Once upon a time I was a
hippie. And as a hippie lad, making my way through high school in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s,
I remember hearing people calling me and others like me “Communist pinkos.” I also recall thinking
how ridiculous that sounded—to think that I was some kind of Soviet or
Red Chinese agent seemed like the most absurd and unlikely thing imaginable.
Mostly I just wanted to be left alone to go my own subcultural way. There were
many like me, adrift in Kumbaya-land
with our rebel music and assorted self-abnegation rites of liberation from
squaresville.
Yes, we smoked pot and
dabbled with other mind-altering substances. We rationalized that if the ding-bat
adults around us were getting rip-roaring drunk on booze, we had a right to choose
our own ways of coping too. And what was it we were trying to cope with? Mostly
it was the horror and guilt of Vietnam. But it was a lot more than that too. We
sensed the wrongness of things around
us. We felt assaulted by a cold mindlessness that was stupid and abrasive, unhip and uncool. The altruistic among us felt the world needed more love and
that we should actively try to get better at understanding each other; those
oriented more to unrestrained self-indulgence just got high a lot and felt they
were owed a better world. In fact, getting high, self-medicating ourselves, was
about all we could do; when straight society seemed so stacked against us our
best defense seemed to be to numb ourselves with something, anything, to ease
the pain of our separation and alienation. In fact, that’s exactly what we
were—an alien-nation-within-a-nation.
Again, to be called a “Communist”
was so bizarre. Imagining that Communists came over here (or that home-grown, American
Communists were among us) in order to agitate and steer us kids in a Communist direction
seemed absolutely ludicrous. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Just before starting high
school, when I was 13-years old I wanted to work at River Bowl, the bowling
alley behind our house. The owner was a Mr. Rodock, but we called him “Lumphead”
because he had a very visible cyst on his bald head. He gave me a job
application. I brought it home and was filling it out in the kitchen when I
came across this question: Are you now or
have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? It seemed like a really
weird question. I recall asking my father about it. He laughed it off and made
fun of it, as I recall, which only added fuel to my general befuddlement about
the whole “Communist thing.” It seemed like that was another world somewhere
far away; some stupid ideological craze that appealed to, e.g., the “VietCong.”
I got the job in the bowling
alley and was assigned to clean each of the 50 pin-setting machines. Right
after I finished cleaning the last machine, the owner told me he couldn’t keep
me on because I was too young. (I looked older than I really was.) Maybe Mr. Rodock
didn’t notice my age on the app—or maybe he just wanted the machines cleaned
quickly and cheaply. Who knows?
Well, I quickly sought out another
part-time job. (Of course I was now wise to the System.) There was a 7-11
further down River Road. 7-11s are franchise operations. In those days it was owned
and run by the Southland Corporation located somewhere in Texas. Ice slush
drinks called Slurpees were all the rage back then and unlimited free Slurpees
were an employee perk. This time, when I applied to work at the local 7-11, I
gave them my older brother’s name and social security number. The boss
immediately handed me a price stamper and set me to work.
It was 1967. The boss, or franchise
owner, was one Bill Herrmann: a salt-of-the-earth comedian. He had been a sergeant
in the army who, I came to learn later, had been booted out for “psychological
reasons.” Bill knew how to manage men and ran a tight ship. He was a master at
humorous chit-chat and he had a loyal following of early morning regulars who
stopped in for coffee on their way to work in D.C. They would stand around for
a while so they could listen to his daily feed. It was all just good ol’ boy talk
and joking around—a chummy sort of bonding talk they lobbed. But I remember
feeling that it had a strange internal logic to it; there was a good-natured
sensibility that emanated from pontificator Bill Herrmann and his amused
sychophants. And I, too, was an admirer. He was Jonathan Winters with a tinge
of Rodney Dangerfield. I loved him.
As the name “7-11” implies,
the store opened for business at 7 AM. On the weekends, in the mornings, once things got squared away and before
many customers came in, he would counsel me in his down-home way. He would ask
me questions, essentially about how I viewed the world around me—about Vietnam,
women, etc., always probing. And then he’d offer unsolicited advice,
sociological in nature, and hard-won from his own unvarnished life. His
comebacks were priceless. Bill had what seemed like a bottomless grab-bag of
sayings, phrases and jokes. Still, on the semi-serious side, he really was a
keen observer of the human condition.
