Gary Horton | Ain’t No Time to Wonder Why |
I’m a proud graduate of James Monroe High School in the San Fernando Valley, class of 1974. That was one hell of a time to be in high school.
The Vietnam War was still raging. Nixon was in trouble. And most explosive of all, until December 1972, the draft was still on, and kids graduating our school were getting pulled up against their will, sent off to Vietnam to kill and die for what turned out to be another war-justifying lie: the “domino theory.”
Imagine you’re 17 years old, finishing your senior year, minding your business, trying to get something out of an L.A. Unified School District education, and your number gets called. The next thing you know, you’re a cog in the wheel of the military industrial complex, soon to be fodder for what was initially called a “policing action,” and then you’re in the jungle, shooting at people who just want you out of their country, while you’re just hoping to somehow stay alive. Just the summer before, you were surfing Malibu.
The anger about all this had the country nearly in flames, with student protests just about everywhere. My own James Monroe High was no exception. And why not? Our friends were literally being thrown into what was secretly known in the White House as a lost cause.
(Country) Joe McDonald died March 7. He was best known for his anti-war rally song, “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag”:
And it’s one, two, three, what are we........