A 70s flashback: Coming of age in Berkeley

The East San Francisco Bay area, lying directly across from ‘The City’ (yes, I know that NYC’ers claim that term is their virtual intellectual property but we in the West have long since co-opted it to refer to San Francisco…or ‘Sam Cisco’ as the older SFO locals knew it, and most emphatically NOT as ‘Frisco’, that egregious tourist term visitors to The City use to refer to it) has a long and fascinating history, stretching back even before 1850, when California was declared a successful candidate for statehood. The ‘East Bay’, as we locals know it as, consists of the sprawling city of Oakland and on its northern boundary sits the City of Berkeley (we affectionately call it ‘Berzerkeley’), home of that singular seat of Western American higher learning, the University of California at Berkeley.

Its more recent era (the 60s and 70s especially) has been no exception, given the momentous post-war developments there that consisted principally of the so-called ‘Beat’ movement (50s), followed by the immense upheavals of the Vietnam War protests and the successive psychedelic ‘Hippie’ years (60s/70s).

Most notably, the signal core of the 60s/70s social turmoil originated within two complementary sub-movements of those two decades. Namely, Civil Rights activism and the academic ‘Free Speech Movement’ (on the UCB campus in the mid-to-late 60s). To a large extent, they were co-joined causes, and in the case of radical Civil Rights activism, Oakland’s disproportionate population of blacks (who had flooded the northern urban centers of war production, during WW2, searching for jobs) quickly made it a hotbed of civil unrest. The University of California, for its part, equally quite rapidly became a festering crucible of seething social foment, due to the influence of growing black activism and the popularity of radical socialist ideologies among students enrolled there, as the Vietnam War increasingly bogged down to meat-grinder status in Southeast Asia.

The notorious black radical group, the Black Panthers, originated in Oakland and quickly spread to Berkeley and its campus; for young white liberal students the primary student cause of choice (mid-60s) became the so-called ‘Free Speech Movement’ in which several radical leftist student groups coalesced into a unified body of student protestors fronted by Mario Savio, a bright, young and politically savvy student who came to be known as the FSM’s articulate leader.

Given that period’s complex and convoluted turmoil, rather than dwell on any particular chapters of this student leftist activism here I would suggest you do some further research on-line, if it is of interest. A single entry of Free Speech Movement in the search line will quickly bury you in an avalanche of backstory on that epochal rent (sic) in the reactive social fabric of those days!

Now, I have a reflexive (necessary, as I see it) habit of reiteration and repetition with regard to my recounting of my own development and personal growth during those formative times in my life, since I am sure seldom does anyone conscientiously try to deliberately piece together this personal time-line of mine by going over my previous material. So, if what I say here seems boringly familiar, please excuse me, since I suspect many of you are not in the slightest previously acquainted with my opinions and expostulations, here on Authors’ Den.

In the latter part of the 60s, when the FSM and Black Panther groups were starting to gain strength directly proportional to the developing Vietnam protests, I had been on active duty in the US Air Force, serving as a medical specialist in SAC (Strategic Air Command) and ADC (Air Defense Command) on bases in the US ZI (‘Zone of the Interior’, meaning Continental USA). As soon as I mustered out, I immediately returned to my roots in the Bay Area, coinciding with the start of the 70s decade.

However far my distance from Berkeley while in the service, I was definitely left-of-center in my social and political orientation (weren’t ALL students?) prior to donning the ''Blue Suit'', a stance that I attribute in no small part to having been disproportionately affected by prominent anti-Soviet activist authors, such as Boris Pasternak (I have always been a prodigious reader). In fact, while in the Air Force, I found substantial solace from my unwilling participation in what I considered to be an unjustified, ‘illegitimate’ foreign war in Southeast Asia through Pasternak’s depiction of personal tragedy amidst the chaos of revolution, and I became utterly enthralled by Pasternak’s beautiful and powerfully moving epic, Dr. Zhivago (later popularised in David Lean''s film of the same name). [I suppose, looking back on all that, that I unconsciously identified with Lara''s young student boyfriend, Pasha Antipov rather than Zhivago himself.]

