The San Francisco Examiner from San Francisco, California • 77

-UULtlU- pamnnfliimunuinniimiuniinuniUHniiiumnDffiiu oramaiioiiuiiuiiu; HERB.fMEH ART HOPPl 1 I J-L I In -m f38r inuiii i hi Man's Black Magic Chronicle Publishing Co. 1969. December 28, 1969 There Goes Whatever It Was THERE MAY COME a time when we will look back on the Sixties with nostalgic affection, but I'm inclined to doubt it. The decade wasn't all bad but not for lack of trying: the three graceful men who might have embellished it fell to the assassins, and as we went on trying to save Vietnam by destroying it, we discovered we were destroying ourselves; a country that has a Pentagon doesn't need enemies, it turned out, and the graffito of the decade may well have been "Pragmatism doesn't work." 7 IN SAN FRANCISCO, the tall buildings rose to blot out the views of a Bay that is disappearing. Hair grew longer, skirts shorter; sniffed Cecil Beaton: "Never in the history of fashion has too little material been raised so high to reveal so much that needs to be covered so badly." Caryl Chessman died at San Quentin in what they call the fireless cooker as Gov.

Pat Brown agonized; "The difference between Pat Brown and Caryl Chessman," went the black joke after the execution, "is that Caryl Chessman is still alive." Wrong. Mr. Brown, the Tower of Jello, master of instant indecision, went on to defeat the man who had been beaten for President at the beginning of the decade and would be President at its end. THE BEATNIKS faded out and the hippies flowered in, one of the early ones explaining "I'm just overcompensating for a tendency to be a compulsive worker." The Chronicle launched a fearless crusade against bad restaurant coffee after Pat Buttram drank a cupful that tasted "like something you sit in to remove a tattoo." Alcatraz lost its reputation as the world's most celebrated leak-proof pen; three prisoners dug their way out with spoons as TWA's Bob Brady sighed: 'Too bad if they'd taken 22 prisoners with them they'd have qualified for a group fare to Europe." So many demonstrators were arrested at the massive sit-ins at the Palace and on Auto Row that Inspector Bob Quinn looked up from a mountain of paper work to gripe: "What this department needs is an Arrest-a-Plate." And LBJ refused to send Hubert Humphrey to Winston Churchill's funeral because he was afraid Hubert wouldn't be able to stop smiling. 1 "IF YOU LIKE him you pronounce it Ray-gun," explained Bob Finch, "and if you don't, you call him Reegan.

As I was saying to Governor Reegan just the other day The historic White 1 House department store folded; a Little Old Lady who worked there collected her last check, went trt Tinn RHverfhrtrno' National Ranlr in Aa. CCENE: The Heavenly Real Estate Office. The: Landlord, thoughtfully stroking his long white beard, is listening to the annual year-end' report from his collection agent, Mr. Gabriel. 1- Gabriel: the exploding novae in Sector 4782 now seem under control, but that runaway galaxy in the 534th Quadrant still requires your! attention, sir.

The Landlord (wearily): It isn't easy keeping billion trillion stars in their courses. Is that all, Gabriel? Gabriel: No, sir. I still have the special report on that tiny planet you love so. The Landlord (pleased): Ah, yes, Earth, my little blue-green jewel, (frowning) Are the tenants still gouging up my mountain meadows, burning holes in my forested carpets and befouling my blue seas and crystalline air? Gabriel: Yes, sir. And they're still brawling, fight-: ing and killing each other off.

(hopefully raising! his trumpet). Shall I sound the eviction notice' now, sir? The Landlord: Wait, Gabriel. There is one thing I' don't understand. Don't they know they are all children of God? Gabriel: Yes, sir, they all know that. The Landlord: Then how can a child of God bring himself to maim or kill another child of God? a Gabriel: Oh, he doesn't sir.

First he performs magic rite changing his enemy into something less than human. Then, when his enemy is no longer a child of God, he maims or kills him in good conscience. Landlord: What an awesome power! How do they manage this incredibly complex transformation? Gabriel: Very simply. Look down there, sir. Can you see through that blanket of smog? Now take those two fine men in blue The Landlord: Ah, yes, two stalwart officers of the law sworn to protect their fellow man.

But who are those crowding around them? Gabriel: Young idealists, sir, dedicated to social justice. Now, listen. Hear what they're shouting? "Pigs! Pigs! Pigs!" The Landlord (aghast): And they're throwing bricks at those two policemen trying to maim those two children of God! Gabriel: Oh, no, sir. Not children of God. Pigs.

The demonstrators- have transformed them into pigs and can now maim them in good conscience. The Landlord: I see. And that big soldier over there in Vietnam shooting at a fleeing old woman? Has he changed her into a pig, too Gabriel: No, sir. He changed her into a gook, a dink or a slope. It was easy.

She didn't speak his language. Nor was she familiar with his That always makes the magic easier. Landlord (Sadly): Transforming the children funaat) Chronicle Editorial Comment Charles Young Thierior, Editor and Publisher Georga T. Cameron, Publisher 1925 ro 195S mt I 1 1 1 rounaea i qh gy vniriN ina m.n. vi iung Delta Doubts arid the THE SO-CALLED PERIPHERAL CA-NAL a proposed 43-mile, man-made ditch that would cost $209 million and, by by-passing the Delta, put relatively pure Sacramento river water into State Water Project pipelines for export to Southern California has been strenuously opposed on the grounds of economy, conservation, fair play, and common sense.

It has now acquired additional opposition from an eminent biologist, Ferdinand S. Ruth, assistant to the director of the Lawrence Hall of Science, at the University of California, Berkeley. As reported by Jackson Doyle, The Chronicle's of God into pigs and gooks. How tragic! Gabriel: Oh, not only pigs and gooks, sir, but nips and wops and krauts and chinks. For example, they never lynch a fellow man until they havt turned him into a nigger or a coon.

