Take One: I am working as a reporter in Riverside, California, a member of the establishment media I blasted as an undergraduate activist. Alicia and I pass ourselves off as a married couple in order to sublet a cottage in graduate students’ housing on the UC Riverside campus. I like having a desk and press card; I like being able to go anywhere and talk to anyone.
Take Two: A group of parents stack a School Board meeting to oppose renaming a school after Martin Luther King; another group pickets the newspaper’s liberal bias in covering the Farm Workers strike. The editors suspect there is an organized movement pulling the strings, and they ask me to publish a reactionary letter in our own newspaper, under a pseudonym, to see if I can draw them out. One day, I am playing my guitar in our cottage when a representative from The White Citizen’s Council pays a surprise visit. They would be thrilled to have a college student like me on their team. He explains that they recruit people by reading letters to the editor, conducting phony telephone surveys, and going to community meetings.
Take Three: I go up to the roof of the newspaper building at 3 p.m. and watch the smog roll in from L.A. The two-digit temperature display on the bank near the bus station reads 99 everyday as I board the bus after work.
Take Four: I cover a folksinger’s visit to Chino State Prison. She sings Dylan’s “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” which includes the line, “And picking up angel who just arrived here from the Coast.” I interview a burly prisoner wearing the prison uniform of blue jeans and work shirt. He tells me he's a Hells Angel, and I ask if he’ll go back to the Angels when he gets out. He replies, “It’s a lifetime thing.” He has a question about one of the songs: “That thing about picking up the angel—was she singing about a Hells Angel?” I’m not sure what to say. “Yeah, you could interpret it that way. Yeah, you’re right.” His face softens. “That’s what I thought. I felt a touch of apathy in my chest when I heard that.”
Take Five: Alicia and I listen to the radio as Neil Armstrong walks on the moon. We go outside and stare at the moon with wonder. I can't fathom how humans made this possible, but know that the process started with the earliest people to walk the earth.
Take Six: I read wire service reports of Woodstock. I am glad to be 3,000 miles away because it sounds miserable.
Take Seven: On my own initiative, I interview some groundskeepers on strike at the University. They don’t have much to say about management, but take shots at the custodians, who are paid more than they are. Most of the custodians are black, the groundskeepers Chicanos. I don’t file the story.
Take Eight: I continue to meet with the White Citizen. I tell him I really think we should have guns, and he replies, “We don’t run a vigilante group because we don’t want to be susceptible to injunctions. We figure that people have common sense and that when the time comes they’ll know what to do.” I risk provoking him by asking him why Harry Belafonte seems so intelligent, and the White Citizen doesn’t flinch when he credits “white blood” as he strums my guitar. The editors are afraid that I am in danger, so they decide—over my objection—to wait until after I leave town before exposing the White Citizens Council. I am relieved.
Take Nine: On a 105-degree Saturday, I ask Alicia to take a picture of me reading with an egg “frying” on my bare stomach. She leans over and a few drops of her iced tea land on my stomach. I wince and snap, “Hey, be careful.” She grins impishly and tips her wrist. I howl, curse, and run out into the sun. When I return, she isn’t there. I yell her name. I have the queasy sensation that in an unconscious rage I might have struck her with one neck-breaking howling death-grip and dragged her body out of sight. I finally hear Alicia in the tub, sobbing. I undrape the curtain and find her curled up, her hands covering her face, laughing her head off.
Take Ten: I am allowed to be the first reporter—and the first man—to attend a meeting of the first women’s liberation group in the area, because they trust me more than the Women’s Page reporters. I file an unassigned feature. It still hasn’t run when I leave, and I later get a note from the newspaper librarian, a member of the group: “They nixed it. Suffice to say it was probably hot stuff. So the Women’s section has it."
(from the working draft of Based on a True Life: A Memoir in Pieces)
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