Early Summer Recollections: Past and Present The day, with fair-weather clouds and a vibrant blue sky and moderate temperature, was much like that day in early July 1971. The Berkshire Connector of I-90 showed off its late-spring greenery among the surrounding rolling hills at both times. On this day, I headed to the Albany, New York area to pick up my guitar, which was in repair. All of those years ago, the four friends’ destination was Eganville, Ontario, Canada. We were on the road to visit a family friend of mine who was building a house in Ontario. My best friend Joe, his friend Judy, and another friend of mine rode the inviting highway in my friend’s green 1967 Ford Mustang. Of all of those friends, it was Judy who I stayed in contact with the longest and who died four years ago. The others on that trip and in that car are gone, except in memory. I had become acquainted with Judy when I called her in the spring of a year before in an attempt to reach Joe about the possible dangers of his participation in a protest rally in New Haven, Connecticut, in support of members of the Black Panther Party who were on trial there. I told Judy that military transports had flown low over my family’s house in central Rhode Island on their way to Quonset Naval Air Station in case Nixon wanted the military on the streets of New Haven to deal with the crowds gathered there. Judy was a senior at New York University, and Joe studied for a master’s degree in literature. He would go on to earn a Ph.D. in college and university administration. The last time I saw Judy was in the early morning hours of a July day after driving down from Canada following the 4th. We left Judy and Joe at a graduate students’ small one-story apartment complex, as Judy was ready to begin studying for a Ph.D. in psychology, a degree she would never get for reasons I do not know. Through a strange and serendipitous set of circumstances, I would reconnect with Judy decades later, but our interactions were of the most superficial kind. Sadly, when I sent Judy a commentary about our road trip of July 1971, she seemed upset by something I had written in that article. I think that it may have had to do with the way I categorized the July 4th holiday that year, amidst the turmoil of the Vietnam War era. When I heard the shocking news that Judy had died four years ago, I found much of the biographical information of her life story very much antithetical to the person I had known at NYU. I found a reference to Judy’s years as an undergraduate very curious in that bio. A guess is that one or both of Judy’s daughters had written about her life. Judy’s days at NYU were portrayed as being immersed in the youth movement and movements for social justice during that era. No mention was made of the antiwar movement, but I knew from attending meetings with Judy and Joe that they were heavily involved in the latter. In 1971, we all traveled to D.C. to take part in the May Day antiwar demonstrations there, which were anything but sedate. Thousands were arrested on the streets of Washington and held at a sports stadium in that city. But, there seemed to have been a kind of almost seamless transition for Judy sometime following that era, as she earned an MBA and began working in the insurance industry. That didn’t particularly make an impression on me, but it was the fact, described in Judy’s life story, that seemed to point to living a middle-class, and perhaps an upper-middle class life, with absolutely no hint of involvement in any social causes whatsoever. It may be that Judy’s reaction to my essay about the July 1971 road trip reflected the redirection of her life toward careerism and away from movements for social justice. I don’t know. Many of us, the baby boom generation, became middle class, but remained socially and politically active. A recollection of the road trip that Judy recalled, but I must have submerged, was of being led by local police out of a town north of Albany off of Route 87, where we had stopped for dinner. I remember Joe getting into an argument with some people sitting at the counter while we sat in a nearby booth. The argument had to do with hair length, and Joe was not a person who shrank from confrontation. What I do know is that my friend Joe moved along that similar path of careerism. That these two lives followed that life story is not surprising. Millions did, and I often wonder what sentiments they had as they apparently jettisoned ideals in one sense for the comforts or acceptance of middle-class life. One final memory of Judy is of the three friends getting up in West Potomac Park on that May morning in 1971, after having spent the night in sleeping bags. We were ordered out of the park by police. Judy went her own way toward a women’s march against the war, while Joe and I sought refuge in the nearby Lincoln Memorial, as the police quickly began hassling demonstrators there and throughout the city. Judy would have been recognizable on that day from so long ago because she had striking red hair that set her apart. The entire Washington, D.C. experience was surreal because the theme of the May Day demonstrations was to stop the government from business as usual while it waged the vicious war in Southeast Asia. All of these thoughts came tumbling back as I drove on the Berkshire Connector of I-90 at the height of spring at the edge of a different summer, but similar in many respects. Thank you for subscribing. Share this episode.
