The Isla Vista Bank-burning Story or: My Love for You is a Liberating Thing

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My memory came from reading the letters [to my mother] and the feelings that the letters evoked.

I would read the letters and the memories would spin itself. I had to put two or three characters into one character. The prick from the bus and the one that made fun of my short pants was personified as that type of character I wanted to portray. There were certain experiences I wanted to pull together — they mostly came from the letters. Bill, one of the characters, sent a digitized album from our entire trip. It gave me more confidence to what really happened. How do you think this time period and the events that occurred during it affected the UCSB community as a whole?

The events definitely put us on the map. It brought the community of Isla Vista together. When The Bank of America in I. It gave voice to our generation. There was a both a positive and negative side. If they wanted change, they would burn things down. When you say voice for your generation, what kind of voice are you referring to?

So much money was spent on war and killing that our generation wanted to have something to say. There were so many great things that came out of UCSB — they created Earth Day and gelled the community in a positive way. There were rallies to support gays, women and African-Americans. Help us improve our Author Pages by updating your bibliography and submitting a new or current image and biog. Showing 3 Results Books: Teaching Shakespeare to Hairdressers: Read this and over 1 million books with Kindle Unlimited.

Borrow for free from your Kindle device. The Isla Vista Bank-burning Story or: Bachelor Butterflies 17 Jul Provide feedback about this page. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations. View or edit your browsing history. He was hired, on a trial basis, as a reporter.

Someone ran in with the news of Paul McCartney's death. Carl rushed to the library andchecked out stacks of books on immortality and on the worship of the dead. When Robin came home, Carl was curled up on the living-room rug, encircling a speaker witha cocked arm, his head nodding, his teeth grinding, his toes frantically pushing up and downin his socks in beat with Sgt.

Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. He jumped up and shut it off. He sat Robin down and read her accounts of sun gods and solarrites and told her excitedly about the allusions to death and the sun all through the Beatles'lyrics. He showed her the album covers with telltale hints of Paul's death. He had become a sociology major because it sounded like the least demanding subject, withgeneral theoretical discussions rather than every-night assignments, as in French. Though some of the classes interested him, especially The Myth of Mental Illness, andInterpersonal Relations, he did little schoolwork.

Instead, he worked late at the Hero, askingfor extra assignments. The rock group disbanded; the others were studying more, attempting to graduate withdouble majors. He took his drums out to the address in Santa Barbara. Three young men, all a little younger than Carl, lived there and practiced in a barn in theback, surrounded by morning-glory trees and stocked with a lot of cocaine. For four weekends, Carl went to the house and drummed for long, loud, musically meshedhours with an exuberance and freedom he had never felt playing top-ten hits at fraternityparties with the old group.

The three asked Carl to move with them to San Francisco, to seriously practice in a ballroomowned by one of their fathers. The temptation to drop everything was strong. Robin said shewould come with him. But Carl felt she knew he would never actually do it. He gave himself a few days to make sure, then told the boys no.

He brought his drums backto the apartment and set them up in the corner. He practiced on them less and less. The metal-flake blue sides and gold cymbals gathereddust. They covered events together and tookturns typing up the stories back at the office. When they ran late, they would drive togetherto the print shop in Goleta, near Santa Barbara, to make sure the article was properlylaid-out.

The prominent campus radicals and black and Chicano students were continually coming tosee Maggie, the little editor. She would argue with them regardless of whether theircomments were laudatory or critical; then she would call over the news editor and,sometimes, her boyfriend, the editorial editor, take the group into her office and shut thedoor.

Once in a while, one of the radical sociology professors would drop by. Except for having been raised and influenced by politically liberal parents, Carl knew nothingabout politics. He concluded that he hadn't been around the Hero long enough to be trusted. But he wanted to be part of the discussions.

He wanted to know what was going on. From the staff meetings he had attended, he formed the impression that Maggie, almostsingle-handedly, was responsible for the content of the Hero. Carl was enamored of Maggiedue to the strength of her convictions, both in the type of editorial she wrote and the type ofstory she assigned to be covered. When she was around, Carl would see still-photographs of every move he made.

Robin felt they were becoming isolated. She had hoped that more than anything else, thepaper would be a way to meet some new people, to get to know some couples. Instead, theyhad been overwhelmed with work. They each took half atab before going. All evening, Carl felt estranged from the few people to whom he spoke.

