3:20. A couple of hundred cops began massing on E Street and 13th, right in front of the National Theatre. They all crowded around the back of a Hertz truck. One of their number stood in the back of the truck, calling out each officer's name, and then tossing to each his riot equipment-his helmet and his gas mask. It was just like the way they distribute lunches to the band during? Harvard football games, so I hung around.

The kids and the cops were mixing freely. The black cops were friendliest. They told us that they just wanted to go home without getting their heads bashed in, and we tried to explain that that's the way we wanted it too. The young white cops were less inclined to talk, but it was only the older whites-the sergeants and their captains-who were really antagonistic.

We asked one captain why they were all suiting up right there in the street and he typified the prevalent level of sarcasm by answering that it was only part of their regular Saturday afternoon drill. And then he pretended to thank us for the extra overtime pay he would receive.

Meanwhile, we could hear the orders coming over their radios. There were three main bodies of cops in the city-one at Justice, one at the White House, and this third group on 13th and E. Our group-things were getting so friendly that it was difficult to maintain the proper degree of polarization-was reserved for "general ground control activities." A few squads were sent off to a nearby red light district, two busloads were earmarked for the embassy area, the rest were to wait to mop up the bands of demonstrators that would be straggling back from the Justice Department later on. There was no doubt in their minds that there would be trouble. It was all part of their really smooth operation.

Finally, it just got too cold to hang around any longer, and, feeling like a New Yorker narrator, we said goodbye to the cops and told them we'd be seeing them around.

Down on Constitution Avenue, the WSA demonstration against the Labor Department had already ended. I was sorry to have missed it, because my father works for the Labor Department, and the whole situation was just too Ocdipully-neat to pass up.

There were troops stationed on top of all the government buildings along the way. Lots of the boys flashed peace signs to us and we'd flash them back. I wondered if they envied us our apparent freedom, and then thought how sad it might all be if they were actually waiting for us to free them. I really wish I knew where the army is at.

By the time I reached the Internal Revenue Building on the corner of 12th and Constitution, I could see that the gas had already begun a block further down at Justice.

I decided to stay at the corner, because the whole block was already jammed with people, all kinds of people milling about, just as if we were all spectators at some great circus and the canvas was about to collapse all about us, but nobody quite knew how to panic. There was simply no way to characterize the crowd; the militants must have all been up front because they didn't seem to be in evidence. In the midst of everybody else was a button-hawker with a large, black-felt-covered board, dotted with all colors and sizes of peace buttons. A few kids stood around him trying to decide which buttons they wanted to buy. I swear, but even after the gas really started, that guy still stood there. He must have been the last person to leave the area.

While I waited, I wandered about among the medics, hoping that they might be one of the focal points of the action that was about to take place. (And, anyway, since I had now become an affinity group of one, it was also quite the circumspect thing to do.) But the medics were mostly volunteers, with the kind of nervous enthusiasm common among first year section men. They kept giving every one around them suspicious looks in

an effort to ascertain whether any of us had been stricken down yet. I began to think it might be safer to avoid them.

During that same time, someone had run down the American flag that flew in front of the Internal Revenue building and everyone cheered. Then, half a minute later, someone else ran the flag back up, and everyone cheered again.

And simultaneously, a lot of other guys were wandering around shoving pamphlets into our hands, pamphlets that told all about Campus Crusades for Christ and The Voice of Proprecy.

I began to fear that if this country ever makes it-as a body-to the day of the apocalypse, we're all going to put on a pretty second-rate show of it.

It was something of a relief when the gas finally started. For, by that time, I just wanted to get through with it so we could all go home. (And, in any case, the gas would at least force us to forget the cold.)