EUROPE ON $1.11 A DAY – Sample Chapters 1-3

A Draft Dodger Flees to Europe Despite Losing His Savings in a Marijuana Conviction

A 1969 Memoir

by David Blander

Chapter 1

THE PHYSICAL

Early 1969

They want to kill me.

                   I knew that disturbing thoughts raised blood pressure, so I was practicing my paranoia in preparation for the squeezing cuff.

                   We wore only underwear and our shoes and socks. The central California country boys in line with me laughed and joked as if in some extended P.E. class. Idiots, I thought. How much shucking and jiving will you guys be doing when the VC come charging through the perimeter of yourfirebase after driving you into your bunkers with a rain of mortar rounds and then blasting your bunkers to smithereens with RPGs [rocket propelled grenades]. Laugh that off, boys. I was learning the lingo of the Vietnam war because I read everything I could find about it. This was, after all, the war of my generation. I just chose not to participate because I believed it was wrong. Then why study it? Because, I reasoned, if you want to fight against the damn thing, you better know something about it. I learned about interrogators taking a couple of Viet Cong prisoners up in a helicopter. “Okay, Charlie, tell us what you know.” “Don’t know nuttin’ Joe.” And the prisoner would be tossed out. The second prisoner would be only too happy to reveal all. Despite his cooperation, he too would be thrown out. An interrogator gloated, “Saves the cost of keeping him locked up. Besides, he was worthless to us. He already told us everything he knew.”

                   In the underground Los Angeles Free Press, a former Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol commando (an LRRP, pronounced “Lurp”) said, “We’d go in after the B-52s bombers had come through. Where there used to be a hamlet, those big-assed birds left nothing but a huge crater, and hanging from the trees were all these body parts.” His statement reminded me of the Billie Holiday song Strange Fruit. Lady Day had sung about lynched black men hanging from trees. Same deal, I thought. Just a change of races.

                   America, I concluded, was one fucking mean-ass nation. I took to calling the Stars and Stripes “Old Gory.”

                   So I was pissed. Like any good, red-blooded American boy, I was brought up to believe our wars—horrible though they were—brought us things worth fighting for. The Revolutionary War established our liberty as a Free Nation. The Civil War gave black people a chance—limited though it was—to pursue the American Dream. World Wars I and II defeated dictators out to Seig Heil! our entire planet. The Korean War ended in a stalemate, but at least we brought baseball to Seoul.

                   And now, Vietnam. What good could emerge from this war? So far, the only salutary thing I saw coming out of it was our massive Peace Movement.

                   At UCLA, I was part of a radical, anti-war film student group, grandly-named The Eyes and Ears of the Revolution. We filmed anti-war demonstrations and cheered the 1968 Tet Offensive, when the National Liberation Front (NLF), a union of North Vietnamese troops and Viet Cong, disrupted the Tet New Year celebrations with a swarm of attacks all over South Vietnam, proving that General William Westmoreland, commander of the U.S. forces, had lied when he’d said America was on the verge of victory. At rallies, we chanted, “Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh! NLF is gonna win!”

                   Waiting in line, I folded my arms and shrank into myself. See, folks? Withdrawn psycho! You don’t want this guy around a .50 caliber machine gun!

                   Before the draft notice came, UCLA had sent me something else: a Bachelor of Arts degree. Okay, so now I’m a grad student. No big deal. Not so fast, said Uncle Sam. Within days after the B.A. arrived, came “Greetings,” from the draft board. No more 2-S student deferment. Why did the two missives arrive almost simultaneously? Coincidence? Or conspiracy? School spits ‘em out, army sucks ‘em in?

                   The Greetings letter included a date for a draft physical in L.A. where—the word was—if you’re breathing they’ll take you. There was no way I was going to enter the army of an imperialist nation that slaughtered peasants minding their own revolutionary business.

                 I wasn’t about to beg for Conscientious Objector status, which was grudgingly granted only to those who could document their pacifist religious faith, of which—as an agnostic—I had none. Besides, I was revolted by the idea of a bunch of “pigs” judging my beliefs to determine my future. 

