The induction center at Oakland California was a big Dickensian cliche, a brick abattoir, a sugar factory where young men's lives were processed into glucose-rich treats in bright shiny wrappers. They gave you a clipboard, when you got there for your pre-induction physical, that had papers clipped to it of course, and that was you, going around here and there, they weighed you they measured your height they tested your hearing. I'm 6'4" now I was almost 6'5" then. There was a guy in the height line ahead of me that was like 6'7" he said hey man even if, you know we won't see no combat. I said what's that? He said they cut it 6'4".
Right while I was there the guy received the orders raising it.
The hearing thing the guy jammed the volume wide open, a voice in my other world said get those headphones off! So I tore em off. And the burly Sarge guy got all heavy on me but I wouldn't put em back on til I got reassured he wasn't going to wreck my ears.
Later on I pissed on the clipboard, the cough thing was no-sweat cause my mom was a hospital worker and I grew up around doctors and nurses and medical procedures, then the shrink thing which was note-for-noted by Arlo Guthrie and probably a few hundred or thousand other guys. You know, I'll kill yessir mothafuka, you teach me how yessir I will kill and kill and kill.
And the shrink's all, you've got problems son, I can see that through the fake, but the Army'll help you straighten all that shit out.
Later they gave me a chit for a hotel, for an overnight, it was a psych thing where they bring you back for a retest. There was some truly weirdass little punks in the hotel, I don't remember much else, I felt real violated by their presence in the room as I tried to sleep, I remember that.
The next morning I meandered on back over to the Induction Center, there was a guy with hair down to his tits walking out dragging a Navy pea coat by the sleeve, he had a long, full beard too, it wasn't that common in early 68 not even in CA.
We exchanged greetings, it was a beautiful sunny morning. I went in to the reception area and up to the counter. The guy who was there looked on his list and said I wasn't there, he checked twice and another list too. So I said what, and he said go on home, you're done here. So I had this pass and went back to the Greyhound Station and went on home.
A few weeks later I got a letter from the draft board with my draft card in it. I took it out and it had my name and all on it, it was cardboard like most ID's in those days. After my name, right after my name, there was an asterisk, typewritten in red ink. I asked a few friends about it but nobody knew what was up with that. So one day I went down to the local draft board, where you had to go to register and everything when you were 18 which I had done which was what started all this. I went up to the counter and the lady said can I help you, and I said well I got this in the mail, and I pulled out my new draft card with the red asterisk on it, and she said Well. Do you know you can get in a lot of trouble for defacing your draft card? It's against Federal Law! And I said I didn't do it, it came like that. And she of course didn't believe me, so then she went to a file cabinet and got my file, and she looked in it and gave a little smirk/snort and looked at me and said You don't seem like someone who would want to be a hairdresser, all smirky and everything, and I said what? what do you mean? I don't want to be a hairdresser. And she said well that's what you put right here, where it says what do you intend to become after school. And she showed me, I had written cosmologist, but she had never seen that word before. I tried a little to explain but she was quickly disoriented and we went back to the draft card issue. I wasn't leaving without an explanation or something, and she said finally, Oh alright, I'll go get Mr. Ets-Hokin, or whoever it was, and she went in the back through a door back there, and was gone for a little bit, and then this man came out in a seersucker sport coat, with a confident half-smile on his face and he walked straight toward me on the other side of the counter and right as he gets to the counter everything goes completely blank.