I can assure you that reading through those scenes (wherein co-protagonists Yuri Zhivago and Larisa Feodorovna found refuge in deepest winter isolated in a freezing, frost-covered dacha outside Moscow) while I was myself undergoing  an equally frozen, snowy North Dakota winter, my romantic imagination could and often did soar exponentially!

Reanalysing that now, I reluctantly realise that aside from sympathizing with the White Russian opponents of the regime of deposed Romanov Tsar (Nicholas II) and simultaneously also the subsequent barbaric, brutal oppression characterised by Marxist/Leninist Communist Socialism, I had fallen heavily for Pasternak’s character in Zhivago played by exotically alluring actress Julie Christie (‘Lara’). [At the time, she was my ideal ‘hottie’, replacing Jane Fonda, whose ascendent star went supernova when she visited the North Vietnamese NVA and posed for pictures on an antiaircraft gun, earning the undying hatred of all US airmen over there.]

All this is likely due to my having always been a profound ‘closet romantic’ although largely unsuccessful at actually understanding and romancing the female genuine article. In high school, as a matter of fact, I can count the number of crushes I had on co-eds on a mere three fingers (gaak!). Even then, I was so timidly shy that they were all remote, ‘secret’ affections that I never dared to bring out into the open to engage in actual amorous assignations.

Instead, I sought solace and refuge in the "lonely surfer" ideal (itself a very romantic notion, even if the surf scene was typically utterly devoid of female groupies at that time), an image inspired by an evocative instrumental number by Jack Nitzsche, (music for social recluses, LoL) ‘The Lonely Surfer.’

Yes, that was me, in my own mind: the misunderstood, noble if socially maladaptive ‘Surfer Dude’ who preferred the beautiful and powerful ocean waves to moping about alone at home over my failure as an aspiring Casanova! The Pacific Coast waters were therefore my functional sanctum santorium and I frequently returned to the Central California coastal beaches whenever I could, in high school days, often with a very small group of similar surfer HS social rejects.

At any rate, I can now better understand that my youthful leftist activism was to a great extent the product of several things: my callow maturity (the same factor implicit in today’s young students), relatively little real understanding of how oppressive Communist social states invariably become the brutal dictatorships they invariably morph into, a healthy (or unhealthy, if you prefer) smattering of ‘Che Guevarra style’ idealism and (not least importantly) the sheer, exciting and exuberant ‘romance’ of passionately fighting the system against the status quo (whatever it was) that is a requisite rite of passage for all youths. [In this last context, think Marlon Brando in his 1953 film, The Wild One, wherein a media reporter asks Brando’s character what he’s rebelling against. “What ya got?,” responds Brando.]

Since those times, framed against a backdrop of my seven+ decades of life in America (and numerous years abroad, as well), my political orientation gradually shifted from ‘left-of-center’ rightwards. That is not to say I am today a radical of any creed or color but I am now far more conservative than I was as a 20-year-old. This seems to come naturally with age and is also requisite component of wide-ranging experience, as clearly as I see things. Why is that, I wonder?

Because my 7 decades of life, combined with an exponentially broader understanding of humanity (thanks to both education and an omnivorous reading habit, across all genres), have together expanded the broadness of my outlook, proportionately. Having lived through both the Korean and Vietnam wars (read: Cold War Era) and participated in the protracted Middle Eastern conflicts (“Southwest Asian”, as the military lables this region) to no small extent, I am better able to fit America and our erstwhile Capitalist Democratic system into a broader frame of historical context.

One of the perhaps more unexpected conclusions I’ve reached is that there is NO perfect system of government for a sentient species such as ours, that carries the seeds of its own destruction so close to its genetic surface. When (you believe that) there is no Ultimate Deity calling the shots, pulling levers and manipulating all things unseen by human beings (as in the case of ‘OZ the Magnificent’ of the Emerald City in that famous children’s fable), then it becomes easier to feel that the Yang/Yin Tao of all human history is entirely arbitrary. This should make tragically apparent that we are a grossly imperfect (if ‘sentient'') species, the masses of which are restless, unsatisfiable and largely ungovernable, no matter what organised system we exist under.

