All my life I have been too passive. Rather than take charge, it's been far easier being a passenger. I've let things happen to me.
I let Bob Jones University happen to me.
No one controls what generation they are born into. It was my luck to be a child of the fifties also known as the Baby Boomers. Or perhaps, given our materialist bent, the Pepsi Generation is a better title. We started out as members of the peanut gallery on the Howdy Doodie Show and by the time we were eighteen we had morphed into what seemed to be a new sub-species of humanity: Homo Funditus Confusus (the totally confused man.) Some of us became long haired hippie dippy freaks with a bong in one hand and a tambourine in the other. A few of us devolved into militant Marxists out to torch every paneled basement in America. Most of us read The Catcher in the Rye and the poetry of ee cummings and through that modest intellectual achievement thought we had discovered the secret of the universe.
We weren't sure what we were supposed to do, but we knew we had to do something.
Rather than follow the well worn and tested truths of previous generations such as working hard, playing safe, keeping your nose clean, trying to make something of yourself, we, the boomers, pretty much scotched those boring ideas and centered our lives around Madison Avenue-like jingles. "Make Love Not War" was our motto. And what passed for philosophy could be written on a Peter Max poster: "You know, man, can't we just, like, love each other, you know?" Note, there's not a three syllable word in that sentence.
Is it even a complete, coherent thought?
My goose was cooked when President Lyndon Johnson, for whatever political and/or psychological reasons, brought the Vietnam War to the United States. There is some controversy about who really got us into a land war in Southeast Asia. Some blame Kennedy, some Eisenhower, some FDR. But Johnson dropped in more than half a million men (less both Bill Clinton and myself.) LBJ took the war to a level where he couldn't back out. If you are looking for the instigator in chief, look no further than LBJ.
Not wanting to go through Congress, Johnson decided to draft boys directly into the fight. Then, to placate everyone he created a system of college draft deferments. Before you could say "protest movement" college campi across the US became havens for anti-war activists.
It was all so predictable, but then overtly idiotic foreign policy is the price we pay for letting academics influence government. These inhabitants of the Ivory Tower seem to be in a perpetual state of war against common sense, their only weapons being newly minted, untested social theories and a superior demure.
Why do we still listen to these guys?
By the spring of 1970, Vietnam rattled onward. No conversation was complete unless one weighed in on the war. By then the evening news had turned against the conflict so every night it seemed there was some new outrage to chew on. I mean, Jeez Louise, it got to the point where you wanted it all to just go away so you could have a normal conversation.
And then Nixon announced incursions into Cambodia. Turns out the North Vietnamese were hiding troops and weapons just across the border knowing they would be safe from America's guns. Nixon's decision to conduct the Vietnam war as if it were a real war rather than a Marxist passion play was simple common sense. Naturally, the intellectual class was enraged. College campuses exploded.
And there were protests at Kent State. A building was burned. Governor Rhodes called in the National Guard. Shots were fired. Students were killed.
My parents watched it all from a small black and white portable television set in their kitchen. That was the moment I got flipped out of the frying pan of Fate. My parents were determined to keep me out of the fray (although sometimes my mom acted as if she wanted me to enlist which, logically, would have placed me dead center IN the fray.)
That's why they wanted me to go to Bob Jones University. They seemed to have things under control down there. It was a no nonsense institution in an era over running with nonsense.
Looking back, I know now that when they pushed Bob Jones University, I should have pushed back. But then, pushing back is not in my nature. I would rather listen to Herb Alpert than attend a Rolling Stones concert. A root beer float seemed far more enjoyable than puffing on a doobey, and as for protests... well, that's simply not my style. The closest I ever came to a war protest was following the bouncing ball on Sing Along With Mitch while his chorus sang Puff the Magic Dragon.
And so I caved.
Bob Jones University it would be.
After all, I would be far away from home in Greenville, South Carolina.
On my own.
Sort of.
That would be cool, right?
I'd have a dorm room and roommates and communal showering.
I mean, how bad could it get?
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