City/Country Miners

City Miner Magazine, which was published from 1976 to 1980, always felt like a brother (sister?) to THE SUN — one of the few publications I felt good about reading, with its Northern California–flavored blend of articles, interviews, fiction, down-to-earth stuff that mattered. I was sad to see it go, and glad that editor Michael Helm has resurrected its spirit in this new book, City/Country Miners: Some Northern California Veins.

“Northern California is a unique and diverse region of the planet,” Helm writes. “A number of us, undaunted by New York/L.A.–oriented mass media cynicism, would like to keep it evolving that way. Toward that end, City/Country Miners has presented the urban and rural weather of some of Northern California’s most finely tuned minds. A weather that is larger, more subtle and complex, than the monocultural interests of the ‘Moral’ Majority, a Southern Pacific clear-cut forest, or the 7 o’clock evening news.”

City/Country Miners features urban and rural stories, poems, articles, letters, journals, oral histories and graphics organized around the four categories of relationships, places, work, and politics. “The basic editorial bias,” Helm says, “has been to emphasize first person, direct statement. I believe that, in grappling with the ever illusive nature of reality, many I’s (eyes) are generally better than reliance on the royal we, or third person ‘objective’ voice. The naked I conveys only the authority that its own sense of authenticity can generate. Each reader, without editorial intrusion, has to decide for his or her self what rings true.”

Thanks to Michael Helm for permission to reprint these excerpts. He plans to put out a new volume every year or two. You can order it for $7.95 from City Miner, P.O. Box 176, Berkeley, CA 94701 or by asking your local bookstore to order it from Bookpeople.

— Ed.

More Loose Leaves From The Little Black Book
Jennifer Stone

October 1967

This one is different. My children are gone for the week. We are alone and in love. We scrub each other’s backs and feed each other strawberries and lie on the floor and drink wine. Gratified desire, satiety, the works. We walk out to a cafe-bar to pity the loveless world. We are so knowing and so self-satisfied, everyone is drawn to us. We are holy and they want to touch us. We don’t speak often, only to confirm each other. The shared laugh of seeing through everyone we meet; to understand is to forgive . . . we forgive everyone. And when we are alone again the gong sounds like it does in the beginning of a J. Arthur Rank film and we are drowned in each other and if it weren’t real it would make a swell movie. It’s never been anything like this except once when I took acid but the man I was with then was far away. This time he’s more me than I am and we have been here together many lifetimes before and we are drinking each other alive. This is the moment to die. Nothing can get better. Nothing does.

Summer 1974

It happens every seven years. Transfiguration: a new self. I was thirty-three when I met him. Forty years old now and he still calls. I don’t hate him, I’m just past caring. I mean seven years of one night stands with one man. I can’t go on treating him like a sex object when I’ve forgotten where I met him. We said everything we had to say in less than a week. He’s old now and cranky and paranoid and something of a bore. Rather like me. Only I don’t expect undivided attention anymore. Oh, I demand it but I don’t really expect it. He wants me to listen to his every word and he had nothing to say when he started. He roars a lot. I have no idea what about, but the noise impressed me for quite a while. Then it irritated me. Then I thought it was sort of sweet. And now I’m bored. Sound asleep if you want to know. If things go on this way it looks as if I might turn celibate. I’d get lots more work done. Balzac said a night in bed, in bed with a woman I mean, cost him any number of pages. I think he said eighteen. Balzac thought of it as a physical drain. For me, it’s a brain drain. When I’m in love I think all the time. I analyze every word, every gesture. I pick and dig for evidence of criticism or censure or even for approval. Scratch, scratch, scratch. He quit years ago. He hears nothing. Oh, he mellows a little if I lay it on with a trowel, if I act ecstatic and gratified as hell. He basks in my afterglow. But if I’m cross or gloomy he just ignores me psychologically. Never biologically. Result: I am impassible.

Yes, it may be true the body renews itself every seven years but brain tissue is permanent. It modifies but it doesn’t renew. I only get one soul. I know this is true because when I run into people I haven’t seen for twenty years I can get away unrecognized if I don’t speak. If I open my mouth they can hear the same old nervous system. It’s my father’s mother’s voice I think, more than the rest. In any case, it never changes.

Perhaps it’s time to quit. Time to quit talking, time to quit fucking. Gandhi quit fucking when he was thirty-seven. Seminal fluid to pituitary gland; energy turned spiritual, that sort of thing. All that heat going to the brain. For once I could get out of a male head and into my own. It’s very contemporary, living alone and doing one’s own thing. One’s own thing. Beats getting all dressed up and spending an evening being gorgeous just for the sake of a few orgasmic moments or even for a few non-orgasmic moments. I’ll give it a whirl. I’ll even give it a title: Neo-Narcissim.

