America The Takeback

The Forward That letter! It flames verbatim. I honor that young man who wrote: Think me crazy…but how would you like to help me save the earth? That letter is real. That letter set fire to this fiction. The author, young, sensitive, deep, passionate, creative, cynical of society and loving of earth, sent that letter to some thirty college friends. Their names have been changed because government surveillance, reminiscent of the seventies, has returned. Harassment, arrests, and criminal prosecutions of students have been increasing. Under the pumped up powers of the Patriot Act, any student can legally disappear. While not excusable, this governmental ''enthusiasm,'' is understandable, having been burned by the flames of 9/11, embarrassed by intelligence failures, and shamed by a trumped-up war. These students wanted to return America to its roots of constitutional freedom. They wanted to do something. They did. They made a pact. They planned three steps to change America. They took their plan to other colleges. I encouraged them but I did not help them. I carry guilt. I offer this book in partial atonement, and hope that it prepares their way. The world will soon meet them.
You will meet them here.
This is their story. The Prologue No one knew it. The year 1957 was stunning, but no one knew it then. But soon, the world will know it… No one knew it in 1743. That also was a stunning year. No one knew that five newborn lungs were sucking in the old air of monarchy and breathing out revolution. Born in that single stunning year were the founders of the scientific revolution, the industrial revolution, the French revolution, and the American revolution. Born in that year was Antoine Lavoisier, chemist, botanist, astronomer, mathematician, geologist, anatomist, and physiologist, who blew away medieval phlogiston in his Traité elémentaire de chimie thus becoming the father of chemistry and a founder of the scientific revolution. Born in that same year was Edmund Cartwright whose power loom multiplied into 6,000 looms in three years, thus weaving his name into the industrial revolution as one of its founders. Born in that momentous year was Jean Marat whose fiery articles in his journal L’Ami du peuple jettisoned him into a leader of the French revolution. And born in that same incredible year of 1743, were Thomas Stone, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Thomas Jefferson, author of that document of revolution. The world didn’t know it in 1743, but the world soon would. The year 1957 was also stunning, but no one knew it then. In 1957 two girls and three boys were born who would change the future. Their small blue lungs, pumping 40 times per minute, sucked in that old air of 1957, turned pink, and breathed out the new air of a revolution. No one knew it then. They wouldn’t know it until on a hot summer day those five would stand upon a stage at the Convention Center in Philadelphia, birthplace of America, and announce a rebirth, a revolving, a revolution. Some major historians would call it the Second American Revolution, others, the Second American Republic, still others, the First American Democracy. But on that day when America witnessed it, slowly they began to know it. On that day when America began to revolve, slowly the world began to know it. The beginning was a fait accomplis—finished before people knew it had started. How did it happen? Not like Jefferson, Stone, Lavoisier, Cartwright, and Marat who followed their independent stars, so independent that Marat condemned Lavoisier to the guillotine; rather, the 1957 group met in college, dreamed, talked, planned, joined, executed and became a cluster of stars. Theirs was a simple but profound plan; it was old but new; it was idealistic but practical. It was doable. The Second American Revolution was eminently doable. And it had begun. It could have been done by many people. It might even have been done by you and me. But it was done by them, the ''Junk Pals,'' a group of college friends. The idea first came on a morning wind off Lake Michigan, when one of the friends, Chuck McCrory, began one of his environmental rants about ''the piss and poison in his lake…'' But before that momentous morning, let’s go back to their first meeting in college. Let’s go back to that Midwestern college on the western shores of Lake Michigan. Let’s go back and watch the dream unroll into our newly forming world… Spring, 1975 Open season on freshmen. Organizations leeched for their blood. The Scilaws, PolySci and PreLaw students, threw a fishing party on a Friday evening and caught froshies. The five students who were caught didn’t know they would start the Second American Revolution. After the party, a group went to Clarks Diner, a kitchy, 24-hour restaurant with a 50’s décor. A series of Andy Warhol rip-offs ran down the wall, blending Marilyn Monroe and the Campbell soup cans. The cheap artist with half an allegorical mind placed Marilyn, her famous white dress blowing high above her more famous thighs, straddling those Campbell soup cans. Most male students would have traded their future diplomas to be one of those cans. ''Look Caker,'' said Chuck pointing to a pile of guys hovering over a table with two girls. ''Those upperclassmen are drooling on our frosh. That blond beauty sitting there was giving me the eye at the Scilaws. There! She just looked again! She’s mine. My dream girl.'' ''In your dreams,'' said Caker, Chuck’s roommate and bonded soul mate Both young men thought themselves lucky in getting the other for a roommate. Within a week their comfort level had risen from throwing playful barbs at each other, to lobbing joyous bombs. ''No. I’m serious,'' said Chuck. ''God, she’s ethereal! And her friend’s an angel, too. A pure angel. She’s yours.'' ''That leaves you out, dirty devil. Those girls will break out in a rash if you get near them. But I agree, they are jewels. But I don’t see any angel eyes looking at me.'' ''That’s because angels don’t like jewboys, Weinberg. But don’t worry. I’ll hustle both of them for us. Clearly they’ll prefer my fine white flesh to that Middle East dark shit of yours, and of course they’ll love my wit and charm.'' ''And blarney and bullshit. Your ego needs a bigger galaxy. How much you want to bet?'' ''If I get the girls, you buy the beer. Deal?'' ''You’re on.'' ''Wish me luck, Caker. I go forth to rescue those maidens from those body snatching uppers,'' ''I’ll go with you. I want to watch you fall flaming into hell.'' ''No, you hold our table. We have to have some place to lay ‘em when I bring’em back.''
