Hurricane Street by Ron Kovic

Author:Ron Kovic
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2016-05-17T04:00:00+00:00

Tuesday, February 19, 1974

Someone has put up a large number 6 on the window, and already the press seems to be everywhere. Both KNBC and KCBS are setting up their cameras in the center office and Nick is talking to a guy from the Los Angeles Times, who is scribbling down notes in his little pad. There’s a woman reporter from the public television station KCET interviewing Danny right now, and several young students and their teacher from a local high school, who walked in just a few minutes ago, are talking to Sharon.

* * *

The phones continue to ring almost constantly with requests for interviews, while I struggle to pull myself into my wheelchair. It’s nearly twelve noon when I take a call from a guy telling me he’s a reporter at the LA Free Press and wants to know if he can interview me right now over the phone. I tell him sure, and he begins by asking me how everyone is holding up considering it’s our sixth day without any food.

“Pretty good,” I tell him. “Most of the guys are adjusting well, but it’s not easy.” I encourage him to go to the SCI wards in Long Beach. “Go down there and see for yourself what they’re going through. It’s a slum! It’s a national disgrace!”

He then asks me how much longer we’re willing to go without food.

“For as long as it takes,” I say. “We’re ready to die in this place if we have to.”

* * *

Somebody from D ward called me earlier in the day. I believe it was a friend of Willy Jefferson’s and he told me that everybody on the SCI wards has been watching us on TV. “You guys are getting a lot of coverage,” he said. “Most of the guys on the ward are with you, but some of the World War II and Korean War vets are really pissed. They’re calling you traitors and unpatriotic and saying what you’re doing is an insult to all veterans. Ed Callahan, who’s head of the Long Beach Veterans Outreach Program, said, All those guys are Communists and what they’re doing is causing a lot of trouble on the paraplegic wards. They’re going to give us all a bad name. Stuff like that. These are the same right-wing vets who criticized you last year when you started the Patients’/Workers’ Rights Committee. Now they’re attacking you again and condemning the strike.”

* * *

We all take turns this evening washing up in the hallway bathroom. We normally don’t do our sink baths and bowel care until all the federal employees have left for the day. It’s better that way, more private. At Parris Island, our drill instructors would curse and scream, telling us it was time to “shit, shower, and shave,” and that is exactly what we are doing now.

We sit naked in our wheelchairs running the hot water in the sinks until it rises to the very top. We first clean our private parts—crotch, balls, and penis.

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