As the game moved along both of us chucked our chess-book tactics for bare-knuckle combat. He played with an erratic, intuitive intelligence. “Mothafuck!” he cried out.

The glass walls of the student union looked out on Sproul Plaza and a riot was breaking out. Billows of tear gas clouded the glass. National Guard troops, armed in camouflage fatigues, watched from Telegraph Avenue as the Oakland police, in blue uniforms and zombie crash helmets with black visors, charged students with truncheons raised like broadswords.

AUTO-FLASHES BY PETER STINE 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 99

1969

I was playing a lot of chess in the Berkeley student union, this day with a tough opponent, a heavy black man with dreadlocks that swung down and knocked over a rook or one of his pawns. He began with a Roy Lopez opening, me with a quasi-Sicilian defense, but as the game moved along both of us chucked our chess-book tactics for bare-knuckle combat. He played with an erratic, intuitive intelligence.

“Mothafuck!” he cried out. The dreadlocks swung again, knocking pawns to the floor. “This ain’t a problem in the joint. They shave ya smooth as a watermelon.” Said by some white, …