Take your pick: Communism has utterly failed, Socialism has invariably turned rotten despite its idealistic precepts and democracy (which in our case is now a corporate-dominated form of Hoover-sucking Capitalistic materialism with "democratic pretenses"), also seems to have recently fallen flat on its 300-year-old historical face.

Therefore, given the ever-bickering, excitable, and eternally argumentative, intrinsic nature of our species, there can never be any emergence of a fully satisfactory ‘ultimate, best social order’, regardless of the promises made by true-believers of whatever ilk or persuasion. Like traditional religious ''deities'', our flawed, imperfect social organisations are merely mirrored reflections of our inherently flawed, imperfect human selves.

This sobering realisation, formed from recorded, careful observations of our species over eons, remains a concept beyond the comprehension of almost anyone who is just beginning life. Sadly, the truth of it remains illusive also to those who refuse to think critically for themselves and instead rely on equally badly informed and naive peers to form their owns thoughts and beliefs (hello, “social media”, hello “celebrity worship”).

Still with me? OK, returning to the early years I spent in the People’s Republic of Berzerkeley and the UCB Free Speech Movement, I recently came across someone with whom I associated back in those days. That individual was a Japanese-American woman named Etsu(ko), who was the wife of one of the pulmonary doctors I worked with on Oakland’s "Pill Hill" (a healthcare institution now named Summit Medical Center that is an amalgamation of three separate, previously existing hospitals there).

That pulmonologist was a rather unique and dynamic individual whose direct forebears were prominent champions of black civil rights struggle in the Pacific Northwest, just after the turn of the last century (1900). The scion of a distinguished and archetypical black activist, this young Fellow first came to my attention in the mid-70s, while I was directing cardiopulmonary laboratory services at Alameda County’s Highland General Hospital (a major West Coast teaching hospital and medical complex close to the Oakland/Berkeley boundary and referred to occasionally by intimates as the "Cook County Hospital of the West").

Since part of my responsibility back then was to assist our Chiefs of Service in training medical interns, residents and post-doc Fellows in cardiological and pulmonary medicine procedures, that implied a very close and necessary interaction with both patient care training staff in our CCU/ICU/ER units and with ''house staff" and attending physicians.

Most of the time, our new interns (and many of the then-first-year residents (all graduates of an AMA-approved MD academic program) were still a bit wide-eyed and not fully comfortable with the acute challenges they encountered in their training. Quite often, they were not yet still fully confident of their knowledge and acquired skills to function smoothly as competent house staff. Part of my job was to help ease them over these obstacles.

One day, a brand new, young Pulmonary Fellow, that''s to say a post-grad Fellow in pulmonary medicine, suddenly came on board from a prestigious institution back East. When he waltzed into our CCU on his very first day, it couldn’t have been a more dramatic entrance. He was wearing a hip, stylish, broad-brimmed hat and a trenchcoat like some character out of a Sam Spade detective thriller, and began making rounds and giving orders with the confident affect of a long-experienced professional who had been in practice for decades.

Exuding unshakeable personal charisma and style, this new fellow entered into our lives with all the ferocity of a Monsoon gale high up in the ''Death Zone'', that part of the uppermost reaches on the the highest Himalayan Peaks (such as 29K foot Chomolungma, the tibetan name for Everest), where survival sometimes depends entirely upon one''s physiological acclimatization to altitude. Even with proper acclimatization, there are limits to complete adaption to the effects of the Death Zone, before the human body begins to irreversibly waste away and die.

I was soon introduced to this new pulmonary fellow, a Dr. X (name changed, of course). As a dynamic young black man with soaring ambitions and a confidence that promised to back them up to the hilt, he came on like ''gangbusters.'' It wasn’t long before I met his similarly unique wife, the previously mentioned Etsuko.

