This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Editor's note • In this regular series, The Salt Lake Tribune explores the once-favorite places of Utahns, from restaurants to recreation to retail. If you have a spot you'd like us to explore, email whateverhappenedto@sltrib.com with your ideas.
It was ground zero for Utah's counterculture, a place where young intellectuals could test their chops in science, philosophy and the arts. But more than that, it was just a cool spot to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes and shoot the breeze with friends, new and old.
College students, artists and would-be hippies thrived in the 1960s and '70s at The Huddle in the Union Building at the University of Utah.
It was nothing fancy — a room filled with small Formica-topped tables and plastic chairs. But the unassuming place had a great jukebox with three songs for a quarter, a cigarette machine — 65 cents a pack — and coffee for a dime. For a nickel more, patrons could get a small pot of Joe (two cups) in a funny-looking container — called a hottle, but better known as a huddle.
The war in Vietnam was grinding on in 1970, and that spring, four students were killed by National Guardsmen during an anti-war protest at Kent State University in Ohio. The mood of the times was reflected on The Huddle's jukebox by, among others, Neil Young:
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming / We're finally on our own / This summer I heard the drumming / Four dead in Ohio.
"It was because of Vietnam that we talked politics all the time," recalled Brooke Gordon. "We couldn't wait to vote. We couldn't wait to get involved and make change."
The Huddle, she said, also was where to catch up with people and with what was going on, including parties or who was heading up to Alta to ski.
"That was our social network," Gordon explained. "We didn't have Facebook or cellphones — so everything got hashed out face to face."
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Counterculture oasis • It was an era of great, political music, Gordon said. The Huddle jukebox never played bands like The Lovin' Spoonful or Bread. Huddle-goers selected singers and bands like Joan Baez, Richie Havens, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
"It all had a political edge," she remembered.
Trent Harris, too, recalled the patrons' focus on a changing world and current events. In the early '70s, "there was always talk of the politics of Vietnam and the politics of the university [administration]," he said.
Harris had a student deferment from the military draft and frequented the coffee room almost every day, where he liked to play chess and meet women.
"You could pick up a copy of The Salt Flat News from Richard Goldberger (the city's first alternative rag, edited by Richard Menzies)," Harris said, "and go into The Huddle and read it over coffee."
Salt Lake City was no San Francisco. But places like The Huddle, Mama Eddie's Right-On Beanery, Cosmic Aeroplane and Tape Head Company (THC for short) were oases where counterculture types could feel like part of a national movement to thwart the war, reject commercialism and the status quo, and embrace sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.
Freshmen from the suburbs discovered a new world on campus, particularly at The Huddle.
It was a transitional time, recalled Kathryn Handy, who used to hang out at The Huddle. "We had boyfriends and we were carefree," she said. "But we had contraception and sex wasn't a life-threatening thing, as it can be today."
Handy was a student but she also had a job at the U., which made dressing tricky. Many women who hung out at The Huddle had said goodbye to Gidget: Gone were the bobs and the pumps. It was hello to denim and Army fatigues. And, for many, shaving was out.
"You'd see the difference between girls in a sorority — all polished; and the girls at The Huddle with backpacks and hiking boots," she said. "But I had a good job on campus and I couldn't show up looking sloppy."
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Fear of the war • The Huddle was an integral part of college education, according to Rob "Bones" Green.
"It's where I spent my undergraduate career," he recalled. "The Huddle was a class on its own — a class in social camaraderie."
Green caught a low number in the draft lottery. Fearing he might lose his student deferment, he joined the National Guard. Unlike today, Guardsmen in the '60s and '70s were not bound for foreign wars.
The fear of getting sucked into Vietnam weighed on most young men and was reflected on a jukebox favorite by Country Joe (McDonald) and the Fish:
Come on all you big, strong men / Uncle Sam needs your help again / Got himself in a terrible jam / Way down yonder in Vietnam / So throw down your books, pick up your guns / We're goin' to have a whole lotta fun.
Shortly after the Kent State killings, the old ROTC building on the U.'s campus was torched. Green's National Guard unit was trained as a riot patrol squad and was put on alert after the ROTC fire.
"There were some radical people there," Green recalled of The Huddle crowd, "and it made me nervous as a Guardsman."
He feared being called up during a rowdy demonstration, like Kent State. "But I wouldn't shoot at anybody," he said. "I wasn't going to shoot at my friends."
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Finding peace • Although he was apolitical, Robert "Tree Bob" Brossard liked the academic atmosphere in The Huddle, where people discussed philosophy, science, mountain climbing and photography. But he didn't fathom the anger on the left, exemplified by the Students for a Democratic Society — the SDS.
"I didn't vote and I didn't participate in rallies," he said. "I just didn't get what SDS and others were so upset about."
On the other hand, Brossard did enjoy the colorful characters at The Huddle, including Charlie Brown, who flew across campus on an old bicycle in black tights with a black cape flapping behind. Brown was among a group of hippie peaceniks, Brossard recalled, and had at one time pitched a tepee in the median on Foothill Drive.
Brown represented a gentler side of the youthful tide. Peace, too, was in the air at The Huddle, accompanied by theme music like "What's Goin' On" by Marvin Gaye:
Father, father / We don't need to escalate / You see, war is not the answer / For only love can conquer hate / You know we've got to find a way / To bring some lovin' here today.
President Richard M. Nixon put an end to the draft in January 1973 — a milepost that seemed to mark an unofficial end to the 1960s. In August 1973, the U.S. ended direct military action in Vietnam.
The war had been a great catalyst for the counterculture. But by the late 1970s, the social movement that came to life in the mid-1960s had become hard to find. The Huddle had lost its gravitas and was replaced with an upscale sandwich shop.
The jukebox, too, was gone. It might just be a rumor, but the last song played on the beloved music machine was said to be "Big Yellow Taxi" by Joni Mitchell:
Don't it always seem to go / That you don't know what you've got till it's gone / They paved paradise and put up a ... sandwich shop.