CHAPTER 8, Part Four: 1967- 1968 Seminal Years: How the counter culture, the Vietnam war, free speech, and civil rights affected the workplace.

Race riot in Detroit, 1967

The late sixties were seminal years in the US that had an impact on most of the Western world.  Though I was busy working and taking care of my kids, I was quite aware of what was going on.  We didn’t have a TV, but newspaper headlines, the alternative press, and radio news commentators screamed.  It was hard not to be informed.  In the summer of 1967 race riots broke out in Chicago, Brooklyn, Cleveland, Baltimore, Newark and Detroit; over three dozen people were killed.  35,000 anti-war protesters showed up at the Pentagon with over 600 arrests.  That same year, the Summer of Love launched in San Francisco. (See photo below, taken in Golden Gate Park.) Independent media encouraged people to come here and enjoy absolute freedom.  And thousands did, singing the Mamas & The Papas song ( a group from LA).“When You Come to San Francisco, Wear Flowers in Your Hair.” 

Summer of Love

One day, a friend and I were sitting on the wall bordering Crocker Plaza eating lunch when a flat bed truck pulled up and parked.  On it, long haired and bearded people in colorful clothes: tie-dye, bell bottoms, fringed leather and beaded headbands- sang and danced, playing guitars and whacking tambourines, stunning passing office-workers into jaw-dropping disbelief.   I heard people  say, “Oh, God, who let the freaks loose?!”  “I can’t believe this is happening in San Francisco- here [the financial district], especially!” and  “What is the world coming to?”  A sign on the truck bore the words “The San Francisco Mime Troupe."  

 A Mime Troupe early poster, 1967

A grinning Bill Graham, who managed the troupe at the time, stood in the center. (It was founded by mime/actor/writer R. G. Davis).  Above the music, he shouted and handed out flyers, exhorting people to come to their shows in the Geary Temple.   (The Geary Temple gained notoriety in the 1970s when it became Jim Jones' Peoples' Temple.  It was damaged in the 1989 earthquake and rebuilt into a post office.)    My friend and I were ecstatic, watching them and the reaction of dumb-founded workers.   Not too many years later, I would see Bill Graham at the Fillmore Auditorium, on the corner of Fillmore and Geary where to this day people flock to rock concerts.  As a producer of rock groups there and at the Avalon, he'd  be handing out apples from a barrel, on the stairs leading up to the ballroom.    
The people in my office rarely went out for lunch.  I asked the few who did if they saw the Mime Troupe on their flat-bed truck.  “No, but I heard all this noise.  I thought mimes didn’t talk.”  "What was going on?" some asked. When I told them, they shuddered and said they were glad they missed it.   Timothy Leary had it all backward, I thought-  with his mantra: “Tune in, turn on, drop out."  He felt people should drop out into what was called the counter-culture.  But to me, the people who dropped out seemed to be office workers.  The clueless- ignorant of major changes occurring in culture, the war in Vietnam, free speech, and civil rights in the late '60s.  These were not popular water cooler topics.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

In December, Dr. Benjamin Spock and Allen Ginsberg were arrested for protesting the war in front of a military recruiting center in New York.   The same day-March 16, 1968-as the horrendous My Lai massacre occurred in Vietnam Robert Kennedy announced he was running for President of the US, and Lyndon Johnson said he wasn’t.  Then on April 4, Martin Luther King was assassinated in a Memphis motel by James Earl Ray.  Here in San Francisco, Blacks rioted in Hunter’s Point in the south eastern part of the City.  Across town, several miles away in Eureka Valley, I was anxious about sending the kids to school, but I trusted officials to handle things peacefully, which they did.  The atmosphere was tense in the Financial District, but by the end of the day, it appeared things had calmed down.  The media ran with the news, interviewing everyone from politicians, religious leaders, and civil rights sympathizers.  Jesse Jackson was everywhere.

Once in a while, I had to go to the understaffed Marine underwriters’ department on the 7^th floor to get coverage information.  I talked to the supervisor, Jack Weinberg, an engaging, stocky, swarthy man who reminded me of the actor Rod Steiger whose films “The Illustrated Man” and “Dr. Zhivago” had just been in theatres. Jack dressed nattily in expensive, three-piece suits and colorful ties, and pastel or striped shirts with white collar and cuffs, setting him apart from the rest of the drones. Often, to relieve the boredom of my department, I would invent an excuse to go to his office where we’d chat and laugh about work, the hoops you were expected to jump through to get anything done, or just dish about co-workers. One Friday night, I met Gene at a bar on Castro (Eureka Valley was rapidly evolving into the gay Mecca it is today) a few blocks from my place.  Jack walked in through the crowd.   I had to look twice; Gene glanced at him, touched my shoulder and winked.  Jack was wearing a moss-colored, one-piece hot-pants outfit.  He looked at me.  His eyes widened and his mouth opened.  Then he grinned and put his finger to his lips.  I responded with the zipped lip gesture.  Like Gene, Jack would not have set off anyone’s “gaydar,” even in gay bars.  Much later, as the crowd got nosier, Gene left with Frankie.  Jack approached me.   He’d had more than a few drinks. 

