1964 to 1972 David in Santa Cruz. 1970-Iowa Police-voting Communist

Why I Grew My Hair Long

 

Before the Columbia police riot in 1968, I could not convince the people of Waterloo that I was not in a rock band. As I was the first boy to wear his hair long in Waterloo that is the only thing they could think of and my reality could not touch their conclusion jumping. It was so bad that the manager of the Walgreen's on the corner of East 4th and Sycamore asked me for my autograph. In the famous Balcony of Blacks' Department store a young black guy came up to me with culture shock on his face and said, "I'm from Chicago and you understand man, you're the only one here who understands." Well I didn't know what he was talking about but it would not have been a comfort to him to admit it so I disassembled, while he expressed his dismay at the culture of Waterloo.

My reality was that in 1964 the barbers' union declared 14 year old boys were adults and had to pay adult prices for haircuts. I felt that as I could not vote, drive, marry, work full time, or join the army, I should not be considered an adult at the barbers till.

The Beatles were becoming popular at that time and I decided that I would not cut my hair until I could vote, and could get away with it as longer hair was being worn on the East Coast. And as written, it sort of worked, for a while.

 

Reaction Rears its' Head

 

As I wrote, I did get away with it for awhile but then in 1968 after the police went nuts at Columbia University in NYC, David Brinkley, of the Huntley-Brinkley Report, issued the pronouncement that all 'hippies' were commie homos who wanted to screw your daughters and take away your Cadillacs. For those of you who do not remember, Huntley and Brinkley were NBC's answer to Walter Cronkite. Of course Waterloo believed every word and the same people who had been asking for my autograph now started throwing rocks at me. This actually happened. They threw rocks. Not everyone though, some children just hid behind trees if they saw me. Once on Franklin Street, Phyllis Singer, who wrote a column for the Waterloo Courier newspaper, rolled down her car window and yelled, "Are you a boy or are you a girl?' as she was driven past me, but perhaps the women in her family wore beards and she was naturally confused. One never knows.

 

The Police Preserve and Protect

 

My response was that I was not going to be forced into complying with totalitarians and so kept my hair long far longer than I had planned or wished. If the idiots had stopped trying to force me to cut it I would have, I was tired of it's upkeep, but they were too bigoted and too stupid to do so. It was just wild. Once a fat motorcycle cop (by the way, he was also a part time barber) put his machine up on sidewalk along East Fifth Street just across from the County Hall and walked it a few inches behind me gunning the motor. I got rid of him by dodging into a bank and waiting for him to go on with whatever he thought his job was.

Another time, I was returning home at night after mailing a letter at the Post Office when on East Fourth just below Mulberry a squad car ran at speed up onto the sidewalk almost hitting the front of Lincoln's Office Supply before stopping. The cop started screaming out of his window at me. The advice from those old British adventure movies about great white hunters does work: stay calm and look them in the eye. A calm quiet tone in word and posture, polite responses in my best English and respectful inquire into why he was so red faced hysterical did the trick. We didn't call the police pigs because we didn't like them; we called them pigs because they wanted us dead. And wanted it why? Just because? We were being taught that America is a free country, we learnt the hard way that it isn't; at best it is a continuing attempt at a free country.

It was with that background of abuse and hatred that I went off to California and was so dumb that I thought no one would pay any attention to me. Well, I was verbally and almost physically attacked by an Asian woman on Market Street in San Francisco but her friend dragged her away before she started swinging, and even the freaks there stared at me.

One night In Santa Cruz while crossing the Soquel Bridge a couple young men spoke to me as though I were a human being. It was the first time in six years that had happened and I no longer knew how to respond. I was dumb struck and nonplussed. I couldn't even speak to them. I almost felt like jumping off the bridge. Puzzled, they when on and as they did I heard them speculate that I must be tripping on some very heavy acid. But it was just PTSD from years of trying to be free in that hell hole Waterloo, Iowa where three months before I had stepped out of my home for a breath of night air, and was standing under my bedroom window when a car load of cops came up the alley and tried to arrest me for house breaking. But then the night that a face covered in blood pressed against the door window between the street and our living room and we let in a woman, who had been thrown out of her 'boyfriends' car for not putting out, the police had to be invited over but did not respond to our call.

 

the Life Political

 

I still didn't cut my hair when I became old enough to vote as I felt the morons I lived among would have thought that they had won by force of their oppression. I didn't cut it until the Arab oil embargo during the Carter Administration when my fellow Americans were all so worried about their gasoline they completely forgot my hair. It's really sad that Carter, who was trying to do something about global warming, yes dear we knew about then, if we cared to, was punished for high gas prices we might have had a chance to stave off the disaster facing us today, but no we were too stupid, and got Reagan the mental dinosaur.

So the hair was still long when I first walked into the Waterloo City Hall looking for where my polling place was hidden. At the City Hall I found the signage conflicting with itself. Like a comic gag with arrows pointing away from each other and others pointing toward each other with the words "This Way"…and others just pointing to a blank wall. The Police Station was, however, in plain sight at the end of a hall so I went there to ask for directions.

