War and Peace
On most of my adventures, nobody ended up in jail. And nobody got scalded.
In the early 1960s, when I was coming of military age, a young man had certain calculations to make. By law, on your 18th birthday, it was time to register for the draft, the "Selective Service System". Between that time and your 26th birthday, you were required to carry a draft card, and you could be called into the Army. I had turned 18 in the Coquille jail.
One option was to enlist for two years in the service of your choice, and get your "Military Obligation" out of the way, then go on with your life. Another option was to join the reserves in your chosen branch. The reserve option took a commitment of six years, with weekend drills and yearly training exercises. Your unit might never get called up to active duty. After that you would be free to go on with your life. A third option was the easiest, you went on with your life and you took your chances with the draft.
Dave McCrary and Nicky Knickerbocker were a couple years older than me and took the "get-it-over-with" option. They joined the Army on the buddy system. They were both back within six months, one discharged for contracting pneumonia in Korea, and the other for being allergic to wool blankets. My journey would take a good bit longer.
In 1961 war seemed a far away possibility. WW II had ended 16 years before, then the smaller scale Korean War came to an end 6 years before. We were just kids fresh out of high school and had little awareness of the details of the geopolitics of the time. We knew the big strokes the "Cold War" nuclear standoff, and the Iron Curtain dividing Europe, but we knew little of the proxy armed struggles going on all across the globe. We had no inkling of a war that would require us to be drafted. We were given the expectation was that modern warfare in our lifetimes would be conducted with rocket launches at long distance and likely end in a worldwide nuclear conflagration.
At UCSB, undergraduate males were required to participate in ROTC, in the form of a 1/2 unit class in Military Science. We were issued Army uniforms, and on Thursdays we were required to show up in front of the Military Science building for drills and marching with guns. The class as I remember it, got us accustomed to handling an M-1 rifle, familiarity with its operation, how to take it apart and put it back together; and how to open the empty chamber for inspection, and close it without getting your thumb mangled. I participated in 1961, but by the time I would return in 1963, the program had been ended.
Back in Southern California once again, I went down to see my father in Los Angeles. After he had gone bankrupt and left Carpinteria, he had a rough couple of years before old business associates set him up to manage an historic old hotel in downtown. In its day, the Ingraham Hotel had been an upscale establishment in the heart of the city near MacArthur Park. Its claim to fame was that it had been the venue for Richard Nixon's wedding. In 1962, he was running it as a residence hotel mostly for old guys on Social Security. The smell of tobacco smoke permeated the building and everything in it. Typical of my father, he ran things with kindness and a sense of humor. A sign on the front desk read "Grouchy People Keep Out!" His job was just to maintain the building and a keep small revenue stream until it was demolished for a new high rise to be built in its place.
I answered ads in the classified section of the LA Times. They were mostly sales jobs, like the "Great Books" series, which was sold door to door. It was a depressing set of options. When an ad appeared in the Santa Barbara newspaper for something a little different, I drove up and answered it. Got the job. The next year the Ingraham was torn down, and my dad moved to Las Vegas, where he stayed the rest of his life.
The ad was from Santa Barbara realtor named William Bostick Hackett III; Bill Hackett. He just wanted a gofer to do odd jobs for him, and to study for a real estate salesman's license. The tasks were like taking classified ads to the News Press offices; like placing "For Sale" and "For Rent" signs where they were needed; a couple times I collected rents, and once I rented a tractor just like the one my dad taught me to drive in 1955 Northridge, and knocked down the weeds on a vacant lot that he had up for sale.
For the real estate license, you have to declare your criminal record. I had to consider the status of my arrest in Oregon. As far as I knew we had "jumped bail", and I might have a problem. I contacted the court up there. They said that my bail had been forfeited when I didn't show up and that was the end of it. No big deal.
I had only worked as a real estate gofer for about a month when Bill called me into his office.
It was May. He said that a friend of his was running for congress in the Democratic primary election in June, and he was going to drop the real estate business and help run the campaign. So for the next month, if I wanted, I could be a campaign gofer.
