Like I said before, if you were a male between 18 and 26 and you were around from about 1966 to 1972...the military draft weighed heavily on your mind. As it turned out, I went to college for a number of reasons. First, it was expected of me..my mother and father were college graduates, all my grand parents were college graduates and even my great grand parents had a higher education. Of course, I went to college for an education and man, did I get one. I went to college to meet the "right" sort of girl but in the mid to late 60's the "right" sort of girl really didn't interest me....except one. I went to college to attend "better" parties. High school parties were OK, but hey....you have to say that if you were a party animal....there were no better parties than college parties in the mid to late 60's. Even though I went to college in San Antonio....if we got a whiff of a good party somewhere else...off we went. We had lots of money, we had cool clothes, we drove nice cars and we knew how to have a great time....plus, for a guy....I was a great dancer. Remember, my dancing ability came from when my mother sent me to dancing school way back when. I also attended a male finishing school....my mother went all out to make sure I had all the tools to succeed. While in San Antonio...we attended parties in Austin at UT, Houston at Rice and the University of Houston, at Texas A&M in College Station, in Dallas at SMU and TCU in Fort Worth...in Denton at North Texas State and the BEST party school of them all...Texas Woman's University in Denton Texas. There was no better place to party than TWU...where the ratio of women to men was about 99 to 1. If we had to skip school on a Friday to get to a party....we would. That's why, when we set our college schedule, Friday's were always a light day and classes were ones we could easily skip. I also attended college to legally avoid the draft....a big deal to some of us in the late 60's.
OK, most of my college career has been documented in my last blog. Let me say here that I was a very good student, I was smart..I scored very high on both my ACTs and my SATs. I took both tests more than once just to see if I could out score myself and I did. Even though my sister and I changed schools about as much as you change clothes, I kept very high grades. I enjoyed school...I maintained at least a B+ average all through grade school. I think I only missed two or three days of school for all the twelve years I attended and those were because of our parents taking us out for one reason or another. I can remember only one sick day and that's the day that JFK was assassinated. The one thing I lacked was discipline...and as I was soon to learn...discipline was an essential ingredient when you entered college.
I started out at Trinity University. At Trinity, you had to declare a major before you started. How the hell did I know what I wanted to be at 18. I picked Geology..and you want to know why....because the guy that lived across the street from us in San Antonio was a Geologist. He had a big house, a beautiful wife, two expensive cars, lovely furniture, a boat and a beautiful pool in his back yard with a huge deck. That's the criteria I used to "pick my major". Was I ever going to make it in Geology at Trinity....HELL NO!!. I remember getting B's in my first two semesters of Geology but when I entered the first semester of sophomore Geology, there were only 5 students in the class. The professor, who was, by the way, a Doctor (almost all professors at Trinity were Doctors in their field...very intimidating!!) said on the first day....there are five students in here and I grade on a curve. There will be one A, one B, one C, one D and one F. I turned to my friend and said....do you want to be the D or the F. I dropped the class the next day and there went my career as a Geologist!!.
I dropped out of Trinity after the third semester. I entered SAC or San Antonio College. SAC was a community college and I was very successful there. I maintained a B+ average but it was only a two year school. I took all kinds of classes just to stay in school. Remember, if I was not in school full time, I would be subject to the military draft. SAC was pretty uneventful. By now, I had a full time job plus I was doing something on the side that was making me a lot of money and some interesting new friends. I will be writing a blog about my various jobs while I was in college but that's for another time. Since SAC was a community college...there were not a lot of parties but I had maintained most of my Trinity friendships and I was still included in all the "must attend" parties around San Antonio. Rich kids parties if you will.
I must admit that girlfriends were scarce at that time. Did we have girl "friends"....yes we did but as the Beach Boys said in one of their songs.."We didn't go steady cause it wouldn't be right, to leave your best girl home on a Saturday night". That's the way we thought. I did meet a girl at SAC that I was very interested in. Remember, I was a smart alec, egotist, thought I was better than everybody else except my close friends...all in all, a real asshole. But around my friends (who were also real assholes...yes, even the girls), we thought that was just normal. The girl I met at SAC was named Claire. I won't mention her last name. She was a beautiful girl...She looked a lot like Michele Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. Her dad was a very well known, respected Doctor in San Antonio. They were very wealthy and lived in a very expensive area of San Antonio at that time..Alamo Heights. For some reason, she showed some interest in me. Remember, I was moving more and more towards the counter culture. I had no idea why she was interested in me. Later I found out that it was my "bad boy" image and she was rebelling against her father...a very strict person. We dated some and I took her to some of the parties I attended. She was a sheltered girl. She was an only child to a dominating father and a socialite mother. She was going to SAC to get her first two years in at home, before she would head off to some girls school back east. She was fun and we had a great time. I think the reason I really liked her was that when I knew her..she was rebelling and wanted to be part of that group. She would have me pick her up when she knew her dad was home. He hated me and I really didn't know why....I think when she fought with her dad, she would tell him things about me, and us, to just infuriated him. Anyway, she loved the "bad boy image" and we lasted about a year off and on.
