Fred Lerner

In The Zine Dump you speak of "an alumni newsletter from the co-op dormitories where I spent my last two years at Berkeley". I spent the Summer of 1964 studying Hindi at Berkeley, where I lived in Cloyne Court. Norm Metcalf had recommended it to me, and so I paid my five dollars for a lifetime membership in the University Students Cooperative Association.

This entitled me, upon payment of fifteen dollars a week and putting in seven hours of work, to room and full board – a pretty good deal when I was receiving a fifty dollars a week stipend for living expenses!

As I remember it, Cloyne Court was a pretty interesting place to wear a Goldwater button. But Berkeley politics weren't entirely solid-left. At Sproul Plaza the Goldwater and Romney supporters each had their tables, from which they slanged each other pretty well. Until 11.30, that is: at which point the Romney people left their flyers and cash-box at the Goldwater table and went out for a lunch break. At 12.30 they returned and minded the store for the Goldwater boys until they returned an hour later -- and then it was warfare as usual until the end of the afternoon.

I hope your youth was equally misspent.

We’ve gone around and around about this – surely the other Republican candidate at that point in 1964 was William Scranton!