I remember one morning in
particular he went on for quite some time saying how war was just all about
jobs and corporate profits, and that Vietnam was nothing but a huge,
distracting jobs program run by politicians for the ultimate benefit of
businessmen. I had never heard anything like that before, at home or anywhere
else. Bill’s no-nonsense political sensibility sent my mind reeling more than
once. He helped me to see things in a simpler and very real way, instead of the sugar-coated, media-popular viewpoints
that were presented as hopelessly complicated and irreconcilable. He was a homespun
philosopher getting through middle age and the radically changed liberal society
as best he could. And he poked fun at my leanings toward this new counter-culture
that was slowly but surely claiming me.
And so, I would go on through
high school as a socio-cultural hipster mug who, none-the-less, meant well; a
superficial philosopher hippie king who embraced old ‘50s cars, and a hedonistic
lifestyle that revolved around being cool and trying to get laid. I never
thought that I was a Communist—never; and I never thought that my progressive
views that accepted “liberation movements,” birth control and abortion, ultra-tolerant
moral relativism, etc., were anything unnatural or evil.
At least I knew what it was
to work. I always liked to work. And, as described above, I would experience
countervailing notions to my family’s own “progressivism” by being out in the
workforce.
On my mother’s side, my
grandfather grew up as a farm boy, but studied engineering and then went out
and made something of himself as a business entrepreneur. He and my grandmother
were frugal. They scrimped and saved and eventually my grandfather was able to retire
at 55. His main occupation from then on was carefully watching his investments
in the stock market while continuing to live a frugal life. Both grandparents were
simple and sensible folks. The lessons my grandfather learned along the way
made him a life-long, conservative Republican. He was also a practicing
Catholic.
A favorite aunt, my mother’s
sister, was also imbued with strong conservative and Catholic convictions. Aunt Janet was another force that helped me question the whole liberal shooting
gallery that most young people in society were buying into whole hog.
Thus, I had some strong traditionalist
influences along the rocky road of misadventure upon which I had already set my
sights.
As I groped my way up the
ladder of education and work experience, I never heard of the “community organizer”
(i.e., Communist) Saul Alinksy. But the counter-culture taught me to admire “revolutionaries”
such as Che Guevara and Abbie Hoffman, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Eldridge
Cleaver. Even brainwashed Patty Hearst exuded a sort of romantic rebel aura.
These, and of course our beloved rock musicians and certain Hollywood and TV actors,
were supposed to be and were our new
heroes.
But I never, ever wanted to
be a Communist. To me, anyone identifying as a Communist was an idiot embracing
a failed system. Of course, I was quick to critique my own Western capitalistic
model as defective too, but not irredeemably so as with Communism, which was
antithetical to liberty from the get-go. No, capitalism was humanity’s natural
economic inclination and should be fostered and protected, if need be, by
regulation. Individuals had the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness; to property. That was firmly engrained in my mind then and
remains so today.
Even so, for years to come there
remained an unresolved, on-the-fence attitude toward conservatism and tradition.
My psyche seemed to be a jumbled composite of all sorts of stuff. For over 50
years I remained “progressively”-oriented overall with just a healthy dash of
skepticism. Never one to embrace extremes, it seemed more prudent to stay in a
limbo-like, middle-of-the-road socio-cultural and political state of mind.
Slowly, however, I began to notice how I was being manipulated.
Since the ‘60s I had been at
least dimly aware of the covert activities of our own intelligence agencies,
especially the CIA. Like many others, by the ‘70s I too began hearing about its
nefarious mind-control programs, never quite making the connection it had with
the System, particularly the media. In those days I was still a TV watcher. But
as I weaned myself away from TV my mind began to heal itself. I soon began to
question everything that I had been taught to believe about the world and
reality—except for the nature of Communism, that is. The trouble was, I only knew
the kind of overt Communism that’s shown on TV and in the movies, and was much
less sensitized to its more subtle aspects (often referred to as “cultural
Marxism”). But I was waking up. Good Lord, was I waking up…(to be continued)
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