Guns or Butter
by
Connell F. Persico

Federal Work study funds were my source of income. My take home pay was $111.04 monthly. Rent and utilities were $65. Payday meant a trip to Tad's Steaks for the $1.49 special. Payday also meant a contribution to the collective weapons fund. We needed to arm ourselves for the inevitable struggle against the repressive police state. By early 1967 I had several rifles and a pair of handguns. Between the purchase fund and buying ammo for target practice, money for food was scarce, but come the revolution, all would be plentiful, so there was no issue.

Once a month, I would borrow my mom's car, load the guns she was storing for us in her house in the trunk, and we would head off to Napa for target practice. Amid the fields of gold and green, in the solitude of remote and uninhabited valleys, we would set up pictures of police and Republicans as targets and develop our accuracy as shooters. We would drink screw cap wine and sometimes whisky and smoke a lot. It was essential we develop our skills in the various states in which our enemies might find us.

After a heady day of clamor and political education, our ears ringing from the constancy of the pops and pows of so many weapons, we would start for home, fatigued but imbued with a sense of purpose and destiny. The blaring car radio covered the silence of the internal arbitration between the 23 year old youth discovering himself and the soldier of destiny.

Arriving back in the city meant commencing the sacred ritual of cleaning the weapons. It was collective purification. All of us together stripping each instrument down to its multiple parts, oiling them, and reassembling them for the ever present ready. More conversation, more smoking. Serenity and calm contradicting the energy and violence from which we had just emerged.

As we finished cleaning each weapon, we would load it anew. It was critical to be ready at all times for responding to an anticipated assault. This time, Al, a Panther, always dressed in battle fatigues, who two years later would brand me a capitalist for making $400 a month, loaded his pistol and while verifying the accuracy of the sights accidentally pulled the trigger. A bullet caught the hairs above my right ear and pushed them to the back of my head. My comrades blanched and watched, waiting to see if I would fall. After a moment, as it became clear I was still capable of talking, we began to laugh. Half in jest, I remarked, "If you assholes are covering my back, and the pigs are shooting at me from the front, I don't stand a chance."

Over the months, new sensibilities emerged. I stopped keeping the stash at my mom's home. These weapons were loaded, there was a young child in the home, and my sister didn't know what was stored in the closet. Our beliefs mandated we not involve innocents in our conspiracy. Those of us willing to die must assume total responsibility for our actions. So we moved the weapons into our Noe Street flat.

Then one night, while we were smoking, unplugging a stopped up drain, setting cockroach bait, and listening to Aretha Franklin, Eduardo, TWLF leader, vigilant hothead and beloved roommate, was looking out the window and noticed two cops had stopped outside our place and were having a conversation. Within seconds, someone had determined this was the start of a raid. We sprung into preplanned action. Bill grabbed his weapons and headed for the roof. I grabbed a rifle and headed for the top of the stairs. Others assembled in different locations. What seemed like hours passed as I stood there breathless, finger on the trigger, hammer cocked, ready to blast as soon as the pigs came through the door.

The police had left soon after they had been noticed and our readiness was for naught. For naught, except the tension of this artificially created and drug induced moment, following upon the prior incident, had helped to break my commitment to a violent solution to our social ills. I gave away my weapons and moved to a studio apartment on Grant Avenue in North Beach; enabling daily visits to Caffe Trieste for more polite but no less fervent debate.

Was I less committed? Was I more sensible? All I knew was that it was a new path.