Isla Vista, California

Finally, they were home again, lying in their double bed between cool sheets of watercolorflowers that teased Carl's eyes like the sparkles on the stucco ceiling. Robin's eyes were closed, but she must have been thinking the same thing. We were talking toeverybody. He flopped on his back. And then going out to barf. I must have smelled like shit when I came back. I know Ilooked like a ghost. Then telling them how I'd thrown up everything rotten I'd ever had insideme and trying to explain how it was like the opposite of an orgasm They talked to us.

Ope, now it's back I feel like I can see that littlemechanism in my head where thoughts come out of. I feel like I'm sitting behind it. Mythoughts are coming out from it, through my mouth out to the room here. Suddenly, and for the first time in his life, Carl felt that nothing mattered.

Do you think anything has any purpose? It seems like when you get right down to it, down really deep, nothing reallymatters Don't you think so? There are things that're important. In the end, doesn't nothing actually matter? But what did she mean to him if nothing mattered. A lot of things have meaning. She didn't understand him. They didn't think thesame way. But what did it matter what he thought if she didn't share it with him? He fit his body to her naked back. She was smoking and pushing her curly black hair out of her eyes and she was coming overto them. He caught Robin's eye then turned toward Maggie.

Access Check

Are you guysinterested in joining? Carl felt like throwing himself at Maggie's feet. He felt obliged to respond. Fred Bell, the lagoon? We want to actively involve thewhole campus in the issues. Well, a lotof white radicals feel it's about time we got directly involved — with actions. Let's go across and get aHeroburger! We could go out with them, invite them over to get stoned Two young men, radical leaders who Carl had seen in the office, were standing at oppositeends of the living room, debating under a haze of cigarette smoke hanging above 20 or 30people sitting on the floor.

Carl and Robin sat down in the corner. The university administration had refused to hold an open hearing — a hearing which studentswould be allowed to attend — requested by the radical professor Fred Bell. The radicals were the ones who had called for the open hearing, claiming that it was Bell'spolitical beliefs that really prompted his firing.

Tim, the lanky blond, bearded young man in the far corner, was arguing that it was too soonto call a demonstration against the administration because the rest of the campus still did notunderstand the issues. He offered a logical, factual refutation for every theory and historicalprecedent the big, curly-headed student, Ricky, boomed out in support of an immediateaction. Robin would mutter an occasional agreement. Carl was grateful just to be at the meeting,lending cigarettes to Tim's pretty, blond girlfriend.

In the end, the group voted to circulate a petition to gain student support for an openhearing. Carl and Robin didn't vote. Carl saw himself mainly as an observer, a reporter. Almost everyone, with a new burst of energy, had something to say. The ladies began by accusing the men of dominating the discussion, telling the men that thiswas a carry-over from their living situations with their girlfriends and a reflection of theirgeneral attitude toward women. Even Tim's girlfriend joined in the criticism, though shemerely repeated a statement one of the other women had made.

Most of the men were taken aback by the barrage, but they generally agreed with what thewomen had to say. Carl's heart had built to a heavy pump. There was something that touched him when thewomen spoke of being belittled and ignored. He wanted to leap in and agree with them, but itwould have been impossible to calm down enough to talk. Besides, the men who had jumped The women were speaking for themselves. There were many people at the meeting Carl had not seen before. Apparently, this was ameeting to bring new members into the Radical Union.

During a break, Carl talked to the photographer — Roger — mainly because he looked lonely,standing off to the side by himself. He said he had recently transferred from another collegeto Santa Barbara. It seemed a bit odd that he was taking pictures of everyone, but no one said anything aboutit.

Carl was hardly the one to raise the issue, nervous enough at just having to speak in frontof 30 people. Robin took her turn and said something about the importance of understanding andcommunicating with people. All Carl could think to say was that the goals he had heard people talking about soundedpositive, but that whenever the possibility of violence was mentioned, his mind would go upagainst a block. Carl felt so strong a bond with the group he couldn't see himself not part of it. He tried to sort out why they were so special and why they had made politics meaningful tohim for the first time: They weren't dedicated to workingfor change.

When an old friend looked him up, Carl feared he might be a police agent.

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He told him he hadwork to do and had no time to talk. The administration steadfastly refused to consider the idea. The radicals called for a demonstration. For a week, Carl and Robin wrote articles in the Herofocusing on the upcoming demonstration, emphasizing that, clearly, students had no say intheir university.

