Bad Trips

One: Graduate School

I graduated from a small college in northern New York State in 1965. For the summer I found a job washing dishes in a restaurant in the town near New York City where Mary Lou, my girlfriend from college, lived. I hadn't given much thought to what I intended to do with my future. It seemed to be a subject I could never think about for more than a few seconds at a time. At some point, however, I had managed to apply to a couple of graduate schools. I picked out one in Detroit, because my college roommate, Latimer, was from there and frequently talked about what a hip place it was.

I was finally accepted by the school in Detroit, so shortly after Labor Day I took a trunk and some suitcases and caught a train to the city. I slightly knew one person there, James, a friend of Latimer's, but I didn't know where he lived or have any way to get in touch with him. When I arrived in Detroit, I left most of my things at the station and walked to the campus of Wayne State University. It wasn't really a campus in the sense of the intimate, tree-shaded sort I had grown used to, but just a bunch of buildings in the middle of the city. Although my friend was enrolled at the University, the people at the information office refused to give me his address. I ended up getting the name of a hotel to stay at. Registration for classes didn't begin for another week, so there was nothing to do but hang around the almost empty library.

After several days of this I was feeling pretty low. I needed another human being to talk to. I called Mary Lou to tell her how depressing Detroit was, and was encouraged to learn she was lonesome also. She suggested I come back for the weekend, and so I did. She met me when I got off the train, the weekend straightened us both out, and somehow she had ended up with a letter from James to me. Now I knew where to find him. He was living at something called The Young Socialist's Co-op and I was welcome to stay there too. I pictured a big barracks building.

When I got back to Detroit, I walked around until I found 4849 Brooklyn, the address he had given me. There was nobody there. The next evening I returned and this time the person who answered the door told me James was at a meeting of an anti-war group. I went back up the street to the old storefront that served as the headquarters for The Committee to End the War in Vietnam. Inside there were just a few people. I spotted James and we greeted each other, said a few words, and I looked around. More people started coming in, so I wandered outside. As the meeting got underway, I was sitting on the curb, beating out rhythms with a couple of sticks. In a minute, one of the officers of the Committee came out to tell me that the noise I was making was interfering, but I was welcome to come inside and listen. I didn't think it would be interesting and instead lay down in a narrow strip of grass by the street and fell asleep. I woke up a little later when a lady stopped her car and came over to see if I was all right.