The George Putnam Show

“It is this reporters opinion that to destroy a nation, and enemy must begin by destroying the youth of that nation.”

For all my Red Tide activities in the 1970s, I felt like we were swimming against a tide of high school apathy. Listening to my dad’s memories, I felt like nothing cool had happened in L.A. since the sixties; nothing. Bill said that in ’67, when Sergeant Pepper came out, everyone in the whole city took the day off and went to Griffith Park to sing “All You Need is Love,” and drop acid. He told me the story about how his colleague Peter Ladefoged lost his hearing in one ear because of the police beating he endured among 10,000 antiwar protesters in front of the Century City hotel when LBJ came to town.

But by the early 70s, at the height of the United Farm Workers boycott, our band of high school organizers were lucky to get four people to join a picket line in front of a store carrying scab wine— and we were even luckier if company-hired goons from the Hells Angels didn’t show up to stomp us. “Hired” was the operative word. I said to one biker who threw me into the street and made my …