                “I wanna make you a proposition,” he said, setting his drink on the bar and lighting up a cigarette.

                “A what?”  I laughed.

                “I’m serious,” he said.   

                “Okay, what?”

                “Look , hon, I have to go to the Juneau office for a few days to check out a new client.” 

                “Okay . . .”

    “I need a woman to accompany me as a foil.  I was wondering if you’d like to go.”   I didn’t say anything, but a thought flashed through my mind: what on earth do I have to wear to Alaska?  As though reading my mind, Jack went on, “I’ll have a huge expense account, so I can buy you whatever you need: fur coat, boots, a cocktail dress for the reception, shoes, anything.  So don’t worry.”

                “When?”

                “The date hasn’t been set yet.  You'd be perfect.  I can't think of anyone I'd rather have accompany me.”

                “Good, wonderful, because I’d love to go.  I’ve always wanted to go to Alaska.  It’ll be fun."
                 "I’ll let you know," he added. "You have some time to think about it."   I pictured myself in a gorgeous hooded fur and great-looking boots.  I would have to tell Lynn and make sure he was okay with taking care of the kids.

Robert Kennedy after he was shot. 

                One night few weeks later, on June 5, 1968, I turned on the TV to watch Robert Kennedy give his acceptance speech in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, after winning the California primary, and saw him assassinated.   I could not believe what I was seeing.  I was devastated as were the people in the US and around the world.  The shooter was Sirhan Sirhan, a stable boy at the Santa Anita racetrack, a Jordanian Christian who had issues with Kennedy's support for Israel.  He is currently in a prison in Coalinga. 

The MUZAK logo.

 I digress:   Several years earlier, some marketing firm and a team of so-called psychologists who studied worker behavior came up with the results: employees churned out more work when they listened to pre-recorded, piped in music.  The firm that nailed the contract for most businesses was MUZAK (which is still at it, by the way).  The “music” is pre-digested pop or a pabulum mix of instrumental scores from Broadway musicals, pop, and easy rock-  no vocals as they proved distracting.   The only place you could get away from it then was in the bathroom (not any more).  Even elevators were wired.
  The morning after Robert Kennedy’s assassination, I stepped into the elevator at work to the strains of “Everything’s Coming Up Roses!” walked to my desk to “Put on a Happy Face!”  I was livid.  I put my purse away, hung up my coat, and marched into the building engineer’s room, which, ironically, was MUZAK free.   The engineer was sitting at his desk with his back to me, reading The Chronicle.  I’d never met the guy.  I said, “Turn that crap off!  Don’t you have any sensitivity about what just happened?  Robert Kennedy was shot dead last night and you’re playing that?  Please, turn it off now!”  I didn’t wait for his response.  Soon as I closed the door behind me, I heard “S’Wonderful” cut off in mid-phrase.   Later, a co-worker looked up from her desk and said, “Gee, it’s quiet in here.  What happened to the music?”  “Thank God,” someone responded.  “I can’t stand that shit.”    The quiet lasted only a couple of days.  (The impact of Kennedy's assassination had more of an effect on the general public than King's as it was shown live on TV.)

 Back to Jack and Alaska:   I had to talk to him about marine coverage a few times, but he never again mentioned the Alaska trip.  I figured he’d had a lot to drink that night and regretted asking me.  Somehow, I knew not to bring it up.  Actually, I was relieved.  The last thing I wanted was to spend time with a bunch of drunk insurance men and their hair-sprayed wives and/or mistresses in a remote place like Juneau where I couldn't just hop on my bike or catch a bus home.  Those business junkets wind-up as drunken orgies, anyway.  And, I’ve never been away from my kids for too long and didn’t feel comfortable leaving them in Lynn’s care.                             

Cops beating protesters at the Convention.

 In late August, at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, about 10,000 anti-war demonstrators clashed with a thousand Chicago police, FBI and CIA agents; a few thousand National Guard, and  US.  Army troops.  Bystanders and the press were also beaten.    In November Nixon and Agnew were elected President and Veep, against Hubert Humphrey and Edward Muskie, who ran on a pro-war platform.  The next day, students struck at SF State University followed in 1969 by college student strikes across the country.

NEXT:  Part Five ends Chapter 8:  Against the backdrop of the conviction and sentencing of the killers of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the Black Panthers vs. police, and hippies attacked by National Guard; the Branch Manager opens a telegram addressed to me from Time Magazine.  And men on the moon; Woodstock, Altamont, Stonewall riots, the end of segregation; head honchos arrive from the main office in New York and wreak havoc on many of us.  I’m on my way out.   Again.   My choice.   And more.