What was life like for a college student in the 70s

00:02 Okay, so I guess we can just get right into it. So the question that I'm going to be asking you, or the question that we're going to be talking about is, what was life like when you were my age?

00:14 Well, I have so many different memories, and people tell me that what I remember and what actually happened are not always the same thing. So I will tell you what I remember, and we'll have to go from there. When I was 19, approximately, there was something going on called the Vietnam War, and you probably studied it in ancient history or something like that. But for those of us who didn't really want to get out there and get shot at, we had to find ways to not do that. And we also didn't really believe that war was necessary. So I was part of a group of people, there are many, many of us, who said, no, this was not a good idea. And the only way I could stay out was to go to college. And so I went to college. And after being in college for a while, the us government changed how it was drafting people. And it did something called a lottery. And I can't remember what year the lottery was, but it was basically sort of like ping pong balls with dates in it coming out of a thing. And whatever birthday came out on that first ping pong ball, everybody with that birthday got drafted. And then the second ping ball, ping pong ball came out, and everybody in that birthday got drafted. And you could have 365, approximately ping pong balls. And so you're sitting there waiting to know where your ping pong ball is going to come out because they said, well, we're going to draft up to a certain number. And the year that I became eligible for that, the number was 180. So if your number, if you were one of the first 180 ping pong balls that came out with the date on it, then you were drafted. I had number 230 something, 240 something. And I can't tell you the relief that I felt when my birthday was finally called at that, because I could go. Go on and keep living my life, if you will, and not worry about that. I had friends that ran to Canada to get away from being drafted. I had friends that got married. So sometimes you were married, especially you had a kid that would keep you out of being drafted. I had other friends who pretended to be crazy, because if you could go in for your physical and mental evaluation, sort of like if you've ever listened to Alice's restaurant song, it's that same thing, that they would let you out and mark you that you were not fit to be in the military. And obviously, things have changed quite a bit since then. But at that point in time, there were not a lot. There were more people being drafted than enlisting, and that was a big, big problem. So that was one thing that was big in my life, and that was eventually resolved. Another thing that's big in my life is when I went into college, I fell in love. It took me about a week, and I fell in love with somebody, and I stayed in love with her for about three and a half years. And, you know, by the time we were supposed to get married, when we graduated college, and somewhere along the way, I changed my mind. And guys do that sometimes. Decided that this. That I did not want to run a lumberyard in Newark, New Jersey, because her father ran a lumber yard, and he was looking for somebody to come help him and take it over. I was getting my degree in computer science and applied math, and somehow that just didn't fit with my idea of what I wanted to do. So instead of having a ginormous wedding in a wedding factory in New Jersey, I didn't get married. Even had. I had a. Had a headache, what do you call an engagement party and all that. And it was just. It messed with my mind quite a bit. And it's a matter of, you know, my parents were in a long term relationship. You know, that's what I was used to. You get married, you get married for life, and, you know, that's what I was looking for. And then finally I realized this was not the person I was going to be married for life to. So instead of getting married and getting divorced, I broke off the engagement. And I actually remember when that happened. I was a little older. I was 21 at the time. And I mentioned it to my girlfriend. I said, no, I don't think I'm going to get married. And she got hysterical and not really understanding women, you know, at that tender young age, it was like, you know, I said it with a way of like, well, what are we gonna have for lunch? And her whole life just ended. And, you know, later on, she recovered, she got married, she had kids, you know, all that kind of stuff. But it was quite traumatic, I guess, for both of us, but more so for her than for me. And I was not, you know, I wasn't. I was a cold person. It's just I had already worked this through my mind, and she hadn't. So that made it very difficult. But other. Other things are memories I have. I was an absolute terrible student. I missed a lot of classes, I didn't turn on much homework. I used to joke that the end of my first year, my freshman year, I made the dean's list, but it was the wrong dean's list. It was the one where they put you on probation, and they say, if you don't do better, you're not coming back. And I started out, I was electrical engineering student, and electrical engineering was all mathematics, and I was good at arithmetic and stuff like that. So I thought, oh, this would be great. You know, I like. I like taking wires and, you know, making sparks and stuff like that. I said, oh, this is good. But when I started taking electrical engineering courses, I found out that there's a lot of math theory involved, which is a whole lot different than adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. And a lot of their courses started at, like, eight or 09:00 in the morning, and my brain doesn't start to work till maybe noon. It's always been that way. And I went to see my advisor at the end of my freshman year after getting on the wrong dean's list, and he said, owen, he said, there's this new field coming out. It's called computer science, and it takes a special kind of brain to do this stuff. And he says, I think you have that kind of brain. And I said, okay.

