Underground Review

On the trip I had time to read David Rudd's book Underground. It brought back many memories of my high school and the divisions that existed, though nothing on the scale that Rudd and the students at Columbia had. He was very thorough in detailing all the events that led up to the seizure of numerous buildings and staging a sit-in for six days, his trip to Cuba, the dominance of Communism in the student movement, what led to their turning violent and eventually going underground. In his opening he says that their actions so alienated the general public that they might as well have been employed by the FBI. He has much better hind sight that others writing books about that time. Most of the book dealt with his time hiding from arrest. Seven years of being afraid that at any moment he would be arrested. The different places they had to move to, different jobs, trying to raise a family, the change in politics that allowed him to resurface. It was interesting.

One passage caught my attention. While hiding out in Santa Fe in 1971-2 he mentions that students in Albuquerque closed down I-25 by the University and he was encouraged by those in Santa Fe to come down and join in and how hard it was not to be a part of this.

I remember those days very well. The Friday before district track meet was the JROTC dining out and ball on Kirkland AFB. My date was the daughter of a police captain, the police captain that Bruce was under at the time. Driving up to the gate we were told that there were rumors students were planning a protest in front the the base, and if that happened the gates would be locked for the night. I could just see all the deep shit I would have been in had this come to pass. Fortunately they didn't protest. I got the fine upstanding young lady back to her very overprotective Mormon father and had a good nights sleep before a very important couple of races.

 I qualified in the mile for the state track meet and that week we were allowed to practice at UNM's track. The sports complex for UNM is well south of the campus. My high school is in the northern part of the city (why it's called Del Norte).  I didn't have a last period class and got on the freeway to drive to the track a little earlier than the rest of the team. I got to Lomas, which is where the police stopped traffic and had to drive east to San Mateo then south Gibson, west to University and north to Stadium where the complex is located. When I got to the track I talked the grounds keeper into letting me use the field house phone to call the activities director so he could give the heads up to the rest of the team not to go the freeway. As far as I was concerned those assholes accomplished absolutely nothing and merely caused a big mess.

My conclusions on the book will be in the next post as I have a department meeting in a few minutes.