Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
or six bucks was the same as twenty-five today bucks. He paid, chump change to save a life.
He'd plucked my copy from a case of books and folded it back to the 1001
st
way to beat the
drat:
Learn to chew tobacco with your asshole and keep a chaw tucked in your cheek. When the
proctologist tells you to turn around, bend and spread, do as instructed. When he comes in close,
spit tobacco juice right in his eye.
I laughed, on cue. What a visual. He was a family physician, practiced in delivering difficult
prognoses—so went our review of grim options in a series of sessions at his house. He as-
signed the topic, calling it the most important homework of anybody's education. We would
review and develop those ideas that seemed appealing, except for the last idea of chewing to-
bacco. “You're on your own there.” He chuckled. What a relief.
We reviewed choices and consequences, including sentencing patterns. That would be
prison sentencing. He called it a serious game; with luck we would avoid the dead serious.
In a short time packing up and heading north seemed like the best option, but an interim
option emerged. By refusing induction, civil rights and civil law would not be forfeit. Draft
counselors across America had focused on induction refusal in one place, clogging the court
dockets there, allowing more time for the God-forsaken war to end. The strategy was based
on faith that the madness must end, though it seemed eternal, without conscience.
It would be another fifteen years before Journey would capture the love that lingered for
San Francisco, an icon of the most lovable components of American culture, including toler-
ance and the informed intelligence to consider differences among people. San Franciso could
pluck heartstrings coast to coast on a reference of lights going down
in my city . . .
The tune recalls the love all around us in a lyric of refuge, rendering the essence of home,
as in home free. San Francisco made sense, so I—
we
—would make the pilgrimage, because
we belonged there . . .
Bolting to Canada was a last resort, to be implemented only after refusing induction in
San Francisco, the interim strategy. First off, we would attempt to avoid the Vietnam War by
failing the pre-induction physical. Here too draft counselors across the country ran the odds
on failing the physical. Strategy was based on statistics—all in the days of the telephone as the
single form of communication, when all phones were wired to walls. With no cell phones, no
internet, no email or social networking, no 24-hour news, no nothing but the fervor of a few
good women and men, we wended through the maze, feeling the love all around us where we
least expected it. This was justice in America in a compelling mobilization of conscientious
individuals. This was a golden, glowing opportunity of historical magnitude, realized.
In short, hippies were a phenomenon becoming a subculture around the Summer of Love
in '67. But in spite of non-conformity as a golden standard, nearly every inductee tried to fail
