The Seed and I a Murfin Memoir —A Seedling at Last

On the phone in Piper's Alley looking for a party a few month before joining the Seed  staff. My summer appearance when I joined the staff featured a straw hat, sweat soaked plaid shirt, and a red kerchief knotted at the throat.

On a hot afternoon after Goddard Graves arrived at the Lincoln Avenue IWW General Headquarters to finish my term as General Secretary Treasurer and I had spent a couple of hours showing him the ropes I left the hall and ambled up the street to 950 Wrightwood and the Seed office over the hippy eatery and community hangout Alice’s Revisited.  I needed a job and I needed it fast.  It was a cold call.  I hadn’t spoken to anyone previously and although I knew several staffers I had no idea if they needed or wanted anyone new or if they would be open to the semi-disgraced ex Wobbly bureaucrat.  The Seed had already become an IWW job shop, but I didn’t know if that would work for or against me.

I don’t remember who was sitting at the big desk near the wide-open bay windows.  A couple of box fans stirred the muggy air.  The desk was strewn with papers, piled high with underground press exchanges.  There was a large IBM electric typewriter with exchangeable type balls in various fonts and sizes and a black telephone with extension buttons.  The large front room of the former apartment was filled with stacked bundles of the paper waiting to be bought by the street vendors who circulated the vast majority of copies.

I don’t remember who exactly was sitting in the squeaking desk chair trying to pound out a story on the typewriter between fielding phone calls.  Barely looking up he assumed I was a new vendor.  When I explained my mission, I was met with a noncommittal “Okay then.”  I was told to come the next staff meeting in a day or so for consideration by the collective.

When I turned up at that staff meeting a couple of days later I was astonished at all of the people in the room,  They crowded the front room perched on chairs dragged from every corner of the office, on the bales of papers, on the desk, or cross legged on the floor in a rough circle.  I knew, at least by nodding acquaintance maybe half of them.  I had no idea what most of them did. 

The meeting was very informal, chaired—that may be too formal a term—by Bernie Farber the lead editor.  There was no round of introductions.  I would have to figure out who was who on my own.  My instillation could not have been more off-hand.  Bernie said something like, “You know Murf from the Wobblies.  He wants to join the staff.”  Heads nodded.  Nobody voiced any objections.  Just like that I was in.  I must have said something.  No terms of employment were explained, that would be discovered later.

The meeting plunged right in to planning the next issue.  Community events and story ideas were brought up.  Writers pitched some ideas.  Some stories were assigned.  I volunteered to do a labor column that was eventually called Labor Pains and to do community reporting.  Items from the weekly Liberation News Service (LNS) packet were discussed as were stories from our Underground Press Syndicate exchanges.  Music people discussed possible reviews and upcoming concerts, Peter Solt and other art folks discussed comix, story illustrations, and the all-important cover.  A great cover really drove street sales.  Discussion was chaotic and there were some times arguments, particularly between those most interested in the counter cultural scene and the more ardent revolutionaries, a tension I observed throughout my tenure.

There was talk about how street sales were going, about advertising, production schedule, and assignments.  In two hours or so it was over and folks drifted off to do their thing, whatever that was.

Dramatis personae

Like all staffers Bernie Farber made part of his income peddling the Seed on the street.  This was taken about 1970.  By the time I joined the staff those whiskers were much more impressive.

Bernie Farber had settled into the editor’s chair.  He was both a veteran activist and a journalist.  He had long been active in the anti-war movement and at Roosevelt University had been active in Students or a Democratic Society (SDS) and was the influential editor of the Roosevelt Torch.  His background was in the traditional left and was a committed Marxist.  He had quickly adapted to the hippie/yippie life style and was happily living communally and enjoying grass and psychedelics.  He was a cheerful presence who had grown a bushy black beard on his round, bespeckled face and in the summer was decked out in colorful t-shirts, shorts, and sandals.  Despite that he was the firm leader of staff members pushing for more militant, political content sometimes at odds with more counter-culture interest.

In his post-Seed years he earned a law degree and for many years taught at Chicago-Kent College of Law.  After a devastating stroke a few years ago left him disabled, he has earned a living as a free-lance editor and has continued to write posting sci-fi stories and collections, short non-fiction, and occasional political commentary under the name Max G. Bernard.

The rising influence of the emerging Women's Liberation movement was reflected by this cover by Skip Williamson published during my time on the staff.

