Protestations

The protests currently raging in Wisconsin remind me of my college days there in the 1960's. Nobody seemed very interested in protesting anything in Wisconsin back then.

I do remember one time some lawmakers proposed raising the drinking age for beer and wine from 18 to 21, which the students were very decidedly against. A rally on campus overflowed into town, and a boisterous but not angry crowd joyfully overturned a beer truck and distributed its contents to the protesters.

To be fair, it was a bit early for anti-war protests when I was there, but there was one student who shouldered the burden for all of us, and I have never forgotten him for his courage and determination.

This dude’s name was Tony Majewski. He was tall and slim and had long, light-brown hair and a long beard to match, both of which he kept clean and neatly combed. He looked so much like modern depictions of Jesus Christ that if he had showed up wearing a robe and sandals, people would have thought it was the Second Coming.

While there were a number of students I knew at the time who were opposed to U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, Tony was the only one who cared enough to protest against it. It was a shame he was never able to convince anyone to join him. But true to his convictions, he did it all alone.

Every Saturday morning from 9:00 to noon, Tony would picket the post office, the only federal building in town. He walked back and forth in front of the post office with a hand-lettered sign that read TUNAFISH FOR VIET NAM.

His plan was to have planes drop tons of tuna on Viet Nam in the neighborhood of the border between the warring factions, where it would lay in the hot sun and get real ripe. The smell would eventually drive people away -- the North Vietnamese would head north and the South Vietnamese would head south, and there would be no more fighting.

I said he was determined. I didn’t say he was real smart.