SIXTIES FLASHBACK: SIX DAYS IN OHIO

Michael Shay, May 2001

PART I: A LEAP BACK

I traveled to Ohio the week of May 7 to do some literary consulting.

What I got was a leap back to the sixties.

In Columbus, where I was sitting on a literature grants panel for the Ohio Arts Council, the trees had leafed out and flowers bloomed in the parks. It was a far cry from Cheyenne, Wyoming, where crocuses, cottonwoods, and crabapples were still battling late spring snowstorms. Over at the sprawling The Ohio State University (what’s with the “The?”), students sparked into pre-finals panic attacks. A few weeks earlier, rioting had broken out at The OSU. From what I could gather from newspaper accounts, the riot was more about a frat kegger gone bad than anything political. But, in normally sedate Cincinnati, street demonstrations had broken out after a cop was found innocent in the shooting of an unarmed 19-year-old black man.

In May 1970, Ohio was riot central. At Kent State University, the anger over Vietnam and the so-called “Cambodia incursion” came to a head when four students were gunned down by National Guardsmen. There had been the usual marching and chanting from the demonstrators; tear-gassing and shouting through bullhorns from the Guardsmen. Then came the shooting with the live ammo, which was not supposed to happen but did. Four dead in Ohio, as the song says.

At my campus at the University of South Carolina, I was spit-shining my shoes for the usual Thursday afternoon military drill. One of my fellow Navy ROTC midshipmen appeared at my dorm room door and told me about the Kent shootings. It was hard to believe that students just like us were being gunned down on campus. It also was hard to believe that 18- and 19-year-old G.I.’s, many of whom trained right here at Fort Jackson, were being gunned down all over Vietnam. The hardest thing to believe, though, was that we were getting ready to march through campus dressed in uniforms, rifles slung over our shoulders.

That may have been the day my military career dissolved before my eyes. Our Marine C.O., whose son had been blown to pieces in the Central Highlands in 1968, refused to cancel drill. Our company commander, a pissant Marine option midshipman who, rumor had it, was fragged by his own troops in ‘71, led us out of the ROTC armory and down the hill to the drill field. Not for the first time,I wondered: what am I doing here?

It was a good thing that, at that very moment, the SDS and Student Mobe members were rallying on the other side of campus. As we marched, a few glass bottles whistled over our heads, shattering in the street nearby. A few epithets came our way, hurled from dorms windows or from behind the campus’s lush vegetation. On the march back, two longhairs allegedly emerged from the undergrowth and spit at guys in the rear of the column.

It was odd, really, that all hell was breaking loose at campuses all over the U.S., but we could blithely march down the hill and back up again with nary a concussion amongst us.

That was about to change.

During my week in Ohio, I saw Country Joe McDonald in concert. Twice. That is two times more than I saw him during his halcyon days, back in the late sixties and early seventies. I knew Country Joe and the Fish from their appearance in the Woodstock film. In it, Joe performs his famous fish cheer: “Give me an F,” etc. The closest I got to Woodstock was the No. 1 Drive-In in Daytona Beach, Florida, where “Woodstock” played for three weeks, which was a pretty long stint for a drive-in. We saw it three times. One night, my friend Mike wandered away from the group and had his ass kicked by a gang of bikers, who were in a more Altamont frame of mind.

Country Joe lives in Berkeley and had been performing in New York with one of his old bandmates. The first night I saw him was May 10 at Flaherty's Thirsty Ear Tavern on West Third Avenue in Columbus. I went with my colleague Bob Fox, literature coordinator for the Ohio Arts Council. He’s also a fine blues guitarist who, as a young man, took guitar lessons from the Rev. Gary Davis in NYC. As we sipped microbrews and waited for the show, Bob told me he used to chauffeur the blind Mr. Davis (he once performed as Blind Gary Davis before seeing the light) and ran errands for him. The famous bluesman was a real taskmaster at the guitar. Once, after Bob played one of the Rev’s standards, a number he had been practicing for weeks, the Rev nodded his head and said, “Let me show you how it’s done,” then commenced to play his piece like it was supposed to be performed, humbling Bob who, in turn, practiced some more. He still performs some of the Davis repertoire in his concerts.

Country Joe played some of his standards, such as “Summer of Love,” "Charlie Don't Surf," and a beautiful ballad about Janis Joplin. Serious sixtites flashback time. The crowd was a mix of the Gray Pony-Tail Crowd (my peers), thirtysomething couples, and one entire table of Barely Legal Drinking Age guys and gals. They had the front table and had been putting away with the pitchers with some regularity. One guy in his early twenties had a long, dirty-blonde ponytail, which seemed to fit the occasion. As Joe performed, the ponytail guy sang along with a surprising number of songs, more than I knew. Everyone at the table seemed to be getting into it.

Country Joe is still a performer. He had been featured at the annual Kent State gathering the previous Friday. In a few days, he would join fellow Woodstock man Richie Havens for a concert. His voice is still strong with a slight, age-spawned tremor. And he hasn’t lost his political edge. He made several comments about George W., “The W stands for whatever,” he said to the mostly friendly SRO crowd. There was a little exchange when Joe called Israelis terrorists for killing Palestinian kids. “Freedom fighters” someone yelled back. “Yeah, freedom fighters” he said with a huge dollop of sarcasm. Sensing he was treading on dangerous ground, he quickly launched into his next song.

Joe eventually got around to the Fish cheer, followed by the “Fixin’ to Die Rag,” which still seems timely. Vietnam had been in the news lately, with atrocity allegations leveled at Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska. And George W. and Dick Cheney had been trying to pick a fight with China. The hoopla for the latest Hollywood WWII epic, "Pearl Harbor," was reaching a crescendo. We all sang along to “One, two, three, what are we fightin’ for, I tell you I don’t give a damn, next stop is Vietnam.” Joe is a Vietnam-era veteran, serving a hitch in the Navy before mustering out just in time for the advent of the Summer of Love, psychedelia, Live at the Fillmore West, and all that stuff. His “rag” has that darkly humorous edge that seems to appeal to veterans, peaceniks, and draft-dodgers alike.

Joe’s concert at the Thirsty Ear Tavern dredges up all sorts of feelings. I couldn't help thinking about that skinny freckle-faced kid maching through the USC campus on May 4, 1970. I also thought of my own 16-year-old son, two years away from registering for the draft. At one point, Joe mentioned Vietnam as “the war that messed up an entire generation.”

It killed a mess of good people. And changed lives, sometimes for the better....