She immediately impressed me as a highly intelligent young woman and it was obvious that she complemented Dr. X perfectly in helping advance his professional interests by whatever means necessary. Still, given her Asian ancestry and Dr. X’s black American roots, they made for quite an unconventional pair (even back then). White/black marriages were still largely frowned upon by older, conservative white people in the early 70s, but a black/Japanese marriage? That was singularly unusual!

After completing his year of Fellowship at our hospital, Dr. X. quickly made plans to open up a private pulmonary practice on nearby Pill Hill, and soon had a suite leased for that purpose, equipped with a rather complete pulmonary function diagnostic lab. Due to our work together at Highland, Dr. X. brought me on-board to operate that new diagnostic lab for him, which I did after completing my regular daily schedule at Highland. In the course of that association, I found myself in regular daily contact with Etsuko, his charming wife.

Etsuko was, as I said earlier, a very intelligent, gracious, capable and versatile partner who took over Dr. X’s office as his business affairs and office manager, as well as the practice’s financial accounting. She handled everything for him superbly, with aplomb and alacrity!

Typically Japanese-American in her 2nd generation (Nisei) mannerisms and affect, she preferentially remained in the background (a characteristic often found in formidable Asian women that is sometimes known as the ''mailed fist in the velvet glove''). Although exceptionally cultivated, pleasant and unfailingly polite, she never engaged in much of a casual conversation about anything other than lab patient studies.

Still, her personality was both as accomodating as her efficiency in just about all aspects of the non-patient care details of daily clinical matters  and she matched Dr. X equally in exuding remarkable self-possession and unmatched competence.

Something that especially impressed me  was Etsuko''s black Porsche 912 Targa sportscar (even back then, the 912 Targa was a distinctive and stylish status symbol…especially for a woman to drive). As a closet Porscheholic, this didn’t fail to make an impression on me (as someone who could barely afford the 1969 Volkswagen Bug I owned, let alone a car of the 912’s upscale cachet). Although a 912 is literally a Porsche with an up-tuned VW flat-four engine, it was still a Porsche, after all!

Several recollections stand out in my memory from those days worth recapitulating; one moment that I well recall involved a Christmas gift given me by Dr. X and his wife. It was obvious that it had been Etsuko’s idea to gift me with a beautiful, potted Bonsei tree. I have no idea what its cost or value was back then, but knowing her good taste in all things, it probably was an expensive gift indeed!

Etsuko had been interested to learn of learn of my interest in Japanese history and culture (my major subjects at UCB), hence this particular expression of holiday thanks. She also knew, from Dr. X’s time as a Highland fellow, that I was involved with a young Chinese resident at Highland whom I regarded as a potential mate at some yet-to-be-determined point. This all indicated to Etsuko that I was a cut above the usual white American male, warranting the bestowal of the Bonsei.

Naturally, I was quite pleased with this gift and took it home to the house my Chinese resident GF (read some of my past writings to learn about that remarkable young woman) and I shared near Highland, where I placed it on our front porch (there being no place in the rear of the house that was suitable).

Not many days later, I came home from work to find that the Bonsei had suddenly disappeared, stolen I can only surmise by someone who was (atypically) fully aware of what a Bonsei was and its potential value! Oakland was then, as it still is, full of rampant crime, so I really should have known better.

That day, at Dr. X’s office, I reluctantly revealed this embarrassment to Etsuko, with apologies for having lost the unique gift. Her reaction was not what I had expected. Etsuko’s normally placid and congenial expression dramatically clouded over like a Pacific typhoon for a full few seconds before I saw her just as quickly regain her composure, but I knew instinctively that she was VERY displeased, which was the last thing I wanted her to be.

