The Town I Loved, the Protestor I Became
My Wonderful 1950s Childhood Inspired Me to Oppose the Vietnam War
If you want a classic portrait of middle Americana in the middle of the 20th century, you had to look no farther than my hometown of Rialto, in inland Southern California, 50 miles east of Los Angeles.
My youth on King and North Verde streets was about American kid stuff—baseball, bugs, riding my bike, my crush on a grammar school classmate named Katherine, playing John F. Kennedy in the Kennedy-Nixon mock debates at school, trying to make new Levi’s look worn, swimming during the summer at the officers’ club pool at …