One thousand students were massed in Administration Plaza. Carl and Robin sat on theconcrete steps, with their backs to the speaker's platform, taking notes. A dozen campuspolice were a few yards behind them, inside the emptied administration building, watchingthe rally through plate glass windows and a glass door bolted with a chain.

A student, Garner, in Levi's, with a full beard and a tied-back ponytail, was concluding hisspeech We are taught that grassroots democracy and self-determination aren't hollow words. By failing torespect the popular will, the gentlemen of the administration have abdicated their responsibility asgood Americans. As the crowd was cheering, a fight broke out between another student and the dean,standing at the back of the rostrum.

Carl heard glass shatter then saw a phalanx of policepouring out of the glass building, swinging long black billy clubs, coming right at him. He leaped up and grabbed Robin, trying to pull her down the steps. Robin was holding her shoulder. He yanked her again, further away from the row of policesweeping through the crowd. They were bashing students' arms and legs with theirbatons then shoving them into planter boxes. Students threw chairs and shoes and anything else nearby through the windows. Carl's heartwas pumping but he didn't have the guts to throw anything. He pulled Robin around theoutside of the crowd, squeezing her hand until it hurt her.

They watched the police retreat into the building. The debris stopped flying. Back at the Hero office, the reporters agreed that the day's events would probably alter thecourse of the campus movement. A large group of students maintained an all-night vigil in front of the administration building,which had been taped up with newspapers.

It was too cold outside for Robin and Carl to stay. When they returned late the next morning, another rally was in progress. Carl paused to talk with Roger, the photographer, who had stopped coming to the radicalmeetings. Carl was curious about what he was doing with the pictures he had taken. Rogertold him he was a Vietnam veteran and the pictures were going to be for a new Third Worldnewspaper. In fact, he said, he was using the Hero developing room. Hehad never heard of any such paper. But he wasn't sure enough of himself to press the point. This time, Carl and Robin stood on the outskirts of a crowd that was twice as large as the onethe day before.

The balconies and windows of the surrounding buildings were clogged withpeople watching the demonstration. On the sixth floor of the administration building, there was a row of police with cameras. Speeches decried the police charge and called again for the open hearing. Greg — Carl had seen him around the paper and had heard he knew many of the rich liberalsin Santa Barbara — got up to speak.

He was dressed in neat, graduate-student clothes, withhis blond hair not too long. He spoke in a businesslike tone that was suddenly ominous: We have received a list of 19 students. There are warrants out for their arrest for yesterday'sdemonstration. I'll read the names of 15; the others were ripped off during the night.

The crowd grew still. Carl recognized some of the names. There was a buzz in the crowd. The silence fell again as Greg repeated the names. Carl was moving away. Before he knew where he was going, some of the others who hadheard their names were walking with him. They decided to go to Patty's apartment, whichwould be safe. Robin stayed to cover the rally for the paper. One woman who had her name read off couldn't come with the group to discuss strategy. Shewas a pre-med student and had a biology midterm examination that afternoon. She had totake it, she said, even if they came in and arrested her before she finished it.

Carl couldn't swallow abite. The others stuffed themselves and cursed the police and tried to determine why only theradicals had been singled out, a day late. And on what charges? Carl realized that those atthe apartment were students he had seen at the radical meetings. A lawyer came over and convinced the group that, rather than have the police turn the townupside-down looking for them, they should turn themselves in.

The lawyer arranged with the police that the group would be brought down to the station. Carl thought back to the meeting the week before, when they had voted to have thedemonstration. One of the women, who was going to be late for the meeting, had asked Carlto bring up the fact that everyone should be aware of the possibility of arrest. The fifteen posed for Maggie, the editor, for a picture outside the police station andcourthouse.

They entered through the back door and sat down in the outer office, separatedby a long receiving desk from the typewriters and phones busy with stiff, uniformedpolicemen. Except for one student who hung his head in the corner, the group was almostjovial. He still had the bite of tuna sandwich in his throat. He felt lonelier and more frightened thanhe had on any drug. He was cut off from the only person who understood him. Tears came tohis eyes but he blinked them away. The five women who were part of the group were taken off to their section, and, a few at atime, the men were taken up in locked, cage-like elevators.

