I’ve written elsewhere how, coming from Oklahoma to San Francisco in the mid-1960s, fresh from active duty in the Marine Corps, I was somewhat taken aback by the attitudes and dress of folks around me at San Francisco State College. Professors taught classes in blue jeans and sandals. Everyone seemed to smoke marijuana and consume mood-elevating plants and pharmaceuticals, and young women didn’t wear a lot of underwear. Understand, I adapted very quickly—took up a lot of the habits and fashions I found comfortable. I can recall clearly the mother of my only daughter—a woman I’d met in a San Francisco bar and whom I never did get to know very well—telling me that I was “a goddammed hippy” not long before I last saw her. (A couple of years later I got a call from that woman’s mother telling me that my then three-year-old daughter had just been delivered to the San Francisco airport along with another child—an infant. I picked up my daughter, Isabel, and neither she nor I have ever heard of or seen her mother again. I don’t know what happened to the infant. That was in 1966.)
I was never a hippy. I worked full-time and went to college. I’m eternally sorry to have to say that I was never a particularly good father to my child, but my mother—a good woman—helped me out considerably.
I liked being a college student. I liked it so much, in fact, that I kept going to colleges and universities here and there until I had earned enough degrees to suit me. I worked most of those years in hospitals. Hospitals operate twenty-four hours a day and shifts could generally be arranged to accommodate full-time classes. I had early on trained to become an Operating Room Technician—the person you see on TV and in the movies who slaps the scalpel and clamps into the surgeon’s hand—and that skill served me well for the many years I remained a student. I worked and studied in Oklahoma, San Francisco, South Carolina, and New Mexico.
I loved being in the operating room. I enjoyed—for the most part—being around the surgeons and anesthesiologists (there were, to be sure, a good number of arrogant assholes among them, but they were in the minority). I loved being around nurses and nursing students. Those were good and happy times to be young and full of testosterone and energy. I remember, for example, a bar just a block or two away from St. Anthony Hospital in Oklahoma City that was called “ICU” (Intensive Care Unit) the walls of which were decorated with metal bedpans and IV Bags and various other hospital accouterments that made us all feel welcome at the end of a grueling eight or, often, more hours of ministering to the ill and saving lives, just like they do on television.
They were just fine times, my college days. When I enrolled at San Francisco State I declared that I was “Pre-Med”—that I intended to become a rich, famous cardio-vascular surgeon like Michael “Black Mike” DeBakey and transplant vital organs and save lives and walk around in scrubs and a white jacket all day while adoring nurses and grateful patients and their families fawned over me.
I enrolled in Biology and Zoology classes. I took a Human Anatomy course in which every three students were assigned their very own human cadaver to dissect over the semester. I recall that my two lab partners and I immediately named our cadaver “Ernest” so that we could always answer when asked what we were doing that we were “working in dead Ernest.”
At the same time, however, I enrolled in as many literature courses as I possibly could on account of I loved to read and had never before—in Oklahoma or in the Marine Corps—been around people who also loved to read and, even better, to talk at length about what they were reading. As I said, I worked fulltime in hospitals on the 3 to 11pm shifts, yet I always enrolled in eighteen credit hours each semester—actually, I sometimes enrolled in twenty-one hours intending to drop three hours once I had determined my least favorite class. I soon discovered that there was a whole library chocked full of wonderful books and there were Bay Area bookshops that smelled good to me and where the proprietors had the good sense to place overstuffed easy chairs and ever-filled coffee pots—and these were free cups of coffee, mind you, not Starbucks outlets with their flavored and whipped creamed Talls or Ventis or whatever they call them, and cookies and pastries and CDs and other paraphernalia that cost as much as any book. I’m thinking here of the famous “no name bookshop” in Sausalito that I favored—I wonder but doubt seriously if it still exists.
At the end of my Sophomore year I was required to undergo a “degree check” to ascertain whether or not I was progressing adequately in my scholarly pursuits. The young woman who performed this check asked me if I was still intending to pursue medical school. She pointed out that I had enrolled in, but dropped, basic chemistry but that, as I prepared to enter my junior year I had completed all but a single course required for a degree in English with a double minor in Biology and Psychology. She allowed as how I might want to revisit my aspirations since completing the required coursework for application to medical school would no doubt mean I would have to enroll full-time in science and mathematics courses for the remainder of my undergraduate career. I blanched at the thought.
That very afternoon I had a lab of some kind and I remember telling my two partners about my predicament. A woman and a man, I wish I could recall their names. They both said that they could see me as a tweed-jacketed, pipe-smoking professor of literature. I liked the idea. The following week I declared my major to be English and stopped fretting over the dreaded chemistry and math. I believe I bought a cheap pipe, too—but it didn’t really suit me, apparently.
After receiving my Bachelor’s Degree in English at Central State University in Oklahoma, I moved to New Mexico where I took a Master’s Degree, also in English, at New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas. I spent a year teaching in a college program inside the walls of the New Mexico State Penitentiary in Santa Fe.
I commuted to Albuquerque from Las Vegas and earned my Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of New Mexico in 1975. American Studies was then a transdisciplinary program in American culture studies that was only offered to doctoral students. I studied American Literature, History, and Sociology.
