Back in the 1960s

I'm putting up Chapter 11 of my novel, recently converted to third person narrative. Thomas Leirmont, the primary character in the novel, has just had his fifty-something soul sent back into his 18-year-old body--a sort of metaphysical time travel that's the basis of the story. my problem here is how to bring readers into the world of 1968 without losing them. My solution was to give a narrative as Thomas rides the train into Chicago. It's what some would call an "information dump," but the world of 1968 is almost ancient history to some readers,  Anyone have a better idea?

Chapter 11, Back in the 1960s
August 23, 1968

Free people, free pot, free music, free theatre; a whole new culture will manifest itself to the world, rising from the ashes of America. Rock groups will be performing in the parks; newspapers will be printed in the streets; Democrats and dope fiends will chase each other through hotel corridors. Longboats filled with Vikings will land on the shores of Lake Michigan, and discover America! Chicago will become a river of wild onions!
 

YOUTH INTERNATIONAL PARTY

CHICAGO, AUGUST 25-30, 1968

Yippee!

Thomas felt a jolt as he looked down at the Yippie leaflet, and assumed the train had made a lurch. “A magical time will be had by all,” proclaimed a hand-lettered message on the outside of the envelope it had arrived in. When he had received the leaflet back in March there was still magic in the air. Eugene McCarthy, the peace candidate for president, had nearly defeated Lyndon B. Johnson in the New Hampshire primary. For a few weeks, it looked as though peace, love, and understanding would triumph that year.

Of course, for the men and women in Vietnam there was no magic. The year had begun with the surprise attack of the Tet Offensive, where North Vietnamese and National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) troops had broken a cease-fire and made advances throughout South Vietnam, even taking the provincial capital of Hue. In Saigon they breached the perimeter of the United States Embassy. The offensive had ultimately been beaten back by United States and South Vietnamese forces after some hard and bloody fighting, but it wasn't supposed to have happened in the first place. The only positive thing about the Tet Offensive was that it made more and more Americans wonder whether this war was worth the blood and treasure.

CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite had come back from a reporting tour of Vietnam and editorialized on February 27 that the war was essentially a stalemate, and called for a negotiations with the enemy, “not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.” It appeared that America was ready for a dose of sanity.

But as he sat on the train to Chicago, staring at the leaflet, he knew the magic had ended all too soon. First, Robert Kennedy had entered the presidential race and divided the antiwar Democrats. When President Johnson withdrew from the race at the end of March, there was little celebration. Still, the dream of peace did not turn to nightmare until April 4, when Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered, and cities, including parts of Chicago, went up in flames.

It was Robert Kennedy, the man some McCarthy organizers had called cowardly, who showed courage and compassion the night King died. Thomas had been in Indianapolis the night of April 4, when Kennedy announced to a largely black audience that King had been assassinated. In his mind Thomas could still hear Kennedy quoting Aeschylus: “Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God." There were tears streaming down his face, and down the faces of everyone in the McCarthy headquarters as they watched Kennedy on a battered old television. He asked his audience to say a prayer for Martin Luther King’s family and for the nation, and exhorted them to “dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.”
            There were no riots in Indianapolis that night. Thomas realized then that Kennedy was perhaps the only candidate who could unify the nation. He could connect not only with black Americans, but with working-class whites. Thomas couldn’t imagine McCarthy at the West Side Democratic Club in South Bend, drinking beer and eating Polish sausage on Dyngus Day, the Monday after Easter. But Kennedy was there. Although he knew Kennedy was the best hope for America, he had committed himself to the McCarthy campaign, and felt honor-bound to stay with it.
            The King assassination delayed Hubert Humphrey's entry into the presidential race. On April 27, in a gilded ballroom in Washington, D.C., Humphrey, apparently oblivious to the past months, declared the “politics of happiness, the politics of purpose, and the politics of joy.” While he had entered the presidential race too late to enter any primary, he could count on a goodly number of delegates from the caucus states, and quite a few from states with nonbinding primaries. Humphrey had a solid record on civil rights, but he was in lockstep with Johnson on the war.