Maralee Gordon was another important editorial contributor and an ally for greater radicalism.  A hold-over from earlier days she had worked her way up from largely clerical tasks to being a major writer.  She also represented a dramatic shift toward feminism as the Women’s Liberation movement was really getting off the ground.  That meant a deep challenge to the sometimes macho-radical ambience of the staff and to the casual use of nudes and sex images in the paper.  The number of women on the staff had grown greatly to almost even numbers.  Maralee and another politically minded hold-over Virginia Becket lived a couple of blocks east on Wrightwood at the Other Cheek Commune which had been established by radical Mennonite pacifists.  The Other Cheek was also famous for its weekly vegie/brown rice/tofu Free Feeds.

Maralee moved to McHenry County and raised a family not far from me in Crystal Lake.  She became a Rabbi and served the McHenry County Jewish Congregation for several years until she retired.  She is a frequent guest worship leader at our Tree of Life UU Congregation.  She has been a leader of the interfaith Faithbridge group and remains active in social justice causes, especially immigrant rights.

Decades later Rabbi Maralee Gordon and the Old Man would work together in on immigrant rights issues like this 2019 Lights for Liberty Rally outside the McHenry County Jail.

Other women on the staff included Rita Gehring, who mostly worked on art and lay-out with her boyfriend Peter Solt.  Flora Johnson was another.

Solt, the veteran art person was a leader of the more counter-cultural staffers.  He was a whiz at the fanciful color separations and dramatic covers for which the paper was known.  He was joined by those interested in the music scene.  Several staffers contributed reviews of concerts and LPs.  Other covered the lively emerging Chicago off-Loop theater movement and film reviews.  Scathing take-down of television and the mainstream press were also common. 

Among those plowing those fertile grounds was Mike Gold, who had been a year behind me in Niles West Township High School and was particularly interested in the underground comix we ran, the content of some of which was being challenged by the feminists as well as in the music scene.  He went on to a very successful career in the comic industry.  He regularly blogs and does podcasts with his wide-ranging, pointed, and often hysterical commentary.

Mitch Lieber was younger yet and a music reviewer.  He soon split his time with Radio Free Chicago which broadcast for a while from a second floor apartment near the IWW hall.  Mitch has been working on a documentary Rumbula's Echo a deeply personal film of a Nazi atrocity, the mass murder of the inhabitants of the Riga, Lithuania ghetto and its echoing reverberations among survivors and family members.

Dick Yippie posing with his ever-present purpe Yippie button and a copy of The Saying of Chairman Mao Tse Tung.

Dick O’Brien, better known as Dick Yippie, was a jack-of-all-trades on the staff, occasionally writing, copy editing, and was a wiz at the lay-out light table.  He worked on the Seed longer than anyone.  After advertising dried up, the free Chicago Reader stole much of the thunder, and street vendors drifted off to something else he kept plugging away trying to keep the paper alive.  He edited the last few sporadic issues alone at his kitchen table while he made a living as the sexton of a North Side cemetery.  He remained a quiet raconteur and was among the Friday after-work gathering of Lincoln Ave. street scene survivors that gathered weekly at Lilly’s.

Earl McGhee was our only Black staffer.  He usually edited the Seed’s very popular dope review feature which not only surveyed what was going around, but also warned about dangerous shit when it hit the streets.  The whole staff benefited from this feature as dealer dropped off sample for our trials.  Grass, acid, hash, magic mushrooms, and peyote were all plentiful for us.  We discouraged heroin, meth, cocaine, and various uppers and downers.  Earl also more than dabbled in the dope trade as a member and leading light of the Midwest Dope Dealers Association which promised cleaned and seeded honest ounces with a free pack of Zig-Zags included.  Staffers sometimes assisted in cleaning the recent Mexican imports at Earl’s apartment for free bags.  At the Seed Reunion in 2017 Earl showed up very professional looking and was hoping to get in on the ground floor of legal marijuana in California.

Uncle Martin, John Krug, had grown up as a working class Polish/German kid on the North Side.  After the Democratic Convention Riots in ’68 he grew his hair long and joined the street scene.  He was quiet at staff meetings but acutely interested in space exploration and its possibilities and wrote about that.  He got his moniker from Ray Walston’s character on the old sit-com My Favorite Martian.  Decked out in a floppy hat and an old Army Jacket he was one of the steadiest of street vendors selling at least 200 and often more copies a week under the Marshal Field’s clock on State Street.  He also hawked the Black Panther, Rising Up Angry, and the Industrial Worker.  He drifted out to California who connected with the Bay Area underground press.  Later in Santa Cruz he was active in homeless and housing issues, as well as closely following the West Coast music scene.  John is the administrator of the Chicago Seed Revisited Facebook group with over a thousand members.