Bill's friend was Vernon Johnson. I knew something about this guy. He was a Santa Barbara legend back when I was in High School. Here's his story as I described in Anti-Gravity Device Company:
"This man may have saved us all from nuclear annihilation. In September of 1959, Nikita Khrushchev, premier of the Soviet Union, was visiting the United States. The premier had in his power the ability to set off World War III, a worldwide conflagration.
"I was in high school in Carpinteria at the time. Khrushchev would be passing through town on a train. The press was reporting that he was miffed by not being allowed to visit Disneyland due to security concerns, and generally having a rotten time in Los Angeles, with crowds of protestors throwing tomatoes at his limousine and in the dust-up about that in the days that followed, a grumpy Khrushchev was taking his planned high security train trip up our scenic coast. He was having a very bad time.
"Escorted by helicopters, a two-train caravan rumbled on through town and on toward Santa Barbara. It was strange. This was the man who had proclaimed to the West, "We will bury you," a year before. At school, fire drills routinely alternated with nuclear attack drills. This was the man whose bombs we practiced ducking under our desks to shield ourselves from. Two years earlier, the USSR had launched their Sputnik satellite, the first man-made object in earth orbit. The American space efforts were definitely behind, and it was proof that our foremost Cold War adversary could deliver a nuclear bomb to anyplace in the world. This was the man who could make the order. He was riding through town on a sunny September Sunday, and it didn't seem fearful. I watched him go by down where the little railroad bridge crosses Carpinteria Creek near the ocean. I was lying on the ice-plant-covered sand dune at the beach camp, and there he goes: the great bogeyman.
"In Santa Barbara, it was wondered if he would be in a good enough mood to even get off the train to greet local dignitaries. When the train stopped it was reported that he sat there glowering until he had became aware of a smiling bearded face in the crowd. Only then did he decide to get off the train. He got out, and after a perfunctory shaking of hands with the mayor; he oddly singled out the man in the crowd who looked interesting to him, the man with a short white beard. They had a brief exchange through an interpreter in which the bearded one welcomed him to Santa Barbara and expressed an interest in visiting Russia. And the chairman of the Union of Soviet Socialists Republic said, to the effect, "Come on over."
Khrushchev's mood was decidedly elevated by this short conversation, and World War III never happened."
"The following year this man, Vernon Johnson, with his wife and eight kids, left California on a personal good will mission, driving across the U.S, then a ship to Italy, then driving up through Europe and on to a momentary encounter with Khrushchev in Moscow. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, just two years later, his finger hovered over the doomsday button. How could he incinerate the Johnsons?
"It was a very bizarre but far-sighted thing to be doing at the height of the Cold War, to be cutting through the crap like that. In the public schools there were entire programs of political paranoia coaching us as to how to spot propaganda being directed at us (we learned, all right); with fire drills we marched outside and lined up on the playground; with nuclear blast drills we dove under our desks "keep your backs to the windows, there will be flying glass and an eyeball destroying blinding flash." So in the midst of the hysteria about the Russian-atheist-Communist-menace, one guy turns to his wife and says, "Why don't we load all the kids in a bus and go half way around the world and see for ourselves?" And she says, "OK", and off they go.
"Well, after a while they come back alive and were a feature in the local newspaper for a time, but then I didn't hear about them for a few years. I'm not sure when, but they next came on my radar they were central in building a village of small non-code structures in the area of Hollister Ranch where they were experimenting with different communal arrangements, another ahead-of-the-times thing to be doing in the early sixties, until the Sheriff's Department, Health Department and Building Department showed up to close them down. They were non-conformists, like beatniks, only optimistic. They were hippies before the word had been coined. Bohemians you might say, free thinkers. Life as an experimental adventure."
The sixties were just beginning and I was getting glimpses of what could be. When Vern Johnson lost the primary, Bill Hackett closed his office down and I was unemployed, but I knew what to do...See if Dave wants to go surfing in Mexico.
