What are you going to do with your life? That was a question I kept hearing from my parents and academic advisors my sophomore year in college as I tried to decide on a major. All the while in my mind I kept thinking I’m only 19…how am I supposed to know what I should do with my life?      

     It was the spring of 1974 and I was attending Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. The Vietnam War was winding down and the decade of the sixties had passed. Still in some ways the spirit of the sixties still lingered. The campus was buzzing with excitement over the upcoming visit of President Nixon and students were sleeping outside and playing guitars in protest. Speakers daily criticized Nixon and my sociology teacher was preaching the gospel of self actualization and trying to organize a commune in San Francisco.

     On a weekend trip home, I talked with my dad about school and career choices mentioning the commune which he wasn’t too keen about. I told him I was having trouble deciding and then he told me about how he got into education. But how do you decide at 19 I asked him and how do I know what I’m good at doing? He said I was intelligent and came from good stock so I should do fine. He then mentioned some of my ancestors. I drove back still confused.

     Back at Mercer the campus was going crazy. Television crews were interviewing students daily and protesters were everywhere. Secret Service men in dark suits were mingling with the crowds, listening and observing. Rumors were rampant about hidden listening devices and men with rifles on the roofs. The word around campus was to stay away from windows.

     Escaping the chaos on campus I retreated to my dorm room where I could think. My mother was a teacher and my dad a principal in our small town where I always felt like I was under their shadow. Here I was my own person and finally felt like I belonged somewhere. Now I felt like I was being pressured to decide how I would live in the future when all I wanted to do was learn how to live right now.

     The sun was going down and yellowish golden light was streaming through the window when i decided to get some peanut butter and bread at a nearby grocery store. Carrying the bag of groceries back to my room I had to climb over a large rope cordoning off the campus. A group of secret service agents stopped talking and stared at me as they instinctively reached for their guns but stopped midway. Shaken I got back to my room and remembered to stay away from the windows.

     Several days later, after giving his speech, President Nixon scurried down the back steps of the old stone chapel surrounded by secret service agents. In his haste he tried to climb into a black convertible but got stuck with one leg in the car and the other leg dangling on the outside. Someone pulled him the rest of the way into the car. Then the cars sped away down blocked off roads.

     After that I thought the campus would calm down but things got crazier. A tsunami of pent up emotions crashed over the campus and I jumped on the giant wave. It started when a girl from a nearby college drove topless through campus in a convertible. Then about twenty male students jogged naked on a public road that went around the campus.

      Several college administrators and policemen were having a heated discussion in front of the dorm when the joggers returned. Since they had been on a public road the police were arguing they should be arrested for indecent exposure. Somehow something was worked out so they wouldn’t be charged, but a few days later the mayor mentioned castrating any future streakers.

      The next week a bicycle streaker rode through campus almost every afternoon wearing a ski mask. A group of us would gather on a small hill above the sidewalk and cafeteria. Dennis who wore a green army jacket and somehow reminded me of John Denver was there as well as Mike who looked like Buddy Holly with reddish orange hair.

      We would be talking or smoking a legal substitute for marijuana that had the same smell when the bicycle streaker would come whizzing by on the sidewalk. A roar would come up from the crowd then sometimes a few more streakers would come by in the gathering twilight then we would go our separate ways.

       I think the whole country was having a meltdown from the turmoil and tension still lingering from the previous decade. The search for deeper meaning and utopia was suspended. Self-righteous world changing was exchanged for kids just wanting to be kids. A national catharsis was taking place as we symbolically shed all the angst of the sixties and streaked away from it. For me the sixties ended that Spring of 1974. I no longer felt I had to change the world.

      I literally ran away from the sixties when I streaked with a friend named Rob the next Saturday. We decided to run from the Art building to the street in front of the women’s dorm, a distance of about sixty yards. Dotting the gently sloping landscape were small trees that had just been planted. Another friend named George would be waiting in the getaway car.

           After hiding our clothes behind some bushes, we started running when a large black dog started running beside me. I started laughing so hard I couldn’t run while Rob was trying not to run into the small trees. Suddenly the street looked a mile away as a crowd of students started gathering with cameras by the steps leading to George’s car. Somehow, we made it and as I was going down the first step my ski mask fell off.

            Meanwhile an old security guard with thick glasses from the dorm across the street started running toward us to get George’s tag number. People in the crowd started calling out numbers to confuse him as I lunged down the steps and jumped into the car. A line of cars behind us were beeping their horns as we sped away with Rob and me in the back seat laughing.

            We sneaked back onto campus a few hours later amid wild rumors that the police had George’s license plate number and were in the process of tracking us down. I spent an anxious weekend but nothing ever happened. On Monday when I entered the cafeteria I was surprised when a large group stood up and started clapping. For a couple of hours, I felt like a celebrity then the bicycle streaker came back that evening. So much for my fifteen minutes of fame.

 After that Spring my dad decided Mercer was too expensive……… I guess the streaking didn’t help. That summer I spent a lot of time watching the Watergate hearings then that Fall I enrolled at the local community college. I really missed Mercer and it was especially hard at first………… it was the first place I ever felt like I belonged. I wrote to Dennis for a little while and even visited that Spring but it wasn’t the same. We had all moved on with our lives.

As far as the question of what am I going to do with the rest of my life is concerned I have come to believe for myself personally the better question is what do you feel like doing for the next few years? Why can’t a person have a series of mini careers especially now with it so easy to get training? But basically, I think it comes down to each individual.

The look of those secret service agents as I climbed over that rope with a jar of peanut butter is something I will never forget as well as that amazing Spring of 1974.