Learning to Survive

In January of 1970 there were only two other male students at John Tyler High (out of ~1700) whose hair significantly deviated from the school dress code. One of them was about 6'6" and I don't recall his name - he never talked to anyone and nobody messed with him... The other one was Wayne Fleming, who I met in Drafting class on that first day...

Now - given my background it's not hard to understand how I ended up "unconventional"... But Wayne's case was something of a mystery... He was Tyler born and bred. Everyone else in his family was conservative and country and so were all his long time friends. He had even worked at a feed store since he was 13 years old. There was no apparent reason for it - he just liked his hair long and preferred rock music to country... His parents seemed pretty confused by it too :-)
Even though he'd lived his whole life in Tyler he still caught a lot of grief over his hair... His car (a '65 Mustang) was a frequent target. The damage was typically caused by a pipe or tire iron but I recall one incident where a guy jumped on the hood and dented it pretty good. But I'm getting a bit off track...

Wayne and I started hanging out a lot (birds of a feather) and he taught me the rules of survival at John Tyler:
He explained the difference between real cowboys and posers (aka "goat ropers" or "Rexall Rangers"). There weren't many real cowboys at John Tyler and it was the goat ropers who posed the most serious threat. Wayne further explained that they were highly susceptible to peer pressure and therefore only dangerous in groups... It didn't take me long to confirm that he was absolutely right. Unless they outnumbered you at least 5 to 1 they wouldn't even look at you :-) Of course - there were a few rednecks who just liked to fight - like the one I encountered in my prior post. But after Wayne clued me in as to where (and when) they congregated it wasn't that hard to avoid unpleasant encounters.
That's not to say I wasn't still constantly taunted and threatened - but most of it was comically juvenile... And every once in a while somebody would pull a knife and threaten to shave my head with it - but they were basically just showing off for their buddies... When it came right down to it they were so insecure you almost had to feel sorry for them :-)

Aside: This was exactly the time when the song "Okie From Muskogee" by Merle Haggard hit the country charts. It was an anthem celebrating narrow minded ignorance - a rallying cry for the intolerant... Definitely didn't help my plight much :-) ... I just couldn't freaking believe that the length of someone's hair was that big of a deal to so many people! ... I swear I'm still suffering from post-traumatic stress over it... But I digress :-)

When you were in town - just like at school - you didn't want to get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time... I still got a spit-can dumped on me out of a passing pickup truck once though. There were idiots everywhere, I guess.

I heard some disconcerting rumors too. Things like:
- The bullet-riddled body of a long haired drifter was found in a ditch outside of town and the police didn't bother to investigate (justifiable homicide)...
- A teacher at R.E. Lee High saw a chopper go past with an American flag pointed on the tank and ran out during class, got in his pickup, chased the guy down and ran him off the road.
I don't know if that stuff was true but it certainly seemed plausible at the time...

But I also (eventually) discovered that there was indeed a sizable population of unconventional people in Tyler. They just kept a very low profile :-)