Light My Fire

Back in 1967, ’68 and ’69, I was a college student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

“The Berkeley of the Midwest.”

It got its nickname- and reputation- because the University of Wisconsin was pretty radical back in those good ol’ SDS/SNCC days.

(After all, Paul Soglin- legendary student activist and later three-time mayor of Madison- headed up many of the anti-establishment activities when I was there.)

The entire campus was burning with the fires of activism. Every morning student protestors would chant, march, picket, sit in or lie down about something- usually Viet Nam war-related. Guns, tanks, gas masks and police dogs were common college sights.

There were the (in)famous Dow Riots of ’67.  I usually missed those. They were held real early in the morning***- and they conflicted with my Italian class besides.

Then there was the scary Bascom Hall takeover attempt. I was right in the middle of that. The National Guard exploded tear gas to stop the kids as they knocked over all the giant vending machines in the Hall’s halls.  I evacuated through a window.

And who could ever forget the bombing and- accidental collateral damage- killing of a mathematics research assistant in the Army Mathematics Research Center? (Although it happened in the summer of 1970, it felt like I was still there. Tragic and horrible.)

And then there was the National Guard vs all the kids riot in my Oceanography class.

The movement du jour was a call for a Black Studies Program to be added to the university curriculum.  As we had no black people to speak of in the corn-fed Dairy Queen county of Dane, all of this particular agitating was done by Jewish kids who hailed from the deeply radical New York exurbs of Roslyn, Mamaroneck and Larchmont.

A couple of boys would show up in all the big lecture halls and demand two minutes of the class time to make their pitch for the importance of an Afro-American study course. And all of the professors would give them a forum.

Except Professor Moore, Oceanography 101.

(I had to take one science course at Madison.  It was either Oceanography 101 or Geology 101-“Rocks For Jocks”- for this English Literature major.)

One early afternoon, (*** I spent every night listening to the radio’s two a.m. “Comedy Corner,” and I could never make it to morning classes- or riots) I was sitting in the lecture hall taking notes about tsunamis when these now-familiar couple of guys approached the professor’s lectern and politely asked him if they could have the SOP two minutes to make their pitch.

Professor Moore wasn’t having it.  He WAS the Establishment- old, Republican, gray-haired, steel rim glasses, gray suit, no nonsense and he wasn’t about to give up valuable class time to two hippies from out of town.  Uh, “no.”

Make that “HELL, NO.”

So he ignored their request and went right on lecturing us as if they weren’t there.

The kids weren’t having that.

They looked at each other, nodded, picked him up and placed him gently to one side. Then they launched into their spiel about racial inequality in the core curriculum.

As they spoke, the National Guard raced down the lecture hall aisle and started clubbing the kids.

With that, the entire student audience (me included) rushed down the aisle and attacked the National Guard.

A full-scale riot ensued.

Guns, snarling dogs, and tear gas all made their appearance, but by now, these were so common place that I have forgotten if they played a major part in this particular class riot or not.

Finally in July of ’69, I hung up my protest signs for good.  I had gotten married, and I was much too busy morphing from Twiggy into Donna Reed to care about the counter culture.

I had become one of the people I formerly didn’t trust.

Those were the good old days when going to college had very little to do with actually hitting the books.

They seem so far away and yet…

Just let me hear the opening notes of this and I can smell the tear gas.

Right on, brothers and sisters.

Now where did I put that mini skirt?….