Then too, there was a nursing office assistant (an LVN) at Dr. X’s office. Our nurse had undergone a traumatic divorce that had left her with a young son in his very early teens. She had been suddenly face with the need to earn a living and support both of them, so Dr. X and Etsuko had graciously given her a position in their office…typical of their thoughtfulness...where her gratitude showed in the dedication of her work. She quickly became an invaluable resource at the office.

Since I was at that time driving a small, 90cc Honda motorbike to and from work, I had recently decided to buy a much larger motorcycle and felt that as a generous gesture, I would ‘gift’ the smaller motorbike to the nurse’s son.

Upon learning this, Etsuko felt, I quickly discerned, that this was not a good thing, either for the boy or for their practice, since given the hazards of motorbikes in the hands of young adolescents, an accident could have far-reaching consequences not just for the nurse and her son, but for all concerned.

Regrettably at about this same time, my Chinese GF (she was born in China and came to the US originally as a ‘paper daughter’ so as to evade the ''Chinese Exclusion Laws'') and I were facing an imminent break-up, since she had, unknown to me, taken off on an illicit affair in Carmel with a young Cal law student who had been moonlighting as a handyman around our house), using ‘our’ VW Kombi van on the trip.

The excuse I had been given was that she was ''taking a trip to Carmel with some of her fellow female residents'' and since I was an enlightened Berkeley man who felt women were equally entitled, I hadn''t paid any special attention to this pronouncement. There is, after all, an ancient saying in China that ''Women hold up half the sky'' and I truly believed and supported that tradition (to my intense regret, as things came to pass).

I discovered this deception when the day after she departed for Carmel (with ''the girls''), I happened to notice that a sexy emerald green one-piece tanksuit I had given her as a gift wasn''t in its usual place in our chest of drawers. I had given her that suit (which looked fantastic on her beautiful figure) because her idea of a swimsuit had theretofore consisted of a raggedy old, cut-off circus tent that would have looked extremely dated even back in 1900.

Such was her modesty that she rarely used it unless we were off at a beach somewhere together, so the fact that it had suddenly disappeared raised my suspicions that everything wasn''t exactly as she had told me. After all, there was no need to look gorgeous for her female chums, was there? Hmmmm!

Upon her return, several days later, I asked about it (since it had magically reappeared in the dresser bureau again) and the truth tearfully emerged: she had taken off with our UC law-student cum handyman and I can only imagine what happened down there in OUR VW van!

Suffice it to say that my dignity and trust had been grievously violated by this gross breach of faith and I quickly moved out of my GF’s house, temporarily seeking other accomodations. This faithless deception had hurt me deeply, since I was raised to regard an amorous relationship as a very serious matter, to be respected and NOT taken lightly. Since our office nurse had a spare room at her apartment, I quickly seized that option.

When she learned of this, Etsuko felt it would place unacceptable strains on our nurse''s life and thereby jeopardise operations at Dr. X’s office practice. Evidence of an iron-will, usually well hidden behind the serene Noe mask Etsuko normally wore, quickly surfaced, creating strained feelings on both our parts, so I again moved to another apartment, this one being on Grove Street (now Martin Luther King Way), which turned out to be directly across the street from the Oakland Black Panther Headquarters! [But that''s a whole separate story!]

Eventually, I left my Highland Hospital position when Alameda County experienced a major staffing reshuffling, due to budget constraints requiring a shift in administrative lines of responsibility that placed me under the management of an obnoxious colleague. Fortunately, I quickly accepted a position at Walnut Creek’s John Muir Hospital, a well-known independent hospital situated in that city, but this also mandated leaving Dr. X’s employ, and from that point on, I had no further contact with either Dr. X or his wife, Etsuko, to this day.

Fast forward to this past week, while I was searching out old associates and friends (purely out of nostalgia) via the internet. I’m one of those types, you see, who values the people I have had meaningful friendships with (perhaps more than most do) and strongly believe in maintaining ties over the years whenever possible. [This personal trait is very characteristic, I later learned, of a ''Fire Dog'', which is my sign on the Chinese astrological Zodiac...the sign I was born under.]

