So, here we were in Chicago. Austin had insisted on accompanying me. He had “connections” in Chicago, he’d boasted, and I hadn’t tried too hard to dissuade him from coming along.
It was late Sunday afternoon by the time we got to the Conrad Hilton Hotel. Austin really did have some influence in the town. Without it, we’d never have been able to get accommodations. I don’t know what strings he pulled, but they worked.
The hotel lobby was jammed with McCarthy11 rooters. The Senator was due to arrive at any moment. Austin and I started elbowing our way through the crowd.
Suddenly there was a roar. “Here he comes!” The crowd surged forward, carrying us along. Then the roar changed to a groan. It was Lester Maddox12 !
Austin and I started for the check-in desk again. Halfway there, another roar sounded——“Here comes Gene13 !” —-and we were thrown back once again. A flying wedge of beefy fuzz, and I could have reached out and touched -- William Buckley14 !
Finally we made it to the desk. We checked in and crossed over to the bank of elevators. Then-pandemonimn! “Here comes Gene! Here comes Gene!” the mob was screaming again. The throng behind us stampeded and we were pushed to the front. Here, in the van, I found myself nose-to-nose with—— Hubert Horatio Humphrey15 !
“Hubert! Hubert! Shake my hand!” a man beside me yelled.
The Hump smiled his drugstore bland smile and grasped the proffered hand. The man thrust his face into Humphrey’s and screamed, “We want Gene!” HHH dropped the hand as if it was an unexpectedly soiled diaper.
Too late. The crowd echoed the cry. “We want Gene! We want Gene!” they roared as Triple-H moved through them.
They sure knew how to hurt a fellow. I wondered what it was doing to his ego. I needn’t have worried. By taking advantage of the typical vacuum in the Veep’s wake, we managed to reach the elevators and get up to our rooms. I turned on the radio and listened to a local station while I unpacked. I learned that demonstrators were congregating in Lincoln Park. There were sure to be hippies among them. A little later, when Austin joined me, we agreed that time was of the essence and that we might as well start our hunt in Lincoln Park after dinner.
It was about eleven-thirty when we arrived at the Lincoln Park mall. We didn’t know it, but we were just in time for the opening battle of what would be the Chicago War. This First Battle of Lincoln Park laid the ground rules.
For the next week there would be no such thing as a “neutral” in Chicago.
The scene, when we got there, was still fairly peaceful. Protestors were sprinkled over the grass. There were almost as many cops there as people, but they hadn’t really gotten around to clearing the area as yet. We wondered if perhaps a decision had been reached to allow the kids to remain in the park.
Austin and I walked toward the trees fringing the mall. We were scanning the area for a blonde hippie chick, as per specifications. In the underbrush, small clusters of policemen were removing their badges and nametags.
Chicago cops, it seems, have this identity problem. A self-effacing lot, they’re shy as schoolgirls when it comes to accepting individual credit for the duties they perform safeguarding democracy. It was this spirit of modest anonymity which prodded many of them to take advantage of the privacy afforded by the bushes and trees deeper in the park.
The soft sounds of their embarrassed giggling wafted over the warm night air. The feeling communicated was of a small group of boy scouts hiding from the scoutmaster for purposes of clandestine mutual masturbation. But of course they weren’t doing anything of the sort—I think. I was too far away to tell for sure, but I don’t think they were.
Suddenly a bullhorn sounded. It was announced that the park, including the mall, would now be cleared by force. Most of the people, Austin and I among them, responded by trying to leave quickly.
It wasn’t that simple. The announcement was still echoing when a solid line of blueshirts stretching the length of the mall appeared as if from thin air and marched with military precision toward the sidewalk. Each of them wore a crash helmet and carried a wide-muzzled tear-gas gun held at the ready. People started running, trying to get out of their path. But now there were cops on the sidewalk as well, and they were driving the people back toward the marching phalanx.
There was an inevitable, brief shoving match. Then the demonstrators broke through the police line and the majority of them made it across the street. Immediately there were three or four ranks of blueshirts at the curb parallel to the now panicky crowd.
During the rush Austin and I had become separated. Now trapped on the sidewalk across from the park, I peered around me, trying to locate him. I couldn’t spot him anywhere.
“Move!” I found myself peering into the muzzle of a tear-gas gun.
I moved.
It should be noted here that all Chicago policemen are eight feet tall and weigh two thousand pounds. They breed them in the stockyards. Judging from the number of bulls stampeding over the scene now, someone must have left the corral gate open. It looked like they outnumbered the crowd by about three to one.
I took a deep breath and quickly appraised the situation. The crowd was milling about on the sidewalk across from the park. Behind them was the wall of some sort of building which ran the length of the block. In front of them were several phalanxes of police. To my right, at the far end of the block, the police had formed several more lines, sealing off the corner. To my left, close, more cops were just beginning to form into lines across a narrow intersection. The intersection led into a street that was more the width of an alley. I guessed that this might be where the police would eventually drive the crowd.
It was a good guess. As I moved to cross the intersection before it was closed off, I glanced down the narrow street and saw that there were ranks of police closing off the other end. By the time I slipped around the cops to the comparative safety of the sidewalk on the other side of the gutter, they had already moved to box in the rest of the crowd.
Most of the reporters and photographers had gathered in the place where I was now standing. At the far end of the block, now, we could see the police charging into the crowd. Panic took over. There was no place for people to run to avoid the swinging clubs and riflebutts of the cops, who shouted savagely as they waded into the mob.
Behind me flashbulbs were going off as the photographers tried to record the police action. Suddenly two lines of the police nearest us wheeled around as if in response to a command, charged across the gutter, and began clubbing the newsmen gathered there. I was lucky. The photographers were their main target. Together with some reporters, I managed to dash back toward the park. There was an island in the middle of the intersection and five or six of us found sanctuary there.
The main force of policemen, still shouting, had pressured the crowd from a rectangle into a square. From my vantage point, the tactic of forcing them into the narrow street they’d already sealed off was easy to observe. But once the cops had closed off the street, it was impossible to see what was happening there. I only heard the sound of clubs hitting flesh and the cries and screams of the wounded.
“You people move on!” A policeman came up to the island and waved his club at the newsmen threateningly.
“I’m a reporter.” One of them showed his credentials.
“A reporter?” The policeman repeated it loudly, like a mating call. Three other cops came up on the run.
All four of the cops held one hand in front of themselves carefully, obviously shielding their badges and nameplates from view. They surrounded the reporter. I couldn’t see what was happening. Then the cops vanished. The reporter lay in a heap on the traffic island. A few of his buddies picked him up and helped him move away. The power of the press!