Most Likely to Succeed

by Dennis Green

I was reminded of this the other day by an item in the newspaper of the time, back in 1970, when I was arrested during a night of protest in Isla Vista against the War in Vietnam. I’ve told the story before, but every time I tell it, it gets a little better, not because I embellish it, but because each time I’m a little better writer.

It was June, and the last day of classes at UC Santa Barbara. I was still teaching in those days, had taken my wife Pam out of I.V. to stay with friends in Married Student Housing, and was still in my teaching outfit, “dressy casual” and had just finished grading a stack of student papers.

We were living in an apartment building right behind the little market and dry cleaners, a half-block from where the Bank of America had been burned down six months or so before. On that particular night, I had stood next to two firemen as they watched the bank go up in flames a hundred feet high, assuring each other, “I ain’t going in there!” and “Me, either!”

That first week of protests was fired up by Chicago attorney and defendant in the Chicago Eleven trial, William Kuntsler. In a second round of protests, I had joined other faculty in protecting the temporary bank, holding up a chain link fence that protestors tried to push over. So I was wary.

But Nixon had bombed Cambodia, and California Governor Ronald Reagan had called in the National Guard to quell the protests during this third series in June. I had participated in many protests and demonstrations — against the John Birch Society, the administration and the War — but was sitting this one out. Or so I thought.

So when I finished grading papers, around nine p.m., I went outside and wandered down the row of apartments, staying within the courtyard on private property in respect of the official curfew, looking for a nice game of Bridge. When I neared the laundry room, suddenly a big L.A. Sheriff’s deputy blocked my way. “Have some wine!” I said like a smart ass, holding out the stemmed glass I’d brought outside with me.

No sense of humor. He slammed the glass against the building wall, smashing it, threatened me with his night stick, turned me around and put the plastic strip, “field handcuffs,” around my wrists, locked behind my back. And then, he marched me off to the field booking station.

Well, it was quite an adventure. Suffice it to say that while we were stacked, 40 of us, in a holding cell designed for 16, one of my students, standing behind me, shouted out, “Mr. Green! I won’t be at the final exam tomorrow morning!” I replied, “Neither will I.”

And then, after the strip search, I was voted by the guys, “Best-Dressed Man in the Cellblock,” an honor I treasure to this day. There are millions of ways to be unhappy, and only a very few moments as precious as this one in any lifetime!

©2010 Dennis Green