                 If I were inducted at my age, twenty-three, I wouldn’t be walking point in some jungle. That was for gung-ho 19-year-old “grunts,” fueled with the testosterone-tweaked, militarily-manipulated rage to create Mai Lais. As my Aunt Margaret used to say, “Youth is wasted on the young.” And many of those youths in Vietnam got “wasted,” in the worst sense of the word, because their M-16 rifles jammed. The military, in its hubris, claimed that the M-16 was so sophisticated that it wouldn’t do that. Wrong. Grit easily entered the rifles in jungles and rice paddies and fouled the guns’ innards. Many soldiers threw away the M-16s and picked up the enemy’s reliable, crud-proof AK-47s. (The military finally fixed the problem in 1967 by chroming the inside of the chambers and barrels, letting the dirt slip through.) One of the soldiers found dead beside his jammed M-16 was my high school weight lifting buddy Karl. A failing student, he’d dropped out and joined the Marines. He’d visited on leave weighing 200 pounds of muscle. Those steak-and-eggs breakfasts and excruciating boot camp routines had bulked him up. Formerly, Karl and I had worked out with the same weights. Now he could out-lift me by 20 pounds. Six months later, he was dead. As Country Joe and the Fish sang, “…be the first ones on your block to have your boy come home in a box.”

                  If I were in Vietnam, being too old for grunthood, I’d probably be ensconced in some well-guarded base, tabulating the body counts that Westmoreland thought added up to victory. But I loathed the military too much to tolerate a knuckle-dragging hamfist shaving off my long locks, or some granite-faced drill sergeant demanding that I say, “Sir! Yes sir!” after he calls me a maggot. As a karate instructor, I wondered if I could refrain from giving that sergeant a mae geri front snap kick in the balls and then spending the next fifteen years in a brig.

                   The military was the ultimate expression of what I called “The Sickness.” The English writer D. H. Lawrence described the malady best: “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer.” To me, the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King confirmed that assessment. What’s a flower child sympathizer like me doing in this place?

              So what was I going to do?

              I visited a team of anti-war attorneys who advised prospective draftees on how to avoid the military. A lawyer there told me to move my place of residence out of L.A. “Legally, your place of residence is a state of mind,” he explained. “All you need is an address there. Try to find a place where the cows outnumber the people.” His second piece of advice was to see an anti-war physician. I picked one from his list who was only a short drive from my apartment in Venice. “Your blood pressure is one-forty over ninety,” the doctor said. “That’s right on the borderline of being too high for the army.” The condition was hereditary. Uncles on my mother’s side had a habit of dying from strokes in their fifties. ( Thanks for the genes, Mom.) “Now, I can’t advise you to do anything that harms your body,” the doctor continued. “Here is a list of foods and condiments that people with hypertension should avoid.”

                A word to the wise, Doc!

                Supper became canned spaghetti or ravioli mixed with tablespoons of salt. Yuck!

               Next came finding that place of residence. My favorite relative, Aunt Margaret, had a retired teacher friend in Fresno, who agreed to provide her address, but she wanted to meet me first. I drove through central California’s flat, fertile farmlands to a neat ranch home surrounded by fields equipped with the cows the attorney had recommended. Like Margaret, Sylvia was lean and leftist. But she suffered from something that my aunt didn’t. As we drank tea in her kitchen, an old man stormed into the room wearing an American Legion hat. He started spewing halitosis in my face about how I was shirking my duty as an American. I glanced at Sylvia, sitting behind him. She was shaking her head and making motions for me to ignore the irate old fellow. I felt sorry for Sylvia.

               On the midnight before my physical, I started driving two hundred NoDozed miles to Fresno. At sunup, to stay alert, I took a quarter of a cross-scored white pill called a “bennie” (Benzedrine, an amphetamine upper, the “little white pills” in trucker songs). I hoped the amount would be too small to detect in my blood. Taking a deep breath, I entered the hulking, featureless government building.

                My big moment was coming. I lined up for blood pressure check. At first, I tried to calm my nerves, then I thought, Wait a minute! Anxiety raises blood pressure. So have a nervous breakdown, Davey, but keep it to yourself!

