"I see. So, what if I asked you to go somewhere with me? Would you go?"
Maggie smiled. "You mean to have an ice-cream soda?"
"Well, actually I was thinking more along the lines of pizza and beer. I feel I owe you something for cleaning my uniform."
"You don't have to do that."
"I know I don't have to, but I would like to. Like you said, no hassle." Tony smiled. "Look, if it's because I'm in uniform, you don't have to worry. I'll change clothes before we go."
Maggie laughed out loud.
"What did I say funny?"
"Do you really think if you changed clothes it would make any difference? You could go stark naked and everyone would know you're a soldier."
"Well, I'm willing to try that too, if that's what it'll take to get you to go with me."
"All right," Maggie said.
"Which part are you saying all right to? Pizza, or stark naked?"
Maggie laughed again. "Pizza. Come by for me at a little after six."
"Great. You want to go to Bear Tracks?"
"You mean the 'hooray for the red-white-and-blue' Bear Tracks? The one where everyone has to genuflect to a fluorescent painting of Lyndon Johnson, artfully rendered on black velvet? No, thank you. That's where all the military-types hang out."
"You forget, I am a military type," Tony replied. "All right, where would you like to go?"
"How about The Aquarius?"
"Right, where you have to kiss the ass of a plastic statue of Timothy Leary," Tony mocked. "Yeah, I can think of nothing I'd rather do than go to a place where I am surrounded by hippies, loud music, and pot-smoke."
Maggie laughed. "All right, then you suggest somewhere neutral."
Tony smiled. "I know just the spot."
THE OTHER SIDE OF MEMORY
CHAPTER 3
When Tony arrived at Maggie's that evening, they took one look at each other, then laughed. The normally conservative Tony was wearing blue jeans and a very colorful, Peter Max shirt. The hip Maggie had replaced her wire-rim glasses with contact lenses. The headband in her hair had been removed in favor of a mother-of-pearl barrette, and she was wearing a dress and make-up.
"What's all this?" Tony asked.
"I didn't want to embarrass you," Maggie answered. "What about you?"
"Yeah, I bought this shirt this afternoon," Tony replied, sheepishly. "I guess we're meeting in the middle."
Maggie laughed again. "Not quite." She reached up and ran her hand through his very short, ash-blond hair. "Even with your pink, green and gold-striped shirt, your hair keeps you a long way from the middle. Still, I'm flattered that you tried."
"Shall we go?" Tony asked. "My car's just outside."
Tony's car was a '65, candy-apple-red Mustang convertible. He had just washed it and it sat against the curb, glistening in the slanting rays of the late afternoon sun.
"Bitchin’ car," Maggie said as Tony opened the door for her.
"I'm sure you'd like it better if I had peace symbols painted on the door, but I'm not quite ready to go that far."
Maggie grinned. "That's all right," she said, as she got in the car. "I'm not giving up on you, yet."
They exited Big Bend Boulevard when they reached Webster Groves. A few moments later Tony turned into a parking lot at the corner of Chestnut and Coalbrook.
"Here we are."
Maggie looked around. "Where? I don't see anything that looks like a restaurant."
Tony pointed to an office building on the north side of the parking lot. "There," he said.
A green neon sign, so small as to be almost unnoticeable, stuck out from the corner of the building. It read: "Ike's Pizza" and an arrow pointed down toward the entrance. The entrance, reached by a narrow staircase of ten steps, was at the bottom of a concrete pit.
"Are you sure about this place?" Maggie asked, hesitantly.
"Very sure," Tony replied. "The first pizza I ever had was right here."
"Then I'll take your word for it. You are far too much a gentleman to steer a girl wrong."
The setting sun cast crimson bars of light through the small, high-mounted, windows. They were setting at a table covered with a red and white checkered oil cloth. The distance between them was lighted by a single candle that protruded from a wax-drizzled wine bottle.
"I think you'll like it here," Tony said. They also make good spaghetti and lasagna if you'd rather have that, than pizza."
"No, pizza is fine." Maggie said. "And if the food is as good as the atmosphere, I know I will like it."
