CHAPTER 127 POETRY AND NON-PEACE 1970
He wrote me on January 24 concerning this rumor.
“I better tell you a little about this supposed to be pullout of the 1st Division. The latest word we heard was if you weren’t about to go home anyway you wouldn’t be going. What they are doing is taking people from other divisions who are just about finished their tour and putting them in the 1st division for the pull out. The amount of first division people going is about 2%. The rest of us will be transferred to new divisions. I know for the people back home this will be very disappointing, many of us feel the same way. The thing that gets me is how they can tell all the people back home these things knowing they aren’t true. Oh, some of the 1st Division is leaving, but all of its men are staying and being put in new units. So now all I can do is resume my old count down and hope the time goes fast. By the way I am down to 163 days now.”
“Clean Gene” was the first person I heard to verify what Joe had written, that the withdraw was not a true withdraw because the troops who came home were coming home anyway since their tour was up.
Joe Rubio noted on the plus side he had been promoted to E-5 Sergeant. His brother John arrived in Germany on January 10.
At this point in my life I had become very left wing politically. I was frankly almost an anarchist and Joe’s reveals about what was going on in the Army only made me feel more antigovernment. Adding to my distrust and disgust with our leaders was the trash crisis then going on in Philadelphia. The collectors had gone on strike when the Mayor named a new Commissioner without consulting the union. Trash and garbage was piling up about the city and spilling over the pavements. Meanwhile, there was no decent school system in the city, no smooth transportation and no entertainment to speak of, and a policeman named Rizzo was becoming far too powerful. I viewed Rizzo as a threat to freedom and justice and that he was wrong in thinking his heavy handed tactics would cure crime.
I actually began writing a novel about this period called sometimes “Red-Moon Rapist”and other times, “Night of the Red Moon.” This almost seems like a predecessor of the future Tom Wolfe novel, “Bonfires of the Vanities”. It was concerning a Philadelphia man who is accused of a murder-rape in West Philadelphia. He is arrested in an Adult Theater and the prosecutor claims he was influenced by pornography. The Mayor is modeled after Rizzo and sees this of a way to foster his extreme law and order policies. The crime has been hyped in the media and the citizenry is up in arms for the accused to be made an example of. The District Attorney is up for election and sees this as a campaign opportunity. An ambition preacher is also calling for a swift conviction and execution on moral grounds. I never finished this novel.
The year before (1969) I finished a semi-autobiographic novel and Richard Wilson and myself (called within it “Eric Walters and Frank Marsh). It was adventured based on Richard’s purchase of a cheap car from an old guys in the sticks. It was called “Forty-Dollar Car.”
The next was identical to the last, except more narrow. Each street taken was less wide than the lest. Any more contraction the car would not fit. Frank pic
tured the Ford stuck halfway down an alley, the tires squished against the curbing.
“Stop by the green house.”
There were five green houses all in a row.
“Which one?”
Three had bud less rose buses. The bushes were neglected. They had been left unprotected through the winter months..Many of the branches were broken down.
“Which bush, Eric?”
“The one you just passed.”
Frank backed, his tires bumping one curb or the other. Once he jumped the concrete curb and drove across a grass patch, falling back to the street surface with a jarring bump. Frank backed pass the indicated rose bushes, then pulled forward onto a gravel driveway. At the end of the drive was a wooden garage propped up with clothes poles.
Excerpt from Forty-Dollar Car.
In 1970 the country seemed about to explode; in fact, there were a number of bombing: two in Maryland, one in Pittsburgh, one in Wisconsin, three in California and four in New York all within the space of two weeks. On March 13 there had been 400 bomb scares in New York alone.
On Easter, March 15, it snowed in the morning at the rate of 2 inches an hour before changing over to rain and hail, then back to snow that dropped another 5 inches of white stuff. I still had no job and our car would not start. My dad came into Philly and picked us up and we stayed at my parents through dinner. Dad took us home around 8:00 PM.
It was an unpredictable stormy March in mores way than one.
published in an anthology they were planning. My poetry had been published here and there, including readings on a weekly radio show called Personal Poetry, hosted by David Allen. It was broadcast on WEFG-Stereo out of Winchester, Virginia.
The Anthology was published later in the year, a 301 page
hardbound book sampling a number of American poets. It was called Dance of the Muse: A Treasury of Modern Poetry. It was published by Young Publications, Appalachia, Virginia and edited by Jeanne Hollyfield. Two of my poems were included in the volume, “Touching” and “Song in the Graveyard”.
I have walked the winter
In great distances of snow,
Where the waterfalls stood mute
And were turned to crystal
And I have touched it.
I have stood at autumn
In the mountains far away
And seen the sunsets of Heaven
Blazing like candied fruit
And I have touched it.
I have walked ocean shores
With the waters cold and warm
And seen the cotton tufts of waves
That know the entire world
And I have touched it.
Excerpt from “Touching”
Dance of the Muse:
A Collection of Modern American Verse
Young Publications 1970
Jeanne Hollyfield, editor
Appalachia, Va.
In my Chap Book: Days of Despondency. (1978)
In early May I received a letter from Joe Rubio asking what I thought of Nixon sending troops into Cambodia. I didn’t write him back immediately because I couldn’t afford stamps.
Meanwhile, the violence in the states continued to percolate. On
May 4, students at Kent State in Ohio held a protest against the U.S. incursion into Cambodia. Several members of the National Guard were there to keep order, They failed their mission miserably.
Instead of maintaining peace, they opened fire, most shooting into the ground, but some fired into the crowd and four students were killed and nine additional were wounded, one of whom was left paralyzed. This garnered much media coverage and became something of a symbol of the times, especially the image of a female student on her knees wailing over a fallen body lying on the pavement.
Mississippi, a predominately Black College were also protesting the war in Cambodia. When a rumor was circulated that Medger Evers brother, Charles Evers and his wife had been killed, the students rioted, setting fires and throwing rocks at passing cars. Fireman trying to control the fires called for police backup. The Jackson police, State Troopers and the National Guard descended on the campus. Chaos apparently resulted and the police opened fire, killing two and injuring 11. The Jackson State Massacre didn’t get the media attention that Kent State received and is sort of forgotten today, but it was one more indication of the tensions and violence of those times.
From my letter to Joe dated May 17: We’re used to getting casually figures from Vietnam, now we get them from the home front as well. Four students at Kent State in Ohio, 11 at Jackson State in Mississippi, instances of confrontation, colleges closed down, construction workers attacking student demonstrators on Wall Street, etc, and so forth. Our country is losing its cool; going out of its collective head, who is talking sense anymore? Hardly anyone. And there isn’t a soul listening.”
On May 11 Joe Rubio became one of the troops sent into Cambodia, where he remained until the 14th.
Have we really progressed much?
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