Abilene Christian College - Prickly Pear Yearbook (Abilene, TX)

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ally been the realists” crew be murdered. After the killings, he ordered his followers to commit suicide. He called the women and children to come first to drink a cyanide laden drink.“We must die with dignity,” Jones told them. Over 900 people obeyed this “messiah.” Some had to be coerced by guns, but most took their lives willingly. “We all fall tonight, but he’ll raise us tomorrow,” one of Jones’ followers said. The news of the deaths shocked Americans. The American press covered the horror with explicit photographs, tapes of Jones’ death orders and statements from ex- members. The most shocking aspect about the coverage is that it was all true. The idea that so many people could believe in someone as insane as Jones just didn’t make sense. He was a man who offered confused people vacant solutions to life’s problems. They longed for peace — peace they thought they couldn’t find in America. Sadly, they didn’t which opposed her. When we left Vietnam we were in effect saying that we no longer believed in the American way enough to fight for it. We became tolerent, even com- placent, of our ideological enemy: Russia. This tolerence was best illustrated in President Carter’s embrace with Russia’s head of state, Leonid Brezhnev, at the end of the SALT II meeting in 1979. It was summed up in Carter’s 1977 Notre Dame commencement speech. He said, “We are now free from our inordinate fear of com- never thinking that fire is better find it in i V Guyana either, ietnam can be traced I belief that our coui fought with water.” This fire “...failed with Vietnam, the best example of its intellectual and moral poverty.” Vietnam can be seen as a striking out at Communism. In the late ’70s we began to try to make peace with the Russians. We called it detente. We sold the Russians grain, shared technology and lent them money. We Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Nobel prize winner and Russian dissident, said, “Communism needs...detente for one purpose: to gain additional strength with the help of Western financing (those loans will not be repaid) and Western technology before it launches its next large- scale offensive.” His words rang pure and true as Russia rumbled into Afghanistan at the twilight of the ’70s. What Solzhenitsyn had said in 1978 at Harvard’s commencement was made even more relevant by the Russian invasion. In the speech Solzhenitsyn accused Americans of being self-centered and of caring little for other people, especially those of other nations. The tolerance of Russia was nothing to be proud of, Solzhenitsyn said. This toleration marked a “decline in courage” in America. Solzhenitsyn said America was slumbering; they were in for a rough awakening. His points about Russia were important, but even more important was what he said about the decline of the American spirit. Maybe we aren’t as happy, as brave or as optimistic as we once were. Perhaps it’s because of the flood of information that greets us every day. It’s difficult to be cheerful when murders, robberies and invasions are flashed at us constantly by the media. But the problem isn’t the tool; it’s how we use the tool. This flow of information can cause us to lose sight of what our life is like. We become aware of what is around us, but forget what is inside us. The ’80s? I’m ready. Yes, there are problems. Yes, there are threats. You can read about them in a newspaper, see them on a TV or listen to them on the radio. But a newspaper, a TV or radio can’t tell us what will happen. We determine that. I think of what novelist John Cheever said, “The future doesn’t look dismal. I detest the extravagant uses of decay and decline as applied to this country. The Yale magazine wrote me and asked if things were going to get worse in this country. I wrote back that if people continue going around asking questions like that things are bound to get worse. “This is a haunted country,” Cheever said. “Haunted by a dream of excellence.” We need to look at the Vietnams and the Watergates and see where people went wrong. We need to pick out the mistakes. It was unfortunate that so many people suffered in the two situations, but it will be much more tragic if we fall into similar situations because we did not learn We can learn something about the dream of wealth from Elvis Presley, and something about Communism from the dead millions of Cambodia. From it all, I think we can learn to see what should be, through the realities we experience. As we look back on the events of the ’70s and anticipate the events of the ’80s, it is necessary that we realize the importance of the lessons we should have learned throughout the past decade. “At best the future is uncertain,” John Lee, of the New York Times, wrote. “But in the American ex- perience, the optimists have usually been the realists.” DavidRamsey

