1960s Decade of Dissent: The Way We Were

AuthorHouse

Chapter One

If you arrive in Berkeley along Telegraph Avenue, as I did on the bus that fall day in 1959, you come to a dead end on Bancroft Way at the edge of the University of California and walk across Sather Gate onto campus. It's all changed now, but that was the way it was then. Sather Gate, an ornate rock bridge with an overhead arch, crosses Strawberry Creek, a meandering little stream that tumbles down the steep Berkeley hills to eventually flow into San Francisco Bay. I guess there is a creek there, but to be honest, I've never walked down through the tangle of blackberry vines to see if there is any water in it. It's not much of a creek anyway, and certainly does not compare to the Tuolumne River on the Indian reservation in the Sierras north of Yosemite where I was raised. I guess you could say I was raised - even though I mostly survived on my own because my father added little to the process, and I had no mother - she'd disappeared before I was old enough to remember.

But Strawberry Creek did provide a colorful border to the university campus back then as it flowed down toward Shattuck Avenue in the main part of Berkeley. Then it disappeared into a culvert and was no longer part of the landscape in the confines of a city that had no place for a meandering creek.

Even before reaching the campus, I got my introduction to the Berkeley scene by walking up Telegraph Avenue and passing through the hordes of beatniks loitering on the sidewalks. Their dress code set them apart: ragged, dirty, old obsolete army surplus dungarees, some barefoot with khaki leggings that reached to the knees, while still others wore combat boots and bandanas of various colors with wild, uncombed hair that often fell below the shoulders. Then there was little to choose from between males and females, since they all looked the same. As I passed through Sather Gate, I was greeted by protesters standing on platforms shouting their taunts to everyone and seemingly to no one, as the parade of students marched through, paying scant attention. A guy standing on a ledge shouted, "We will Goddamn be silent no more! They call us the silent generation, but we are silent no more. Silent? Shit. Screw Kerr! The chancellor is a fascist!"

Shocked, I hurried on past. He saw me. "Hey Indian boy, yes you. Why do you take it? Speak up. Get mad as hell. Don't take it anymore!" I was upset. He called me "Indian boy." God, is it that apparent? Can't I escape the reservation?

The campus was where vine covered buildings stood as monoliths rising above rows of marbled steps. The one in front would become my classroom for freshman English - a subject that was a tough challenge for me. With a mixture of Mi-Wuk and the gutter language of my reservation father, the English I learned in school was always a struggle. My father set a poor example, I suppose. He was a drifter, working odd jobs here and there when he worked at all and his education was nil - no more than a grade or two - if that. He never told me. When he was a boy, there were few schools for Indian kids that amounted to much and money government plowed in mostly disappeared before it got to the classroom. When I was a boy it was worse, because I changed schools so many times when my father moved from place to place. How was I to learn much? But I guess I was naturally smart and learned anyway. By the time of graduation from my reservation school, I was getting good grades and qualified for this scholarship since I was an Indian and got a high score on some tests.

"Montana, will you come to my office during a free period when you don't have a class?" the school superintendent asked when he saw me walking up the hallway stairs. What was up? He seldom spoke to any of the students and I didn't think I'd gotten in any trouble. "Okay, sir," I said. "I'll be up after my next class," wondering what he wanted. Montana was my name, but God knows where it came from, because I've never been close to Montana.

My aunt, who I'd lived with during high school, said maybe Montana was given to me by my mother, who might have come from there, but she didn't know What little I knew of my mother - which isn't much - is that she was a white girl who worked in Sonora, where she and my father hooked up. I'd heard whispers that she'd worked as a prostitute in some brothel. I never knew if that was true, and guess I'd just as soon not know. Maybe she and father got married, but it didn't matter much, because she disappeared soon after I was born. I was handed around to Indian families on the reservation for a few years, and then I went back to live with my father one time when he got out of jail and reformed for awhile. He even got a job. He wanted me with him, so back I went, being about nine at the time and having just completed the fourth grade in Tuolumne City, where I'd been living with a white foster family. During that time, I pretty much learned how to take care of myself, which is why I can still get along okay. I had a survivor mentality I guess.

When I went to the superintendent's office, though, I was nervous as hell. "Montana," he began in a friendly tone, "I have some good news for you! Remember the test all the students took a couple weeks ago? Well, you scored very high, at the top of the class. Congratulations," he said, smiling.

"Thanks," I said. "That comes as a big surprise. It sure does."

"Well, it is a nice kind of surprise, and it just might lead to something even better," he said. "The government has set aside some money for minority college scholarships. The Bureau of Indian Affairs is anxious to have Indians qualify for some of those scholarships and go on to college. It's a way to give bright young people like you, the chance to leave the reservation and get a higher education." Then he paused for a moment. "I plan to make application for one of those scholarships for you. How would you like that?"

I can tell you I was stunned. I'd hoped to get a job somewhere off the reservation to escape the footsteps of my father, but college seemed so remote it had never entered my way of thinking. "But, sir, college costs a lot of money - more money than I'll ever have," I said. "I'm not sure it makes any sense to apply."

"Nonsense, Montana, that's the good thing about this minority scholarship. They recognize all the difficulties and they've opened their pocket book to make it possible. I want you to think about it tonight," he said. "Then come back to my office first thing in the morning. We'll work together in filling out the application. Okay?" I guess it was, so I took his advice, went home, thought about it, applied, and here I was six months later in Berkeley.

The campus was built on a hillside. It climbs up a steep grade past the microbiology lab where they study germs, then past the geology building where the seismograph to measure earthquakes is located. That seismograph was situated in a good spot: right next to an earthquake fault. Across the road was the football field, called the Memorial Coliseum, although no one remembered where the name came from A funny thing about that sunken football field; it was built in the crack of the Hayward earthquake fault that had erupted - or whatever earthquakes do - a hundred years ago, creating this deep crevice that they dug out for a football field, making it sort of a natural amphitheater. If the Hayward fault ruptures again, that seismology building will be in an...