She was right except I
needed around four whuppings a day if she really caught me! About
typical for a young teen.
You know how to raise
male children don't you? After they are weaned, you put them in a
barrel, nail the lid on, and feed them through the bung hole. When
they reach 18, you drive the bung back in.
When I went off to
college, I did it in a unconventional manner. My family was quite
extensive and a heck of a lot of fun with lots of support in all
sorts of activities. Well, most activities! ...some, welll...
Beginning in the last
half of my 17th year, things around the home place became
strange, almost like a soul-sucking creature had set up house with
us. Everything seemed gray, lifeless, and I couldn't understand what
had gone wrong. I remember my mother crying softly in their bedroom
at night with the sound of my father gently soothing her. ...just
didn't know.
There were two very major
things that happened to me between October of 1967 and March of 1968
that affected my feelings about college football that would take a
book to explain so I'll just do the basics. In 1967 I won my high
school Science Fair's 1st prize in physics. They, the HS
Administration, decided to send me on to the Regional which I won as
well and got a bit of a fat head when NASA and the US Air Force paid
a lot of attention. It was time for the State and it came with a
substantial scholarship, enough to pay my books and tuition. I won,
however, my high school had not
paid the $4 admission fee. No tickee, no scholarshipee. Thanks a
bunch Mr. Rogers.
My family was not poor. Between my father and his partner, a
childhood chum, they had founded a very successful 13 year old
refrigeration business, dad had his flying instructor and charter
business, and I, among other things, made plenty repairing avionics.
We had a fine home and 15 acres in the country all paid for, plus I
was headed to a local private college to study engineering. It also
kept me near my childhood sweetie, Connie, that I was to marry after
college. We had been together since we were twelve and were joined at
the hip! Also, there was the probability of maybe doing a bit of
flying myself!
Are you beginning to get one of those “tell God your plans”
feelings?
Things around home were going from bad to worse without a smile among
us. My parents quit square dancing (I had loved it), dad sold the
airplane, it was just getting hard to breathe. Nothing was right and
there didn't seem to be a reason. The morning after graduation, I
packed one small suitcase, drove up to the closest used car lot to
I-10, sold my car for a song, and hitch-hiked to Washington, D.C.
The
following years were not bad at all, just exceedingly poor. Being
under 21, I couldn't sign a rental or lease (lived in 18 places
during college), couldn't apply for resident student tuition (THAT
really hurt), but I COULD go to Vietnam. My parents had split the
sheets and the stories that filtered down to me were contradictory. I
won't bore you. Besides, it still hurts after nearly 50 years. It
wasn't until 1971 that I found out what happened. The story is
pretty-much the same as the tale in “Death & Destruction”,
change the names and the times. We never learn. I don't think we
can.
Squeezing every penny to make tuition payments, living in some
“interesting” places (those I'll HAVE to write about!), and
riding the thumb a lot used to make me kinda green when I saw kids
that were totally illiterate and innumerate get full-ride
scholarships plus goodies that brainless muscle loves. Professional
football only takes less than 2% of the NCAA players and the ones
accepted have an average “career” of 3 years. One of the trio of
Hell-spawned crackheads that broke my hip requiring titanium re-bar
hammered in, in 2012 could only talk of his time & “heroics”
with the Miami Hurricanes 25 years prior. He was one of the 98%
rejected by the pros. He was sooooo smart it was a wonder how his
skull could hold all his brains! A miracle I tell ya, just a
miracle...
In
1981, my former wife and myself wanted to see if something could be
done about the sorry state of the Suwannee County school system
before our son started. The Suwannee County system was rated 3rd
from bottom in all of Florida and the symptom was the near-worship of
football. Turns out we were not the only parents up in arms. Ever try
tilting at windmills? Priorities......
Where do you want to spend your money? What departments do you want
to encourage? Geography? Math? Chemistry? English? FOOTBALL!!! Ra ra
ree, kick 'em inna knee! Ra ra rasss, kick 'em in da obber knee! Who
needs scholastics when we got a championship pigskin team! ...paid
for by alumni and tuition from the students.
When it came out in 1979 that school tuition was used in the
purchasing of two Corvettes to bribe a pair of utterly brainless
pieces of meat to join the FSU football team, my interest in college
football fell to its present level; somewhat lower than a snake's
rectum. That made the criminality of record company payola pale in
comparison. When I think of what my roommates and myself did in
college to keep body and soul together, like the day we got our
paychecks (different employers) and we each bought a big jar of
peanut butter and a loaf of WonderBread home, or the morning we had
oatmeal but no sweetening (you can't eat unsweetened oatmeal!), went
to a local diner and stole packets of sugar...
...but the tuition got paid.
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