Sailing to Oblivium: June 12, 2017

They say it never thunders in San Francisco. It did that morning. It rumbled from the west past an old Chinese man and me. It moved on as if carried by the fog, and the man yawned. I leaned against a building, lit a cigarette, and thought about the unfairness of life.

We were standing on the Southeast corner of Haight and Masonic streets just before daylight. I don’t know where the other fellow was headed, but I was headed to the Contra-County bus terminal on Mission Street to catch a bus to the Bay Area Induction Center in Oakland. That’s where they determined if you were fit enough for the military draft. It wasn’t the happiest day of my life.

It was in the late summer of 1966. Anyone who has visited the City by the Bay understands Mark Twain’s saying that “The coldest winter I ever spent was the summer I spent in San Francisco.” I pulled a sheepskin lined jacket tighter and waited. On a normal day, I would be at this spot two hours later, waiting for the bus to take me to work at a Babcock and Wilcox office in the mission district just across, incidentally, from the terminal where I was now headed. I wasn’t going to work today, though.

These were interesting times in “The City.” In a few hours, hippies would fill the streets, centering on a now-famous intersection a block from where we waited. Later, in the afternoon, Ken Kessey and his band of “Merry Pranksters” would join the crowd around his bus, still parked in the Panhandle Park, across the street from my apartment.

By that afternoon I would know my fate. I had no doubts. Despite suffering from a terminal case of underachievement, I was healthy enough to be sent to die in the jungles of Vietnam. The underachievement part didn’t bother General Westmorland, Lyndon Johnson, or Robert McNamara. My body was warm and I could breathe on my own. That’s all that mattered.

Despite my laconic nature, I had worked my way through a college degree. The last semester I had worked two part-time jobs and carried 18 hours with grades high enough to have me re-classified as fit for cannon fodder. With my degree in hand, and my life ahead of me, I could look forward to a variety of choices: Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, or Coast Guard.

I passed, of course, but I managed to stay in the city a couple of months longer. Then I was off for the seminal adventure of my life, one I wouldn’t do again for a million dollars, nor would I take a million dollars to have not done it. I’m sure there are other old farts around who feel the same way.

One who didn’t enjoy the adventure now serves as our president. To paraphrase the late Hunter S. Thompson, the 45th President of the United States never bought the ticket and he never took the ride. You didn’t have to if you had the right connections, and he had connections that have taken him all the way to the White House. I now read where he says he will make the country “great again” but he doesn’t elaborate, except to assure us that it will be … well … great.

As for me, I’m still looking for the time period that this greatness will replicate. I mean, I’d like the exact year and all that.  As of June 12, 2017, all the news has done the last week is remind me of that foggy morning on Haight Street, so many years ago. Nobody has suggested an exact date for this glorious time—this year of living greatly. I do know one thing, though.

It sure as hell wasn’t 1966.

At the beach in San Francisco. Just waiting.