JOHN OGDEN
The Summer of Love was long dead by the time 1970 rolled around, nailing the coffin shut with the Kent State massacre and the death of Jimi Hendrix. The war in Vietnam was still raging and the death count of young American and Australian troops kept climbing, along with over a million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians. By the following year I had won the conscription lottery, with the offer of a free trip to Southeast Asia to shoot people I had no quarrel with. At that time, a 19-year-old was judged too immature to drink or vote, but considered old enough to kill. That little marble plucked randomly from a barrel would change the course of my life.
As a conscientious objector my solution to avoid conscription was to hitch my way to