Chuck winked, and without waiting, like the soccer player he was, he glided towards the cluster of males covering the girl’s table. The fire of an Irish demon burned in his blood, and the Blarney stone rang in his throat. He had been kissed by looks and luck. In Oregon City High School, the girls had voted Chuck onto the courts of most of the school dances. They were drawn to his blond-red hair that flamed over a 6’2’’frame, and his impish humor that twinkled over hot seriousness. Or maybe they liked him because he worked at Custard Cups and gave the girls extra big dips of custard with an even bigger smile that ran down their throats. Or maybe it was that Chuck seemed like a man among the boys. When so many of the adolescents were still pimpled sticks floating in their seas of identity crises, Chuck knew who he was. He thought deeply, he classified things as right or wrong, he cared passionately, and he fought for his positions. He was fire, he was passion, he was fun. He kept the girls laughing, and perhaps most important, he respected them. He had serious friends who were girls, but none became serious girlfriends. His unattainability increased his desirability.. And of course, if you have the girls you have the guys. To those hormone hungry boys not knowing how to connect with the curvaceous sex, Chuck was the man to follow, a how-to-do-it-man, a how and where to touch the fair sex. At college his confidence firmed, and he learned to read girls’ glances. And he was sure of the glance from the blond earlier that evening at the Scilaw’s party. She had looked at him, looked away, and then had thrown him the quick smile-and-once-again-turn-away. When she checked back for his reaction, Chuck walked his eyes up and down her body, then he playfully pursed his lips and arched an eyebrow of approval. Now again, just moments before, she had signaled him with a half-flashed smile and a flick of her hair. No question. He had to bite on that bait, even if she was surrounded by upper-class sharks. A girl like that was not caught by a spectator sitting on the beach. He bladed through the bunched bodies to the edge of her table and asked: ''What do you think of the Scilaws?'' The blond girl, Katrina, looked at him, he’s got guts, she thought. Then she swept her eyes around at all of the ''boys,'' as she called them, smiled and said coquettishly: ''With so many Scilaws here… why of course I adore them.'' Katrina Brit was a woodland dryad traipsing on a red carpet. Daughter of a hippie dad and a Hollywood wanna be mom, Katrina inherited both of their values. Her parents, Northwestern alums, had dumped their careers to buy 17 acres north of Santa Barbara. That way her father could commune with nature and her mom could commute to Hollywood. A quasi hippie community sprouted on the farm, and Katrina frolicked in this free loving, sometimes wildly hedonistic environment. Although Katrina loved her father’s easy living and his closeness to the throbbing being of nature, she leaned more towards the sashaying seduction of Hollywood. Torn between beauty and being, she struggled, as she always would, with the Father and Mother inside. The flirting tilt of her head, the coy smile starting from the corner of her lips, and the alluring sparkle from her sea blue eyes said that sex would be fun, uninhibited, and a wild ride for the man, man enough to mount her. In High School she was less the student and more a free spirit, and she picked up the nickname Cavie for embarrassing reasons. Without the alum pull of her parents, Cavie would not have entered the educational powerhouse of Northwestern. At NU she was a instant frat favorite, but shortly dropped the frats. She said drinking was not her idea of foreplay. Rather she wanted a man’s smile, his poise, and then let sex come how it may. Walking free from the frats seemed to increase her appeal. Students rotated round her like the planets the sun. Her smile was a sweet ravishing pull that could not be resisted. She drew the young men down and received the lucky ones like the earth the rain. But most of the hormone bursting students dreamed and masturbated to her image in their minds. If she had not met Nan, her academic friend sitting across from her, Cavie probably would have shaken her shapely ass more and her brains less. Chuck stood before her. He had the smile, the poise, and the balls. He responded to her assessment of the Scilaws:. ''I agree with you, The Scilaws look like a happening group.'' Katrina flirted the entire group: ''Scilaws are kinda ugly, but I like their principles.'' ''Then you’ll like me,'' said Chuck, ''I’ve got principles and looks.'' ''And a blimp of an ego.'' ''Uhh…yeh, I guess that too,'' he laughed. ''That’s just what my friend told me. And when you’re done impressing these fine uppers,'' he gestured with both hands and smiled graciously, ''bring your friend and join us over at that table.'' He bent down and locked eyes with her, almost seeming to wink as his lips softened. ''I’m serious. I really would like to discuss that statement you made at the meeting about our government growing old; I want to see where you go with that.'' He stood up and raised his voice while half-pivoting to the group: ''Also, we might discuss joining this fine bunch of outlaws—I mean Scilaws. We’ll wait for you over there.'' He walked back to Caker leaving some Scilaws glaring at him, half-wanting him in their group but half afraid of him: they could use a chick magnet but not a rooster. At the table, Caker had been joined by Chips, a tall tag-along geek who had steadily drilled his way into their company. Caker laughed at Chuck as he returned lassless. ''Where are the girls, bright ass. Looks like you’re buying. I’ll take a dark brew…if your ID works.'' ''Hi Chips,'' Chuck acknowledged their hang-on friend. Your timing’s good. tonight. Caker ’s buying.'' ''Hey, he wasn’t in the bet, but we’ll let him in since you’re paying.'' Chuck splashed a huge grin and whacked Caker on the back: ''Sorry loser. You’re a double loser: never bet an Irishman about booze or women. You just bet on both. The babes will come.'' They came. They met. The earth might have shaken that night. But it didn’t. Not even a rumble. No more so than when Samuel Adams met some colonists in the Green Dragon Inn in Boston, when he leaned across the table towards his future compatriots, condemned the tax sucking British, brewed a revolution, raised his ale in anger, then left the Green Dragon Inn to throw the Boston Tea Party. Sure, on that night in 1975 there were white suds, witty sparks, and hot hormones, but nothing rumbled. Caker paid for the suds, Chuck and Cavie struck the sparks and burned the hormones, and academic Nan listened while awkward Chips laughed. As their heads swirled they didn’t know, they couldn’t know, what would grow from this gathering. No one could foresee what would spring from this magical meeting point and swing across the country like the rising sun. They wouldn’t know until, from the far perspective of a changing world, they looked back upon this night...