                Trying to appear casual as the cuff tightened around my arm, I silently did zen-karate breathing, forcing ki—the life force—down into my gut, an action similar to forcing a constipated crap. I stoked this internal storm with a mantra: They want to kill me! They want to kill me!

                 Conducting the test was a young MD with coke-bottle glasses. He took his reading, paused, then said, “I’m going to have to do this again.”

                Again the cuff tightened. They want to kill me!

The doctor’s eyes widened, comically turning his thick lenses into cartoon orbs.Sweat glistened on his forehead. He stood. “Please come with me.”

                 I followed him into a room with light green walls and a big brown easy chair in which he told me to sit. “Now, I don’t want you to be alarmed,” he said. “You’re young, and I don’t think you’re in any danger. But my reading indicates that you’re on the verge of having a stroke.”

              Shit! Did I overdo it? “What are the numbers?” I asked.

             “183 over 130.”

              “Wow. That’s high.”

               “The first thing you should do—to prevent a medical emergency—is to see your doctor right away and get some medication.”

                How about I just stop eating salted spaghetti?

                I took the young doctor’s advice. I called the anti-war physician and told him of the high blood pressure reading. He wanted to prescribe medication, but I said, “I got it up on my own; I can get it down on my own, too.” The doctor’s last words were chilling. “They might want to test you again.”

                 Back in my cluttered Venice Beach apartment, I rolled a joint, popped open a Schlitz and perused the possibilities. Best case: I’m classified 4-F, unfit for service. Worst case: they get suspicious of that Everest-high blood pressure reading and want to test me again. If so, I didn’t want to goose up the blood pressure again; I might actually have that stroke the Coke-bottle glasses doctor warned me about. I couldn’t risk staying in America. When the MPs appear at my Venice pad, I wanted to be doing things like smoking legal hash in an Amsterdam coffee shop.

                 Over pot and Ripple, a friend asked, “What about just going to Canada? You’d be safe up there.”

                 “Suppose America said, ‘Give us back those cowardly chickenshits or else,’” I answered. “If Canada refused, would America send in black ops teams?”

                 Draft dodgers in Canada feared that possibility and lived scared.

                  I saved up for my European vacation by teaching as many karate classes as my sensei (chief instructor) could schedule. Realistically, I figured on accumulating about $450 for a hundred days abroad—a bit short of the $500 needed for vacationing according to Arthur Frommer’s best seller Europe on Five Dollars a Day, but close. Just drink less beer.

                   Of course, if Aunt Margaret would tell me in a long distance collect call from wherever I was in Europe that the draft board wanted to re-test me, whatever money I had left would be applied to sanctuary in Sweden.

                  Then came disaster. The people I called “pigs” seized over half of my vacation savings.

Footnote 1. From I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die-Rag.

Chapter 2

BUSTED

April, 1969

As we walked along the Venice Beach promenade that spring night, a police car approached from the opposite direction.My friend John and his girlfriend Christie turned off onto the beach, heading for the water. I should have just kept walking toward the police car, but instead I followed my friends. 

               We were about a hundred feet out from the blacktop when the cops shined a powerful light on us and an amplified voice ordered us to return. Turning, I pretended to stumble. As my hands hit the sand, I pushed the joint in my left fist as deeply into it as I could.

                 One cop conducted a search—and he found the damn joint. 

                They released my friends; I had been the only one “holding.”The cops cuffed my hands behind my back and shoved me into the rear seat. Into the belly of the beast, Davey.

                My first encounter with cops had come during the June 23, 1967, Century Plaza Hotel “police riot,” where cops gunned their Harleys into a screaming crowd and bashed heads, including those of children. I had been busy filming the police attack with a “combat camera,” a raucous Bell and Howell (“Bellow and Howell”) Filmo 16 millimeter camera made for war. It was so rugged you could roll it down a mountain and it will still work. Peering through the eyepiece, I heard a commotion beside me. I looked up just in time to see a billy club descend on me. Reflexively, I held the camera up as a shield. The club smashed into it. I turned and ran. I peeked back and saw a puzzled policeman holding half a stick. The camera still worked.