07:12 And.

07:12 And then I went to the catalog and all the courses. You know, you didn't. You weren't registering by computer. You had a catalog that listed all the courses, and you went through and picked them out, and then you had to go stand in line and sign up for them. And I noticed that all the courses for computer science, none of them started before noon. And I said, okay, this is my career. This is the way I'm going. And sure enough, I turned myself around, made the other dean's list, and, you know, had a successful career doing that. But it took the insight of my advisor to be able to put my personality and this new piece together and new subject together. And people say, Owen said, you know, there's so much math in computers. And I said, no, all you know is zeros and ones. Everything is zeros and ones. And if you put them together and you say real fast, that's my name, 010101. So I said, okay, I was born to do computer stuff. And, you know, I took it to it like a duck to water and had a great time and had a successful career with that. But going back to being. Being that, the 19 year age, I didn't think about things like money I was very lucky. My parents were able to pay for my education. I remember I used to get a allowance. I got $50 a month for all my expenses that were not food or housing related, which means if you wanted to go out and get a cheeseburger or you wanted to go buy a bag of chips or something like that, that was, that came out of $50. And I thought I was the richest guy in the world because, you know, back then $50 went a long way. I didn't have a car, so I didn't have to put gas in the car. Of course, back then, gasoline was about maybe thirty five cents a gallon. You know, if you found the real cheap places, they were twenty nine cents a gallon.

09:08 I wish how it was now a little different.

09:12 Yeah, a little different. The other thing that was, was interesting about that period of time was meeting different people from different parts of the world and more so different parts of the country. But I did meet a few people from outside the US. And some people have big influences on you, some people have small influences on you, and some people you just don't understand. And part of the non understanding is you have to learn to accept people as they are. And I grew up in a society where a lot of people were not accepted as they were. A lot of minorities were looked down upon and legally discriminated against. And, you know, that sort of has gone away, but not entirely. There was no such thing as people who were openly gay. That just didn't happen. During that period of time. You heard stories about somebody that was suspected, but that was about the end of it. People did not date interracially. You never saw a white woman with a black eye. I mean, it just didn't happen. So when you start meeting people that are different and meeting people a little outside of your realm of experience, you learn about them and you learn to accept them. And that was a huge thing for me, to transition from living with stereotypes, which were reinforced by things like tv shows, to getting to know people and understanding who the people were and, you know, understanding a person as a person, not just a, you know, put into a category, a stereotype. You know, that was a big part of. Part of going to school was that piece of education. I would say the majority of kids that I was in classes with, the majority were white, from middle class suburban cities around middle class suburbs, from large cities around the country. I went to school in St. Louis and I came from a suburb of Washington, DC. And my best friend actually, then came from a small town in Oregon. And that was my Oregon connection. But there were so many people from so many other places that were similar to me. And then I got to meet people who were different than me. I remember one young woman came from Hawaii, and she was native Hawaiian. And that was cool. I mean, I never met anybody from Hawaii before. And one day it snowed, and she ran outside, and she just went absolutely berserk running between the snowflakes. Because she had read about it, she'd seen it in movies. But she had never experienced snow before. And I'm going, okay, this is cool, you know, just trying to understand somebody's frame of mind. Especially when you grow up with snow, you know, it's like, what's just snow? I said, no. This was like. Like a life altering event for her. And I said, okay, that's cool. You know, you don't. It's to be able to do that. And not to judge somebody based on things like that anyhow. So learning about other people was very important. Learning about myself through learning about other people was important as well. I had, like I said, I had a girlfriend through the entire period of time. One of the things I can thank my girlfriend for, my ex girlfriend, who I didn't get married to, was learning how to shop. I grew up in a family. I had three brothers. My mother didn't have time to shop. She took the Sears catalog. She'd go through it, and she'd order us clothes twice a year, once in the spring, once in the fall. And this box, about three foot cube box, would show up. And we'd take all the clothes out. We stand right in the living room, try them all on whatever fit we kept. What didn't fit went back in the box. And that was shopping. So I remember my freshman year, and my girlfriend said to me, Owen, let's go shopping. And I said, okay, do you have a search catalog? She said, no, I'm. We're going to go to a store. I said, huh? I had never gone. You know, I've been to a grocery store, but I had never been to a store to buy clothes, you know, so I didn't know you could go to a store and buy clothes. I thought everybody bought clothes from the Sears catalog anyhow. Of the monkey or the monkey Wards catalog, you know, those are the two catalogs that were out there. It was quite a. Quite an adventure. So I ended up with a pair of yellow bell bottom pants, which I don't have anymore. Fortunately, I ended up with a pair of blue suede shoes. Which I still have believe it or not, know, anybody needs a size twelve blue suede shoes, let me know, you know. And I remember back then, boots were a big thing for guys, you know, not cowboy boots, but leather, leather boots that came up almost to your knees. So I had a pair of those. And this is all as a result of learning how to do kind of shopping. So now we've come full circle. How do you shop now? Well, you go to Amazon, you find something you want, you push the button, it shows up at your doorstep two days later, it doesn't fit. You put it back in the box or the bag or, you know, it's not just Amazon. It's, you know, a whole bunch of other places to do that. I mean, I don't know how many people go into the stores and actually shop anymore, but at least I have the ability to do that. So thanks to her, what else did. I was really important to me during that period of time. It was really important to try and make as many friends as possible. And I had. I still do. I have a really bizarre sense of humorous. I can put things together that most people, when I say it's funny to me, but they don't understand and not necessarily something insulting, but just very obscure references to things. And so I found that inhibited my making friends because they would say something, I'd make a joke, they'd look at me with a blank stare, is this guy crazy? All right, let's go. Let's move on to the next guy. So it took me, it was a lot of the beginning of self awareness that you have to, when you talk to somebody, you don't just talk to them. You look at their face and you see how they react to what you say. That was something I never worried about before because, you know, I had three brothers and we talked at each other, over each other, around each other constantly. And, you know, nobody cared how the other person took it. That was just, you know, you're part of the family and that's just what happened. So that was part of that, that learning piece. Sometime right after I graduated, just a little bit older, I had a grandfather pass away, and he was 80 something. He was in good health. He got run over by a kid on a motorcycle. Died in the hospital a couple days later with a blood clot. And I remember I went to his funeral and the funeral, he was living in Philadelphia. I was in Washington, DC. So, you know, it wasn't that far. So I drove up there and went to the funeral. And, you know, traditionally, you know, our funeral is a closed box. I mean, you know, it's, there's no open, no open casket stuff. And so there's, there's a, you know, a casket lying on the ground next to a hole, you know, some prayers being said, things like that. And I'm cool with this. I said, you know, I know I, in my head, I said, I know he's dead. You know, he's passed away. And then all of a sudden, one of the men who's helping to put the casket into the hole looked at the person who was charged, in charge of the service and said, well, which way do you want his head and which way do you want the feet? And until that point in time, it was just a box. And all of a sudden, there was somebody inside the box, and that somebody was my grandfather. And that was, that was, you know, a moment. Yeah. You talk about one of those things you don't forget. It's not something you initially want to remember, but it's just one of those things you don't forget because it changed from being a person, I mean, just a box, to a person that was inside the box. So that was, that was my last, my last grandparent, my last surviving grandparent, anyhow. All right, I need a break.

