Now I'm skipping around chronologically, since the past inhabits and illuminates the present.
It's remarkable how a single word can remind you of a whole story. This morning I was thinking about the dietary rules I
have to observe, not for religious reasons but for health ones. The word "glatt," which I think means "smooth" in Yiddish, is a kind of super-kashrut, or "kosher on steroids." This reminded me of my old friend John Blank (not the one in Portland, whom I still know, but the one from San Diego and Los Angeles, whom I knew in the 1960s).
John was hanging out with me in San Francisco, after having received a draft notice. He was probably the most ill-suited person for the military that I have ever known. He didn't know what to do, and ended up flying from SF to NYC to consult with the Lubavitcher Rebbe. He hoped to get some kind of letter that would excuse him from military service, but the Rebbe did not comply, and John was on his own.
John went to his appointment with Uncle Sam, and was drafted. But John had a plan, a multifaceted one. One of the first things he did was tell the chaplain that he could only eat kosher food. Not just kosher, but "glatt kosher," "smooth kosher." He never told me the chaplain's response, though I can imagine several possibilities. Anyway, that didn't work.
While John was stationed at Fort Ord, near Monterey, for basic training, he went AWOL and visited me in SF. He had a bottle of vodka (which he pronounced more like "vodkee" or "vodkeh") in his duffel bag, and I assume he had been making use of it. I think this would have been in early 1967, and John wanted to go to a concert at the Fillmore Auditorium. So we got on the number 16 bus and went to the Fillmore.
John's plan, at this point, was to get into so much trouble that they wouldn't want him. He got on the bus and went back to Ft. Ord and turned himself in as AWOL. Apparently they hadn't even missed him, and had little to say about it. He was still batting zero.
Next, John told the chaplain that he had to have time for his prayers. The chaplain told him that he could do it in the bathroom. This infuriated John, since it contravened all the rules of purity.
Having exhausted his avenues of argument with the chaplain, John made an appointment with the base psychologist. By now John had been in the Army for two or three months. He had refused to carry a rifle, but he could play some instrument, so they had put him in the band. Anyway, when he went into the psychologist's office he acted as crazy as he could and told the shrink that he wanted to kill someone. This time, they believed him. He was given a general discharge.
The last time I talked to John, he called me in the middle of the night from Seattle. I couldn't do anything for him, because Dan and Al were crashed on the floor of my small studio apartment and I was looking for what eventually would become a communal hippie-house.
I don't know if John is still on the planet, but if he is, I'd like to find him, and share a bottle of "vodkee" with him.
Text © 2020 by Donald C. Traxler aka Yakov Bloom Traxler.
