this old anvil

I was born the year Eisenhower was elected president. By the time I was twelve I’d seen the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, and civil rights marchers driven off streets with blasts from fire hoses on the evening news. I got my driver’s license the same year Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, and Chicago cops rioted against antiwar demonstrators at the Democratic Party convention. I registered for the draft the year just about every college in the country was shut down by a student strike over the Vietnam War and the killings at Kent State.

Long hot ghetto summers – a president shot –  Bay of Pigs and Missile Crisis – legalized abortion – Black Panthers - Gay liberation – Malcolm X – Che Guevara – Salvador Allende – napalm - détente – Brown Berets – Ho Chi Minh – Tupamaros.

I saw Jimi Hendrix live in concert, the Grateful Dead too, and Elvis’s comeback concert on TV. I smoked pot and dropped acid. Had a threesome. Drove from Milwaukee to Miami (and back again). Spent 24 hours in Freeport, Bahamas before getting kicked out of the country. Worked in a couple of gas stations, and a cemetery. I was also a university student.

Then, a few months before I turned 22, I signed up with the communists. I wanted to be a revolutionary. I spent the next 17 years of my life in the party. For many reasons I’m not there now. But in my head, and my heart, I’m still the kid who joined “the movement” way back when.     

Which is why this thing with Elena won’t work. We had our second date – on our own this time. We saw “Amelia “ (which I highly do not recommend – dull as dishwater). But talking over drinks afterwards I had to be so “on guard” about everything. It never occurred to me how much political views and personal history influences everyday conversation.

Elena mentioned the late Celia Cruz, the great Cuban salsa singer. As much as I love her singing I can’t help but think of her betrayal of her country by “defecting” (oh, yes, for “freedom,” not money) and if I had met her I would have, respectfully – not hostilely – told her both of those things.

But Elena is so into that “anti-Castro” thing – like many Cubans here – that there’s just no point in talking about it. We’re going to go out again. I’m going to have to lay it on her. We’ll see what happens.