Harvard, Hollywood, Hitmen, and Holy Men by Paul W. Williams

Author:Paul W. Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780813196695
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky

17

Breaking Down, Breaking Through

1972

B

ut Standish Meacham has left Harvard and is chairman of the History Department at the University of Texas and asks me to travel to Austin for “A Convocation on the Year 2000”—a year that is three decades in the future. He has also invited a dozen other white males, including the French philosopher and political scientist Raymond Aron, author of The Opium of the Intellectuals; and the New York sociologist Daniel Bell, author of The End of Ideology; and the critic whose book The World of Our Fathers revealed to me my roots in European agnostic socialism, Irving Howe; and the futurist founder of the Hudson Institute and author of Thinking About the Unthinkable, Herman Kahn.

I think this might be an enlightening trip. On the face of it, the gathering promises too many great brains to miss.

On the afternoon before the convocation begins, the Texans throw a huge barbecue on the prairie. The host leads a spirited seventeen-hand black horse to me and challenges me to take a ride. They don’t know I’m home on the Malibu range these days. I get on and he immediately whacks its rump and the steed bolts. I hear a big laugh from the Texan crowd as the horse races into the open flatlands.

No need for the Lone Ranger’s “Hi-Yo Silver!”—we are at full gallop. I duck under low-hanging branches and pray the horse doesn’t step in a gopher hole. I grip tight with my legs. After five minutes of running his heart out, the huge stallion decides to turn back toward home.

The Texans are surprised when I gallop toward their prairie party ten minutes later, still on top of the lathered horse. I pull in hard on his reins and skid to a stop, right in front of them, with a smile.

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