Copyright © 2022 John Oliver
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com
In the early 1960s, when I was coming of military age, a young man had certain calculations to make. By law, on your 18th birthday, it was time to register for the draft, the "Selective Service System". Between that time and your 26th birthday, you were required to carry a draft card, and you could be called into the Army. I had turned 18 in the Coquille jail.
One option was to enlist for two years in the service of your choice, and get your "Military Obligation" out of the way, then go on with your life. Another option was to join the reserves in your chosen branch. The reserve option took a commitment of six years, with weekend drills and yearly training exercises. Your unit might never get called up to active duty. After that you would be free to go on with your life. A third option was the easiest, you went on with your life and you took your chances with the draft.
Dave McCrary and Nicky Knickerbocker were a couple years older than me and took the "get-it-over-with" option. They joined the Army on the buddy system. They were both back within six months, one discharged for contracting pneumonia in Korea, and the other for being allergic to wool blankets. My journey would take a good bit longer.
In 1961 war seemed a far away possibility. WW II had ended 16 years before, then the smaller scale Korean War came to an end 6 years before. We were just kids fresh out of high school and had little awareness of the details of the geopolitics of the time. We knew the big strokes the "Cold War" nuclear standoff, and the Iron Curtain dividing Europe, but we knew little of the proxy armed struggles going on all across the globe. We had no inkling of a war that would require us to be drafted. We were given the expectation was that modern warfare in our lifetimes would be conducted with rocket launches at long distance and likely end in a worldwide nuclear conflagration.
At UCSB, undergraduate males were required to participate in ROTC, in the form of a 1/2 unit class in Military Science. We were issued Army uniforms, and on Thursdays we were required to show up in front of the Military Science building for drills and marching with guns. The class as I remember it, got us accustomed to handling an M-1 rifle, familiarity with its operation, how to take it apart and put it back together; and how to open the empty chamber for inspection, and close it without getting your thumb mangled. I participated in 1961, but by the time I would return in 1963, the program had been ended.
Back in Southern California once again, I went down to see my father in Los Angeles. After he had gone bankrupt and left Carpinteria, he had a rough couple of years before old business associates set him up to manage an historic old hotel in downtown. In its day, the Ingraham Hotel had been an upscale establishment in the heart of the city near MacArthur Park. Its claim to fame was that it had been the venue for Richard Nixon's wedding. In 1962, he was running it as a residence hotel mostly for old guys on Social Security. The smell of tobacco smoke permeated the building and everything in it. Typical of my father, he ran things with kindness and a sense of humor. A sign on the front desk read "Grouchy People Keep Out!" His job was just to maintain the building and a keep small revenue stream until it was demolished for a new high rise to be built in its place.
I answered ads in the classified section of the LA Times. They were mostly sales jobs, like the "Great Books" series, which was sold door to door. It was a depressing set of options. When an ad appeared in the Santa Barbara newspaper for something a little different, I drove up and answered it. Got the job. The next year the Ingraham was torn down, and my dad moved to Las Vegas, where he stayed the rest of his life.
The ad was from Santa Barbara realtor named William Bostick Hackett III; Bill Hackett. He just wanted a gofer to do odd jobs for him, and to study for a real estate salesman's license. The tasks were like taking classified ads to the News Press offices; like placing "For Sale" and "For Rent" signs where they were needed; a couple times I collected rents, and once I rented a tractor just like the one my dad taught me to drive in 1955 Northridge, and knocked down the weeds on a vacant lot that he had up for sale.
For the real estate license, you have to declare your criminal record. I had to consider the status of my arrest in Oregon. As far as I knew we had "jumped bail", and I might have a problem. I contacted the court up there. They said that my bail had been forfeited when I didn't show up and that was the end of it. No big deal.
I had only worked as a real estate gofer for about a month when Bill called me into his office. It was May. He said that a friend of his was running for congress in the Democratic primary election in June, and he was going to drop the real estate business and help run the campaign. So for the next month, if I wanted, I could be a campaign gofer.