End of September, 1975

Noon at the Bay Area Rapid Transit station. I sit on the bench and look toward the Berkeley hills. The hills are green. Two pigeons fly down from the sky. They soar through the open roof of the station in a great arc, curving into the glass windows leading to the green hills. I expect the glass to shatter but there is only a dull thud. One bird falls, limps, lurches, and drops quietly, head falling softly to one side. The other writhes in a furious flap of wings, her feathers flying, twisting in agony as if her back were broken.

A woman sitting on my right says well how stupid can you get. She says she thought pigeons were smarter than that. In a final desperate lurch, the broken bird falls off the platform across from us, landing on the train rails.

A woman sitting on my left, a woman with shellacked hair and eyelashes glued tight, says well it was probably a male chasing a female and serves them both right.

Bedtime Talk Between Two Six-Year-Olds
Frank Polite

— What is dynamite, Papa?
— It is contained, and then it explodes.
— Like a bomb?
— Yes, like a bomb.
— But how is it made?
— Dynamite isn’t made. It’s captured.
— Captured! Like an animal?
— Like a snow tiger caught in a net, its claws sharp as icicles, its eyes sparkling like cut glass! Yes, it might be an animal that lives its life in one brilliant instant; but do you know what dynamite really is?
— What?
— Lightning.
— Lightning! But how is it captured?
— In certain places, usually on mountain tops, there are glass castles that capture Lightning.
— Have you seen the glass castles, Papa?
— No, the castles are invisible.
— But, why doesn’t Lightning shatter the castles?
— Because Lightning is so fast and brilliant, it sees right through the glass and doesn’t know it has been captured. If Lightning saw the glass, if the castle thought that much of itself, then Lightning would surely shatter it.
— What happens after Lightning is captured?
— Well, I said that Lightning is captured, but it isn’t really captured. The castle thinks it is, and that seems to be good enough. So, what the castle does is this: it funnels its thinking into wires and tubes and lightbulbs and dynamite and such. It gives Lightning many names and many uses.
— Does the castle make lightning bugs?
— Yes, you got it! And rainbows and waterfalls and colors, too.
— But, what is Lightning, Papa?
— The Sun. Lightning splits off from the Sun, and do you remember what the Sun is, what the old poet told you?
— The Sun and Moon are the eyes of God.
— That’s right. And Lightning is His reins on the world.

Frank’s War: Vietnam 12 years after
— Frank B. Kiernan talking

I was in Vietnam 11 months, 3 weeks, and 1 day. I went there at the beginning of 1969 and came home at the end of ’69. I was in the Army Cavalry. I was drafted when I was 20, shortly after quitting college, while working for United Parcel in Connecticut. Out of my infantry unit in basic training, they made 78 people regular infantry and 4 people medics. I was one of the medics. I was in the 1st Squadron 1st Cavalry which is tanks and armored cars.

I arrived in Saigon and then, about a week later, was sent to a Base Camp 27 miles south of Tam Ky. I was there about 48 hours before realizing that I had made a mistake, that I never should have gone to Vietnam. I realized that the people we were presumably there to help didn’t want us there. I felt a lot of hostility from the Vietnamese people. The fact that they didn’t want us there made me feel like I shouldn’t be there. If I had been more aware of the real situation before going, I probably would have done almost anything not to go there. At the point that I did go there, I thought I was doing the right thing. My family was behind me in the respect that they had left it up to me as to what I should do. Being uninformed and patriotic, I accepted the draft and went to Vietnam.

The main thing I realized when I arrived there, after getting into the field, was that I couldn’t think about what was happening in front of me. Because if you thought about what was going on you would really lose your mind. So instead of thinking, you reacted. If something happened, and someone’s guts got blown out in front to you, you didn’t think about it. You just reacted and did what you could for the person.

I don’t know why they made me a medic. Being drafted, I had no say on what my MOS would be. I had never held a gun in my hand until I went into the army. But they didn’t know that. I was glad I was a medic, though, because I think the worst thing you can do in the world is take a human life. The positive side of having been in Vietnam for me was that I saved a lot of human lives, both North Vietnamese and Americans. The lifers respected me because anytime someone called that was hurt I went to their aid. After 16 months I made sergeant because on one occasion there were 4 medics above me who were destroyed in one action and I was the next guy in line. So they made me a sergeant.