"What atmosphere?" Tony asked. "The food is the thing."
The wall beside them was crowded with pictures, posters, business cards, framed newspaper clippings, paper fans, mounted fish, stuffed birds and various kitchen utensils. Maggie examined one of the photographs and saw that it was of a Little League baseball team. The pride of their baseball uniforms showed in the young boys' faces as they stared, seriously, at the camera. Across the front of the uniforms were the words, "Ike's Pizza."
"It was not by accident that I chose this table," Tony said, when he saw her looking at the picture. "Take a closer look."
"What am I looking for?" Maggie asked, leaning toward it. "Oh, look! There you are! You played on the Ike's Pizza baseball team."
"I'll have you know that you are looking at the Webster Groves' Little League champions for 1957," Tony boasted.
Maggie looked at the photo for a moment longer. "Why, that looks like . . . ," she started.
"It is," Tony finished for her. "Eric Holmes. He was the best player on that team and, when we went on to high school baseball, he was still the best. He's good enough now, to play college ball, but it doesn't seem to mean anything to him anymore."
"Maybe he has different priorities."
"Yeah, I guess so."
"I didn't know you know him."
"I don't," Tony replied. "At least, not anymore. The Eric Holmes with the beard, long hair, and bull horn in his hand, is not the one I grew up with."
"A heavy-set man, in his late fifties, came over to the table, wiping his hands on a much-spattered apron.
"Tony, it's 'a good to see you!" he said in greeting. He had a very heavy Italian accent. "Since 'a you go off to college, I don't see you so much. So, you have brought your girlfriend with you, eh? What's 'a your girlfriend's name?"
"Maggie," Tony answered.
"Maggie. Is good name, Maggie. I am Ike."
"Ike?"
"Actually, is Luigi. Luigi Sangremano. But when I come to America in 1949, I decide I will use American name. Eisenhower is famous general and everyone likes Ike, so I use his name." Ike shrugged his shoulders. "I hope he don't mind."
Maggie laughed.
"So, you want the pizza? What kind pizza you want?"
"We'll have the large Double Watusi," Tony said. "And a pitcher of beer."
"What on earth is a Double Watusi?" Maggie asked.
"That is what Tony calls the Grand Slam," Ike said. "Is good, you like," Ike assured her.
"The Double Watusi has everything on it," Tony explained.
"All right, but leave the mushrooms off my side," Maggie said.
"You don’t like mushrooms? How can you not like a mushroom?" Tony asked.
Maggie shivered. "What's there to like? They are squishy little things without taste."
"Okay, Ike, leave the mushrooms off her side, but double them on my side," Tony ordered.
"One pitcher beer, one Grand Slam," Ike confirmed, starting for the kitchen. "No mushroom on one side."
"Don't forget to double them up on the other side," Tony called.
"Okay, okay," Ike replied, waving his hand without turning around.
"You know something? Don't tell any of my friends, but this beats the Aquarius," Maggie said.
"And Bear Tracks," Tony agreed.
"I'm glad we came." Between bites of pizza, Maggie explained that she was majoring in drama. "Not because I think I will ever be an actress or any
thing. I just believe a background in drama helps one cope with life."
In addition to her mother and father, Maggie had one younger sister back in Jefferson City. Her sister was a junior in high school.
"She's not at all like I am. She's into cheerleading, home economics, that sort of thing." Maggie laughed. "We get along very well because we don’t compete. And even though she doesn't agree with my politics, she doesn't condemn me. As a matter of fact, no one in my family can understand why all this is so important to me. But they are all very...."
"Supportive?" Tony suggested.
"A better word would be tolerant."
"Why did you become a hippie?" Tony asked, breaking off a long string of cheese that had stretched down from his piece of pizza.
"Why did I become a hippie?"
"Yeah."
"You want to know what the problem is with people like you, Tony? You see only the surface. You see the way we wear our hair, the way we dress, and you think that defines us. It identifies us, perhaps, but it doesn't define us."
"What does define you?"
