It’s quite cold outside now, snow and everything, but I’m warm, sitting in an easy chair under a blanket, sipping hot chocolate, watching flames dance in the fireplace. At this point, I’d have to say my life seems fairly good. At least, I’m not complaining. I should also mention that I’m fairly old these days. Okay, north of seventy, which means that as I sit here and relax, my mind tends to drift back to earlier days, to a time when I was young and irresponsible, to a time when computers were huge and phones were used to simply talk to the person on the other end, to a time when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

One of the things my mind inevitably turns to when I’m reminiscing like this is the Vietnam War, that war in which the United States tried to liberate South Vietnam from communism. The war ran from 1964 to 1975 and saw an estimated 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers killed while about 2.0 million Vietnamese civilians and about 58,000 U.S. military personnel lost their lives. What a bloodbath. The war itself was a guerrilla war, which meant that for the United States to have succeeded, the support of the Vietnamese locals was essential. It was up to them to let us know what the enemy was up to, where their mines were planted, where their ambushes were planned, where their supplies were hidden. Apparently, we didn’t have that support. We won the major battles but lost the war.

Of course, much has been written and televised about the events of that era, like the rise to power and assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the war itself, the peace movement, black power, women’s lib. As I sit here and think about it, my focus tends to shift from those broad events to the more personal things I went through during that period, both good and bad. As I said, I was less than mature in those days. To be honest, I found not taking life so seriously quite agreeable, at least until the day the ax fell, and the ax did fall. I was a college student at the time, early May of 1969, feeling at peace with the world when I received notification that I was failing both physics and economics. While I was passing the rest of my courses for the most part, my math instructor did shrug his shoulders and tell me that calculus could go either way, maybe pass, maybe not. Hearing those words left me kind of stunned, although I don’t know why. I had let each of those courses slide badly out of control that quarter, and not withstanding some convenient self-delusion on my part, I knew it. In retrospect, I suppose that part of the problem was all three classes met in the morning. I kept intending to get up and start attending each one regularly, but it just didn’t happen. My bed was warm and inviting, and I ended up sleeping through session after session thinking as I drifted off I’ll make it next time for sure.

Then, of course, there was my draft board. Oh, yes, my draft board, the insidious vultures circling over my head daily. I knew I would be facing big problems with them soon. I was an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota at the time and still in possession of a student deferment, that critical piece of paper that had been exempting me from the army and Vietnam, but things were heating up. My draft board was getting very tough when it came to renewing student deferments, very tough when it came to looking at academic progress and grades.

As I trudged back across campus toward my apartment, as the bad news sunk in, I felt increasingly estranged and lonely, feelings only exacerbated by the pleasant spring weather. A cool breeze wafted against my face, and bright spring colors seemed to effloresce everywhere. The breeze and colors only reinforced the notion that I no longer belonged. I had let the right to participate in such a picturesque setting slip away, not that everyone I passed didn’t seem to be enjoying themselves. Everywhere I looked, ebullient young people were almost giddy as they embraced the new season, celebrating the fading away of yet another long Minnesota winter. They bounced around in jeans, and love beads, and long hair. They peered through wire rim glasses. They laughed, and talked, and shrieked, and squealed. Occasionally, a Frisbee sailed overhead. On top of everything else, as I marched woodenly along, I turned a corner and found myself forced to navigate around some bearded young guy in jeans and a sweatshirt, probably an honors student, strumming a guitar. I started to say something to him but decided not to. After all, he belonged. I didn’t. I was simply a weary misfit anxious to get back to the seclusion of my bedroom.

When I made it back to my off-campus apartment in Dinkytown, it occurred to me that my roommate, John Hansen, had several classes that morning and would probably not be back before noon. Finally, a break. I let out a relieved sigh. But then as I entered the living room area, I was hit by an unwelcome stream of bright sunlight flowing through the only window in the room. I moved quickly to yank the curtains shut, and while my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I returned to the front door and locked it. Next, I proceeded to my bedroom where I opened a desk drawer and pulled out a plastic bag that contained both free grass and a few already rolled joints. I fished out the biggest joint, lit it and took a deep drag, holding it in my lungs for as long as I could, maybe thirty seconds. As I haltingly released the smoke, I began to experience the effect I had come to expect. I became washed in a slow spinning wave of euphoria, a wave that left me feeling both mellow and relaxed.