Journal of a Naked Poet VIII

They say that if you remember the Sixties, you weren't there. I'm having some trouble putting events in their proper order, so I guess I was there.

In 1966 I started work for a stock brokerage firm on Montgomery Street (the "Wall Street of the West") in San Francisco. Once I had proved myself on the job (so well, in fact, that they made me a supervisor), I started growing a beard. This had more to do with Judaism than the Hippie thing, but I guess they were both factors. One day the Assistant Manager of the back office I worked in came over to my desk and asked me about the beard. I said, "it's part of my religion." He said, "I thought you were in a seminary, and all that." I had not anticipated that he would know about that (you had to be bondable in that job, so they investigated you very thoroughly). Thinking at lightning speed, I said,"Oh, you mean the yeshiva. Yeah, I tried that, but decided that it wasn't right for me." He went away and left me alone. But as time went on, two things happened: my beard got longer, and the Vietnam War heated up. The Manager (not his assistant) called me into his office and told me that some of the clients were complaining that, while their son was fighting in Vietnam, the brokerage firm was hiring hippies. I suggested that they move my work space to a spot where the clients coming to the window couldn't see me. That's what they did.

Why wasn't I fighting in Vietnam? I was neither 2-D (Divinity Student) nor 2-S (Student) after December 1964. Technically, I was available to be drafted, and had already been called in for two physicals, which I flunked because (wait for it) I was underweight. In '64 I would have been willing to go, in '66 not so sure, and by the time they called me for the last time, in 1970, they had also invaded Cambodia, and I had burned my draft card, so I don't think so.

I had protested various situations since the SNCC (Students' Non-violent Coordinating Committee)  time in 1964. In '66 I marched in an anti-Vietnam War demonstration, carrying a tambourine. It must have been a major demonstration, because my friend Mike and his then wife, Maureen, drove up from San Diego for it, with a young woman named Kirsten. She was an artist, and kind of dreamy and way out there. For some reason, I caught her imagination. Fortunately, they all had to go back to SD. Kirsten and I exchanged addresses. We even wrote to each other, using our artwork as a kind of code, because her father was extremely protective and suspicious. He also had some bucks, as the owner of an electronics firm.

The next year, on a visit to San Diego in July, I sat with Julie on the floor of her parents' home in Lemon Grove, as she taught me how to throw the I Ching. It was quite amazing, and when I got the hexagram Kou - Coming to Meet, I knew with certainty what was going to happen. It did.


Text © 2020 by Donald C.Traxler aka Donald Jacobson Traxler.