Author’s Afterword
This book grew from reality. I have cited part of the letter from a college student: Think me crazy…but how would you like to help me save the earth? The idea was planted even as the book was being written. Since fact formed this fiction, may fiction form fact? The American Republic has grown old. It decays. The American Democracy is being born. Its future will be written by them. And by you? If you are idealistic, if you want to make a difference, if you have friends who share your dreams, if you have the generosity to live your life for the good of all life, if you have the tenacity, if you have the guts, then start a revolution, a rebirth of values. Grow a new birth of vision that looks far back to the beginning of life up through the beginning our of country, and forward through the next forty years of your rising generation. Or simply put, if you want to save the world, then begin. Listen once more to Margaret Mead: ''Never doubt that a group of people can change the world. Indeed that is all that ever has.'' Blatantly this book pushes the moral and lets the literary lag. Although I have tried to keep in mind Horace’s dictum of utile dulci, mix the useful with the sweet, still, I have let politics smother the plot, and I have let idealism burnish the dirty slog of realism. Young, I lacked a long-range wisdom. Old, I lack the youth. If I were young again, I would like to think that I would spend my life to bring back our country and save the earth. Instead, I offer you paltry wisdom and ask again: 'Can you hear your country call? Can you hold the hammer and touch the child’s cheek? Can you walk in the muck up to your neck and keep your nose clean? Can you speak into the faces of frowns and into the throats of threats? Can you burn money but not your soul? Alone, you can't. But I urge you—find your friends and set your values, swear to stick together, to hold your ideals for life, to spread to others, then rise in power, and change the world.

The Earth Act * Waking Dreams * Sow the Storm* The Wizard * The Karjill * Bridge Out: Full Speed Ahead The Other Edge of Beauty * Thinking * God: an Autobiography * Dr. Gary Kirby

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the Book Jacket

Real. The letter inside is real. Sent by a college student to friends: Think me crazy—but how would you like to help me save the earth? It has begun!
Anger burns like an Irish demon in Chuck McCrory's throat: "They piss their poisons and flush their factories in our drinking water."
Insight strikes on how to change the country.
Secret Oath taken to rise to power, to hold their values, to stick together, to recruit others, to bring back America.
Sex shatters the group: "A young goddess flaunted and a young god hunted. They mixed like a warm front and a jet stream. Tornado fury."
Action! "Politics is practical. So get your asses out of your classes and into the streets.'' They took it to other schools.
Danger—"Those goddamn college kids will not throw dirt on my America" said fat Jack Dawson, FBI agent, Academic Division.
Oratorical Brilliance: "I am an American of the class mammalia of the phyla chordata of the kingdom animalia of the planet earth. I promise to protect America, life, and the earth, in Thomas Jefferson's words, with my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor. I ask you no less. I pledge you no less."