When I was there, there were a couple of different groups of people. There were lifer-sergeants who were gung-ho, charge the hill types. A lot of them ended up getting shot in the back with M-16s by their own men. There were intelligent officers, who had graduated from West Point, who would call into the colonel and lie, “We’ve already been to this hill.” They knew there was no sense going up there and getting our asses kicked for nothing. They were at the point where they would fake a report saying we went there when we really didn’t go there. Whereas a sergeant, the lifer, the E7, who is in for twenty years, would want to charge the hill. And those were the people that got the three warnings. They got the smoke grenade, that’s the first warning. The second was the CS gas, and the third time he said charge he got fragged to death. They fragged him. I saw that happen three times.

The whole body count trip was pretty insane. They didn’t just count dead V.C. soldiers. They would count mama-sans and baby-sans. They would count 75 year old papa-sans. If we went through a village where there was a mine that triggered 200 meters away, some GIs, and I can see why they did it, would shoot innocent people because some of our people got killed. They would shoot people that had nothing to do with that mine. I saw that once or twice. I was in Mai Lai a year after it happened. Mai Lai was the only village that I was in where I saw booby traps hanging in the trees. It was the only place where we were supposedly entering a safe village where I saw booby traps. So, we stopped and dismantled them.

The Marines and Airborne fought the real heavy war. They probably saw combat every other day, every third day, whereas I saw it once a week. One time I didn’t sleep for four days, under the influence of no drugs, out of pure fright. But, the Marines and the Airborne were in a lot more shit than I was ever in. But, I was in enough to scare the shit out of me.

I saw Apocalypse Now, I saw The Deerhunter, I was never in anything like Apocalypse Now. I’m not sure what Coppola was trying to do with that movie. I think he was trying to make an excellent movie. He tried to do it too hard and ended up botching the whole thing. I did, though, see some insanity similar to that. I was in Vietnam about a month when this colonel, who was in charge of our battalion, which had 9 tanks and 27 armored cars, took us out into the field to take pictures to send home to his wife. One of our tanks hit a mine and three people got killed. The only reason we were there was for him to take pictures. When that tank hit the mine a guy that had been there 11 months went down on his machine gun and aimed it right at the colonel’s chopper. It took four people to subdue him before he got off of his gun. The chopper went from 100 feet to as high as it could go, as fast as it could go. That colonel was taken away and I never saw him again. That was the most insane thing I saw. I thought The Deerhunter was a much better movie, although I was never attacked by 50 people at one time. I was there 11 months 3 weeks and 1 day and was in combat situations 48 of those days.

I spent nine months in the field. The typical infantry grunt spent about 11 months, medics spent about nine. And after nine months I told the guy that I was too nervous to spend any more time in the field and that I was a wreck. So for the last two and one half months I was in Base Camp where we just got rocketed instead of attacked. I spent about 2½ months at Base Camp and then I was shipped home. I was in the army 21 months. I got out early because I was drafted and had been in combat situations.

I was pretty lucky. I was wounded very slightly twice. So that was no big thing. When I came home I made a point to forget about what happened over there. I don’t talk about it too much. Sometimes, when I get very high and I might be around someone else who has been there, I might talk about it but I don’t dwell on it. When I was there I didn’t think about it, I reacted, because if you thought about it while you were there, you would go nuts. When I got home, I forgot about that year of my life. That’s basically how I dealt with it. And I really don’t have nightmares about it. I feel I am lucky because I’m sure there’s a lot of people, besides being physically maimed, that are emotionally scarred. And might be emotionally scarred for the rest of their lives.

A couple of things persist from my Vietnam experience, though. For example, I cannot sleep on my stomach. Because when you are over there you always sleep on your back. You always sleep with a gun in your hand because that way if there is a zapper attack you have a gun and you’re ready. I always slept outside on my back, even in the rain. Because the guys that slept in tanks or other enclosures were prime targets for grenades and mortars. Outside, on my back, I could hear things and be much more ready. Even though I was a medic, if someone was trying to kill me, that was the only time I shot back. Very seldom did I shoot back because almost all the time we were shot at first and I was called upon to help someone. But the basic thing, since I came back, is I always sleep on my back, I don’t sleep on my stomach. Because over there if you slept on your stomach you could wake up with a knife in your back.

I was very glad I was a medic even though I had no choice about being made a medic. I was sometimes called a gook lover because I helped wounded Vietnamese, but I was also respected because I always helped anyone that called upon me. I was awarded a few medals while I was there. Besides the Purple Heart, I was awarded a Bronze Star and a Silver Star.