It was almost two months to the day after King's murder that Robert Kennedy met the same fate. Thomas had gone to bed June 4 knowing McCarthy would lose the winner-take-all California primary and woke up to learn Robert Kennedy had been murdered by a man identified as Sirhan Sirhan. After the shock and sadness of Kennedy's death, he assumed Kennedy's delegates would support McCarthy, the original peace candidate. But McCarthy, still bitter about the Kennedy candidacy, had withdrawn into himself, rebuffing the efforts of his own campaign to cooperate with former Kennedy supporters. After weeks of frustration, the Kennedy organization persuaded South Dakota Senator George McGovern to declare his candidacy in order to prevent the Kennedy delegates from going over to Humphrey. The effort was probably in vain, as Humphrey claimed to have almost all the delegates from the non-primary states.

Thomas wouldn't be at the convention, but at the “Festival of Life” in Lincoln Park, which the leaflet promoted. It was looking to be a continuation of the nightmare. What had been planned as a counter-celebration to the convention, with live music and entertainment, seemed to be turning into a week-long standoff with the cops. The Festival was a joint effort by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Viet Nam, or the Mobe, and the Yippies, formally known as the Youth International Party.

The Mobe was a coalition of antiwar groups, headed by longtime activist David Dellinger, a man committed to nonviolence. Some of the groups were not so peaceful. The Students for a Democratic Society had begun as a coalition of liberals and radicals. There weren’t too many liberals left in the organization, and the radicals were divided over tactics. Too many of them now advocated violence. Tom Hayden, who had been one of the founders of SDS, and Rennie Davis were the most influential youth leaders in the Mobe. Davis appeared to be in the nonviolent camp, while Hayden said he believed there was a time for violence, but not in Chicago. 

If the Mobe was the serious side of the antiwar movement, the Yippies were anything but. They were against the war, but they looked at the absurdity of American society and challenged it with an absurdity of their own. The name Yippie came first, that shout of exuberance that became the high-pitched “Yippie yodel.” But Anita Hoffman, Abbie’s wife, knew the news media would want a more formal name. She suggested Youth International Party. The Yippies were into guerrilla theater, a kind of creative anarchy. For instance, Abbie Hoffman and about a dozen others went to the gallery of the New York Stock Exchange, and tossed hundreds of dollar bills onto the floor. Trading stopped as brokers, clerks, and stock chased after the bills.

And then there was the march on the Pentagon, where perhaps fifty thousand marchers surrounded the Defense Department headquarters. While the Mobe was responsible for most of the organizing, the Yippies got the media’s attention when they said they were going to levitate the building with psychic powers. But the Festival of Life, to compete with the Democratic Convention, which they called the Festival of Death, was to be their pièce de résistance.

It was to be a combination protest rally and music festival, with big-name bands and singers. Most had canceled because of the threat of violence, though Detroit-based band MC5 and folksinger Phil Ochs were still coming.

Beginning in March, the Yippies and the Mobe tried to get a permit for the festival, along with permission for people to sleep in the Lincoln Park. While the festival was allowed to take place, the city was adamant that no one would be allowed to sleep in the park.  Lincoln Park would close every night at eleven.

The Chicago branch of the Yippies urged people not to come, fearing a bloodbath at the hands of the police. But the New York Yippies, led by Hoffman and Rubin, were going ahead with the festival.

Thomas had boarded Penn Central's Train 27, the nameless successor to the New York Central's Twentieth Century Limited, at the 1900-vintage Elkhart depot. He had always loved trains, and while No. 27 was not the grand express its predecessors were, it still seemed a magical way to travel, from the conductor's “All Aboard” to the arrival in La Salle Street Station. The timetable showed No. 27 was scheduled to depart at 9:27 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, but because Elkhart County stayed on standard time, it would depart at 8:27 if it was on time. That day it was about half an hour late.

The train, led by three big E7 diesel locomotives, rounded the curve east of Main Street, slowing for the stop. Thomas was glad to see the engines in gray-and-white New York Central livery, rather than solid black Penn Central paint. It eased out of the depot a few minutes before nine. Wearing slacks, a blazer, and a tie, and with his Indianapolis Times press badge pinned to his jacket, he could have passed for a young businessman, if it hadn't been for his over-the-collar hair and long sideburns.

“Tom,” the conductor had said, “You look good even with your long hair. Going to cover the convention?”

“Just the Yippies' Festival at Lincoln Park.”

“Well, be careful. There are some pretty strange birds up there.”

He said he would. They rolled through the yards and the towns of Osceola and Mishawaka before making a stop at South Bend's Art Deco Union Station.

