Days of Wine and Roses, and Vasectomies

November, 1969. Kent State University’s worst days were still ahead of it when we visited the town of Kent, Ohio, where my father grew up. At that time, the turmoil that afflicted so many college campuses had largely spared Kent State, which was and still is, I believe, known more for its concentration on engineering and less for its revolutionary fervor. Early in our visit, my father suggested that the six of us go over to the campus and just walk around, so that I, a high-school senior deep into preparation for college, could get a sense of what campus life was going to be like, sort of. Few parents sent their kids away to school in those days without misgivings, and we had been watching with mounting alarm the rising tide of protest and disorder engulfing America during my high-school years. Although I was completely out of sympathy with my radical peers, and was very unlikely to soon be spending any time boozing or raising collegiate hell, I’m sure my parents felt some anxiety anyway. Secular campuses had become very alien and threatening places, to my mind, but fortunately I was headed elsewhere in 1970. Still, it was a warm day for November in Ohio and pleasant enough to be outside, so we set out for the University, although clouds in the west were starting to darken, and it did look like rain.

“Gee, Dad,” I said in my best Jerry Mathers voice when we arrived at the campus minutes later, “there sure aren’t any war protesters around here.” He agreed that the students there were industrious and serious-minded, and observed that we would all be better off if students elsewhere followed that example. I simply had to agree — I think I might even have uttered the word “daresay,” a word I had been precociously using at least as far back as first grade.

But as we approached the central mall of the campus, we thought maybe we had spoken too soon. In the distance was a small mob of very casually-dressed young men, milling about and obviously preparing some kind of anti-American outrage, while other conspirators were piling out of a dormitory and heading for the action. As we came alongside that dormitory, a window many stories up shot open and a very disheveled head poked out. The head was by far the shaggiest thing we had yet seen that day, and it opened its mouth and yelled something like “EIGHT OPP!!” down at us six outlanders. His draft category, maybe? None of us knew what to make of that, and we made no reply, other than to look startled and pause in our stroll. The head bellowed “EIGHT!! OPP!!” again, louder this time. The signal to begin the revolution? Artillery coordinates? Again we did not understand and kept silent. This dissatisfied the head greatly, and with a shout of exasperation it slammed the window down and disappeared.

We debated about continuing on into what was clearly a brewing civil disturbance. The wind was picking up, starting to blow litter around, as a great rattling cry came from the ne’er-do-wells gathering on the field, numbering now about 20. No sooner had that died down than the front door of the dormitory banged open and the shaggy head and its attached body came storming out toward us, emitting curses as he ran. We drew back from the unsought confrontation with bourgeois dread — but the sweating young man barreled wrathfully across our path, taking no notice of us, then, before, or ever, and leaped in one bound down a short flight of slate steps to a footpath leading to the field.

When he landed on the path, he stumbled a bit, but recovered and raced away after his Comrades, those who would not “Wait Up!” In his hand he gripped something — a weapon? a dope pipe? Mao’s little red book? Maybe he had all that stuff in his room, but that day he carried a battered baseball glove, and the boys on the field were already choosing up sides without him.