the COMPANY of REBELS
I. BERKELEY: A LIKELY PLACE TO BEGIN
I hold that a strongly marked personality can influence descendants for generations.
—BEATRIX POTTER, LETTER TO A FRIEND
I AM LAUNCHING THIS book by recalling in my mind’s eye the story of one stellar rebel/historymaker in one historic locale: bookseller/activist Pat Cody of one important hotbed of creative community resistance: Berkeley, California. Warning to the reader: this chapter is a teaser, a Circe temptress to lure you into remembering, or learning about, the history that I and my peers have had the opportunity to live—in the hope that it might influence you.
PAT CODY: IN THE CENTER OF IT ALL
(1923–2010)
I see a world with decent housing, enough food,
no tooth-and-claw struggle like we have now.
I see happier people who aren’t going to inflict
emotional injury on one another. No war.
No need for all this high technology…
—P.C., IN INTERVIEW WITH CHELLIS GLENDINNING, 1989
Pat Cody exuded Berkeley: she had Berkeley politics, she had Berkeley commitment, she had Berkeley fire in her veins. With her husband Fred, she ran the top independent bookstore on Telegraph Avenue—no, in the city. And her story stands as an example: she was a model of what makes a vital participant in history.
Cody’s Books sat on the corner of Haste and Telegraph, its sidewalk-to-roofwindows showing off the stacks and tables of books inside. Owning a really first-class bookstore demands more than just knowing what books will sell, how to display the merchandise, who to invite for a book signing, or how to hire and fire; it demands constant and daily attention to the community. It was not only Cody’s remarkably complete section on literature and political science, nor its impossible-to-find Tintin volumes from France, nor the full collection of Allen Ginsburg’s poetry that made the store a legend; above all it was Pat and Fred’s willingness to serve. As San Francisco Chronicle book review editor Patricia Holt put it on her Holt Uncensored blog:
To Fred and Pat, it didn’t matter who walked into the store—a homeless self-publisher (hardly an oxymoron) or a professor of physics from UC Berkeley: Matching the right book with the right customer was the highest act of political engagement they knew. Their first and last job as booksellers, they felt, was to contribute to the experience of quiet solitude that can only happen during the act of reading. When the reader’s mind meets the author’s mind, they believed, the world will change.
Outside on the ample sidewalk, Fred and Pat allowed vendors to sell their wares, and their presence became a vital part of the burgeoning street life. There was Hassan Faquour, the Iranian whose flower kiosk overflowed with roses and daffodils, azaleas and lilies. A skinny, six-foot-four-inch hippie-type hawked his tie-dyed tee-shirts from an Indian-print bedspread on the sidewalk. You would see Marty Schiffenbauer traversing the corner on his way to the Caffé Mediterraneum for his morning brew and street poet Julia Vinograd in her yellow cap blowing soap bubbles into the air. Inside the store sat Denny Smithson manning the cash register; his show on listener-sponsored KPFA-FM showcased authors and their books.
During the 1950s Pat and Fred boldly vocalized their stance against censorship. In the ‘60s, while other shops on Telegraph were locking their doors during street battles between anti-Vietnam War protesters and the police, Cody’s opened theirs to provide safe refuge. In 1968, as National Guardsmen were tear-gassing and clubbing peace activists, Cody’s became a first-aid station for the injured, as well as a place for political meetings at a time when such gatherings were banned on public property. Even the bathrooms—with their blackboards and chalk encouraging personal expression and social commentary—were designed to enhance community.
Every morning around ten, in would traipse Pat Cody. Dressed in sensible walking shoes and a plain skirt—her blonde-white hair in bangs and a little-girl cut—she looked like your typical, plainly dressed, liberal mother. But in reality she was a blaze of radical ideas and action. I know, because she was my boss. In the early ’70s, I—a 1969 graduate of UC Berkeley—started working the help desk at Cody’s, operating the cash register and keeping track of sales and orders in the Mythology and Occult book sections. The job seemed the right move in my as-yet-un-designated career path, as my boyfriend, a Russian named Misha Besher, who was seriously into esoteric spiritual matters, worked just down the block at Shambhala Books.
Pat was born in 1923 in New London, Connecticut—her father, Jack Herbert, was a railroad station agent, her mother, Rosalia, a homemaker. The Depression and World War II opened her to the political commitment she would nourish for the rest of her life. She earned a master’s degree in economics at Columbia, where she met, fell in love with, and married a handsome, and also very political, activist named Fred Cody. When the FBI knocked on their door and pressed them to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee—read: to name names of their friends who were members of the Communist Party—they bolted for London and then Mexico. There they met up with folks like Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Pablo Neruda. As a timid 23-year-old worker at the bookstore, I knew nothing of this courageous and colorful past; truth is, I didn’t ask.
Pat and Fred in the store, 1970s. Courtesy of Nora Cody.
But now I know: when the McCarthy era began to lighten up and the HUAC hearings had closed, Pat and Fred returned to California and in 1956 launched the bookstore. At first it was a hole-in-the-wall on Northside, but after a while, they realized that all the political/cultural action was taking place on Southside, so they picked up and moved across campus to Telegraph Avenue. Pat’s knowledge of economics found its preferred outlet as she focused on the financial side of the business—endlessly juggling a growing payroll, the accumulating demands for compensation from publishers who were always breathing down their necks, and a burgeoning inventory of the latest and finest of books. Meanwhile, Fred, who earlier had set his sights on becoming a university professor, came face-to-face with the requirement that, to do so, he would have to sign the hyper-patriotic, anti-communist Loyalty Oath. Instead of compromising his values he decided to pursue something else, and in the bookstore he found new meaning in curating the content of the store via creative book ordering.
As a result of the 1964 Free Speech Movement on campus, the couple really dug their heels in to serve the community. They worked with others to found the Berkeley Free Clinic, where Pat also donated her skills as treasurer. And, always attentive to what was needed, she started the group Women for Peace to protest the Vietnam War.
By the late 1980s I had indeed found my career path: I was a writer, and at that moment I was doing interviews with people made ill by dangerous technologies for a book to be called When Technology Wounds. The offending technologies included atomic bombs and nuclear power plants, intrauterine devices like the Copper-7 and Dalkon Shield, asbestos, and chlordane, as well as dioxin-based pesticides, oral contraceptives, toxic chemicals, and metals such as those that contaminated