Two other young Seed sellers were added to the staff when the paper became a Wobbly Shop.  Mary Kay Ryan was the daughter of Louise Ryan, a long-time white journalist with the Black Daily Defender.  Her mother’s lover, legendary College of Complexes Janitor Slim Brundage was a virtual step-father so she was deeply rooted in Windy City radicalism.  Her best friend since childhood was Kathy Brady.  Mary Kay eventually became a pioneering Western acupuncturist and currently lives at least part time in Ireland.

Becky Beach was almost a classic street waif who I had first encounter picketing a North Avenue head shop that had stiffed its employees a year or two earlier.  She shared and apartment with Rita Gehring and Kathy Brady who was also selling seed.  That is where I first met almost in passing the woman who became my wife when she was a widow with small children and was reintroduced to me by Mary Kay in 1981.

Skip Williamson back in the day with his most famous creation, Snappy Sammy Smoot.

Skip Williamson, the creator of Snappy Sammy Smoot and partner with R. Crum on breakthrough Bijou Comix, was not an official staff collective member, but he might as well have been.  He produced some of the most iconic Seed covers and contributed occasional strips and spot illustrations.  He frequently just hung out in the office and often partied hard with staff members elsewhere.  He recalled some of those times in his entertaining memoirs Spontaneous Combustion and Flesh.

There were, of course, several others, some of whom I am going to be mightily embarrassed by failing to mention here.

A street vendor shared a busy State Street corner with a "Captive Nations" anti-Communist.  I bet the hippy did better business.

As for me, I adopted the nom de guerre Wobbly Murf which is how I was listed in the masthead and how I signed most articles.  If I had too many pieces in an issue I adopted other aliases.

Next—What it was like. 

One Year Ago Today—To Matilda Mokoto Holmes on Her Birth

Matilda--you were brand new!

Note—I don’t know what got into my age addlepated brain to post this on May 27.  Granddaughter Matilda was born on Sunday, May 31—traditional Memorial Day—at 10:40 am.  That was just in time for me to make the exciting announcement in the virtual coffee hour following Tree of Life UU Congregation Zoom services.  How could I forget.  This year the Clan will gather on the front lawn of the Murfin Estate in Crystal Lake on Monday, an official Memorial Day.

To Matilda Mokoto Holmes on Your Birth

May 30, 2020

I understand you can’t read this.  You have been very busy getting born, learning how to breathe and such.  Hopefully your mother will keep a copy of this to share with you on some appropriate birthday a few years from now.

On the day you were born the sky was crystal blue and everything was lush green bursting with young life to greet you like the young ducklings on the pond and bunnies in their burrows.  The Web of All Existence greeted you.

With your Mom and Dad.  You weren't really a cone head.

Your Mom and Dad were there, of course.  It couldn’t have happened without them.  And frankly you were a lot of work to get born.  It was even a little scary but your new life prevailed.  You were welcomed in the arms of love.

A whole tribe waits anxiously to greet you—two grandmas, aunts, uncles, cousins, and an odd old Papa.  And there is your second cousin Sienna who is just one year older than you will be your playmate and guide for years of coming adventures.  And did I mention the dogs Piper and Ginger who will protect you from marauding pirates and Piper at least will curl up to sleep with you.

                            Some of your clan--Papa, your Mom, Aunt Heather, and Aunt Carolynne.  There are lots more.

You will come home in couple of days or so with your Mom to Grandma Kathy and Papa’s little house.  It will be your first home.  You will have others, but that first one is very special.  Grandma will spoil and play with you.  Papa will take you on his walks—the stroller is ready to be your carriage into the world—and looks forward to singing strange lullabies to you and reading books with you when you are a little older.

The date you were born used to be Memorial Day before that holiday got moved.  And in a way that connects you to two great grandfathers, Papa Art Brady and Papa Willard Murfin who were soldiers in World War II which will be 100 years past when you are a young woman.  In fact you are connected to ancestors on both sides of your family whose interesting lives made yours possible.  You are part of a great river of humanity.