Bill's friend was Vernon Johnson. I knew something about this guy. He was a Santa Barbara legend back when I was in High School. Here's his story as I described in Anti-Gravity Device Company:
"This man may have saved us all from nuclear annihilation. In September of 1959, Nikita Khrushchev, premier of the Soviet Union, was visiting the United States. The premier had in his power the ability to set off World War III, a worldwide conflagration.
"I was in high school in Carpinteria at the time. Khrushchev would be passing through town on a train. The press was reporting that he was miffed by not being allowed to visit Disneyland due to security concerns, and generally having a rotten time in Los Angeles, with crowds of protestors throwing tomatoes at his limousine and in the dust-up about that in the days that followed, a grumpy Khrushchev was taking his planned high security train trip up our scenic coast. He was having a very bad time.
"Escorted by helicopters, a two-train caravan rumbled on through town and on toward Santa Barbara. It was strange. This was the man who had proclaimed to the West, "We will bury you," a year before. At school, fire drills routinely alternated with nuclear attack drills. This was the man whose bombs we practiced ducking under our desks to shield ourselves from. Two years earlier, the USSR had launched their Sputnik satellite, the first man-made object in earth orbit. The American space efforts were definitely behind, and it was proof that our foremost Cold War adversary could deliver a nuclear bomb to anyplace in the world. This was the man who could make the order. He was riding through town on a sunny September Sunday, and it didn't seem fearful. I watched him go by down where the little railroad bridge crosses Carpinteria Creek near the ocean. I was lying on the ice-plant-covered sand dune at the beach camp, and there he goes: the great bogeyman.
"In Santa Barbara, it was wondered if he would be in a good enough mood to even get off the train to greet local dignitaries. When the train stopped it was reported that he sat there glowering until he had became aware of a smiling bearded face in the crowd. Only then did he decide to get off the train. He got out, and after a perfunctory shaking of hands with the mayor; he oddly singled out the man in the crowd who looked interesting to him, the man with a short white beard. They had a brief exchange through an interpreter in which the bearded one welcomed him to Santa Barbara and expressed an interest in visiting Russia. And the chairman of the Union of Soviet Socialists Republic said, to the effect, "Come on over." Khrushchev's mood was decidedly elevated by this short conversation, and World War III never happened."
"The following year this man, Vernon Johnson, with his wife and eight kids, left California on a personal good will mission, driving across the U.S, then a ship to Italy, then driving up through Europe and on to a momentary encounter with Khrushchev in Moscow. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, just two years later, his finger hovered over the doomsday button. How could he incinerate the Johnsons?
"It was a very bizarre but far-sighted thing to be doing at the height of the Cold War, to be cutting through the crap like that. In the public schools there were entire programs of political paranoia coaching us as to how to spot propaganda being directed at us (we learned, all right); with fire drills we marched outside and lined up on the playground; with nuclear blast drills we dove under our desks "keep your backs to the windows, there will be flying glass and an eyeball destroying blinding flash." So in the midst of the hysteria about the Russian-atheist-Communist-menace, one guy turns to his wife and says, "Why don't we load all the kids in a bus and go half way around the world and see for ourselves?" And she says, "OK", and off they go.
"Well, after a while they come back alive and were a feature in the local newspaper for a time, but then I didn't hear about them for a few years. I'm not sure when, but they next came on my radar they were central in building a village of small non-code structures in the area of Hollister Ranch where they were experimenting with different communal arrangements, another ahead-of-the-times thing to be doing in the early sixties, until the Sheriff's Department, Health Department and Building Department showed up to close them down. They were non-conformists, like beatniks, only optimistic. They were hippies before the word had been coined. Bohemians you might say, free thinkers. Life as an experimental adventure."
The sixties were just beginning and I was getting glimpses of what could be. When Vern Johnson lost the primary, Bill Hackett closed his office down and I was unemployed, but I knew what to do...See if Dave wants to go surfing in Mexico.
Copyright © 2022 John Oliver
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com