Chapter 1: Moment of Truth

JANUARY 12, 1968. I’d remember that day for as long as I lived.

I sat in my room late at night—or maybe it was early in the morning—holding my draft card in one hand and a box of matches in the other. I could do it. I could just burn the damn thing. That would show them. I lit a match and held it until the flame touched my fingers and I dropped it in the ash tray.

Right. Exactly what would it show ‘them?’ They still had my name and address. Burning my draft card wouldn’t change that. I wasn’t even making a statement. I was alone in my room. I tossed the card on my desk and stretched out on my bed. I really hated those bastards.

I was still five months from graduating from high school in 1968, so I was told I ‘don’t need to worry about it until you turn nineteen’ in September. And if I was enrolled in college and was maintaining at least a C average, I could change my current deferment from I-S to I-SC or maybe II-S. The draft board didn’t seem to know for sure which classification college students could get. Gave me all kinds of faith in them. Not.

But I had time for making plans. I had my acceptance to Columbia College Chicago to study photography in their creative expression program. I’d stretch out deferments as long as I could, or perhaps investigate colleges in Canada or Europe. I was socking away as much money from my photography studio as I could get.

I went to Mom’s office and called Elizabeth. She’d talk me down.

I guess, in the interest of not just jumping into a story in the middle, I should introduce myself and tell you some of the reasons why I was so opposed to the military in general and to the draft in particular.

I’m Nate Hart. I’m the son of the first female Methodist preacher in Illinois, Rev. Joyce Hart. I call her Reverend Mother Superior. My family was moved from the South Chicago suburb, population ~45,000, to Tenbrook, Illinois, population ~750. I was going into my junior year in high school when we relocated in 1966.

The thing that excites me more than anything else is photography. I’m glad to say that I’m pretty good at it. I’ve won some awards at both County and State Fairs. When I came to Tenbrook, I was carrying an old 35mm SLR everywhere I went. That got me my first photos in Tenbrook, when I ran into Judy and Janice, two girls in my new high school class who loved to dress up in different costumes and were willing to pose for me. Their picture was one of my award winners.

I also found out gangs weren’t limited to the city when I encountered a group of motorcycle riders while I was out bicycling. Through a mixture of circumstances, bluff, and good luck, I ended up refinishing the leader’s motorcycle, which had been scratched up in an accident. Tony and his girlfriend, Patricia, became really good friends of mine, even though a lot of people in the town and in school would have nothing to do with them. Calumet High School was 85% black. When I moved to Tenbrook, I didn’t even notice that Tony had slightly darker skin than the rest of the population. I guess, like, his grandmother was black. So what?

That wasn’t true of the village constable who was a racist son of a bitch. Pardon my French. I caught him on film one night as he roughed up Tony and Patricia for no other reason than riding his bike through town. Those photos and an impassioned plea by my dad, Rich Hart, spelled the end of the constable’s employment by the village.

Unfortunately, the spate of petty thefts and vandalism in the village that the constable was trying to pin on Tony continued.

Patricia came to my garage while I was refinishing Tony’s motorcycle and posed provocatively on and around the bike while I took pictures of her. I was a little worried about how Tony would react, but he loved the photos and kept sending Patricia back to pose for me. Patricia’s was the first live human female’s nipple that I ever saw. It happened while she was posing. The photo of her on Tony’s bike—not the one with her nipple—won Best of Category for Black and White Photography at the Illinois State Fair.

After that, I showed my photos to Mr. Barkley, who owned the local grocery store, and he offered to let me use a corner of his fourth floor attic to set up my darkroom and a little studio. The rest of the attic was filled with junk he’d collected or that had been retired from when it was a full department store over the past seventy-five years. He let me use anything I found up there as a prop in my photography. Patricia, Judy, and Janice—and a really cute girl named Christine—all became regular models for me in the attic studio. It seemed like the more often they posed for me, the fewer clothes they wore.