Accordingly, while on my PC, I plugged Etsuko’s and Dr. X’s names into a GOOGLE search and almost immediately up popped the obituary of a remarkable, elderly 93-year-old Japanese-American woman, bearing Etsuko’s maiden family name. This, amazingly, turned out to be Etsuko’s mother, whom I learned was an internee at the Manzanar Japanese Relocation Center during the war. Etsuko and her brother were apparently born in that camp just before the JAs were repatriated. Etsuko, as a very small infant, had thus been an internee herself, albeit briefly! Her mother, I further learned, had been an exceptional woman who had had enormous personal strengths and character.

That led to more and more links. From them, I quickly learned that Etsuko and her husband had strong ties to the late 60s protests at UC Berkeley. Dr. X himself came from the previously mentioned, well-known early black activist who had openly dared to champion the black civil rights cause up in the Pacific Northwest when to do so had been quite hazardous! Not only that but his grand-paternal relatives had been in the forefront of black rights activism since the end of the Civil War! In upper-class black social circles, they were distinctively lauded, acclaimed and honored by the collective US black community!

Etsuko, for her part, had been sent to UC Berkeley by her family''s matriarch (the 93-year-old mother who had then recently demised), where she evidenced a keen mind, academic prowess and also a strong interest in extant social activist causes. More backgrounding revealed that she had actually been among the small number of strongly committed student social activists (along with famed FSM Leader, Mario Savio) who were arrested and jailed by Berkeley police on several trumped-up charges of ‘obstruction of justice’, ‘unlawful public gathering’, disturbing the peace, etc., during the FSM protests.

Most startling of all was the fact that Dr. X’s own father had been a card-carrying, dedicated member, not just of the black civil rights movement but of the American Communist Party back in the 50s, who had worked tirelessly for the Communist socialist cause! Remarkable, really! And here was his son, the doctor, enjoying all the lucrative material perks and social status that come with being a highly successful medical specialist, with all the remunerative and social rewards that status carried with it in the 60s!

Dr. X was, of course, about as communist or socialist as Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse or mom''s apple pie, and one would never suspect otherwise of this young and voluably confident medical practitioner! As for me, at that time, I calculated that regardless of my own moderately left-leaning inclinations towards socialism, as a struggling young technologist who couldn’t afford an arrest record at that point in life, I of necessity kept my nose clean and only gave peripheral lip service to my political sentiments, but would never have dared to openly proclaim them!

And so in these ways, many of us similarly find that life has a remarkable way of sending us all down unforeseen paths in life we often would least expect to find ourselves on...despite unbounded youthful ideals, wildly optimistic dreams and high aspirations.

Dr. X is today a highly regarded and long-respected senior member of the San Francisco Bay Area medical community and although I have nothing else to relate on his wife, Etsuko, I would expect that she also has succeeded spectacularly in her endeavors. She still lives in a very up-scale part of the Oakland/Berkeley Hills, has substantial real estate holdings, and I expect they are still happily married (they apparently also sent their talented daughter through veterinary school).

Etsuko is now roughly 2 years older than I am, from what I discern. I cannot help but look back on those amazing, formative days in eternally fascinating Berkeley with not a small amount of nostalgia and many fond memories.

I doubt I shall ever cross paths with either Dr. X or Etsuko again, but I consider our former associations as uniquely memorable, and a characteristic slice of how things were in Berkeley for some of us, back in those heady days of the 60s and 70s that we all lived through!

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[Note: This is a very informal memoir and I have put it together principally to record that part of my life for my own edification. Regard it as such, please, and don’t feel any obligation to comment on its gramatical mechanics, since it is not written to amuse, entertain or otherwise serve as a legitimate bit of writing of any meaningful sort, but merely to sort out some fond memories of mine and put them down on paper before it’s too late.

[Never forget: It’s not the destination in life that matters…it’s the voyage that has sole meaning and value above all else! Relish your own past adventures and cherish the memories, both good and not as good! Life is, after all, shorter then we realise when we are young and just starting out.]