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“the optimists have usu than just stay alive in New York City. Joey is a have-not without a college degree and a boring job. Not a poverty stricken situation, but in the midst of plenty, it seems to be that. dance floor, where he soared, Joey is lost. The drugs he takes, the violence he participates in and the girls he loves, can’t quench the loneliness, and the longing he feels for a meaningful life. Millions of Americans related to Joey very well. “All in the Family” made America laugh hysterically, at it- self. Archie Bunker and his family stumbled and struggled with situations the typical American had to: taxes, Nixon, bigotry, unem- ployment and violence on the streets. Though not as articulate or in- telligent as many, Archie was a spokesman for the older generation. He watched helplessly as younger people trampled on his ideals and slowly changed his world. The 70s have been called a calm and complacent time, but this statement is not entirely true. Gas entered the decade around 30 cents a gallon, and left at well over a dollar, promising not to look back. Abortion was illegal in 1970, but in 1979 the government was paying for many of the abortions performed in the U.S. Over half the babies born in the nation’s capital in 1979 were illegitimate. The times were changing. Archie, consider the 70s complacent. Archie wasn’t the only spokesman. The 70s had Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne and Neil Young to convey their thoughts and dreams through music. He emerged in the movie as a symbol of the youth of America — spirtually starving, desperately earching for meaning. Outside the These three artists voiced the disillusionment felt by youth who were looking for more than the lifestyle being offered by their elders. A dissatisfaction, a longing for more, is an American trait. It’s every generation’s demeanor to want more, and Browne, Springsteen and Young sang of this yearning. “I live alone in a paradise,” Young wrote. “I’m gonna be a happy idiot and struggle for the legal tender,” Browne sang. “Baby this town tears the bones off your back, it’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap, we’ve gotta get out while we’re young,” Springsteen wrote in the song “Born to Run.” The town is the American Dream with all its restrictions, demands and compromises. Bruce doesn’t want any part of the trap. “It’s a town full of losers, I’m pulling out of here to win.” The American Dream, as Sprinsteen theorized in “Born to Run,” robbed a person of all his other dreams. To overcome, you have to take all of your dreams and run where you want to go; not where evervone else told you to go. Browne and Young had similar things to say, but in different ways. Browne’s “The Preten- der” is about the average American. This American was caught up in the pursuit of plenty. In “The Preten- der,” he sang, “Into the cool of the evening strolls the Pretender, he knows that all his hopes and dreams begin and end there.” Young called the pursuit of money the search for a “Heart of Gold.” He wrote, “I’ve been searching for a heart of gold, and I’m getting old.” He knows the search is endless. The artists’ point, or perhaps their dream, was that there had to be more to life than a nice house, a nice car and money in the bank. The American Dream took enough beating without Young, Browne and Springsteen. Elvis Presley — the living, breathing, walking American Dream — died Aug. 22, 1977. Elvis really lived the dream of riches, glory and adulation, but the country boy from Mississippi got caught in the town Springsteen spoke of, and In the ’50s Presley had alienated many conservative Americans, but by the time of his death he was a symbol Americans were proud of — the poor boy who had made it big. Even when he was young, poor and still unknown, Elvis was handsome, slick and almost awesome. When he died at 42, still young really, he was overweight, lazy, sick and a drug addict. The dream had become a nightmare. All his money left him unsatisfied and unhappy. It is symbolic that Elvis died in the 70s, a time of belief shaking oc- Another group of searching Americans had left the U.S. to find happiness in the tropical jungles of Guyana. The results of their con- fusion and frightening fate shook the world, causing people to become more aware of how dangerous confusion can be. U.S. congressman Leo Ryan had heard about Americans living in a commune in Jonestown, Guyana. The reports he had heard had not been good, and in November of 1978 he went wit'h his staff to investigate the settlement. The people lived in what their leader called “a heaven on earth.” But Ryan found a crowded group of lost and lonely people trapped by a tyrant.Their leader, Jim Jones, said he was a messiah. He controlled the followers, and they worshipped him. When Ryan decided to return to the U.S. to report his findings, a series of incomprehensible events occurred. Jones ordered that Ryan and his

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Cuftuw (U SlCW stu mts {now tf e cj)its ancf TficTowiv Culture in Abilene? In that wine city situated in the West Texa; plains among the prickly pear cacti, the mesquite and rattlesnakes? In the dusty town where the cowboys and city folks have finally met, finding that chaps and couture, Cadillacs and cattle cars really can (and do) blend? In a town that has been known as the pits of Texas? Yes, even in the midst of all this you can find culture in Abilene. Oh, it may not be your every-day, run-of- the-mill culture found in such out-of- the-way places as New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, or even Dallas, but it's there with a flavor all its But, just what is culture? One author has said that culture is the study of perfection, and another has said that -culture is no better than its woods. Yet another author describes culture as “the sum of all the forms of art, of love, and of thought...” Still, even that doesn’t quite explain culture in Abilene. Abilene culture is all wrapped up in its agriculture and petrolem operations, in the Larry’s Better Burgers and Kiva Inns, the Paramount Opry and Thouvenal String Quartet performances, the religious atmosphere created by three church-related colleges and churches on almost every corner and the shopping sprees in such extremes as The Mall of Abilene and the St. Vincent de Paul Salvage the city that more than 100,000 people from around the globe have come to call home — the Key City. Located 1,738 feet above sea level in the heart (well, almost the heart) of the Lone Star State, Abilene is the central city of the Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area that includes Taylor, Jones and Callahan counties. Established in 1881, the city’s economy originally was based on agriculture, and while much of the activity in the area still hinges on ag- ribusiness, the economy since about 1960 has shifted more to oil and manufacturing related operations. Plants in the area manufacture aircraft parts, building materials, apparel, trailers, electrical ap- pliances, as well as many other products, and the area continues to expand annually. In addition to its three colleges — ACU, Hardin-Simmons and Mc- Murry — Abilene is the home of a $100 million strategic air command installation, Dyess Air Force Base. The mixture of personalities and backgrounds brought together by this combination is a large part of Abilene’s unique culture. Vifflinq Oub Those “statistics” are all im- portant in the city’s culture, but getting to the heart — or, more appropriately the stomach — of the matter, we find restaurants for A favorite for all college students after those long hours of study is a piece of pie. And what better place for the delicious pastries than Virginia Lee’s Pie Shop, located at 3266 S. 14th. This family-owned business offers more than 40 kinds of pie, priced between 69 and 89 cents per piece, including the usual fruit varieties, several kinds of cream pies (all topped with whipped cream, of course), the house specialties (lemon chess, custard, millionaire’s delight, caramel- banana. blueberry-banana) and everyone's favorite, fresh According to the owners, Bobby Green and Alton Davis, fresh strawberry “is the big thing,” far outweighing any other kind as a “favorite. The next most popular kind, they said, is caramel banana. Although a good deal of Virginia’s business comes from McMurry students, a large percentage” is from ACU. The busiest times as far as student patronage is concerned are “after movies and later at Virginia Lee’s isn’t limited to pies, however. The menu also offers old- fashioned fasting bowls of soup or beans, with crackers or homemade cornbread, starting at about $1.50, and the grinder sandwich with three meats and three cheeses for $3. Other baked specialties include birthday and wedding cakes and cookies, all made and decorated in the shop. Nothing could be better to top off a good piece of pie than some good homemade ice cream from Larry’s Better Burger Drive-In, another array of culture is