Another thing that occasionally crops up in my mind is a memory of a dying soldier. You know when someone’s going to die. You can look in their eyes, you know they’re not going to live, and you just tell them, “you’re lucky you’re going to Japan.” But you just have to set them down in the helicopter and help the next person that you know has a chance of living. Sometimes I didn’t think I should do it. I don’t think anyone should do it. Deep down in your subconscious, you think maybe you could have saved that guy’s life. But there’s no way you could have. As hard as it sounds, when you look at their eyes, they glaze over. That’s sort of the point of going into shock. Their eyes glaze over and you know that there’s really no basic value in spending time with them when there’s three or four other people that definitely have a good possibility of living. I’m not saying like if there was any chance at all that this person would live that I would leave them. But after being there a month and seeing a few people you know when someone’s not going to live more than five minutes. After Vietnam I had no desire to pursue my medical experience. I did the exact opposite. I never wanted to have the medical responsibility for someone’s life in my hands again.

As soon as I was discharged I called my parents who lived in Connecticut and told them that I was okay. That I was going to stay with some friends in Oakland for two weeks and then go to Connecticut. My friends picked me up at the San Francisco Airport and gave me some LSD. I took a tab and started peaking with it on the San Mateo bridge. I stayed in Oakland for about two weeks and then I went home. It was one of the most sentimental times in my life. My parents and whole family came to the airport to meet me. It was the first time I saw my father cry. It was one of the closest feelings I have ever had with my father. That was a very high point in our lives.

When I got back to my parents’ home, I lived in Connecticut for about 4 months that summer before I moved back to California. During that time I had four friends that had to go for their physicals to go into the army. I stayed up with them at night and talked to them about how insane it was over there, how the people didn’t want us over there. We drank some coffee, got them really hyper, so their blood pressure was extremely high. After talking to me they had to stay two days for their physicals. But they got themselves up for the second day and flunked the physicals. I helped get four of my friends out of the army on high blood pressure that way. Because I saw what was going on over there and realized it was worthless. I would never go to war again unless my own country was attacked. I would leave, I would go anywhere. If they drafted me to go to war in east jockstrap, Alaska, or in Japan, because we were supposedly their allies, I would not go. The only way I would defend our country is if our actual continental United States was attacked. Otherwise, I would not go.

I basically tell people I know that didn’t go to Vietnam that I love them and I’m really happy they didn’t go. Because I knew immediately that it was the wrong thing for me to do. But I had a choice to make and I was young and I just said, well, I don’t know what’s really going on so I’m going to see.

I would never go to war again unless my own country was attacked. I would leave, I would go anywhere. If they drafted me to go to war in east jockstrap, Alaska, or in Japan, because we were supposedly their allies, I would not go.

Since Vietnam I haven’t gotten involved politically. I do know one person that died from Agent Orange. And the government has done nothing about it as far as I am concerned. The government has done nothing. They are either ignoring the fact or they’re saying that’s bullshit. I know a guy that was 28 years old and he went to the VA Hospital day after day after day and they just shined him on. He died with a wife and two children of that disease. That pisses me off a lot. I mean, there’s no doubt in my mind that Agent Orange killed him.

I recently read a book, Born on the Fourth of July, that was by a guy who became a paraplegic in Vietnam. If something like that happened to me I would probably be very politically involved now. I feel very lucky that I got out with minor injuries. My basic feeling is that unless a multitude of Vietnam veterans get together, which I don’t think is happening here, nothing’s going to benefit us that much. I think we’ve gotten screwed. I think a lot of Vietnam vets have gotten screwed. I mean, if I was in a VA Hospital with no legs, I’d be much more involved. Because I’ve visited people in VA Hospitals where I’ve seen rats underneath their beds.

I don’t read the newspaper an awful lot but as far as I am concerned I think El Salvador would be a similar situation and I think that we have no right to be there. I think we had no right to be in Vietnam. I think it was a big mistake. I think that Reagan or the establishment’s going to do in El Salvador what they want to do. I also think there aren’t that many Vietnam veterans that are going to try and stop what’s going on in El Salvador. I might be wrong on that point, but I still think the government’s going to do what they want to do there no matter what all the Vietnam veterans do.

If there was a multitude of Vietnam veterans who protested, then I would join that group. But I don’t think that would happen. If it did happen I would get involved . . . to an extent. I am not going to go out and get killed in the street opposing our position in El Salvador. I would, however, definitely peaceably demonstrate against our involvement in El Salvador.

The greatest feeling about being in Vietnam was knowing that I definitely saved many peoples’ lives. North Vietnamese and Americans. I did the best I could.