                   One of the cops slid in beside me. He angled his holster so that his revolver poked into my side. If it fired, the bullet would go through my guts. The cop at the wheel tossed the car around corners, fishtailing, tires screeching.Hands behind my back, I lurched into the gun. Its barrel jabbed into me like some pervert robot’s penis. I could just see the headline: Addict Shot After Attacking Officer

                After posing for mug shots, I called Aunt Margaret for bail. She was a college professor who thought pot should be legalized.A smirking, burly cop led me past the crowded drunk tank—to my relief—and to an empty cell.“This is where we put our VEE EYE PEEs!” he announced. “People like you who have committed FELONIES! Please enjoy our luxury suite. We’re here to serve you. If you need anything, just SCREAM LOUD! We’re a little hard of hearing. ” The metal-grate door clanged shut.I lay on the bottom bunk, wondering if this meant goodbye summer vacation in Europe; hello, Chino Men’s Colony. Maybe there was a silver lining: as a felon, I couldn’t be drafted. Of course, I’d never ever find a job again.

                I was glad to be alone in the cell. But that didn’t last. The door squealed open, and I jumped off the bunk just as that sarcastic, burly cop deposited a huge black man. “Heeere’s COMPANY!”

               Oh, shit! I thought. He can have whichever bunk he wants as long as I’m not in it.

              The big man sank onto the thin bottom bunk mattress.“This is the end,” he murmured. “This is the end…this is the end…”

              “What happened?” I dared to ask.

             He stared at the floor. “I killed a man.”

             “Jesus.”

             “I’m going to lose everything,” he continued in a numb monotone. “My job, my home.My wife will leave me. I’m going to prison.”

            He said he had been in a neighborhood bar when a man to whom he owed money entered and began badgering him for the cash.He told the man that he would go home, get the money, and return to pay his debt.He had been crossing the bar’s parking lot when his creditor—now drunk—ran after him, shouting, “You ain’t gettin’ away!” The man shoved a gun in his face. 

             “I thought he was gonna shoot me,” my cellmate said. “So I grabbed the gun and it went off and…he died. I went back in the bar and called the police. They told me I was under arrest for murder and I was going to prison for a long, long time.”

              “They always try to scare you,” I said, based on my limited experience. “What did you tell them?”

              “I told them what happened.” 

               “Don’t say anything more until you talk to a lawyer.”

                “Can’t afford one.”

              “They’ll give you one.It’s your right. Any public defender can easily prove that you acted in self defense—that you feared for your life.You’re gonna win.” We discussed such things as possible witnesses, people who could vouch for his character, his dealings with the dead man, his police records, his job history and his family. Acting as his jailhouse lawyer, I forgot about my own case.I got so involved with his that I wasn’t ready to leave when Aunt Margaret arrived with bail. I still had last bits of advice to give my cellmate.That snide burly cop was impatient. “You want your aunt to come back TOMORROW?”

               “No!”

              As I left, I repeated to my now ex-cellmate, “You’re gonna win!”

               On the drive home, all I could talk about was his situation. Margaret laughed. “If he hadn’t shown up, what would you have done?”

               I shrugged.“Probably just worry.”

              “Instead you forgot your troubles by getting involved with his.There’s a psychological reward you get from volunteering or doing other socially useful work: Your personal problems diminish in importance.”

              “Well, it worked for me.”

               I often wondered about my cellmate’s fate, but I didn’t look into it. I wanted no further contact with the courts after paying a misdemeanor (no draft-stopping felony) fine of $250 for the world’s most expensive joint.

Chapter 3

TO GO OR NOT TO GO

Okay, two-fifty from my Europe fund. $450-250=$200 left. To go or not to go—my own personal Hamlet question. My conundrum was whether keeping my butt out of the slings and arrows of the military meant munching fine European cuisine only through dumpster diving. As a chronic worrier, I lost sleep imagining being broke in Europe: Despite my vow not to steal, suppose my gut got so growly that I’d grab some croissants when a baker’s back is turned and then flee amidst local verbiage for “Stop thief!” ?Or being shaken awake on a park bench by polici snarling, “Verboten!” and being hauled off to a cell—which might be an upgrade: no rain, no ants crawling in my sleeping bag, no robbers—unless the cops themselves filled that role. Maybe there’d be roaches in the cell, like the poison-proof ones I learned to live with in Venice Beach. Hello, roommates! Or maybe I could fake blindness behind dark shades, only to have my cover blown when some asshole tries to filch coins from my cup and finds his arm twisted behind his back.

