SOLVED: One Of The Great Mysteries Of My Life!

I feel like a tremendous weight has been lifted off my shoulders. By May of 1970 I had been living outside the country for nearly a year. There was no internet and there were no cell phones back then. By that time I was living in Afghanistan. I depended on issues of somewhat dated issues of Time and the International Herald-Tribune for the "latest" news back "in the world." But these weren't really trustworthy sources, so when it came to the really big political news, it was week or two old letters that came from my friends to Poste Restante in Kabul-- when I was in Kabul. When I was way up north in the Hindu Kush, there was no news. Period. None. But when the Kent State massacre took place in early May of 1970 I was in Kabul. My friend Helen wrote me a letter that came about 10 days later. I don't have the letter any longer-- if I did there would have been no mystery all this time-- but below I'm going to spread out a few quotes from Rick Perlstein's Nixonland regarding the aftermath of the brutal massacre of American students, passersby, on their Ohio campus. First the one that goes directly to my own personal little solved mystery:

A National Economic Boycott Committee decided to boycott Coca-Cola and Philip Morris for "their dependency on the youth market for a large part of their sales."

That's the solution to a mystery? Oh, was it ever. I never smoked a cigarette in my life so forget Philip Morris but Coca-Cola? It's all I drank. Especially in places like Afghanistan, where the water was too polluted to drink. (The U.S. Embassy handed out a xerox sheet instructing travelers to bring water to a rapid boil. Shut it down and then bring it to a rapid boil again before drinking it. Everyone had the Kabul Runs all the time anyway.) All I drank was Coke. But I never took another sip of Coke, Pepsi, 7-Up or anything like that again since opening Helen's letter. I was off that stuff, cold turkey.

And thank God. Coke kills. Although I hadn't had any since May 15, 1970, my doctor pointed to it as a probably cause of cancer (along with recreational drugs, something else I had given up, although for different reasons, around the same time). If you ask ehow.com what makes Coca-Cola unhealthy you get, in part, this:

Coca-Cola has been deemed unhealthy for a number of reasons. One can of Coke can contain about 10 percent sugar. Large amounts of sugar in a person's diet are related to high stress levels, and while it doesn't directly cause diabetes, it can worsen a diabetic's situation. Sugar also contributes to weakening immune systems because yeast and bacteria in the body feed on sugar. It can even speed the aging process when it becomes attached to proteins, which causes a loss in elasticity. In diet drinks, the sugar is substituted with saccharin (or aspartame) to provide a sweetener, and has been researched as a possible cause of bladder cancer. There are also a small percentage of people who cannot physically metabolize the amino acid in aspartame, causing it to build up in the bloodstream. High-fructose corn syrup is metabolized differently in the human body than natural sugars because the corn syrup is a product of genetically altered plants. Nutritionists have scrutinized connections between obesity, diabetes and high-fructose corn syrup. The potassium benzoate used in Coke products harms DNA in mitochondria of cells in the body, inactivating their ability to produce energy. Another health issue is that the recurrent exposure of the acid added to Coca-Cola contributes to the probability of tooth decay because of its reaction with calcium in teeth. The phosphoric acid is dangerous for those with a pre-existing stomach ulcer. Coca-Cola is also known to be a highly caffeinated beverage, and substantial caffeine intake acts as a diuretic and has negative effects, including hyperactivity.

Glad to have it out of my life. Only Helen says she never heard of any boycott, let alone wrote to me about one. And everyone else I've asked from that period says they never did either. But there it was in Perlstein's book. Case closed. In the immortal words of Suicidal Tendencies, I'm not crazy.

So what did the students back then do after the Ken State massacre when they demanded the U.S. end the wars in Southeast Asia? OK, here's more Perlstein:

"The splintered left on the campuses has suddenly reunited," the Wall Street Journal concluded, quoting an electrician who worked at Case Western Reserve: "They figure they might just as well die here for something they believe in as to die in Vietnam." Case was one of the schools where students burned down the ROTC building. So were Kentucky, the University of Cincinnati, Ohio State, Ohio University, Miami of Ohio, Tulane, Washington University in St. Louis (their second) and St. Louis University. At Colorado State they torched Old Main, the original campus structure, erected in 1878. In farm-belt Carbondale, home of Southern Illinois, a center of military research, martial law was declared. At Syracuse nearly every window was smashed; UCLA students forced the entire Los Angeles police force onto tactical alert, and Governor Reagan subsequently shut down all twenty-seven state university campuses. Austin students were teargassed after charging the state capitol. They followed with the biggest march in Texas history (they chanted, "More pay for police!" to keep the cops at bay). At Malacaster College in St. Paul, students barricaded the offices of a new political science professor and demanded his resignation. But the professor, Hubert Humphrey, was away in Israel.

...A report from Madison, Wisconsin, noon, May 5: "Wide-scale rioting, burning, trashing, tear gas everywhere."

The next day: "One hundred arrested, school shut, National Guard, fires in street every night, fifty or sixty hurt, tear gas, 'open warfare.'" ... Within the week, in front of the burbling fountain on Revelle Plaza at UC-San Diego, George Winnie Jr., twenty-three, held up a cardboard sign reading, IN GOD'S NAME, END THIS WAR, struck a match, and went up in a burst of flame. That didn't make the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, or Chicago Tribune; a nationwide student tsunami had broken, too much drama to keep track of it all. By that time guardsmen were posted on 21 campuses in sixteen states, 488 universities and colleges were closed (three-quarters of the schools in Nevada, Massachusetts and Maryland), the entire public high school system in New York City was shut by order of the board of education, and Boston University informed Ted Kennedy not to show up to give the commencement speech because, in honor of the slain students, there wouldn't be any commencement... The National Republican Governors' Conference was canceled.