The guy was reading a book at Berkeley so I asked him...

 

      It could have been anyone, but the fellow with the scrubby grey beard, engrossed in the reading of a thick book, seemed to be an ideal candidate for an obvious question:

     “I bet you’re a survivor of the 1960’s!”

     He closed his book and relaxed his legs from the loto position he had assumed there in front of the Golden Bear at the University of California at Berkeley campus.

     “It’s pretty obvious I have survived.”

      His sense of irony fed my instinctive curiosity.

     “That’s true,” I replied “but what I meant was, well, there aren’t too many vestiges of the days when Berkeley students were lambasting the war in Vietnam and participating in protests against racial discrimination…”

      “Things have changed, true…where are you from?”

      “Argentina?”

      “You don’t say! I’m from Madrid…”

      “But a survivor of the ‘60’s.”

      “Yea. I graduated from Berkeley in ’64.”

      “Things sure have sure changed!”

      “No long haired types, no LSD, no beatniks, no anti-war rallies…”

     “And not too many far-out books, at least along Telegraph avenue...”

     “Nowadays there’re just interested in getting a degree, passing the tests and, well, they don’t have time to think.”

      “About preventive wars, the warming up of the planet...Iraq…”

      “You know why that’s not on the menu?”

      “I don’t know. Maybe because the new generation has gone Nerd.”

      “It’s more simple. During the Vietnam war, the draft still existed, the reserves too. Now they fight wars with volunteers.”

       “If you say: ‘I want to go fight for America’ what can your friends and relatives say?”

       “That’s true. But then you’ve got the multi-billion dollar defense budget, the skyrocketing debt, the mortgage crisis, dipping deep into your pockets to pay the doctor’s bill…”

        “Vaya uno a saber…”

        “Un abrazo…ha sido un gusto hablar con un sobreviviente…”

        So we parted. There was a homeless fellow seated at the entrance to the university, also a survivor of the 1960’s, at least in age. Not everyone is happy living in a suburb, two cars, a dog, a cat, a blackberry, a wife, two children and a talking parrot,” I thought to myself. I suppressed my desire to chat with the homeless chap. I had a pretty good idea of what he’d say, anyway.