Beyond your kin and home there are many friends waiting to greet you and support you on your life journey—your folks’ friends, your whole neighborhood, the Sisters Grandma Kathy works with, and the good people at Papa’s church.  It takes a village to raise a child and you have many villagers to guide you.

The day you were born everyone wore masks.

But I am sorry, not everything was pixie dust and unicorns on the day you were born.  The wide world was a freighting mess.  You were born in the middle of the great Coronavirus pandemic of 2020 which is why no one but your Mom and Dad could be with you in the hospital.  Even after you get home many of your clan will have to wait to see you and play pass the baby until it is safe.  People will wear masks on their faces.  They are scared for themselves—and for you.

Climate change—I am sure you will have heard of it when you can finally read this—is making over the world.  Where you live it will be hotter and wetter, snowier in the winter, apt to big and dangerous storms.  Everything will change from the way things once were.  Your parents and grandparents will have to do everything they can to keep that change from being catastrophic.

The country you live in is rent by bitter division.  Ominous forces are at work.  The free democracy of your parents and ancestors is threatened.  Fascism—I am sorry you will have to learn what that is—looms and some long for a civil war.  Many good people, however, are doing everything they can to prevent that and to leave you a free and safe country.  But it will be a struggle. 

The day you were born Papa was here to help make the world better for you.

Even sadder, on the day you were born cities across America were torn by demonstrations, protests, riots, looting, and violence.  All because Black people in this country are not safe from violent assault by police and because a long sad history of white oppression has been unmasked again.  Your world will not be safe until Black children are safe.

That is why Papa on the day you were born went to Woodstock to hold a sign that said Black Lives Matter and march around the Square with hundreds of others.  He pledges to spend the rest of his life fighting to give you a better world than the one in which you were born.

        You are such a big girl already.

The ancient Chinese had a curse—“May you live in interesting times.”  You were born on a day in the middle of interesting times.  Bless you as you make your way through them.

With all of the love in the world,

Papa

 

The Seed and I a Murfin Memoir —1972 A Wobbly Officer

 A Wobbly in action--protesting a CTA rate hike to satisfy bond holders.  The fare jumped to 35 cents and a 10 cent transfer.  I'm on the left of the picket line outside the First National Bank of Chicago, a major bond holder which pushed the CTA board.    I was Branch Secretary.  It was 1971  Note the full hippy look including a fringed sash and vest.  A photo of this demo ended up on the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times.

In January of 1972  I backed into the job of General Secretary Treasurer of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).  After my predecessor, Lionel Bottari, declined to run for another term, no one with the required 3 years membership in good standing filed to run in the election of officers the previous fall.  Old timers like Walter Westmann and my mentor Fred Thompson who had passed the office between them for nearly 30 years were adamant that it was time for a younger generation to take leadership in the union which was growing and more active than it had been in years.  But the pay was lousy—$75 a week—which made it difficult for anyone with family responsibilities to take the job or those from outside Chicago to uproot their lives. 

I was then Chicago Branch Secretary and supporting myself at various odd jobs including offset pressman, custodian, and cook.  I actually spent most of my time at the office and hall on Lincoln Avenue that the Branch shared with General Headquarters.  I lived right around the corner on Montana Street with Cecelia Joseph, who I had met during the Three Penny Cinema Strike a year before.  I thought I could do the job, but had joined in the summer of 1969 and was not eligible to run at the time of the election.  Instead, I ran for the General Executive Board with the understanding that the GEB under the by-laws would fill the vacancy by appointment. 

So at age 22 I settled in behind Big Bill Haywood’s enormous old desk with an oil portrait of Wobbly bard and martyr Joe Hill staring down on me from the wall opposite my chair.  Luckily, I had help.  One-legged, snaggle-toothed Walt Westmann with years of experience and a bemused attitude toward the scraggly whipper-snapper in a cowboy hat who was suddenly his boss stayed on was bookkeeper, sparing me from responsibilities wildly outside my capacity and experience.   Fred Thompson came by almost daily and was willing to share is wisdom and experience and he fielded the many inquiries we got concerning the IWW’s dramatic and colorful history.  Industrial Worker editor Carlos Cortez with whom I worked closely came by every afternoon after his shift “at the bubble factory” loading box cars and semis with cartons of shampoo and soap products.  Other veteran members Charley Velsek and his wife Jenny helped every month with the big jobs of wrapping, sorting, and bundling the Industrial Worker and the General Organization Bulletin for mailing.

