Growing up in Berkeley with the Bomb

GROWING UP IN BERKELEY WITH THE BOMB/ Norman havers I cannot paint What then I was Wordsworth "Tintern Abbey" ON OUR VACATION IN the summer my father used to take us up to Blue Lakes in northern California. We'd leave Berkeley, drive out through Richmond, then stop at the end of the long Une waiting for the ferry to San Rafael on the north side of the bay, so that we could continue our journey. It was a bottleneck in summer that has now been cured by the buüding of the San Rafael Bridge. But for my part, I loved the waiting in line, and I loved the ferry ride across the opaque green water of the bay. I imagined immense creatures swimming beneath, and I was fascinated by the curious fact that the water looked so warm and inviting though I knew, objectively, that it was cold and deadly. This one time I remember, we were waiting in line and a frecklefaced , tow-headed kid about my age was going from car to car selling newspapers. My dad didn't want a paper, but he said to the kid, "I'll bet you a dime you don't know what the best city in the world is." The kid said, "I do too. Oklahoma City." My dad said, "Oh heck, you win," and gave him a dime. At that moment it came to me with the force of minor revelation (no doubt this is why the incident has stayed in my mind) that everyone thinks where they came from is the best place in the world. This was immediately foUowed by a second minor revelation: where I was growing up, Berkeley, CaUfornia, U.S.A., 1940s, reaUy was, arguably, objectively, by anyone's impartial analysis, the best place in the world. No doubt Uke the paper boy I was somewhat blinded by loyalty and famUiarity, but stiU, some fifty years later, I tend to hold to that beUef. But I have had to amend it quite a bit. It was the best place to grow up if, Uke me, you were born around 1935, which is to say, too young for the Second World War or the Korean War, too old for Vietnam. If, Uke me, you happened to be 152 · The Missouri Review a White Anglo-Saxo Protestant (though even that wouldn't have done much good if, like the paper boy, your face and accent gave you away as a dust-bowl Okie or Arkie). I remember—at the time it made no particular impression on me—my father going around to the neighbors on upper EucUd Avenue to get their signatures on a covenant not to seU their houses to minorities. After my mother divorced my father in 1949, she and I moved to a house in Park HUIs, at the top of the Berkeley hUls, on the edge of TUden Park. We read the regulations for having a house within this somewhat exclusive subdivision: aU houses wiU have peaked, shingle roofs, etc. etc., and, the owner agrees not to seU to Negroes or Jews. When this sort of restriction later was pronounced to be against the law, we received a new booklet of regulations, wherein this proviso was left intact and easUy readable, but with a very thin pencU Une drawn through it. I remember that Berkeley High School, when I went there, seemed to be about one-third white, one-third black and one-third Mexican, but it never once occurred to me that in P.E. class, on the days we swam in the school swimming pool, I never saw a black or a Mexican face. I only realized recently when I read in Berkeley at War: The 1960s (WJ. Rorabaugh, Oxford, 1989), that they were not aUowed in the pool. But if you fit into this now somewhat narrow category (and if, I may as weU add, your daddy was fairly rich), and if, Uke me, at that time you had no concept, or even presentiment of social consciousness, then it could be argued that this was one of the finest places in the world to grow up. After all...