Chicago Rage (Memoirs of a 1960s Hippy) - Softcover

Schulz, Ronald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 192809483X ISBN 13: 9781928094838

Publisher: Tumbleweed Books, 2022

Synopsis

At seventeen, Ron Schulz has already decided that conventional America has nothing to offer him.
It is 1969. The Vietnam War is raging, the country is fractured by racial conflict and political violence, and a new generation is challenging everything it has inherited. Ron drops out of high school and heads toward the counterculture, determined to find freedom, love, spiritual meaning, and a life beyond the suburban world he has rejected.
His journey carries him through underground Chicago, open relationships, drugs, radical politics, unexpected friendships, and the streets of New York. Along the way, he meets Karen, a teenage runaway whose fierce rebelliousness matches his own. Together they turn toward Chicago and the growing confrontation between young revolutionaries and the Establishment.
Waiting for them are the Days of Rage.
As political theory becomes street action, Ron finds himself caught between the intoxicating promise of revolution and its dangerous reality. Police, protesters, racial tensions, anti-war activism, sex, love, poverty, and youthful certainty collide as he tries to decide what freedom actually means - and how far he is willing to go to find it.
Chicago Rage is a candid, provocative memoir of the American counterculture at the end of the 1960s, told from inside the experience by a teenager who wanted more than to witness history. He wanted to help change it.
For readers drawn to hippie memoirs, anti-war activism, 1960s counterculture, and firsthand accounts of a generation in revolt, Chicago Rage captures the exhilaration, contradictions, danger, and restless idealism of a turbulent American moment.

About this title

About the Author

Born in Chicago, Ronald Schulz grew up in the semi-rural suburb of Wood Dale. At fifteen he ran away to New Orleans, where he lived on Skid Row until betrayed by a priest. As a disaffected seventeen-year-old high school dropout in 1969, Ronald took a massive dose of LSD while hitchhiking alone into the wide-open Western American scene in search of the counterculture. He later became involved in radical movements in New York and Chicago, including the SDS Days of Rage, where he was arrested and subjected to several months in a mental hospital. He made the most of it, joining the White Panthers and later a rural Wisconsin commune, which remained his home throughout the 1970s. In 1975 he hitchhiked across North Africa and the Middle East, spent time on a kibbutz, and worked at a copper mine in Israel's Negev desert. Then on to India and Nepal, where he spent nine months studying Buddhism under Lama Yeshe. His life has been full of adventure, travel, and different jobs, including teaching English classes in Tokyo, construction work in Los Angeles, and mining in South Dakota and Colorado. Ronald has a BA in political science from the University of Washington, as well as certificates in memoir writing and teaching English as a second language. He has been to every continent and now lives in Seattle, writing a series of honest memoirs: Chicago Rage, Home at the Edge, and Party at the End of the Rainbow. Soon to be published are Teenage Runaway, with more to follow. Stay tuned by following this author.

From the Back Cover

Free Love, Drugs, and Riots
A time in US history. A time of turmoil. And a time of unrest. A five-part memoir as seen through the eyes of seventeen-year-old Ron trying to earn enough money to continue his exploration of the emerging Counterculture, just after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
From the exploration of the underground culture of Chicago to the streets of New York, this recollection of the riots and first inter-racial romance tells of the trials we all face, even today. And then Karen entered his life - a young run-a-way with wild thoughts of tearing down Pig City.
From freedom to jail, Ron must re-evaluate his life's direction and to look at the world in a wider scope.
Take an amazing journey through the memory of a man from another generation as he struggled to find his position in life-as most of the world is doing today.

From the Inside Flap

With deep gratitude to my wild companions and racy loves: Rae Fichter, Lee Swanson, John Bell, Ruby, Bonnie, and most especially Karen Mucci. You made my life into a meaningful adventure and I hope we'll meet again of the far side.

Edition details

• Publisher: Tumbleweed Books
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 192809483X
• ISBN 13: 9781928094838
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 296