                 Maybe I’d need to work. Maybe the only job I could get would be cleaning those godawful squat toilets, where you stand on blocks raised from the floor, then lower your butt and deliver, aiming at a hole under your stance, hopefully missing your shoes and pants leg.

                 Maybe I’d be stationed with a hose to wash all that effluvia into the holes. Maybe I’d be hired because it would be one of those jobs that Europeans won’t do—only broke, immigrant Americans.

                 Then there was the threat of violence. It would be naive to think that London, Amsterdam or even amiable Copenhagen had no muggers. Despite my 1st kyu brown belt level (one notch below black), I stood an unimposing 5’10 at 160 pounds. I would carry a Finnish puukko (pronounced “boo-koh”) hunting knife that was brought to America by my grandparents, who came over on what they joked was “the rutabaga boat.” But I had no training in knife fighting. I planned to use the blade only as a utensil. But I’d keep the knife within easy reach when sleeping outdoors.

                 I tried to apply my philosophy of Creative Pessimism to my proposed trip. It meant imagining every possible thing that could go wrong and having some kind of plan for it. Maybe not a good plan, but at least one concocted before the thing actually screws up. I developed the philosophy while working on student film sets where snafus happened mostly with things for which you had no backup. Agitated over the draft, the bust and the loss of more than half of my travel funds, I couldn’t concentrate on my schoolwork. Then I found something soothing: Transcendental Meditation. In upscale Westwood Village, abutting UCLA, I sat in a small office across from a poster of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi—the very image of a Central Casting Indian guru, complete with thick white beard and peace-on-Earth eyes. I presented to the certified teacher sitting beneath the poster a nominal fee and a ceremonial offering of fruit. With his practiced placidity, he said one word: ahing. I was to repeat it: ahing,ahing,ahing,ahing. I closed my eyes and chanted, then I let this sound play only in my mind. Ahingahingahingahing. The mental vibration became subtle. I let my thoughts wander, always returning to the deep brain whisper of this mantra. After 20 minutes, I opened my eyes, feeling like I’d just smoked some good hash. Why pay for pot?

                 I meditated 20 minutes before breakfast and 20 minutes before supper, feeling high but clear-headed. I could now focus on my classes, such as French. Maintenant je peux cuss en Francais. Merde! (Now I can cuss in French. Shit!)

                 I believed that any word could serve as a mantra. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. (Woody Allen would make fun of the whole idea in 1977’s Annie Hall, with Jeff Goldblum lamenting into a phone, “I forgot my mantra.”)

                 Despite my new mental medication, I still usually got to sleep by smoking a joint, which seemed to open parts of my brain that even mantras couldn’t access. Pot would change insomniac visions of doom into sandman-soliciting reveries like opening a dojo in Stockholm and teaching lovely Svenska flickor (Swedish girls) how to bust the balls of mashers. American deserters in Sweden wrote about these bold beauties coming on to them. I looked forward to meeting these kinds of girls, since I always had to battle my natural, pessimistic reticence when approaching women. Maybe liberated Swedish girls weren’t afraid to make fools of themselves with awkward opening lines—something that my shaky self-esteem was loathe to risk.

                 My natural pessimism dismissed the penurious prospect of the trip with my old saying, “When in doubt, don’t.” Suppose I was sleeping outside when a rainstorm descended on my threadbare old Boy Scout sleeping bag, and I caught pneumonia and then couldn’t afford medical care? Would I die in some gutter coughing up crud? Or I could stay in Venice and take the physical again if a suspicious draft board demanded it. Could I just goose my blood pressure up to something like 150 over 100, enough to flunk the physical without going into stroke territory. But how would I maintain it at that level? Could an anti-war doctor help me? But what doctor would risk getting caught conspiring to help defraud Uncle Sam? I’d have to take my chances playing blood pressure roulette on my own.

