Thursday Throwback: You CAN come home again
I dropped out of Orange Coast College prior to the spring semester of my sophomore year.
It was February 1964.
I quit Coast to join the Army. What could have prompted such a life-altering decision? Desperation? Well, yes, a bit of that.
It wasn't that I no longer wished to study at OCC, I loved the place. No, my problem – and I recognized it – was that I wasn't a serious student; I was a 19-year-old goof-off.
So, as my final official act (for the moment) as a college student, I attended the Junior Rose Bowl football game on Saturday, afternoon Dec. 14, 1963 at the famed Rose Bowl in Pasadena. More than 44,000 gathered for that watershed event. Chancellor Norman E. Watson, years later, would label it "OCC's seminal moment."
It was my farewell party. It was my valediction (not to be confused with valedictorian!). My "buh-bye." I was excited because OCC crushed Northeastern Oklahoma A&M, 21-0, to win the national title. Now, I could shuffle off to basic training.
In January of 1964 my third semester at Coast officially ended, and two weeks later I was in Uncle Sam's boot camp. It was a jarring transition.
Now, lest you think me a sloth for discarding my education so frivolously, I have an appropriate response. I hadn't adequately prepared for college. I wasn't disciplined. I needed to grow up. Uncle Sam was noted for providing a "growing up experience." Look at my grandfather, my father, my four uncles, my cousin and my brother. Military vets all. It worked for them; it would work for me.
After three years of spit-shining combat boots, eating Army chow, standing guard duty at forsaken locales, and schleping around a duffel bag the size of Vancouver Island, I was ready for my college redux.
I returned in 1967 to the lovely environs of coastal Southern California to finish up what I'd started four years earlier: the pursuit of an OCC A.A. degree. I further earned a B.A. at Cal State Fullerton, and an M.A. at Pepperdine. My overall grade point average was 3.6.
The Army panned out for me.
But, back to the winter/spring of 1964-65 and the kid from Orange Coast.
Six months after joining the Army, I was sent to Fort Benning, Ga. OCC was by then a distant memory, and "My Girl," by the Temptations, had just been released and was surging up the Top 40 charts.
To this day, "My Girl" conjures up in my mind memories of afternoon Georgia gullywashers that left the blacktop steaming, Airborne paratroopers dropping from training towers, and me losing all connection (for the moment) with OCC. "My Girl," who might have been real for the Temptations and my fellow GIs, was for me an illusion.
"My Girl" was the most popular jukebox selection of 1965 at Fort Benning's snack bar. By the time it took me to power down a cheeseburger, chocolate shake and fries the selection would have played thrice on the juke. Guys eagerly fed quarters into the machine to keep their theme playing.
For a private, like myself – earning $71 a month – it was a scandalous price to pay for music. Burgers, as I recall, were two-bits. I never ever put a quarter in the juke because I knew some other lonely GI would.
The Benning snack bar, located on Main Post, was jammed to the rafters on weekends. It provided soldiers with the opportunity to avoid chow hall fare and to savor the classic American cheeseburger. For half-an-hour, the place transported us back to civilian life, and to "our girls."
My wife, Hedy, and I visited Benning 40 years later, in 2005. The snack bar was gone, replaced by a Burger King. I took Hedy into BK and treated her to a Whopper.
In 1965, "My Girl" reflected my life.
"I've got sunshine on a cloudy day / When it's cold outside I've got the month of May / I guess you'd say / What can make me feel this way? / My girl (my girl, my girl)."
It painted a picture of my situation and the situations of 95 percent of my fellow GIs at Benning: a lonely soldier, missing his (idealized) sweetheart. That's what 19-year-old soldiers do. That's what I did.
Except for one major stumbling block. I didn't have a girl. And there wasn't one on the horizon. Sure, there was "Miss Perfect" who regularly wafted in and out of my dreams … but, no flesh-and-blood sweetie. Hedy would not come along for decade.
Everyone in the military has a reputation for something. Shortly after my arrival at Benning I was granted my distinction. More than 50 percent of the 30,000 guys at Benning in 1964-65 were Southern boys. I was one of just a handful from California. I became known as "California," and represented all things Cali. Guys would ask me, "Hey California, what's your girl back home look like? Is she blonde?"
I had no girl.
"Heck, yes, she's blonde," I'd fabricate. "She's beautiful." (I hadn't had a conversation with a girl since the 6th grade.)
"Can she surf?"
"Yeah, she's a surfer girl, just like in the Beach Boys' songs."
"Can you surf?"
"Are you kidding?" (Of course, I can't surf.) "Of course, I surf!"
In early 1965, I returned home on leave. I drove my '53 Willys to the OCC campus and purchased a sweatshirt in the student bookstore – "Orange Coast College Pirates." Thereafter, I was known around Benning as: the "The Surfer/College Boy."
Neither was accurate.
Eventually, I graduated from college, but I never learned how to surf.