"We are defined by our principles and our aspirations. When I took part in the civil rights movement I was called an 'outside agitator.' I didn't go there to be an agitator, I went there to help correct an injustice. Now we are called hippies and student radicals, but I ask you, when did the quest for peace become so anti-establishment that it has become a radical concept?"
"There is a difference between peace and surrender," Tony said. "And between dissent and treason."
"Treason? Do you call what we do, treason?"
"Well, when you see some of the more extreme protesters carrying Viet Cong flags and burning American flags...when they praise Ho Chi Minh and vilify President Johnson, and, especially when they attack American soldiers in airports and bus stations, then, yes, I call it treason."
"Which is the greater treason? To exercise our Constitutional right of protest, or to send young men, like you, over to Vietnam to die?"
"War is a part of the human experience," Tony replied. "And young men have been dying in them since time began."
"And that is supposed to make it right? Don't you think it is time mankind learned from its experience?" Maggie insisted. "Now, tell me about yourself."
"There's not much to tell, I'm afraid. I have no brothers or sisters, and my parents were killed in an auto accident when I was 14."
Maggie put her hand across the table to touch Tony. "Oh, Tony, I'm so sorry."
Tony shrugged. "It was quite a blow for a fourteen-year-old kid, but things like that happen. After they died, I moved in with my grandmother. Fortunately, my folks had generous insurance policies with double indemnity clauses, so living with my grandmother didn't work any financial hardship on her. And there was enough money for me to buy a car and pay my college tuition."
"What about Eric Holmes?"
"What about him?"
"He's there in the picture with you. Were you and he friends?"
"I thought we were. We lived three houses apart, and we played together as kids. Then, the first year we were in college, Eric started getting weird."
"You mean weird, like I am weird?"
"Yeah, something like that," Tony said, smiling at her. He reached across the table and touched her hair. "Although I must say that long-haired hippie girls are much more attractive than long-haired hippie boys."
Maggie smiled back at him. "I guess that depends on whether you are a girl or a boy," she said. "From my perspective, I think you would look cute with long hair and a beard."
The pizza gone now, Tony picked up a little dab of cheese, tomato sauce, and a pepperoni which was still on the pan. He sucked it off the end of his finger.
"Yeah, I can see me now, reporting to my first duty station with hair to my shoulders and a beard to my belly button." After Tony took Maggie home he changed into, what for him, was more conventional clothing, then stopped by Bear Tracks to see who was there. Bear Tracks was the hangout of choice for the young men and women who set themselves apart from their more radical fellow students. "A letter-to-the editor in Student Life, suggested that Bear Tracks was caught in a time warp, and, indeed, a college student of the class of '55 would have felt right at home in Bear Tracks. Here, the athletes wore the green sweaters with the red letter "W," just as their counterparts had a decade earlier. Girls wore skirts and sweaters or dresses, and both sexes had "sensible" hair styles. The beards, of those who wore them, were neatly trimmed.
The regulars of Bear Tracks had their own personal beer mugs hanging from a rack on the wall. The beer mugs were individualized with ersatz coats of arms, and Tony went over to take his down. His coat of arms was crossed swords over a pair of track shoes, surrounded by a wreath of laurel and topped by the rear view of a mule, in a "kicking" pose. The motto was, "Forget about taking names. Just kick ass!"
With his mug filled at the tap, Tony joined some of his friends at a table.
"So, Tony, are you all set for the track meet tomorrow?" Dan Block asked.
"I am if they don't cancel it," Tony replied. "I heard this morning that the school administration was so nervous about the peace demonstrations that they were thinking about canceling it."
"Hell, we got ten schools comin' in here," Dan said. "A hurdler, Dan was also on the track team. "They aren't going to cancel the meet. Besides, Coach went to the administration and reminded them that they didn't cancel any football or basketball games, and a lot more people come to those events than ever come to track meets."
"Yeah," Freddy Stone said. "About the only ones who come to a track meet are the other athletes. There's not going to be any trouble."
"Unless someone sees you with your vaulting pole and calls the nut house to have you put away," Dan suggested.