Much of my time was spent issueing new membership cards like this one, pasting dues stamps in books sent into the office, and posting the reports of Delegates.  This card was issued in November 1971 by Godard C. Graves--1-GO-71--who completed my term as General Secretary after I resigned.  

But for a union with less than a 1000 members in good standing in the U.S., Canada, Britain, Australia, and Guam, the workload was staggering.  In inherited a large cardboard carton of back correspondence to answer.  That included reports from branches and delegates with monthly reports on dues collections, red membership books sent directly to Headquarters to get dues stamps and assessments, literature orders, complaints about poor service, diatribes against us dammed bureaucrats, etc.  I turned over dues records, checks and cash to Fellow Worker Westmann and worked quickly fill literature orders, changes of address and new subs for the IW, and other service requests.  About half of the mail was letters of general inquiry, each specific enough to require an individual reply and with an enclosure of some introductory material and a sample IW.  Most of my day was filled with diving into that box and banging out replies on an old Remington manual typewriter. 

I also had to keep up with the workings of the General Executive Board which met by mail and to which I had to supply answers to questions and a monthly report.  I also had to, as I described it at the time, “piss on fires" ignited by certain contentious and combative GEB members which were always threatening to disrupt the Union with some brouhaha or another.  This required using seven layers onion skin and carbon paper in my typewriter and pounding the keys hard enough so that the last copy was at least faintly visible.  Every month my usually lengthy report to the membership, the summary report by the GEB chair on its activities, reports from branches and delegates, letters from members, and material relating to union elections and referenda had to be typed onto stencils and run off on the pre-World War I open drum, hand cranked Mimeograph machine.

The Industrial Worker masthead during my term and for decades before.  The red color indicates that this was probably from a May Day issue.

I also wrote for the IW and worked on paste-up and the mailing process which required stamping yellow wrappers on the old Addressograph machine, rolling each paper in the wrapper and sealing it with library paste from a pot, gathering them in bundles by Zip Code, and finally finding someone with a car to help me haul the mail bags to the old central Post Office downtown.

In between all of this, there were a steady stream of visitors and the curious, just as I had been when I first visited the former office on Halstead Street during the 1968 Democratic Convention protests.  In memory of that, I always took time with each visitor.

All in all, I was working 10 hour days six days a week and often had Chicago Branch meetings and activities in the evening.  Yet my work style raised some eyebrows.  Instead of coming in at 8 pm when Walt Westmann punctually opened the office, I drifted in between 10 and 11 am but often stayed as long as midnight.  I worked with quarts of Meister Bräu or Blatz on my desk.  I could get either for three quarts for a dollar at Consumer Liquors just down the block.  I could go through all three in a long day.  Once in a while a Fellow Worker would stop by and we would repair to the rear fire escape overlooking the ally and share a joint.  I ate lunch most days at the Woolworth’s Luncheonette also on the block where I flirted with a young waitress.  After work I would blow off steam with shots and beers at Consumers Tap or a couple of blocks south on Lincoln at Johnny Weiss’s Tavern, which explains the late morning arrivals.

I also kept up with Chicago Branch meetings, and other activities, as well as various committees and community events like the weekly Wednesday community meetings that I still facilitated in the Hall.

That was my life for six months until another weekly chore tripped me up.  Every Friday I took all of the week’s receipts—cash and checks, not credit cards accepted then—to the bank for deposit.  Aetna Bank on Halstead just across the street from the former Wobbly Hall was just half a block away and would have been convenient.  But we were loyal to the Amalgamated Bank in the Loop because it had been founded by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and other unions.  Although it had passed into private hands, it was still considered Chicago’s labor bank and handled accounts for almost all unions in town.  That meant taking a thick envelope stuffed with bills and checks downtwn by catching the L the Fullerton stop and walking a couple of blocks from a State Street subway station. 

Most of the time I carried the envelope safely in the inside pocket of a corduroy sport coat I wore regularly and under a thick top coat in cold weather.  But by late June Chicago the city was in the grips of one of its patented, stiffening heat waves.  This particular Friday the thermometer was pushing 100̊ and the humidity wringing wet—more like the Dog Days of August than early summer.  Without a jacket, I put on my straw cowboy hat, and stuffed the receipt envelope into my left rear jeans pocket where it stuck out like a flag.  I waved to Walt Westmann on the way out and headed over to the L.  My plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up above the elbow and the red kerchief I wore around my neck were both drenched by the time I got there.

