Part 2 of Word Back: America
I explore word choice in "Make America Great Again."
What was America like in my youth? Was it all fun and games?
Yes and no.
The Wayback Machine takes us back to my collegiate years, 1969-1976. Yes, I was on the seven-year B.A. Plan.
I remember the legendary Firesign "I Think We're All Bozos on this Bus" Theater perform at the UF Gator Growl in 1975? And wasn’t I there physically although my mind was wandering due to cannabis? I looked it up. Yes, Firesign Theater performed at the ’75 Growl. As I looked up the event's history at the HardyVision Institute of Pop Culture, I found this header: “Frequently Asked Questions: Gator Growl’s Stand-up Comedian History.”
Wow. That was my question. Thanks, WWW. Sometimes
hummingbirdminds are glorious. I scrolled down to this:
When did Gator Growl start hiring big-name
stand-up comedians?
In 1970, UF alumnus Buddy Ebsen (of
“Beverly Hillbillies” fame) was invited to be the Gator Growl emcee. Of course,
he’s not a stand-up comedian, but he did show up and lent a celebrity flair as
he told showbiz stories and talked about how nice it was to be back.
In 1974, the musician Jim Stafford was the
emcee. The Independent Florida
Alligator reports that the Winter Haven native opened
the show with his song “Wildwood Weed” blaring over the loudspeakers, and later
in the show “he sang his big hit – ‘Spiders and Snakes,’ accompanied by six
dancing girls.”
In 1975, the show was emceed by the comedy
duo of Phil Proctor and Peter Bergman of the Firesign Theater.
But it was Bob Hope in 1976 who was Gator
Growl’s first nationally known stand-up comedian headliner. He would return to
headline Gator Growl in 1979 and in 1983 at age 80.
I was right about Firesign! Jed Clampett was
a UF grad – who knew? And Bob Hope hosted three times, once when I was
allegedly in the crowd in ’76?
Instead of continuing my research into
Firesign, which was the day’s assignment, I scrolled down to a video: “The Bob Hope Collection at the University of Florida.” Really? The Smathers Library has
a huge Hope collection willed it by the Bob and Dolores Hope Foundation, most
of it previously displayed at the World Golf Hall of Fame Museum at World Golf
Village off I-95 west of Ponte Vedra Beach where they do a lot of golfing. The
new World of Golf Museum is now in Pinehurst, N.C., near swanky Pinehurst C.C. Its
largest display is a women’s locker room with more than 160 lockers of famous
women golfers.
So comedian golfer Bob Hope’s collectibles are now at the UF Library? That is something. This is the same library where I spent hundreds of hours learning how to be a writer. I read through the reading list former radical Nelson Algren handed out in my creative writing class. I read Harry Crews' Esquire column because I couldn't afford my own subscription. I read it all. I wrote thousands of words in my journal. I wrote and wrote.
And now I remember. In my youth, Bob Hope was my favorite comedian. And I wasn’t alone. As quoted in the 16-minute library video, Time Magazine’s Richard Schickel said he admired Hope’s “rapid-fire patter” and “as a kid growing up, I thought he was terribly funny as did most of the nation.” Me too. He and Bing Crosby were hilarious in their “Road” pictures. I loved how they broke the “fourth wall” to comment right at the camera, right at me sitting in suburbia. He had his own TV show. He traveled the world entertaining our troops fighting fascists and commies or just confused about why they were so far from home. He cracked me up. At one point, he was a starving artist in Vaudeville. The photo of that hopeful kid is in the UF collection.
I became a
know-it-all college kid and Hope was out. He was part of the establishment. He
was buds with Nixon and supported our foray into Southeast Asia. He was going
to get us killed. He wasn’t funny anymore. I threw Bob Hope under the bus (the Bozo bus) because he was too establishment.
Bob Hope tear-gassed me. Not him but him and his
pals at Honor America Day on the National Mall on July 4, 1970. I return now to
the American I was that day, a 19-year-old confused U.S. Navy midshipman on
leave. I told the story in a 2019 blog post:
There were lots of fireworks at the July 4, 1970, event, not
all of it in the sky. American Nazis attended to protest Vietnam War protesters
and the Yippies staging a smoke-in at the Washington Monument. Police tried to
maintain a DMZ between the protesters and Silent Majority picnickers. When that
failed, park police fired tear gas at the rowdy hippies and gas clouds drifted
over the multitudes. This led, as one reporter wrote, to a "mad stampede
of weeping hippies and Middle Americans away from the fumes." At the same
time, the U.S. Navy Band played the Star-Spangled Banner from the Lincoln
Memorial stage.
I was in that mad stampede. I picnicked with my buddy Pat's family. When the
fumes reached us, Pat and I scrambled to lead his grandmother and younger
sisters to safety. Pat and I had been tear-gassed several times that spring at the
University of South Carolina during protests of the Kent State killings. It was
no fun for young people but could be dangerous for the elderly. We made it out
of the gas cloud and, when the hubbub died down, we returned to our picnic.
Later, we listened to Honor America Day jokes from Bob Hope and Jeannie C.
Riley's version of Merle Haggard's "The Fightin' Side of Me." Then,
despite the chaos or maybe because of it, we admired the bitchin' fireworks
display.
So this is America, all of it, all of us, me and Bob Hope and you. We're All Bozos on This Bus.