18:42 Well, it seems like you had a lot of people that, like, helped you figure out life in college.

18:50 I I had, it's funny, I had, I met, I met so many different kinds of people that, as you, you just said, you try and take the best you can from the people that you meet.

19:04 Yeah.

19:04 And sometimes you don't realize it's the best. And sometimes you pick up some things that you later on realize aren't so good and you throw them away, but you try and collect as many things as you can for your growth and your awareness. But, yeah, no, I was in that some respects, I was very lucky to have those experiences, and I made this kind of mistakes that all guys make and.

19:37 Understandable.

19:39 Yeah. You know, you just, you do stupid things, but that, but at that age, you're supposed to do stupid things and get them out of your system.

19:45 Definitely. Definitely. I agree.

19:48 I used to be able to drink a huge amount. I mean, I'm a big guy, and I could drink just about anybody under the table. You know, I don't know if that was good or not, but it was one of the things I could do. And so if I went to a party and people are drinking, I drink, and after a while, I look around, everybody's asleep, and I'm still there. You know, it's like, okay, party's over. I'm leaving. It's just, you know. And then it wasn't until much later in my life that I realized, you don't have to do that. You can just drink some, you know, you don't have to compete and drink more than anybody else.

20:25 Yeah. I mean, you always got to do that in college, so you got to figure that out in college.

20:29 Yeah, life lessons. Anyhow, I guess the other thing I remember, and this is probably typical of most kids in that age area, was the relationship I had with my parents. And Mark Twain had a very famous quote, and I can't tell you exactly what it is, but I can tell you most of it. But Mark Twain was talking about his father, and the quote goes something like, when I turned 21, it was amazing how smart my father became, or something like that. And I had sort of a. I had an okay relationship, but whatever I said, I was right all the time. I had to be right all the time. And we'd argue a little bit, and then I go do whatever I was going to do anyhow. And they had enough faith in me. They kept writing the checks, and I kept going to school. They both worked full time. So that was one of the big things in their lives, was to put all four kids through college without having to have any sort of debt at the end of that period of time. And they managed to do that.

