HOM: FVCC

My quarter there was easy and kinda fun, though I was an old fossil of 26 mixed in with those (mostly) teenagers. The campus was still downtown then, in the old Elk's building across the street from Norm's News and Western Outdoor. I had a surprise while I was socializing between classes. I was introduced to a very attractive young lady, and was startled when she said she knew me. It was Carol Weaver, who I remembered as a pig-tailed sixth grader. She'd grown up! Sadly, she died of brain cancer a few years later. Music Appreciation was, I think, taught by a pretty young lady named Janet Siblerud. I did not start out well in that class -- the first day, she asked each of us what our favorite music was and built a little discussion around each student's answer. Everything came to a halt when she reached me and I told her my choice was Muzak, and I guess my explanation that I just liked life with background music was a little lame. I think she wrote me off at that point -- anyone addicted to elevator music couldn't appreciate real music. Rick Champoux taught Contemporary Social problems, and had been our local delegate to the Montana Constitutional Convention. He also wrote "The Final Betrayal", a well researched novel on the JFK assassination, and is still a friend of mine. I was assigned the Red Power Movement, and learned more of Indian problems than I cared to, and my White Pride took a hit when I read of all the shenanigans our politicians worked on the Indians. One of the other guys in that class, Mark Holston, became a local newscaster. Dale Harvey was the Lit teacher, and left the college and the teaching profession a few years later under a cloud of unproven accusations a student he had flunked brought against him. He took another blow when his daughter was murdered out on the coast, a crime that has never been solved. From what I know of Dale, I suspect he was one of the early victims of the Women's Lib movement, some of whose members used unfounded accusations as a weapon. It was, and is, in this age of "guilty till proven innocent" sex charges, all too easy for a woman to accuse a man who has displeased her of sexual improprieties and ruin him. The book we studied that quarter was Deliverance, later made into a movie with Burt Reynolds. It was quite a change from Shakespeare & Jane Austen! TBC (Me) (Blacktail Books)