Carl was in the last group to go. He felt in his pockets for anything illegal. On the jail floor there were no windows, just policemen and bars and other prisoners, dressedin green, pajama-like outfits, pushing laundry carts or watching from their cells. Carlwondered if he would ever see the outside world again. He was taken into another office with a long desk with policemen behind it. He was seatedand answered clipped questions. Carl had heard stories about young, small men beingraped by the tough long-timers.

It was obviously a big day for the police. All these campus radicals in one fell swoop. A firstfor Santa Barbara. They took Carl's money, fingerprinted, photographed and skin-searched him. He was alloweda telephone call. He phoned his father at his law office in Los Angeles.

The others he had been arrested with Carl half smiled at their greeting and sat down by himself at theopposite end. He looked at the other prisoners, separated by heavy bars and locks, pacingback and forth; smoking, playing cards, looking at him. He knew he could not possibly survive a night in jail.

He was able to make only stabs ofconversation when one of the group came over to him. Carl jumped up, said goodbye to the others, and was let out of the cell. His father had paidthe bail money. But he felt a twinge ofguilt; he almost wished his father had not come. Would you like to get something to eat?

I'd like to hearmore about what happened. There's a pretty good place close by. He gave a Carl a check to contribute to the lawyer who was representing all 19 of thosearrested, then dropped him off on campus. Carl found Robin at the Hero office. He fell into her arms. What're you people doing? I just wanted to be home, with you. I was fingerprinted and had mypicture taken. This isn't what we wanted; it isn't worth this. I'll just tell Maggie. Carl and Robin stopped attending Radical Union meetings. Carl also felt he would haveavoided the continuing campus demonstrations even if he had not been banned from theuniversity for two weeks due to his arrest.

The group was charged with various misdemeanors,including unlawful assembly.

Jeff Probst

The trial was set for a month ahead. Hefell behind in his classes. Robin came up with the idea of traveling in Europe for the summer, after Carl graduated. Herparents could tell them the best places to see; and, she said, they had offered to help withmoney. They picked up maps from the Automobile Club and decided to buy a Volkswagen Beetle inGermany to drive around in then ship back. The news editor of the Hero stopped coming to work. Maggie promoted Carl to the position,over staff members who had been with the paper longer but were not in the Radical Union,and over Robin, who said later to Carl she would have been interested in the job.

The Isla Vista 19 trial was postponed for another month. Kunstler was contacted by the campus radical leaders and persuaded to come and speak oncampus. The storythe police gave was that Patch was suspected of a recent crime. The crowd, whose anti-policefeelings had been simmering since the Administration Plaza demonstration three weeksearlier, responded with rocks and bottles, set the squad car on fire and attacked realtyoffices. They broke out most of the windows in the Bank of America in the center of town andlit bonfires in the street in front of the bank. It was late, eight o'clock, to have just brought down the article on the Kunstler speech.

Carlhad gone to Kunstler's press conference after the speech before writing up the story. They were about to drive home. Carl and Robin had heard there was some rock throwing after the Kunstler speech, but theywere surprised that the bank was being burned. They decided to get a quick hamburger at the student center then go over to the newspaperoffice to find out if they were needed.

Carl had no intention of going out to Isla Vista to seethe burning bank; he was afraid of being recognized and arrested again. There was a roadblock at the normal entrance to campus. They went around the long way. The office was empty.

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Carl switched on the bright ceiling lights. The day's assignments werestill on the blackboards. He and Robin looked out the windows into the pitch blackness until the phone rang. Soon thephones jangled with news and questions about the riot. Photographers — hundreds of them, it seemed — ran in and out with film. For hours, Carl andRobin took notes and answered phone calls. Finally, two in the morning, a report came in that a group of people had burned the bank tothe ground by climbing up to the second floor, dousing the walls with gasoline, and settingfire to the wood.

Carl and Robin typed up the story, the copy editor read it, and allthree of them drove it back to the print shop to redo the front page for the morning's edition. On the way home, Carl and Robin drove past where the bank had been. A giant, blackened safe stood near a wall of bricks in the middle of a smoking, burnt-outframe of gnarled metal. Rubble littered the ground.

The trees in front were scorched thoughthere still were flowers in the garden nearby. A few people held hot dogs over the charred beams fallen on the sidewalk. There were hundreds ofinjuries and arrests before the rain and the National Guard came. The radicals warned that no doubt some among them would be arrested for thebank burning. Isla Vista was hot news. The bank burning had made the front page of, even, Le Monde.