He had been up late and then had trouble getting to sleep, anticipating convention week, so as the train departed South Bend, he loosened his tie, reclined his seat, and dropped off to sleep. The conductor was calling, “Englewood, 63rd Street” when he awoke. Englewood was a station once shared by the New York Central Railway, Pennsylvania Railroad, Rock Island Lines, and the Nickel Plate Road. At one time you could transfer from the Pennsy's Broadway Limited to the Rock Island's Golden State Limited without having to change stations. There were classic pictures of the Century and Broadway pausing at Englewood for the final lap into Chicago. Of all the great limiteds that once stopped here, only the Broadway still ran. It had probably gone through already.

He was on the South Side of Chicago, and it was time to get ready to detrain. He took down his suitcase, backpack, and portable typewriter and placed them on the empty seat next to his. The bleak Chicago landscape, softened by the green of summer, passed by his window. On the right were the seemingly endless rows of high-rise housing projects, while the Dan Ryan Expressway on the left formed a barrier between the projects, whose residents were almost exclusively black, and the neighborhoods to the west—some black, some white, and one Chinese. Farther to the west, beyond his sight, was the International Amphitheatre, where the Democratic National Convention would take place. It was supposed to have been at McCormick Place on the lakefront, but a 1967 fire there brought it to the Amphitheatre, near the Chicago Stockyards. It wasn't really an amphitheater, because it had walls and a roof. It was just called that, for reasons he didn't know.

On the left, across the Dan Ryan, flags were flying at Comiskey Park, where the White Sox were set to play the Minnesota Twins. The Sox, Mayor Daley's team, weren't having a good season.

The housing projects, one after another, passed by until the train entered the coach yards. The old green Rock Island commuter coaches and a few shiny new double-deck cars were in from the suburbs, waiting for the afternoon rush back to Blue Island and Joliet. No. 27 pulled into La Salle Street Station only ten minutes late, at ten-forty.

Thomas walked down the platform between No. 27 and the Rock Island's Peoria Rocket, with the ex-Pennsylvania Railroad observation car, “The Reveler,” bringing up the rear. At least one train in this station had some class, he thought. When Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint had gotten off the Century in North by Northwest, they walked down a red carpet. He was treading on bare concrete. The carpet had been retired last December, after the final Century limped into the station several hours late.

With the cab strike going on, he decided to walk to the Hilton, carrying his suitcase and typewriter down Van Buren to Michigan. While La Salle Street Station was in the heart of Chicago's financial district, Van Buren, under the Loop elevated tracks, was lined with cheap restaurants, pawnshops, and currency exchanges. A couple of panhandlers accosted him crossing Dearborn. The Pacific Garden Mission was just down the street. He kept walking, as putting down his cases would just be inviting theft. He felt bad about not giving them anything, but then, he had virtually nothing to give. Fortunately, they didn't follow, but turned to a new mark behind him. At State Street, Van Buren became a bit more respectable—even more so at Wabash when he was out from under the Loop. A block later, at Michigan, the expanse of Grant Park was straight ahead. After turning right and crossing the six lanes of Congress Boulevard, he was in the land of swank hotels. First was the Pick-Congress, with limousines and taxis in the driveway and liveried doormen summoning the bellhops. The Sheraton-Blackstone, with its baroque façade, was next. And on the other side of Balbo, towering above the others, was his home for the next week, the Conrad Hilton. He had stayed in Chicago hotels before, but none this grand. But someone at the Times had warned him that in spite of all its elegance, most of the rooms in the Hilton were pretty ordinary.

The Times had booked him a room on the fifteenth floor--the same floor as the Eugene McCarthy campaign. Thomas had gotten to know many of the McCarthy staffers when he had volunteered with campaign in April and May. One of he got to know a bit too well.

Because he was wearing a jacket and tie and carried a letter from the Times confirming his reservation, he had no problem checking in. The bellman took his luggage up the elevator with him, and Thomas tipped him after he deposited his suitcase on the stand.

As he had been warned, the room was pretty basic—a double bed, a desk and chair, and a bathroom. It had a television set and an AM-FM clock radio, and prints of classical scenes hung on the walls, but there was nothing that spoke of luxury.

Along with a taxi strike and bus strike, there was a phone strike that week, so calling could take time. When he picked up the receiver, there was a smiling Mayor Daley, and “WELCOME TO THE 1968 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION. Richard J. Daley, MAYOR, CITY OF CHICAGO” under the cradle. Daley's only modesty was that he didn’t put his own name in caps. With the help of the Hilton's switchboard operator, he got through to the Times' Chicago bureau. The editor there told him to get up to City Hall.

