Category Archives: youth

Burning A Draft Card Never

After the 1963 assassination of JFK, the United States became more embroiled in the Vietnam civil war. Support for our involvement was widespread, however according to Wikipedia a twenty-two year-old conscientious objector, Gene Keyes, setting fire to his card on Christmas Day 1964. While the federal government declared the destruction of a draft card a […]

The Location of X

My first major in college was Math. My mother had chosen that field of study, because a 710 score in my Math SATs provided convincing proof that her second son was a future Einstein. She was not privy to the fact that I was smoking pot and dropping acid. Both opened my mind to the […]

Burning A Draft Card Never

After the 1963 assassination of JFK, the United States became more embroiled in the Vietnam civil war. Support for our involvement was widespread, however according to Wikipedia a twenty-two year-old conscientious objector, Gene Keyes, setting fire to his card on Christmas Day 1964. While the federal government declared the destruction of a draft card a […]

Watchic Pond Maine 1964

Watchic Pond 1964 My grandfather and his friends had dammed a stream to create a lake. A foto of my brothers and sisters reenacting the Titanic sinking. My grandfather Frank A. Smith graduated from Bowdoin in 1912. A college friend drowned in the Titanic sinking. He was older than his classmates having worked the North […]

Lisa Takes A Bath 1978

My apartment at 256 East 10th Street was a relic of tenement living. There were no electrical outlets in the bedroom. A water closet had a pull chain for the overhead tank. Warped wooden floors spread to crumbling plaster walls traveled by tribes of cockroaches. Girls didn’t like the insects, but they loved the bathtub […]