                 To go or not to go. I decided to consult a genius, one with an IQ of 161. She had also taken over one hundred LSD trips. Whether the acid had made her that smart or just made her think she was, I didn’t know. But she was a college senior at age eighteen. You have to pass some tough tests to do that.

                 When I first met Sonya (not SAWNya but SOHNya) as she strolled down the Venice boardwalk, I told her she looked like Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane. Same long dark hair. Same pretty “mystical witch” presence. But that was where the resemblance ended. For one thing, Sonya was not a raging alcoholic like Slick. But, like Slick, who led the Airplane to stardom, she was obsessive.

                 We had agreed to be free to date other people, but then I’d come home at 3AM and find Sonya sitting in the hallway outside my apartment, arms folded, patiently waiting—and seething. Her stalking was especially irksome when I’d bring a date home and Sonya would say something to her like: “Oh, did you have a good time tonight, honey? It will get even better behind that door. Trust me, I should know-ho ho.” Even if my date didn’t storm off at that point, the fires of romance would definitely be dampened.

                 So I broke up with Sonya. Then I missed her. Sonya was unique and exotic.

                 She agreed to stop stalking. “I’ll just get in line like a good little girl.”

                 “Well, I don’t want you to feel resentful.”

                 “Do I sound resentful?”

                 “A bit.”

                 “I just meant to be sarcastic, not resentful.”

                 “Whew. That’s a relief.”

                 “Now you’re the one being sarcastic.”

                 We finally called a truce. We’d be free to date other people. No stalking allowed—just sarcasm.

                 Sonya had the right attributes to fuel my fetish for smart, offbeat women. They could be leading anti-war rallies, exhibiting paintings at galleries, writing dissertations or just being oddballs like Sonya. What turned me on was the thought of seeing such a woman in the throes of ecstasy. I got turned on by thinking, “Look at what I’m doing to this unique woman’s incredible brain!”

                 Ego trip? Perhaps. But I got no complaints, maybe because I never told my girlfriends about this turn-on.Why not? Was I afraid some woman would lament, “You only love me for my mind ” ?

                 Unsurprisingly, Sonya had a “take charge” attitude towards sex—which suited me, since I was more passive. She would climb on top, in “cowgirl” position, and lean forward with breasts swaying enticingly. I not only enjoyed her rhythm in deep penetration, but I loved touching every part of her body, which was literally “at hand.”

                 One time we took acid together, splitting a 250 microgram tab into two 125-mic doses for mild, controllable trips. We were riding on snaking Mulholland Drive, disappointed that the drug wasn’t coming on. Then, in the road before us, lay a dead animal—maybe a possum. Its mouth was agape and its unseeing eyes stared straight at us. Sonya let out a scream and in that moment the acid kicked in. Instead of driving down the road, it seemed like the VW Beetle was standing still and the highway was pitching looping curves at it. I concentrated on placing the car in each new, approaching road loop.

                 Regarding my fear of running out of money in Europe, Sonya—as usual—had a distinctive suggestion: “Here’s what you do. You find a tourist area, then you plop your butt down with a hat to collect money. You pull out a harmonica and start playing.”

                 “But I don’t know how to play a harmonica.”

                 “Doesn’t matter. Just blow into it. Sound will come out. You can slide the mouth organ back and forth to get different notes. People aren’t going to stick around to actually listen. They’ll put coins in your hat, feel good about helping your sorry ass, and then be on their way. Just be sure to look poor.”

                 “No problem. Looking rich would be much harder.”

                 I decided the harmonica would be a last resort. It would be like begging—but with a prop. I had resolved not to beg, but when an empty stomach growls its demands, who knows to what lengths you’ll go? Harmonicas are small, light and easily carried. Maybe—in the spare time I anticipated having plenty of—I might actually learn how to play the damn thing, becoming the Bob Dylan of draft dodgers.

                 So Sonya voted for Europe. Then Aunt Margaret said something that made it imperative to go: “People on their deathbeds don’t regret the things they did as much as the things they didn’t do.” Could I turn down an exciting new adventure just because I couldn’t afford it?

                 How did I acquire my knee-jerk pessimism? Probably from being in the kind of family that would later be labelled dysfunctional.