1965
My best memoir stories cover one day
that ends in some surprising way. This story has an unforeseen ending to my
summer after high school.
Was I was the first in my family to go
to college? My eldest sister and brother didn't go at all. My other sister went
to Ryerson around 1960 when it was a community college. She is very proud of
her child care diploma.
I was a foreign student living in West Hollywood, California when I graduated from high school in the fulsome class of 1965. I lacked perspective on what my future would or could be. I had interests but didn't have a guiding light. If I didn't go to college or join the growing war machine I'd have to leave the country. I wanted to stay in California. I didn’t want to go to Vietnam. College won the argument.
No one was pushing me at home that I noticed. My dad was long dead. Mum created a nice home but as a teenager I was immune to and didn't understand her survivor’s “safety first” mentality. My brother was there but he had an entrepreneurial view of the world that didn't include college.
My friends were mostly junior college types. Mediocre students like me. It's ironic that Beverly Hills was the centre of our universe yet none of us were particularly upwardly mobile. Too much time with the daughters. Not enough time with the fathers.
I lack the social skill of being busy. I have always spent a lot of time cultivating my own garden. In the mid sixties I did it reading news, political and sports magazines. My mainstay subscriptions were Time and Newsweek. I ventured into left wing material like Ramparts and the right wing National Review. I recall that at one point I was proud to have 13 subscriptions in all.
The place I was most popular at school was in civics class. People would crowd around. I had the answers. I knew all the state capitals.
Still I had no sense to be assertive applying for college. No dreams. Little confidence. No motivation. No one pushing me. Mediocre grades and SATs. No role model to emulate. Not even a girl to chase across a state line.
I was a foreign student living in West Hollywood, California when I graduated from high school in the fulsome class of 1965. I lacked perspective on what my future would or could be. I had interests but didn't have a guiding light. If I didn't go to college or join the growing war machine I'd have to leave the country. I wanted to stay in California. I didn’t want to go to Vietnam. College won the argument.
No one was pushing me at home that I noticed. My dad was long dead. Mum created a nice home but as a teenager I was immune to and didn't understand her survivor’s “safety first” mentality. My brother was there but he had an entrepreneurial view of the world that didn't include college.
My friends were mostly junior college types. Mediocre students like me. It's ironic that Beverly Hills was the centre of our universe yet none of us were particularly upwardly mobile. Too much time with the daughters. Not enough time with the fathers.
I lack the social skill of being busy. I have always spent a lot of time cultivating my own garden. In the mid sixties I did it reading news, political and sports magazines. My mainstay subscriptions were Time and Newsweek. I ventured into left wing material like Ramparts and the right wing National Review. I recall that at one point I was proud to have 13 subscriptions in all.
The place I was most popular at school was in civics class. People would crowd around. I had the answers. I knew all the state capitals.
Still I had no sense to be assertive applying for college. No dreams. Little confidence. No motivation. No one pushing me. Mediocre grades and SATs. No role model to emulate. Not even a girl to chase across a state line.
At the last minute I applied to LACC. Los Angeles City College. A junior college. Close to home. Low admission standards. The refuge for people who didn't have anywhere better to go. I didn't get in. The foreign student quota was full. It was August. I was in trouble.
A little research surfaced one more possibility. Pepperdine College. It has some buzz now. The new campus is in Malibu overlooking the Pacific ocean.
It wasn't like that in 1965. Then Pepperdine was a small Christian college in south central L.A. When it was built during the depression the school was in the ring around downtown L.A. By 1965 it was dead centre in the ghetto.
The devastating Watts riots took place blocks from Pepperdine about two weeks before classes started.
I had no trouble getting accepted. They had room for one more soul.
Pepperdine, lily white, christian and in the middle of a roiling ghetto was going to be an adventure for this nicely tanned irreligious boy who had no worldly experience. Aside from a few adventures in Beverly Hills that is.
May 12, 2017
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