When I’d first worked at the Claremont, drinking my way through its inventory of booze as if it were all going to disappear (which it was, thanks to the impending advent of Prohibition) and wooing my way through much of the Bay Area’s female population as if they were soon to be outlawed as well, a number of young college women I’d dated had suggested we dine on Telegraph Avenue, where the foreign restaurants were always intriguing and an outrageous bargain. I remembered that at the termination of Telegraph, there was a circle where the trolleys turned back to Oakland and, in front of that circle, a big gateway that marked the beginning of the Berkeley campus. I parked Larry’s car just around the corner from Sather Gate (its name was embossed in its wrought-iron arch) where a vociferous crowd was waving placards bearing the words STUDENTS FOR PEACE, F.D.R. WANTS W.A.R., NO CONSCRIPTION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION. There was a small platform upon which a nicely dressed fellow with a shock of red hair was leaping from one lily pad of grievance to another. The government was steering us into a war that was none of our affair. The Selective Service Act was unconstitutional and no right-minded man should cooperate with this attempt to create Roosevelt’s Horde. The current ban on delivery of scrap iron to any nation but Britain was yet another intentional blow against the hard-pressed Japanese, and made a lie of any claim to neutrality on the president’s part.

I worked my way around the rally and through a side doorway within the gate. On the other side was a much cheerier cluster of students, handing out circulars to all who passed by.

“What’s cooking?” I asked an agreeable fellow, taking the flyer he offered me.

“We’re reminding everyone that to be seated in the men’s rooting section of Saturday’s game, you must wear only white shirts or sweaters. It’s being strictly enforced this season. No white, no seating, no matter what your ticket says. This comes down from Ed Brewer himself.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Ed said this? You heard him?” I asked gravely, wondering who Ed was.

“I did, and he was dead serious, mister, you can take it from me. We’ve had people showing up in yellow and light beige, but no more. We’ll supply the reversible caps for making the Big C, and the cards for the card tricks, but if a man doesn’t own at least one clean white shirt, what’s he doing at Berkeley, I ask you?”