21:47 Good for them.

21:48 Yeah. No, that was very important for them. And they pinched pennies like you wouldn't believe. I mean, they never went out to eat. You know, they kept cars until you could, like the Flintstones. Your feet would go through the floorboards to stop. To stop the car. You know, my dad passed away. He had a closet full of clothes that he probably had for 40 years. I mean, you know, it's just he never. He bought it, you know, every few years, he'd buy a new pair of shoes, you know, so, you know, he. When you're growing up like that, you're thinking, okay, how can I get another nickel a week out of my parents? And you just don't have any sort of understanding as to what they're going through to put you through. And I think after I graduated college, and they said, boy, were we surprised that you graduated. And I said, what? They said, well, give ring your history of not doing well to start out with. And I looked at him, I said, I never didn't intend not to graduate. It was always in my head that in four years, I would come out with my degree. So there was an interesting conversation about what their expectation was, but still, the fact that they were behind me 100%, so no matter how much I pissed them off, they would still support me. And as I got older, you know, past that, then the relationship got kept. Kept getting better.

23:19 Yeah.

23:20 Yeah.

23:20 It's definitely good to have a relationship.

23:21 Like that with your parents and my brothers. You know, I come back from college on vacation, and it's like, I'm the oldest guy. I'm the oldest brother. I'd always bring t shirts, and I do this and the other. And so, you know, everybody was really happy to see me for a couple weeks, and then, you know, I disappear again. And then my next brother went to college, and the next brother went to college, and then finally everybody is gone. And I remember I came back and I lived with my parents for a while when I graduated, when I was first starting getting a job and all that. And it was like, okay, this is different. You know, I don't have the little brats around to bug me. I have my room, and I can do what I want to, things like that. And then when I finally got a place to live, all of a sudden my brother's saying, hey, cool, can we come over? Can we watch tv? Can we, you know, can we do stuff that mom doesn't let us do at the house? I said, sure. Yeah, yeah. So, anyhow, but, again, that's a little bit past, but, yeah, 1918, 1920, you know, Vietnam war, worrying about the rest of your life, getting an education, thinking about getting married and having a family, you know, that's a lot of people I met people who were so focused on that, that's all they could see was graduate college, get married, have kids, have a house, you know, all that. And for me, you know, that all sounded like a lot of fun. Could be. But I remember thinking, if you got married to somebody after, you know, the honeymoon period where it's off, what do you talk about with each other?

25:14 Yeah.

25:16 And I, you know, you know, we moved the clock 50 years now, and I can tell you, yeah, there's still plenty to talk about. But it was, you know, questions like that. I had. I had really no idea what. What being married was about.

25:31 Yeah.

25:31 Because my parents had a very stable marriage for a very long time till my father passed away. But they did their own thing, you know, and I remember, you know, so many. They didn't. They didn't have a tv in the living room, so they had. There's a tv in the. In the basement, and tv in the, in the, in the guest bedroom. But after dinner, they would, you know, dinner got cleaned up and all that. They would sit down in the living room, they'd read and different things, entirely different things. And then they go to bed and said, okay, so that's. So I know. You know, the only time we talked was the dinner table, and then there was usually three or four people talking at the same time. So it was, it was a, a raucous. A raucous thing. So I didn't know what being married was about. You know, the idea of having a physical partner sounded great. You know, that was. That was always fun. But then, you know, there's all these other things that you just don't know about. You have no. No sense except, you know, you watch, you know, you read the news. Oh, this Hollywood actress is on her 12th husband, or Johnny Carson just got married to his 6th wife, or, you know, something like that. But it means nothing. It meant nothing to, to me at that point. Yeah. And, you know, I didn't know. I really didn't know what I wanted to do. I really didn't know. And I got lucky. I fell on the jobs. I had people looking out for me. I was very successful beyond that. But it was still, I guess I just had such an open mind. I didn't know what was going to happen next. And that was, that was a little frightening, especially when you look around, the people who have their. Have direction. You can see they have blinders on, and they're going to do this no matter what. And I was like, look over here. Look over there.

27:31 You know, I definitely feel the same way. I don't. I don't have. I don't have this yet at all.

27:38 Yes, you do. You're going to be a famous basketball star.

27:41 Okay. Well, I mean, I hope so, but if that doesn't work out, then I don't know. Know what?

27:45 Okay, no plan B. Okay.

27:47 Yeah. No plan B. I have to make a plan B.