After I had taken about all the classes I could at SAC....I had to find a four year college. I was still trying to avoid the draft and at the same time, get an education. That's when I entered Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos Texas. As mentioned before...after I enrolled, I found out that this school was 100% cowboys and cowgirls. I was well into my counter culture hippy stage and found out quickly that cowboys and hippies don't mix. Since there were more of them than me, I dropped out after about two months. The only redeeming factor at SWTSU was the girls in tight jeans and boots. I think there was where I learned to adore great asses on girls in tight jeans.
After dropping out of SWTSU, I was flying blind. I was out of school, I was legally dodging the draft, I was working and just having the best time. I still had all my rich friends from Trinity, I had my Mexican friends from SAC and I still had some high school friends. It was a real heady time but things were about to change.
My dad was transferred to Oklahoma City. By then I was an adult and could do what I wanted. I wasn't to eager to move and leave all my friends and fun behind and I told my dad so. One day, he was sitting on the back porch and ask me to sit with him. He told me that it was his opinion that if I did not move with them to OKC and I stayed in San Antonio with my so called friends...that I would end up in jail or dead. My dad and mom were smart people. My dad and I fought a lot and my mom was usually the peace maker. Both parents gave me all the freedom I wanted...mainly because they knew that if they didn't, I would probably do what I wanted anyway. I was into all kinds of things in 1968, 69 and 70. I want to make it clear that I never sold drugs but I was always walking a fine line between legal and illegal. I was doing something in my spare time that was making me a lot of money and was exposing me to all kinds of people. I was known for what I was doing and all types would seek me out. What I was doing was legal but it was certainly in a grey area. I will get more into that later in my jobs blog. I mention it here because I thought at the time I was keeping all my activities from my father, mother and sister but after the little talk my dad had with me, I came to find out that they knew more about me than I thought.
After my dad's little talk and his offer to let me start over again with a clean slate in OKC, meaning he would pay for more college, I decided to move. I entered OKC with a new outlook on life and I challenged myself to go back to college, put my nose to the grind stone and keep it clean and get a degree as fast as I could.
I could have gone anywhere but I decided on Central State University in Edmond. CSU was a community four year school and had a good reputation. I excelled at CSU. I kept my friends to a minimum, I really didn't party much...I was studying all the time. I was a fixture in the library and at the student union.I was there for five semesters. I graduated with almost 200 college hours. Remember, I had been going to college for 7 years. I graduated with honors. In 5 semesters, I was on the President's Honor Roll (all A's) 4 times and the Dean's Honor Roll (all A's and B's) once. I had so many hour that I majored in Management and Marketing and minored in English and History. Most of classes at CSU were advanced classes. I loved it. I always sat on the front row, right in the middle of every class...I loved to challenge the professors...I had people coming to me to help them study. I didn't know it at the time but I was a big man on campus, even when I was keeping a low profile. I'll mention here that my sister was also attending CSU and causing a commotion in her own right. Once the guys found out that "that girl" was my sister, I had more male friends than I knew what to do with. My sister was a girl of the times, dressed the part and drove a hot, red sports car!. All the guys wanted to get to know her. When some guy wanted me to introduce him to my sister, I told him he was on his own...my sister was left to make her own decisions. I hope my sister some day writes her own blog...it will be as interesting, or even more so than mine.
I was a great student, smart and made great grades and all the professors and administration knew who I was. Since I made going to CSU a full time job, I was on campus a lot, even on Saturdays and Sundays. I hung out with the intellectuals, the hippies, the communists, the weirdos and the student agitators. I wasn't a leader but I was always around when thing were happening. If there were marches or protests or sit ins...I could be found. I wrote a few articles for the student newspaper, the Vista and all in all, stuck my nose into everything. I was a big part of the student sit ins and protest on May 4 and 5 of 1970..the Kent State shootings. Eventually all that activism got into my personal file along with the FBI's local file. You have to remember the times we were living in and in my opinion, you weren't alive unless you were for or against any of the movements that were happening around us at that time.
I graduated in December of 1971 and would attend the formal graduation in May of 1972 but that never happened. In April of 1972 I received a letter from the CSU administration telling me that even though I graduated with honors, I would not be allowed to attend the May graduation for fear that certain of my friends and I would "disrupt" the ceremonies. That of course was the furthest thing from my mind but that's what they thought and that's why I never got to attend my graduation ceremonies.
It was OK, after getting my diploma in December of 1971, the rest of my life was beginning. I took a job at OTASCO in OKC in January of 1972 and haven't looked back since!!
I knew you were a rebel, but really!
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