The Landlord (shaking his head): It's blasphemous. Gabriel (gleefully raising his trumpet): Shall I blow, sir, and wipe these scum from the face of your Earth? The Landlord (his brow darkening): These what, Gabriel? Gabriel (ranting): Those rats! That trash! These sc. (suddenly lowering his trumpet, crestfallen) Oh, forgive me, sir. I'm no better than they. The Landlord (in a voice of thunder): Never forget, Gabriel, that he who would transform a child of God into something less than human is an accessory to murder! Sacramento correspondent, Ruth has told Governor Reagan by letter that the canal is "not a desirable method" for helping Southern California solve its water problems.

He agrees with numerous other critics who say that the canal will considerably increase the salt water content of the Delta's waters, and thereby work serious damage on fishes, wildfowl, farms and industries, and he urges, in effect, that the State look ahead, not backward, and abandon the expensive and obsolescent formula of high dams and the long-distance transportation of water. Better and, in the long run, cheaper by far, he says, would be a system under which coastal areas would amplify their local fresh water supplies by (a) reclaiming used water, and (b) desalting sea water. He says emphatically that desalination through the use of atomic power is economically feasible and could "bring water costs in line with costs of water furnished by the peripheral canal or any other system involving dam water supplies." He joins in, also, the increasing chorus of environmentalists and ecologists who deplore the ill worked upon Northern California by massive dams and other water works. THUS THE University of California scientist takes forthright issue with the engineers and professional water-grabbers who say desalination is far in the future. He says it is so close to the present that the great California Water Project -now some $3 billion short of its estimated cost, not counting interest charges will be obsolete when it is finished, if it is finished.

Doubts on that score, especially concerning the peripheral canal, have been voiced by Congressman Jerome Waldie, who says the canal project will be beaten down if Congress considers it, and by Jess Unruh, the Assembly's minority leader, who says that the Legislature may weil consider a joint resolution to delay the project, which is to say, kill it. It is Unruh's opinion that the canal would make a "vast salt water wasteland" of the Delta, and thereby "deprive Bay Area farmers, industries and sportsmen of a priceless resource." Art's Aiim posit it in her account, found THAT had folded, and smiled wanly: "Well, at least I'm not pregnant." "WHAT Pill?" read the bumper stickers on the Dy-dee Wash trucks, and the Surgeon-General's report made cigarettes the Topic of Cancer. At the Cow Palace, Barry Goldwater as American as apfel was nominated for President and said "I'm optimistic." Naturally," added Stan Freberg. "He looks at the world through rose-colored bombsights." AS CHIANG Kai-shek collected yet another $50 million from Washington, Ed Sachs mordant-Iy described Nationalist China as "A cause advocated by people who wouldn't rent to Orientals." "The problems of this age are infinitesimal," noted Prof. John Bunzel.

"The atom, the ovum and a touch of pigment." Asked Bishop Pike: "Why do most people want the front of the bus, the back of the church and the middle of the road?" Walt Kraemer summed up the difference between capitalism and communism: "They can't give THEIR astronauts a ticker tape parade." Still, the market slumped so sharply that when a man said "I'm going downtown to see my broker," his wife asked: "Stock or pawn?" THE BAY BRIDGE humped, San Franciscans twist ed, jerked and rugged, and Dr. Schwarz brought his Christian Anti-Communism Crusade here to warn that "When Krushchev takes oyer he will use the Mark Hopkins as his headquarters;" Al Adolph ruined him by inquiring "will he take the cable Karl to the Top o' the Marx?" At the height of the anti-war fever, Hubert Humphrey insisted in a burst of floratory: "No sane person likes the war in Vietnam and neither does President Johnson." Speed reading became such a fad that Prof. Mark Schorer asked a student "Felt any good books lately?" and as for books, Christine Keeler's was to have been titled "Tories I Have Served Under." Movies grew longer and cars shorter. "Ben-Hur," said Dave Falk, "is too long even if you're Jewish," and George Lemont accurately summed up the American compacts: "They will be longer, lower and widef.fyhan any other small cars in the world." THE SIXTIES: "Would you believe?" and "Sorry about that." Carole Tregoff was tried and found wanton. Happiness is the third martini on an empty stomach, "Santa Claus is North Polish" and "Mother Goose Is a Honky." In Santa Barbara there was trouble on oiled aters and bumper strips reading "Union Oil Is a Slick Organization." The decade that went like sixty, and will the Seventies be an improvement? Well, as Hemingway's Jake said in "The Sun Also Rises," fca't it pretty Qthink so." Stoncbotf omism SOME SEEM to think that the opening round of strategic arms limitations talks in Helsinki between the Americans and the Russians went almost too well, and that the "stonebot-tom" techniques once employed by Vy-ache slav Molotov, the old Foreign Minsitry hand, will yetf be resorted to on the Soviet side.

This is the art of sitting obdurate and immobile until the sitting would wear out anything but a stone. Western cynics see some hint of stonebottomism in the fact that the two powers, attempting to agree on a site for full-scale talks in April, had to fall back on a compromise. The talks will start in Vienna, where the United States wanted them, and continue in Helsinki, where the Russians wanted them. This we find undiscouraging. It Is the world series solution and therefore, by definition, a healthy, red-blooded American precedent for us.

Proud equals agree to play two games on one's diamond, three on the other's, then back again. We don't see why it won't work as well for intercontinental ballistic missiles as for baseball. a Oft 2 I frO HI Nancy, I've been meaning to tell yea about Tori and mt.