I had to get to the bank by 3 pm.  In those days banks closed for business at that hour and would not reopen until 10 am Monday.

The Amalgamated Bank on South State Street was the labor bank where the IWW kept its accounts and where I made weekly Friday deposits.

In the Loop you could see the heat waves rising from the streets and sidewalks as I made my way to the bank day dreaming about stopping for a nice cold beer at Miller’s Pub when I was done with business.  At the bank I joined a long line, many of the customers, like me, with their union’s receipts.  I finally got up to the teller’s cage about a quarter to 3 and reached for the envelope in my pocket.  It was gone!

I was in an immediate panic.  I didn’t know if the envelope had simply slipped out of the pocket on the street or in the CTA car or if some sharp eyed pickpocket spotted it.  Either way, it was gone.  I rushed out of the bank in a frenzied effort to retrace my steps, hoping against hope to find the envelope lying neglected on the sidewalk.  Of course, it was gone forever.

I arrived, utterly dejected back at the office just as Fellow Worker Westmann was getting ready to go home for the day promptly at 3:30.  I explained what had happened.  He could see how upset I was and was very comforting.  “These things happen, Fellow Worker,” he told me.  But I was guilt ridden.  I felt I had committed malfeasance of office by careless neglect.  I should have held the envelope tightly in my hands the entire trip or carried it in a secure bank bag like most of the other union reps in the teller line had.

Alone in the office that night, I typed out in the necessary multiple copies, my immediate resignation as General Secretary Treasurer.  It was accepted with expressions of regret.  No one ever accused me of taking the money and no charges were drawn up or an investigation launched.  My explanation was taken at face value. 

The following week Goodard Graves, Chairman of the Executive Board, arrived from Champaign, Illinois to finish out the second half of my one year term.

Suddenly, I was at loose ends with no immediate prospects and in immediate need of a job to pay my half of the rent and my bar tabs.  What was I to do?

Next—I walk up the street to the Seed office.

The Seed and I a Murfin Memoir—Moving on Up to Lincoln Avenue1970-‘71

 

In 1970 IWW General Headquarters and the Chicago Branch moved into the spacious second floor former bowling alley at 2440 North Lincoln Ave.  The Hall quickly became a busy community center.  An A&P market occupied the first floor and then Uncle Dan's Army Surplus.  The storefront to the right was The Head Shop which became Wobbly shop.

1970 brought big changes.  The Seed relocated to second floor offices on Wrightwood just off of Lincoln Ave. 

About the same time IWW General Headquarters was urban renewed out of its longtime offices on Halsted Street.  We moved just a hop away, to an old second floor bowling alley above the A&P market at 2440 North Lincoln Avenue directly across from Biograph Theater.  With the lanes removed we had a spacious hall which immediately became a community center.  Not only did all sorts of organizations meet there, but benefits were held almost weekly featuring the top rock, blues, and folk acts in Chicago.  The Seed, various defense funds, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), women’s groups, and health clinic were just some of those who used the building.

At some point weekly community wide meetings began to be held every Wednesday night.  I was the Chicago Branch Secretary and was asked to be the facilitator of the sessions.  Up to fifty people representing organizations, local businesses, and individuals showed up every week and sat in a wide circle on folding chairs exchanging information of activities, planning actions, and occasionally hashing out community disputes.  The Seed was always well represented.

The hip street scene had shifted north from Old Town up Lincoln Avenue where rents—at least temporarily—were cheaper.  On its southern edge were two blocks that included cultural hot spots—The Body Politic Theater where the Organic Theater was launching the first wave of the new Chicago theater scene and the space over the Oxford Pub where William Russo’s Chicago Free Theater was presenting his ground breaking multi-media Rock Cantatas like The Civil War and David to sold out house every week.  Across the street the Wise Fools Pub was brining Southside Blues to the Northside.  The Fools would open their own theater space upstairs soon which would give birth to a little musical called Grease.

