(2 of 4)
Jesus freaks are gathered at the corner, mixing freely with other louder groups. They carry the perennial banners of militancy, each inscribed with the device, Liberation. Over it are the words Gay, Black, Women's, Chicano and People's. These are the remnants of a great tidal wave of protest that broke in Rip's absence, still sporadically coursing through the streets and campuses. The year 1968 was at once its crest and ebb. Rip was gone when Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis and when 172 cities went up in smoke, when 3,500 were injured and 27,000 arrested. He was gone when Bobby Kennedy was murdered two months later, and when two months afterward, the city of Chicago seemed to become the epicenter for every disaffected demonstrator in America.
Perhaps there was something in the global ionosphere that year, something that still clings like smoke in an empty room. Without benefit of an unpopular war to trigger protest, Paris also was torn by civil disturbances; so were Mexico City and Tokyo. Even in Prague, the people rose up —only to be pushed into submission by armored tanks. Today all protest seems, somehow, to be an echo of that hopeful, dreadful time; but to the new listener there is no resonance, only the flat remnants of unassimilated rage.
A striped pole catches Rip's eye. He settles into a chair—only to hear a fresh diatribe from the barber—who now calls himself a stylist. Once, long hair was the exclusive property of the hippies; they have gone but the hair has remained. Now all the straights sport it. The barber talks on about a world gone into reverse. Nixon has toured Communist China, which is now in the U.N. The Empire State Building is no longer the tallest building in the world. The World Trade Center is. Eighteen-year-olds can vote. The New York Giants will soon play in New Jersey. In the American League, pitchers will no longer bat.
The stock market, Rip learns, has hit 1000, yet the go-go funds and glamour conglomerates are a sere and withered group. Unfamiliar newsworthies are summoned to his attention: Mary Jo Kopechne, Clifford Irving, Arthur Bremer, Vida Blue, Archie Bunker, Angela Davis, Daniel Ellsberg. There are new countries leaping up from the headlines, nations born while he was away:
Bangladesh, Botswana and Qatar. There was another country, too, called Biafra. Like those radioactive elements produced in a laboratory, it was destined for a brief, intense half-life before it vanished forever. But the eyes of its starving children still stare from old magazines—and in the memory.
His hair cropped, or rather, styled—at absurd prices—Rip retires to a bar for refreshment and intelligence. The TV set is in color now, and there is something called Cable that makes the reception better—although for what purpose is not so clear. True, there are no more cigarette commercials, and some programs called Sesame Street and The Electric Company are brightening the day for children. But for adults, it is, as always, lame adventure series and innocuous sitcoms, the halt leading the bland. There are fewer talk shows and more movies made expressly for TV—all of them, it seems, starring James Farentino and George Peppard.