reposted from Baja Report blog 12/18/2012
It was August 1968. I was 19 years old. The world was crazy. Just like today. My buddy Dave, long time partner in all sorts of crimes and Brother with no blood relation, and I were working during the summer break. He was working in retail. I was a laborer in construction. The summer was coming to a close and we would be heading back to College. We were going to College because of the Draft. The Beta for the Draft was launched by the Romans. The Draftees were the men that survived being leveraged (conquered) by the Romans. At first they used the Draftees to pad the Roman Army. Then they made a serious mistake and reassigned the Draftees as servants to fire their hot tubs at TOGA PARTIES and ended up having to offshore their army. This is always a mistake and you know the outcome on that one. Fall of the empire, fiddling while Rome burns etc. While the Romans were having Toga Parties their Beta Draft was perfected by the Visigoths, the Astrogoths, the Polygoths, and the Barbariangoths at the beginning of the Dark Ages. They would come to a village on their way to sack Rome (sacking Rome was the Core Competency of the various Goths) and sack the village for practice. They called it Sacking as they would put everything in a sack and carry it off. They would sack the food, the goats, the liquor, cats and dogs, clean sheets. They would conscript all the men to help in the next sacking of Rome. It was the Sack & Draft. But the various Goths did not have the word Draft. The Romans didn’t have that word either. They called it Juvenus Collectus, translated loosely as Get Guys. The Goths called it Gotupbrinkenfoler, Goth for Draft. Anyway they would make the conscriptees wear combat boots and squat in the mud while Weapons of Individual Destruction whizzed over their heads. They would often get trench foot.
The Draft in the U S was a little different from the Goths concept. It was like the Goths sacking the village but instead of carrying off every male they would let all the rich white guys stay in the village and go to college for 4 years. Then they would be Gotupbrinkenfolered and go in the Goth army as officers. It was called a Deferment in the U S. But all the poor white boys and people of color that couldn’t afford college got to be Gotupbrinkenfolered right away. It was a crappy system, unfair, but it saved a lot of rich white butts for 4 years. Most importantly my butt. Except a year later Dave got a high number in the Gotupbrinkenfoler Lottery. He quit college. He would have had to quit anyway as his mother was resisting writing ALL his term papers. With a high number he did not have to go unless the war lasted 20 years more. Then he would be too old anyway. WinWin. The Lottery was a strange addition to the original Gothic Gotupbrinkenfoler concept. Gambling. National Russian Roulette. I always wondered why they didn’t make it really interesting and install slot machines at the Draft Board offices. Get your draft card, come into the draft office, pull the handle. OOPS, not enough cherries. Off you go to get trench foot. Talk about the Twilight Zone.
So we were heading back to college to avoid the Gotupbrinkenfoler. We were also still in deep recovery from THE SUMMER OF LOVE. A little twitchy. We needed a break. We decided to use our customary stress reducer that would serve us for years to come: