. She’ll tell you what happens to draft dodgers in prison. They’re puttin’ ‘em in with the general population, the worst of the worst. They’re gettin’ beaten, raped, murdered. They’re commitin’ suicide ‘cuz it’s the only way to escape. And what’s the government doin’? Nothin’! ‘Cuz that’s the way they want it! No, Tesla, you’re not goin’ to prison. You’re goin’ to Canada—with me!”
I started to argue, but Toby cut me off with a laugh and another whack on my back so hard it knocked the breath out of me. “Besides,” he said, “you like hockey, don’t ya?”
Chapter Five: Paul
The memorable events of the long winter of 1969–70 didn’t all involve the war. Toby and I spent Christmas break helping IBM technicians link Bruin with the new Engineering Department computer, blacking out half of Butler in the process. On New Years Day, George, the Mozart of the Beef ‘n’ Bun short-order grill, opened just for us, serving up “Wellston Cheeseburgers,” fries, and Dr Peppers on the house. After lunch I played the game of my life on Fireball, turning the machine over again and again on a single ball as Toby cheered me on. In the end, Fireball quit before I did, dying on the spot, its lights dimmed, bells silenced forever. I grinned triumphantly at Toby. Toby looked at me with awe and delight. “You did it, Tesla. The Endless Ball!” But things to come would overshadow our small victories, as the war overshadowed everything.
Early in January, Toby and I were, as usual, up late working with Bruin. It was past 2:00 a.m. as we finished a new program. The Heathkit radio I built when I was nine rested on a table, tuned to the campus station, WELL. (Toby: “Join the Twentieth Century, Tesla. Get somethin’ with transistors!” Me: “They’ll never replace the vacuum tube!”) Grace Slick’s voice, silky and powerful, filled the lab, singing Lather, about a man who remained a blissful child while his friends grew up and became soldiers.
Before the last notes faded, WELL’s overnight student DJ broke in. “So you want to stop the war? Get yourself over to 5 Hope Street. Student Mobe is training marshals for tomorrow’s march on Federal Hill. Every marshal is a marcher for peace; every marcher for peace should be a marshal!”
Toby grabbed his beret. “C’mon, Tesla. Let’s go.”
It was cold, moonless, overcast, but for once, not raining. Two dozen of us stood, collars up, hats pulled down, feet shifting in front of the house on Hope Street. Four SMC leaders faced us. “My name’s Nick Rector,” the tall one began. “Tonight we’re going to do a little guerilla theater, and when we’re done you’ll be trained parade marshals. Each group leader has marshaling experience in Washington D.C. and here in Butler. Marshals keep the march going where it’s supposed to go, help people with medical problems, and above all, make sure things stay peaceful. You ready?” Hands in pockets, we and the other trainees nodded.
They split us into three groups with one SMC leader in charge of each group, while Rector, who was almost Toby’s size, moved from group to group, supervising. In the dark, I hadn’t noticed Meg until she stepped forward to lead my group. She stood a head shorter than I, two heads shorter than Toby, her posture straight, eyes gentle, wavy brown hair tucked inside the collar of her Navy pea coat. While other group leaders joked and jostled, Meg instructed her trainees with quiet words and spare gestures. She began by showing us how to make a human wall for keeping protesters on route. Taking my arm in one hand and Toby’s in the other, she linked them at our elbows, explaining how, at the last Washington D.C. peace march, she’d stood at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue arm-in-arm with five hundred marshals. “Only five hundred of us,” she said, “but because we were trained, because we were disciplined, we turned the tide of a thousand protesters who’d sworn to break the line of march and storm the White House. And we did it without any violence.”
Meg taught us how to deal with freak-outs and bad trips, medical emergencies and minor injuries. On the asphalt of Hope Street she lay on her side, curling into a ball, hands clasped on her head with interlocking fingers, showing us what to do if the police beat us. When it was our turn to try it, she knelt among us making small adjustments to our hands and feet. Then she had Toby and I play the role of police officers carrying her limp body up the stairs of number 5 Hope as she demonstrated techniques of passive resistance to arrest.
For our “Final Exam,” all three training groups gathered, taking turns being marchers and marshals, radicals and cops, simulating our own small peace march down Hope Street in the middle of the New England night. Meg, on tiptoes, whispered instructions in Toby’s ear, and stepping aside, he quickly slid to the end of the line. The rest of us continued around a corner onto Angel Street, Meg and I linking arms, directing marchers into the turn. As Toby approached, his eyes snapped back in his head, his bear-size body levitating straight into the air. For a moment he looked like the Peanuts dog, Snoopy, happily bouncing down the street. “Unnhh!” he moaned, and still airborne, acted out a wildly over-the-top epileptic seizure.
Meg and I, moving together as though we’d been doing it for years, gently, firmly, took hold of Toby, controlling first his limbs, then torso, laying him down on the asphalt, kneeling beside him, calmly repeating, “It’s okay. You’ll be all right. We’ll help you. You’ll be all right. We’ll take care of you.” And when he finally lay motionless, Meg looked up at me and smiled.
The real march later that day was calm and peaceful, the crowd larger than expected with a nearly equal number of marchers and marshals. Toby, Meg, and I stood together at our assigned position along the line of march in front of Raymond’s Federal Hill Newsstand. Ray Constantino, the owner, padlocked the little stand’s shutters, joining doctors and lawyers, clergy and shopkeepers, hard hats and students, blacks, whites, and decorated veterans, all marching against the war.
When the last stragglers passed, the marshals joined the other marchers gathered on the lawn of the Kennedy Courthouse, listening to speeches about poverty, racism, and t
he war. The keynote speaker, Pete McCloskey, a U.S. Representative from California, his voice echoing off the building’s white marble facade, roused us, making us feel like someone in the government was on our side after all. “This war is immoral, illegal, and indefensible!” The crowd roared its agreement. Then everyone linked arms, thousands of us, singing, All we are saying is give peace a chance! And as the crowd broke up, drifting away like a morning fog, Meg, her arms linked with Toby on her left and me on her right, led us up the courthouse steps, positioning us on either side of one of its graceful Ionic columns. Pulling a dented Kodak Instamatic from her coat pocket and handing it to a very surprised silver-haired police officer (who’d been watching us closely), Meg stepped between us, smiling.
The slightly out-of-focus picture of three young college students in long hair, blue jeans, and military jackets, arms linked, free hands flashing peace signs, rests on my bookshelf to this day.
While other student demonstrators walked up College Hill to classrooms, cafeterias, and dormitories, Toby, Meg, and I headed for the Beef ‘n’ Bun. After lunch, Meg surprised and delighted us, winning free game after free game on Fireball’s replacement, the new Joker’s Wild machine. Toby and I gladly played those free games, adding to them, returning the favor to Meg. We quit with three games left on the machine—“A tribute to the Pinball Gods,” Meg called it—but not before putting our hands together like football players breaking a huddle, letting out one final cheer. Annoyed looks from late afternoon diners greeted us as we came through the back-room door into the restaurant. George, scrambling eggs with his left hand, flipping burgers with his right, working his short order grill like Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic, smiled one of his rare smiles, shaking his head, never missing a beat.
Toby and I turned right out the door, heading for the Physics Department. Meg, hurrying because she was late for an SMC meeting, went left. After a few steps, she spun around, and walking backwards, called out, “Hey, party tonight at number 5 Hope. Be there or be square!” Toby and I stopped as though we’d smacked into an invisible wall, looked over our shoulders at Meg, and rolling our eyes, sarcastically chimed in perfect unison, “Seeya later, alligator!”