Like me, someone who came of age during the 60s, Carlo had a childhood that seemed to mirror the cliché vision of Southern California he used to read about. His paternal grandfather emigrated from Sicily by way of New York, learning English on the streets of Brooklyn which, remembers Carlo, was a unique blend of Italian and New York street slang. His grandfather would look at a piece of machinery that had stopped functioning and pronounce “She’s a no woik!” as his all-encompassing diagnosis. His maternal grandfather was an Oscar winning cinematographer and his parent’s marriage was quintessential Los Angeles…literally. “Orange groves and movies. Like a 1920s travel poster” Carlo says.
Growing up in turbulent times, he graduated high school in 1969…the height of the escalation in Viet Nam.
The world as we knew it, the world as our parents knew it, was exploding around us, and them. The oldest son of a WWII Vet, Carlo, like so many others of his generation, didn't just argue with his father over the car keys. Unlike his dad, he found no honor in serving...at least not at that time and not in that place. Morally opposed to an undeclared war he, like so many others, became one with a generation of young men who not only did not WANT to go, they were flat out refusing...something never before seen in such numbers in the United States. Canada was close - and welcomed the resistors with open arms. Not since the Civil War had so many been helped from stop to stop, an estimated 60,000 "draft dodgers" crossed out of the United States and into the protection of Canadian soil.
He came from a family of veterans and yet he had no idea what he would do if he opened the envelope and read the dreaded salutation: "Greetings". Canada wasn't all that far, but at what price? As he approached the time when a decision might have to be made, the U.S. government blinked. Overwhelmed with draftees refusing to heed the call, refusing to report for physicals, declaring themselves conscientious objectors if they did, Selective Service reinvented itself. No more would masses of letters of conscription sent out. A lottery was instituted. The birthday lottery.
Morally opposed to the Viet Nam war, Carlo remembers listening to the birthday lottery as if it were yesterday. Three hundred sixty five dates were randomly pulled out of a bag (or a hat or a bowl or something), much like the Super Lotto numbers are pulled in over 40 states now. Draft notices then were sent to the newly graduated seniors based on their birthday .. the first date called was the first group to be summoned. His birthday finally surfaced…Number 228. But he was still 17 and, while his relatively high number made it a good bet he wouldn’t have been called he was too young anyway. The next year…the year he turned 18, he again waited to hear the dreaded "June 2nd" called and finally it was - number 304. He wasn’t going. He enrolled in college, spent six weeks in London, went to Disneyland and, to this day, still isn’t sure what he would have done had he been called.
Fast forward 42 years. Carlo is now a mature man, married almost 30 years, father of two adult sons and a freelance writer, sat with me and our two grown sons in the mezzanine of the Pantages Theater in Hollywood, watching a stage full of remarkable young performers who weren't even born when Saigon fell yank us back to that time and place in "Hair". Wondering if this acclaimed revival was little more than a pleasant nod and wink to the "Age of Aquarius" he found himself yanked back to those days of a youth that was far from idyllic, a world that made him, and hundreds of thousands like him, make life defining choices far before they were ready. He stayed in his seat and watched as one of his sons and I danced on the stage singing "Let The Sunshine In." Why?
"I always loved that show" he said. "But I never wanted to get up and celebrate what was going down."
Panno, Carlo. Personal Interview. 20/September/2012.
Kindig, Jessie. "Draft Resistance in the Vietnam Era."Antiwar and Radical History Project - Pacific Northwest. University of Washington, Seattle, 2008. Web. 25 Sep 2012. <http://depts.washington.edu/antiwar/vietnam_draft.shtml>.