Everyone, including Tony, laughed. In the fall, Freddy Stone was a tackle on the football team. In the spring he was on the track team. He was actually a shot-putter, but he had a little game he liked to play at the start of every meet. At six feet eight, and 325 pounds, Freddy made quite a sight carrying his pole down to the vaulting pit. As if he were one of the pole-vaulters, he would very carefully examine the landing pad, falling on it a few times. Then he would check the bar, and take a few practice runs, holding the pole out in front of him. He invariably drew a crowd of curious athletes from the other schools, and though it only worked with the schools who didn't know him, those who did know about his charade gathered around as well, just to enjoy the laugh.
"By the way, Tony, who was that hippie chick I saw you with?" Dan asked.
"It's just a girl who helped me out," Tony said. "While I was down at the rally, someone threw ketchup on my jacket and she cleaned it off for me."
"She did more than just clean your jacket. I saw her in your car."
"We went out for a pizza."
There was a chorus of oohs and aahs from the others at the table.
"They went out for a pizza," Dan said, coming down hard on the word pizza, and moving his eyebrows up and down rapidly in an imitation of Groucho Marx.
Everyone laughed.
"Was she good?"
"What do you mean?" Tony asked, taking a swallow of his beer.
"Well, come on, man, you know what I mean," Dan replied. "Was she a good lay?"
"What makes you think anything like that happened?"
"Haven't you ever seen the way their little titties bounce under those tee shirts? They don't wear bras, they don't wear panties, they're ready man. They're into...free love." As he had done with the word Pizza, he dragged out free love, again eliciting a laugh from the others. "If you didn't get anything off her, you're probably the first guy she's been out with since she was twelve, who didn’t jump her bones."
"Dan, you're as full of shit as a Christmas turkey," Tony said.
"No, I'm serious. You know that big rally they had down at the Arch tonight? By now the whole lot of 'em are off somewhere, fuckin' like minks. I mean, the only reason all these hippies go to t
hese things is for the sex and booze and drugs."
"I don't believe that," Tony said.
Everyone at the table looked at Tony in surprise.
"There are an awful lot of people in the peace movement," Tony continued. "They can't all be in it for the sex and booze and drugs. Some of them have to be genuinely motivated."
"Since when did you become a peacenik?"
"I'm not," Tony said.
"You sure as hell sound like one, taking up for them like that."
"I'm not taking up for what they stand for. I don't agree with any of it. All I'm saying is that I think that some of them believe they are doing the right thing. And when you get right down to it, when I go on active duty in the army, I’ll be fighting for their right to do what they do."
"And they'll be fighting against you," someone reminded him.
"That's probably true. But I'm not going to condemn all the people in the movement, just because I don't agree with them."
"Especially the little blonde, huh?" Dan said. "Man, she must've really gotten to you."
Tony took another swallow of his beer, then looked at the others around the table.
"Let's just say that meeting one of them as a person, rather than just another hippie, gave me a different perspective."
"Boys, we'd better keep an eye on old Tony, here," Freddy said. "The next thing you know he'll be wearing long hair and a beard."
Remembering what Maggie said about him with long hair and a beard, Tony smiled. The others looked at him quizzically, but he didn't share his thought with them.
THE OTHER SIDE OF MEMORY, AVAILABLE NOW ON AMAZON.
A Look At Long Road To Abilene by Robert Vaughan
LONG ROAD TO ABILENE, is a classic hero’s journey, a western adventure that exemplifies the struggles, the defeats, and the victories that personify the history of the American West. After surviving the bloody battle of Franklin and the hell of a Yankee prison camp, Cade McCall comes home to the woman he loves only to find that she, believing him dead, has married his brother. With nothing left to keep him in Tennessee, Cade journeys to New Orleans where an encounter with a beautiful woman leads to being shanghaied for an unexpected adventure at sea. Returning to Texas, he signs on to drive a herd of cattle to Abilene, where he is drawn into a classic showdown of good versus evil, and a surprising reunion with an old enemy.
Terminal Event Page 19