Maggie wanted to use the conference to detail the events leading up to the riot. The town was still occupied by troops and Carl didn't want to leave Robin. She encouragedhim to go, saying she would be fine, staying at a friend's. From their hotel suite, Maggie phoned wire services and local columnists and told them shehad arranged to preempt the senators due to speak at the following morning's pressconference on ecology. Carl saw her notes on what she planned to say: Who I am, sorry to interrupt, press blaming Kunstler.

Was fraternities, surfers, apolitical, boredom, drugs, music, sex, intense feelings,needs. Unincorporated no voice in county govt. Police harassment for drugs. The sun was streaming in. Only a handful of people were downstairs. All the TV cameras and lights were unplugged. An Associated Press reporter came over to Maggie after her speech and agreed to squeeze asmall filler about the bank burning into the afternoon edition of the Washington Post. Carl felt it wasfantastic, much more love than violence and beautifully photographed. But he came out feeling shaken by their plight; they had spiraled deeper and deeper intotheir life of crime until they left themselves no way to escape.

I mean, what for? We don't need to. But it's only a piece of paper. And I'm sure we'd get money frommy parents. We don't need the money. And get the car all at once, not owe anybodyanything. Why go through that? If we got married, it would be for ourselves, and our friends, not your father. Don't you want to get married? We know we're going to be together You want to be RobinMishlin? I don't want to take yourname I could just keep mine! But he didn't see the point. We'd be starting our own life; we cancelebrate the festival, and the movie we saw on our first trip.

The group was in the shade of an olive-tree picnic ground in theSanta Barbara mountains. A garland of sun-wilted daisies was vined through Carl's hair. Hewore his black cowboy-shirt. Robin stood beside him, at the head of the group, holding a ribboned shock of wildflowers. Her hands peeked out from her white-lace sleeves. Her bare feet were just visible beneath her paisley-print dress. The wine jug and joints the parents stood off to the side were being passed around thecircle of The guitar playing stopped.

Greg — the same Greg who had announced Carl's arrest at thedemonstration two months before, and who had driven him and the others to jail — wasshrouded in a saffron robe, befitting another role: We celebrate Carl and Robinjoining hands as Monterey As partners equal and lovers growingSharing and caring for each other each day. Carl took his poem from his back pocket, self-consciously glancing around the group. After acouple of deep breaths and an attempt to unfreeze his smile, he turned to Robin and read: Holding hands in our minds as we waitSomething in the air is for us todayWhat joy and sparkle — we'll never let go insideI love with you to playI love you so very muchI love your liberating touchI love youYou are my revolutionRobin's father's movie camera whirred above the murmuring, and the rustling of leaves.

Robin placed her bouquet on the ground. She undid the yellow ribbon tied around her poem,unrolled it and cleared her throat a half-dozen times: To Carl on our wedding day. You mean so much more to me than I canever express in this simple poem. She read softly and haltingly. But I will take this chanceto do the best I can. She fingered her hair, parted cleanly in the middle, crowned with a strand of flowers andflowing down to her vest.

My love for youis honest and wholecuz that's the stuff on which it is builtMy love for youis hard to predictcuz it's a changing thing. There are times of hot smothering compassionand times of all-hell-let-loose madnessAnd only you know how to match each one. She wiped her eyes. When times are hard and there's so much to doWhen things get confused, and there's no place to turnWhen everyone's forgotten and there's no one to helpThen you've got me and I've got youto know and understand and careAnd, most of all,Her voice was stronger,My love for you is a liberating thingBecause through it we understand As it grows within usOur love reaches out to everyone.

They exchanged their poems and kissed. They were hugged by everyone and stood togetherfor a long time watching the others. A few people hung around the table where the fresh strawberry ice cream was being crushedup, a few danced a little, their own dances, to the recorders and conga drums. But most in the group looked or moved in different directions, melting in and out of clumps ofpeople that grew and dissolved.

Photographers from the Hero snapped pictures and one woman was bent over in a lockedposition of unquenchable psychedelic laughter. Carl convinced Robin that they should go say hello to his parents before they left for LosAngeles.

Robin greeted Carl's mother. Predictably, she looked away from Robin, darting her eyes toCarl's father, then dressed her down from vine-topped head through braless blouse to nakedtoes. Carl didn't know why his mother disliked Robin. Robin had said that his mother probablyblamed her for leading him astray.

There was an abrupt goodbye. When the cars had passed out of earshot, a new round of shouting and drinking took hold ofthe group.

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