The Oxford—a sprawling joint with food service and a four o’clock license was a popular watering hole as was John Barleycorn with its dark ambience, classical music, and art slide shows.  But it was a plain old neighborhood tavern operated by a pretend gruff Austrian named Johnny Weiss that became the main hangout for Wobblies, Seedlings, and street people with its two dollar pitchers of beer, 35 cent schooners, and frequent free shots of Jägermeister for favored regulars.  The juke box played big band standards, polkas, Edith Piaf, Marlene Dietrich doing both Lilly Marlene and Where Have All the Flowers Gone, but also, if you listened carefully the The Horst Wessel Song.   Around those tables there was much debate, raucous laughter, and bonding.

Up the street north of Fullerton the Seed and the IWW hall were two anchors of the street scene.  But there were others.  The Biograph was playing mostly second run films but developed cult following for weekend midnight shows that featured The Rocky Horror Picture Show in a double bill with either A Thousand Clowns or later Harold and Maude.  Crowds in costume would line up around the block and sing along with film inside.  Across the street the Three Penny Cinema was an art house and one of the few venues of foreign films in the city.

I was a in full Hippie at the first IWW convention in the Lincoln Hall.  Seen here with Carlos Cortez, center, and the stalwart Hungarian contingent.

The Headshop was located in a storefront just north of the Wobbly Hall and was operated by a massive bearded Episcopal Priest.  In addition to pipes, papers, and posters the shop also offered bright red and gold Mao buttons, plastic covered Little Red Quotations from Chairman Mao, and other revolutionary regalia.  A block further north was the Guild Bookstore, a purveyor of all sorts of radical books and publications and another meeting place.  The Feedstore and the original Alice’s provided hippie fare—heavy on brown rice and tofu, later supplanted by the more hip capitalist Ratso’s.  Alice’s Revisited opened under the Seed offices to fill the hippie food gap and also became a vital community center and a music venue that presented acts like Segal Schwall Band and bluesmen like Muddy Waters.

A little later Earl Pionke, Steve Goodman, and Fred Holstein opened Somebody Else’s Troubles, a prime outlet just in time for the great Chicago Folk Music revival.  Other music club also began to open including Orphans.

The IWW was such a presence in the area that a number of local establishments became Wobbly shops, mostly under the provisions for cooperatives.  When the Seed reorganized its self into a staff collective the members approached me as IWW Branch Secretary and I signed them up.  They were an official IWW shop, with red card carrying members, and the union bug on the paper for the editorial and production staff but not the printing. 

In January of 1971 I began a term as IWW General-Secretary Treasurer.  I was also taking a larger role in the newly created staff collective—frankly inspired by the Seed—that put out the monthly Industrial Worker.  But when I was not working late into the night at Big Bill Haywood’s desk under the piercing blue eyes of Joe Hill portrait while nursing quarts of Blatz, I was still out on Lincoln Avenue schmoozing at Johnny Weiss’s or a half dozen other joints.

Members of the Seed Staff and friends on their way to the 1971 May Day Tribe protest in Washington.  They did not succeed in levitating the Pentagon but had adventures and some narrow scrapes.  Not shown is editor Abe Peck who needed to chill after three intense years at the helm after May Day.

By the spring of 1971 Most of the key figures of the last the years had already departed the Seed or would be gone before summer.  Graphic designer and Artist Lester Doré and others had retreated to the rural Karma Farm commune in Wisconsin.  Editor Abe Peck felt burnt out after the 1971 May Day Protests in Washington, D.C. and withdrew.  He became an editor at Rolling Stone and eventually a distinguished professor of Journalism at Northwestern University and the main historian of the Underground Press.  Eliot Wald went to work for WTTW public television where he helped create the program that eventually became Siskel & Ebert, then did Chicago newspaper work before becoming a writer at Second City.  From he jumped to New York City where became one of the original writers of Saturday Night Live.  Later he was a California screen writer and died at the early age of 57.  Marshall Rosenthal had departed for a temporary sabbatical that turned permanent.  After returning to Chicago from California he created the Reader’s Hot Type column in 1971 and then created the Panorama arts section for the Daily News eventually becoming a long time award-winning TV news writer and producer at both WBBM and WMAQ.  A raconteur and wit, he died of cancer in 2012.

Peter Solt kept up the high standard for art and covers set by Lester Dore.

Although there were hold-overs like Peter Solt who took over art direction, and Maralee Gordon who had worked her way from setting type to being one of the leading writers and movers on the staff, it was largely a new generation in the summer of 1971.  That’s where I came in. 

Next—1972 as a Wobbly pie card.