Item. Hugh Hefner24 would accept a draft if the Convention made it unanimous.
Item. Lyndon Baines Johnson25 would under no circumstances allow his name to be placed in nomination for Vice-President.
Very interesting, but it was getting us nowhere. We decided to go to Grant Park where there would be more likelihood of connecting with a hippie chick. So we headed for the exit.
However, as we left the Amphitheatre, the machine at the gate refused to blink its green light when my electronically treated pass was inserted. I knew the dismay of rejection when it flickered red instead. A Secret Serviceman grabbed the cord around my neck which was attached to the pass and led me from machine to machine like a collie pup at obedience school. Finally one of the gismos proclaimed my Americanism in electronic green.
Behind me dozens of others were having the same problem. The TV cameras had affected the sensitivity of the electronically treated passes. Hapless hordes were caught in the War of the Machines!
Outside, the McGovern motorcade was arriving. A uniformed police captain came running up to the Secret Serviceman in the lead car. “Eight cars!” he gasped. “You’re supposed to have eight cars coming through. That’s what they said. Eight cars!”
“That’s right,” the SS man replied. “Eight cars.”
“But we counted ten cars!” The police captain had tears in his eyes. “Ten cars came through the checkp oints.
The Secret Serviceman considered this calmly for a moment. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said finally.
So much for Convention security!
Leaving the touching tableau behind us, Austin and I proceeded to Grant Park, across the street from the Conrad Hilton. The scene was Prague by night with elements of Kafka26 . Police were lined up on both sides of the street, and barricades had been set up to contain the crowd. Shortly after we got there, the cops were replaced by National Guardsmen -- complete with jeeps with barbed wire strung across their fronts, flatbed trucks with guns mounted on them, and tear-gas cannisters. The Guardsmen stood at attention, their rifles held at the ready. Searchlights crisscrossed over the area.
Most of the crowd was sitting on the ground, and Austin and I separated to continue our search. After a while I found myself on the sidewalk between the Guardsmen and the protestors. I was behind a male Yippie who was taunting a very young Guardsman. “Put your gun down,” the Yippie sneered. “Put it down and then let’s see how brave you are!”
The Guardsman pointed his rifle and clicked off the safety. “Take it away from me!” he dared the Yippie. The young Guardsman’s hands were shaking so hard that the gun had wavered off target and was aiming directly at me!
“Father!” I yelped to a priest in the crowd behind me.
“Have no fear,” he soothed me. “Are you a Catholic, my son?”
“I am now!” I answered, the words coming out by the rhythm method in my eagerness for salvation.
Cowardice being the better part of valor, I faded back into the relative safety of the crowd. People were on their feet now. Suddenly my arms were grabbed from either side.
A beautiful and fiery black girl on my left explained what was happening. “We’re locking arms so when the pigs charge they won’t be able to bust up our P.A. system,” she told me from under her crash helmet.
“I’m not involved!” I told her, pulling loose.
A demonstrator wearing the black belt of a karate expert grabbed hold of my right arm. “You are involved!” he advised me.
I locked arms.
After a few minutes the anticipation of panic subsided, and I was released. I spotted a group of attractive antiwar chicks lining up in front of the Guardsmen. They shifted up and down the military line, talking earnestly to first one and then another of the boys, crooning words of peace and love at them.
The Guardsmen were evidently under orders not to respond. But their eyes moved from left to right like a slow motion shot of spectators at a tennis game as one blonde doll in a miniskirt moved down the line. I wondered if tumescence was grounds for court-martial in the National Guard.
I intercepted the blonde when the girls finally retreated back to the grass. On the surface she had all the qualifications I was seeking. I sat down next to her and established instant rapport by joining in with her and the rest of the crowd as they sang several hearty choruses of “This Land Is My Land.” Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul, and Mary27 was leading the singing from the makeshift podium the demonstrators had set up in the park.
“This land is your land,” I quipped to the blonde when the singing ended, “except maybe for Chicago.” I nodded ruefully toward the lines of National Guardsmen and their impressive equipment.
“Blimey! Hain’t none of it mine, ducks! You Yanks can bloody well keep it. Hi’ll be hever so glad to leave ’ere and get back to merry Hengland!”
That ended that. I needed an American hippie chick. This London derriere was fetching, but it would never do. I gave her the V signal for peace and walked off, moving around the park again as I resumed my quest.
Deeper in the park, further back from Michigan Avenue, there was a beautifully sculptured flowerbed. Around it, some of the demonstrators had built small fires to warm themselves. I noticed that the flowerbed hadn’t been touched. No flower had been picked; none had been trampled; as if by unspoken agreement, the crowd had circumvented it. I had occasion to look at it again the day after all the excitement was over, and it was still unharmed. It said something about the people gathered there. But Mayor Daley, for one, wasn’t listening.
Now I circled the flowerbed. I passed two girls huddled over a small fire without really getting a good look at them. I was still walking, my back to them, when one of them spoke. “You know what I’d like to do when this is all over,” she said. “I’d like to leave the country for a while. I’d like to go to the Mideast or some place like that and join a harem.”
BOING!
It stopped me in my tracks. Like a bloodhound who’s caught the scent, I wheeled around and walked over to them. The girl who had spoken looked up as I stood over them. She was a blonde!
“Who are you?” she asked, responding to my stare.
“I’m your fairy godmother.” I can’t help it. I have this flair for the dramatic. Sometimes I can’t resist it.
“I don’t dig queers!” the blonde told me firmly.
“Hear me out.” I refused to be dismissed. “I happened to catch what you just said—about joining a harem, I mean. If you really mean it, I can help you.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Nope. I’m absolutely serious.” I sat down beside her and explained the situation frankly and truthfully. I was too tired to mince words and beat around the bush. I gave it to her straight; I told it like it was.
“Are you for real?” The other girl, a brunette, couldn’t decide whether to buy what I was saying or not.
I assured her that I was in dead earnest.
“Well, look,” the brunette said, becoming convinced now. “I’d like to make that scene too. It sounds like a gas.”
“Sorry. The offer’s only open for a blonde.”
“Bigotry!” The brunette spat the word out indignantly and flounced away.
The blonde stayed. She was intrigued. When I questioned her in order to nail down her qualifications, she answered frankly and without hesitation. She told me her name was Norma Wilson and that she came from Kansas City. She was nineteen years old, and except for pot she didn’t use drugs. Her legs were long, and I didn’t have to ask about her bosom measurements because they were obviously adequate. She was wearing blue jeans, but she told me she often wore miniskirts because she knew she had nice legs and liked to show them off. That brought us down to the last, delicate question. I asked it.