The Yippies had nominated a pig, which they had named Pigasus, for President. They had announced they would nominate him and then eat him, because they said the pigs were eating the people down at the Amphitheatre. It was probably just Yippie theater, but it aroused the ire of some animal lovers. The whole incident was over by the time he arrived, with the police confiscating Pigasus after a comical game of greased pig. He (or she—the story was that Pigasus was actually a gilt, or young female pig) was now in the custody of the Anti-Cruelty Society and Abbie Hoffman was in police custody. Thomas had a quick lunch at the Wimpy's on Monroe—hamburgers, British style, with sautéed onions. To be really British, he should have eaten his burger with a knife and fork, but that was going too far for a guy from Indiana.

He went back to the hotel, typed up the story, and walked it over to the Times' bureau in the Daily News Building, just north of Union Station, on the west side of the river. From there he walked back across the river to Wells and Quincy, where he caught a Ravenswood L train.

It may be the El in New York, but in the Windy City an elevated train is just the single capital L. He got off at Sedgwick and walked the rest of the way up to Lincoln Park. Things were quiet. There were a lot of Yippies and flower children, but no real activity. With time to kill, he wandered up to the zoo, where families and Yippies mingled without any animosity that he could see. It was getting towards dinnertime, so he walked over to the main Lincoln Park restaurant, and got a surprise. There in the courtyard of the restaurant was a Viking boat replica, which must have inspired the author of that Yippie leaflet. A sign beside it said had been built for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and sailed from Bergen, Norway to Chicago via the Hudson River, the Erie Canal, and the Great Lakes. It had been on display outside the main park restaurant since 1922, and obviously needed some restoration work. Whoever had written that Yippee leaflet had a sense of the city's history. And the Algonquian word Che-cau-gou meant “wild onions,” which once grew along the river. After a rather overpriced meal, Thomas headed back to the Hilton.

Things were supposed to be happening on Saturday, so he decided to turn in early. He dreamed of a beautiful young woman, with deep brown eyes and jet-black hair. “You must be the Angel of Philadelphia,” he told her. She was so lovely and enchanting he felt cheated when a blast of sirens and car horns down on Michigan brought the dream to an abrupt end.

The clock at his bedside said 1:20—too early to stay awake. He retrieved his notebook and wrote down the dream before going back to sleep.

It was after nine o'clock when he woke from another dream. The same young woman was there, but she looked frightened, as though she were seeing a phantasm. “Phantasm” wasn't a word he regularly used, but it came into his head. “Helena would use such a word,” he muttered into the pillow. But he didn't have time to ponder over it—he had overslept, though it was unlikely he had missed anything. He got through to the Times' Chicago office and let them know he was heading for the festival.

Approaching the elevator he saw the long, soft-brown hair that could only belong to Melinda Cameron. He thought about turning back around the corner before she saw him and waiting for the next elevator, but decided he’d have to see her sometime. She was a staffer for the McCarthy campaign. One night, after he had spent a week driving her around northern Indiana, she invited him up to her hotel room. It was the first time for him, and like a lot of first-times, things were awkward. The next night she found someone else to join her. 

As soon as she saw him her arms were around his neck.

“Are you back with us?” she asked.

“As a reporter,” he said, separating from her as he showed her his press badge.

“You should at least check in with your friends,” she said. “And you might tell me your room number. I’d like to give you another chance. You said I was the most beautiful woman in Indiana.”

“I’ll pass, this time, Melinda. I’ve got to go up to Lincoln Park to cover the Festival of Life.”

“At least put this on for me, for old times’ sake. She unpinned a McCarthy button from her blouse. “Remember how you said the button was the color of my eyes.”

Those sky-blue eyes were enticing, but he wasn't tempted. He let her pin the button on, though. After a quick breakfast at the coffee shop, he left the Hilton. Outside, a women’s peace march was going on. One of the women saw his McCarthy button and flashed him the “V” sign for peace, which he returned. She had dark hair and brown eyes, but wore a wedding ring. She wasn't his dream woman, but her eyes reminded him of her and he thought of the fear he had seen in them. Perhaps he should have skipped breakfast and headed immediately for the park. He didn't understand why, but he knew she was there. 

He walked the few blocks to State and Van Buren and rode the Ravenswood L north to the Sedgwick station. Traffic was heavy on North Avenue as he walked east through Old Town, the center of Chicago's counterculture. At La Salle he turned left, walked another block to Eugenie, crossed Stockton and the parking lot, and entered Lincoln Park. 