Over the next four years I did some teaching—at New Mexico Highlands University and at a private women’s college in Ohio—and I worked as a horseshoer and wrangler and I worked in the operating room at St Vincent Hospital in Santa Fe. I’ve said elsewhere that when I was working as a teacher I was nagged by the feeling that teaching was not really work and that it seemed, somehow, dishonest to take a paycheck for reading and talking about books. On the other hand, when I was, say, shoeing a horse I could hear my Mother’s voice asking me why I was wasting my good college education out there in the hot sun. I was (and am, I suppose) what they call a “free spirit,” which, as I understand the term, is one who does whatever interests him at any given time. Money has never been all that important to me—so long, that is, that I can eat and pay my bills. I would love to be wealthy, but I’m confident I never shall be. Looking back, I’ve had a pretty good time.
I was never a hippy. I worked full-time and went to college. I’m eternally sorry to have to say that I was never a particularly good father to my child, but my mother—a good woman—helped me out considerably.
I liked being a college student. I liked it so much, in fact, that I kept going to colleges and universities here and there until I had earned enough degrees to suit me. I worked most of those years in hospitals. Hospitals operate twenty-four hours a day and shifts could generally be arranged to accommodate full-time classes. I had early on trained to become an Operating Room Technician—the person you see on TV and in the movies who slaps the scalpel and clamps into the surgeon’s hand—and that skill served me well for the many years I remained a student. I worked and studied in Oklahoma, San Francisco, South Carolina, and New Mexico.
I loved being in the operating room. I enjoyed—for the most part—being around the surgeons and anesthesiologists (there were, to be sure, a good number of arrogant assholes among them, but they were in the minority). I loved being around nurses and nursing students. Those were good and happy times to be young and full of testosterone and energy. I remember, for example, a bar just a block or two away from St. Anthony Hospital in Oklahoma City that was called “ICU” (Intensive Care Unit) the walls of which were decorated with metal bedpans and IV Bags and various other hospital accouterments that made us all feel welcome at the end of a grueling eight or, often, more hours of ministering to the ill and saving lives, just like they do on television.
They were just fine times, my college days. When I enrolled at San Francisco State I declared that I was “Pre-Med”—that I intended to become a rich, famous cardio-vascular surgeon like Michael “Black Mike” DeBakey and transplant vital organs and save lives and walk around in scrubs and a white jacket all day while adoring nurses and grateful patients and their families fawned over me.
I enrolled in Biology and Zoology classes. I took a Human Anatomy course in which every three students were assigned their very own human cadaver to dissect over the semester. I recall that my two lab partners and I immediately named our cadaver “Ernest” so that we could always answer when asked what we were doing that we were “working in dead Ernest.”
At the same time, however, I enrolled in as many literature courses as I possibly could on account of I loved to read and had never before—in Oklahoma or in the Marine Corps—been around people who also loved to read and, even better, to talk at length about what they were reading. As I said, I worked fulltime in hospitals on the 3 to 11pm shifts, yet I always enrolled in eighteen credit hours each semester—actually, I sometimes enrolled in twenty-one hours intending to drop three hours once I had determined my least favorite class. I soon discovered that there was a whole library chocked full of wonderful books and there were Bay Area bookshops that smelled good to me and where the proprietors had the good sense to place overstuffed easy chairs and ever-filled coffee pots—and these were free cups of coffee, mind you, not Starbucks outlets with their flavored and whipped creamed Talls or Ventis or whatever they call them, and cookies and pastries and CDs and other paraphernalia that cost as much as any book. I’m thinking here of the famous “no name bookshop” in Sausalito that I favored—I wonder but doubt seriously if it still exists.
At the end of my Sophomore year I was required to undergo a “degree check” to ascertain whether or not I was progressing adequately in my scholarly pursuits. The young woman who performed this check asked me if I was still intending to pursue medical school. She pointed out that I had enrolled in, but dropped, basic chemistry but that, as I prepared to enter my junior year I had completed all but a single course required for a degree in English with a double minor in Biology and Psychology. She allowed as how I might want to revisit my aspirations since completing the required coursework for application to medical school would no doubt mean I would have to enroll full-time in science and mathematics courses for the remainder of my undergraduate career. I blanched at the thought.
That very afternoon I had a lab of some kind and I remember telling my two partners about my predicament. A woman and a man, I wish I could recall their names. They both said that they could see me as a tweed-jacketed, pipe-smoking professor of literature. I liked the idea. The following week I declared my major to be English and stopped fretting over the dreaded chemistry and math. I believe I bought a cheap pipe, too—but it didn’t really suit me, apparently.
After receiving my Bachelor’s Degree in English at Central State University in Oklahoma, I moved to New Mexico where I took a Master’s Degree, also in English, at New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas. I spent a year teaching in a college program inside the walls of the New Mexico State Penitentiary in Santa Fe.
I commuted to Albuquerque from Las Vegas and earned my Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of New Mexico in 1975. American Studies was then a transdisciplinary program in American culture studies that was only offered to doctoral students. I studied American Literature, History, and Sociology.
Over the next four years I did some teaching—at New Mexico Highlands University and at a private women’s college in Ohio—and I worked as a horseshoer and wrangler and I worked in the operating room at St Vincent Hospital in Santa Fe. I’ve said elsewhere that when I was working as a teacher I was nagged by the feeling that teaching was not really work and that it seemed, somehow, dishonest to take a paycheck for reading and talking about books. On the other hand, when I was, say, shoeing a horse I could hear my Mother’s voice asking me why I was wasting my good college education out there in the hot sun. I was (and am, I suppose) what they call a “free spirit,” which, as I understand the term, is one who does whatever interests him at any given time. Money has never been all that important to me—so long, that is, that I can eat and pay my bills. I would love to be wealthy, but I’m confident I never shall be. Looking back, I’ve had a pretty good time.