The cop at the desk didn't know where the polls were any more than the person who had put up the signs but ask me to wait. He was gone for awhile I thought perhaps if he had gone to look for the Poles, perhaps in Warsaw, but he had gone to summoned Detective Morelock who came out from behind somewhere.

Now this was not the Detective Morelock* who was arrested for burglary while on duty but his brother the other detective Morelock. He asked me back into an interrogation room where he left me for quite some time so I had a chance to examine the dust layers on the filing cabinets, although not a geologist, I was impressed. Upon returning Morelock began to ask me all sorts of questions which got too personal when he started asking about income which I didn't have as no one would hire me because of my hair. In my family we don't talk to outsiders about money anymore than bowel movements or sex. So I started asking questions myself - just what was going on? It was a fishing trip trying to find proof that I was a drug dealer?

He claimed that a woman had been raped on the west side and that I matched the description of the rapist exactly. Well at the time he claimed the rape happened I had been at an All Soul's Mass at Saint Joseph's Church where maybe four hundred persons had seen me (they would have been looking at my hair and beard not the priest). I mentioned that there were a few witnesses to my whereabouts then asked, "So this rapist has shoulder length blond hair and a red beard?" "Well", he stammered, "there isn't anything about a beard in the report. But he wore the same color shirt you have on." I was wearing a paisley shirt.

I said, “in that case I think I will just go and vote NOW. By the way, do you know where the polls are in this building?" He didn't. I found them before the night was over and voted for the first time in my life. I voted for Gus Hall, the Communist Party candidate.

Quite a forced march, as In 1964 I was a Goldwater Boy, the only one at East High, and got hell for it. But I really did think he would win the war and the Democrats would just dick around throwing away lives and wealth hoping the Vietnamese would go away. I was wrong about Goldwater but right about the Democrats.

Earlier in 1968, while still taking politics seriously, I crashed both Democratic and Republican caucuses and at the Republicans spoke for Rockefeller, and got to vote for him! Rockefeller lost that caucus by a landslide, the American voters as usual preferring a dildo. I was 19 but no one asked for id.

Young enough to die for a politician but too young to vote for one. I went to the Democrats in the name of reason over power. I went to the Republicans to speak for Truth and honesty over power. America voted against both.

 

Be free.

 

PS during the '60's, '70's, '80's, and most of the '90's the word mullet for a hairstyle was unknown and never used. It appears to have been coined in 2002 by a pair of jokers who wrote a dreary little book making fun of men's hairstyles. Not knowing that long hair was just that and not caring they made up some crap name.

 

P.S. One week before this photo was shot I made my first commercial airline passage. We left from Waterloo on Ozark Airlines, but before boarding I was spoken to by a pair of Airport personnel who asked me back into that little room where you don't want to go.

What was the problem? A woman passenger flying on that run had objected to me. She said she wouldn't fly if I were allowed on the plane? Why? The top three buttons of my shirt were undone, not my pants but my shirt, the top three buttons of my shirt. She just could not bear to be on a plane with anyone dressed like that! I was too astonished to even laugh. But having already learnt that to be graceful is a good way to live as grace makes life more bearable for others, I simply buttoned those buttons, asking if that might not assuage her. The airport thugettes thought it would work and perhaps they made it so.

Go in Grace, the Story has Ended.

David Weldon

 

Cats have nine lives, I have more than that. Cops in the Next Century

September 25, 2010 at 4:04 AM

One late summer's’ night, upon returning home I got out of my car locking the door behind me, only then realizing that my only set of keys was still in the ignition, making things worse, my house keys were on that chain.

My car has very good locks by the way. And I couldn’t break into my home as I have done in the past. The doors and windows were not as compliant as they had been on other occasions. So I couldn’t call a locksmith or the police. In desperation I asked the next door I asked the neighbor, who is in law school and is a part time cop in a small town, to call the police for me to unlock the car. He was resistant at first but I talked him into it.

Iowa City came rather quickly, it seemed to be a slow night, but couldn’t open the car. That officer refused to give up and so called another officer.

Three more calls and two and a half hours later there were in front of my home, two Iowa City cops each with his own car (one was the K-nine), the University of Iowa K-nine unit, and a unit from Coralville, four neighbors one of whom had been riding with the Coralville cop, oh and his girlfriend was with him. He’s a Palestinian party boy and a good kid at heart, when he overheard one of the cops complaining to me that we needed a wedge and it was a mystery that none of the cops had one, our party boy piped up that he had one and ran off to get it. I looked at the cop and asked, “I wonder what he was doing with one of those.” The cop replied that he was just wondering that too.

And then the keys were in my hand.

They were all having such a good time laughing and joking, teasing each other for not being able to open the simple little door that I don't feel bad for having them out. But what an opera! All we needed was beer, and brats on the grill and it would have been a perfect night.

 

 

* Waterloo Courier 23 December 1970 page 1

 

Done