 What he found there did not look like a revolution in the making. The Yippies’ “Festival of Life” seemed to consist of several hundred people at the south end of the park. Many were just walking around, checking out the other people. There were a few couples making out, and Thomas could occasionally smell the acrid odor of marijuana smoke. A lot of the men had long hair and beards, while the women sported even longer hair and wore jeans or cutoffs. But there were also men in suits and women in dresses. Knots of people were listening to speakers, who were denouncing the war, Richard J. Daley, and Hubert Humphrey.

He got to an open area where people were doing self-defense training. It didn’t look promising. In the chaos of a riot, most people are not going to remember tactics they had just learned a couple of days ago. Others were practicing washoi, a sort of Japanese snake dance. They were six abreast, with the six in front holding onto a long stick to keep them together. Behind them there were about a dozen rows of people, holding onto the waists of the people in front. They marched in a snakelike pattern, chanting “wa-shoi, wa-shoi.” Some protest organizers believed it could be used to escape a police attack. Thomas couldn't see how it could possibly work, even with more than one afternoon's training.

As he walked along the path at the south end of the park, someone handed him a leaflet that purported to be a festival schedule. He had read it before in The Seed, the Chicago underground newspaper he subscribed to, but it wouldn't hurt to look it over again, so he found a bench and reread it:

August 20-24 (AM): Training in snake dancing, karate, non-violent self-defense. Information Booth in Park.

August 24 (PM): Yippie Mayor R. Daley presents fireworks on Lake Michigan.

August 25 (AM): Welcoming the Democratic delegates--downtown hotels (to be announced).

August 25 (PM): MUSIC FESTIVAL--Lincoln Park.

August 26 (AM): Workshop in drug problems, underground communication, self-defense, draft resistance, communes, etc. (Potential workshop leaders should call The Seed, 837 No. LaSalle Street, 555-9282.) Scenario sessions to plan small group activities.

August 26 (PM): Beach Party on The Lake across from Lincoln Park: Folksinging, barbecues, swimming, lovemaking.

 August 27 (Dawn): Poetry, mantras, religious ceremony.

 August 27 (AM): Workshops and scenario sessions. Film sessions and mixed media--Coliseum, 1513 S. Wabash.

August 27 (PM): Benefit concert--Coliseum. Rally and nomination of Pigasus and LBJ birthday--Lincoln Park.

August 28 (Dawn): Poetry and folk singing.

 August 28 (AM): Yippie Olympics, Miss Yippie Contest, Catch the Candidate, Pin the Tail on the Donkey, Pin the Rubber on the Pope, and other normal, healthy games.

 

August 28 (PM): Plans to be announced at a later date. 4 PM--Mobilization Rally scheduled for

Grant Park. March to the Convention. 

August 29-30: Events scheduled depend on Wednesday night. Return to Park for sleeping.

            Yet everywhere there were signs--new signs--reading “PARK CLOSES 11 PM.” 

         But as he got up again and walked along the pathway, a magical feeling came over him, in spite of all the defenses he had put up as a journalist. 

         His thoughts returned to Helena. He realized had dreamed of her before. There was always reassurance in those mahogany-brown eyes. The one girl he thought he had loved had rejected him. She was now offering another chance at love—at least the physical kind. He didn't think he could handle the pressure of another night with Melinda. But could he afford to wait for this dark-eyed dream woman? Perhaps dreams were just dreams.

As he came out of his reverie he noticed a couple walking toward him. She looked like a Yippie, with her long, unkempt black hair, faded green denim skirt, and tattered peasant blouse. He was holding onto her hand, almost dragging her, while she seemed confused and frightened. He had brown hair, was dressed all in gray, and wore round, wire-rimmed glasses. As they passed he looked into her eyes and did a double-take. Even though they seemed to be unfocused, as if she were on some kind of drug, they were the same mahogany-brown eyes he had seen in the dream!

A hand grasped him roughly by the shoulder.

“You makin' eyes at my woman?” the man demanded.

Before Thomas had time to reply, she said, “I am not your woman. I just met you this morning. Let him go, or you will regret it.”

He pushed Thomas to the ground, faced her, and grabbed her by the arms. “I just sent you trippin', baby. We're goin' back to my place and I can really turn you on. No woman can resist what I've got.”

Thomas began to get up, He wasn't good at fighting, but he couldn't just let him walk off with her. There was real fear in those eyes.