“On his first day in office,” I said, “…Jimmy Carter pardoned draft dodgers,” and that Mark need not fear military incarceration if he went home to North Carolina. He “could go back any time,” I said, adding sarcastically, “preferably right now!”
Of course, I really didn’t mean it, as Mark was a good friend of the shop, and one of its primary suppliers of second-hand books, tapes, and compact discs. He could also be a source of irritation, never being satisfied with the amount of money I offered in return. Light-hearted, yet intense negotiations would follow, and he would regale me with stories of the authors, as though knowing what an author did before writing a certain book would somehow influence how much I paid for it.
Mark was very clever, always surprising me with the literature he was able to get his hands on, whether it was a trade-sized Michel Foucault’s Madness and Civilization, Jane Jacobs’ Death and Life of American Cities, or the Starfleet Technical Manual. He once told me that the books he offered to a store (mine was not the only one) was contingent upon how much they paid for books. Hoping to encourage him to bring his better stuff, I would pay more, and often got first dibs on some of his finer offerings.
His father was a decorated World War II veteran, still living in North Carolina. He had never forgiven Mark for dodging the draft. When he received his order to present himself for a medical examination in 1970, he wasted no time, making his way instead to Montreal by thumbing rides and Greyhound bus. He made fast friends with like-minded university students, crashing on their couches, and occasionally auditing courses that interested him.
He worked his way across the country, eventually settling on my city. Initially he made a living selling records, tapes and books; later his trade would expand to include DVDs and CDs. All of these, he would procure at church fundraisers, garage and estate sales, and thrift shops. His main source of transportation, aside from transit, were his feet, and there was never a time I did not see him without a shopping bag in each hand containing that day’s booty. Slight of body, he had the look of a man that was in need of a good meal. He was almost always wearing the same fawn coloured autumn jacket and matching sport pants – the kind with a stripe down the side. He wore his blonde hair long, tied back in a pony-tail, and had a stately, well-developed beard.
Sitting with me at the bookstore’s coffee bar, I’d ply him with long espressos and he would divulge all the stories he knew of rock stars from the 50′s, 60′s and 70′s. A veritable walking encyclopedia of everything you wanted to know - the guitar Jimmy Page was using in concert in Chicago on a certain year, or who Grace Slick was dating while still married to Jerry. If you wanted to know who influenced Jimi Hendrix, or where Pete Townshend was standing the day John Lennon was shot… Mark was your man.
Though he travelled many places, and had met many people along the way, he seemed to me to be a bit of a loner; and as he had politely refused my many invitations to concerts and poetry readings, I came to see that he socialized through his work. I felt a kinship with him, though we were at different stages in our lives. We both hovered at the poverty line. For him the Vietnam war had never ended, and I thought of him as a grizzled survivor, living with the dodging of the draft, and his disapproving father. I recently realized that, at that time, he was roughly the same age I am now.
Top photo: Rep. Alexander Pirnie, R-NY, draws the first capsule in the draft lottery drawing held on Dec. 01/1969. The capsule contained the date, Sept. 14th
