family by working as a delivery truck driver for his uncle's wholesale meat company, delivering to restaurants throughout San Diego County. After his father's heart attack, Davis entered a brooding and troubled period, and was mostly interested in drag racing, Kerouac, and taking bullfighting classes. Davis drank, raced, and stole cars with his friends, which culminated in a near-fatal car accident when he drove his Ford into a brick wall during a drag race, leaving him with a permanent scar on his left thigh. Concurrently, while delivering to restaurants across San Diego's East County, he met Lee Gregovich, an older communist and Wobbly whose family emigrated from the Dalmatian coast to work in the copper mines of the American southwest. Gregovich was blacklisted from many employers by the HUAC, but had found a job as a cook at the Chicken Shack, an old-style roadhouse in Julian. The Chicken Shack was the most distant customer Davis delivered to, leading to a weekly ritual: After Davis put the order in the walk-in, Gregovich would provide Davis with red wine and the two would talk. At the end of every discussion, Gregovich urged the young Davis to "read Marx!" The "alcoholic, delinquent, and suicidal" Davis was then invited to a Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) demonstration at the Bank of America in downtown San Diego at the behest of his cousin, who had married the Black civil rights activist Jim Stone. The group was doused in lighter fluid and threatened with ignition by a group of sailors, before members of the Nation of Islam rescued them from the fray. Davis described the 1962 demonstration as his "burning bush moment." Under the guidance of Stone, Davis returned to high school and began working at the San Diego chapter of CORE, to commendation from Gregovich. Davis graduated as one of three valedictorians of El Cajon Valley High, and earned a full scholarship to Reed College. Young activist: 1962–1968 New York and Oakland At Reed College, Davis was overwhelmed, alienated by the hippy culture and struggling academically. He joined the Portland, Oregon chapter of CORE, which included the labor historian Jeremy Brecher, who at the time was one of few members of the nascent Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the Pacific Northwest. Living "drunk" in the dorm of a girlfriend for five weeks, Davis was expelled from Reed for intervisitation. Davis was eligible for