SHEP BRYAN. Born 1953 TRANSCRIPT of OH 2058 This interview was recorded on October 9, 2015, for the Maria Rogers Oral History Program. The interviewer and videographer is Sue Boorman. The interview was transcribed by Susan Becker. ABSTRACT: Shep Bryan attended CU Boulder as an undergraduate during the early 1970s. He lived in Boulder during the tumultuous counterculture years of the early 1970s, and he talks about how that culture dovetailed with his own young adult rebellion. During that time, he participated in one of a series of football games that were held during those years that came to be known as The Hairy Bacon Bowl because they matched up young people who were or looked like hippies (hairy) against police officers (“pigs,” in the parlance of the time; hence “bacon”). He reflects on what the culture of the time and the Hairy Bacon Bowl meant to him. He also talks about his life after his CU years, including doing a stint in the Merchant Marines, becoming a born-again Christian, his marriage and family, and his work as both a businessman and a man of faith. NOTE: This interview is one of a series about a multi-year event known as The Hairy Bacon Bowl, which occurred in the first half of the 1970s. The interviewer and narrator are identified by their first names when there is a change in speaker. Added material appears in brackets. [00:00:00] Sue: So, we're here in Santa Anna, California, we're at Maximum— Shep: Maximum Security. Sue: —Security, which is—what's your address? Shep: 1415 East McFadden, Santa Anna, California. Sue: And I'm here with Shep Bryan, who played in the Second Annual Hairy Bacon Bowl in December 1971. We're going to do an interview about that for the Maria Rogers Oral History Program at the Carnegie Branch of the Boulder Library. I'm Sue Boorman, interviewer, and the date is October 9, 2015. And—hello, Shep. Shep: Hi. Sue: What's your date of birth? Shep: April 30, 1953, which makes me 62. So this is forty-four years ago. That's a long time ago. Sue: Yes, it is a long time ago. So, you'll remember what you remember. 1 Shep: Okay. I'll do my best. [00:01:10] Sue: Thanks. So tell me a little about your origins, where you grew up, and— Shep: Okay. I grew up in Fairfield, Connecticut. No—[reacting to interviewer saying that she grew up near there]—you didn't grow up in Fairfield? Westport. No way. Well, that's another story for us. Fairfield, Connecticut, is a nice, well-to-do place. I grew up—I suppose— privileged. I went to really good schools. I'm the eldest son of five children. I've got three brothers and a sister in my primary family. I was a really, really good, model kid. Until about eighth grade. And then, in eighth grade, I was able to begin to see more of the world. Things were beginning to get a little bit crazy then with the Vietnam world, and the students who just weren't paying attention to their adults. So good kid began a transition and—I'm a good kid again [smiles]—but there was a period of time when my mom says she lost her eldest son. So this time of Hairy Bacon and going to college and the years after that were really interesting times for a lot of people my age. And for our country. [00:02:50] Sue: Yeah. And eighth grade. What was it about that grade? Shep: That would be 13 years old. And though my dad was a Marine, and he ruled the house really pretty strictly, even at 13 years old, listening to music—I remember lying in bed at night listening to WABC with Scott Muni and Cousin Bruce on the radio, late at night, and hearing music that I'd never heard before, including The Grateful Dead, Vanilla Fudge, Paul Butterfield. And you listened to music like that back then, and all of a sudden you know there's something different than what you're experiencing playing capture the flag with your buddies around the house at night. And so, I was growing up. And I began to see the world with different eyes. [00:03:59] Sue: And so when you said "see the world" it wasn't that you were traveling the world. Shep: No. I was just seeing there was more to it. So growing up in a good school, and then I went away to school. I'm actually a preppie—I went to a boarding school in Connecticut. And so when I was sent away from home in tenth grade—tenth, eleventh and twelfth—so sophomore, junior and senior years of high school—I was no longer at home with my parents whom I respected and admired and listened to. I was now in a fresh place, surrounded by other young guys. It was a strict school, but boys would be boys, and you know, we learned how to play. Great academics, great sports, but also great recreation. And that's where I really opened up my eyes. I remember sneaking out of this prep school one weekend and somehow making it to New York City. I went to the Fillmore East and saw Credence Clearwater Revival. And I think they were playing with Mountain that night. And— man—“Katie, bar the door,” at that time. "I want more of this!" 2 [00:05:41] So by the time I graduated from high school, I needed to get away from anybody who knew who I was and would be putting limits on me. And so I knew I wanted to go to college, and getting away from home would be a good thing. Getting away from anybody I knew would probably be good. And so my mom took me, over Thanksgiving of my—probably my senior year—to Colorado—to see Colorado College, University of Colorado-Denver and Boulder, Colorado. The deal was over as soon as I walked onto the University of Colorado at Boulder campus. There were a lot of pretty girls wandering around in shorts. There were a lot of long-haired dudes playing Frisbee. There was a funny aroma in the air that—I found that of interest, and I said, "This is where I'm going to go to school for college." Sue: You knew. Shep: I knew immediately. And in fact it was the only college that I applied to it. Sue: Good you got in! Shep: It was a lucky thing that I got in. So, one of the conditions for my getting in, because I was a marginal student according to them, and I was out of state—I had to start school ten days after I graduated from high school. So I went to the summer session at CU in 1971. I graduated, I think it was like June 6, and I was in Boulder ten days later—June 15 or 16—starting college. Really quickly after I got out. [00:07:30] And so I still had very good study habits, and I got the best grades that summer that I'd ever gotten in college. It was all kind of downhill after that. But that summer, I still was applying myself. I remember I took—astro-geophysics 101 and philosophy. I can remember the philosophy teacher's name. His name was Mackley [?]. He wore sandals and shorts and frumpy shirts. He had a beard and long hair. He sat in the lotus position on his desk and was teaching philosophy. This was a very new experience for me. It wasn't at all like the prep school that I went to where I wore a jacket and a tie every single day, with nice pants. It was all very different. But it was really cool. [00:08:23] Sue: Interesting. So he—did he teach the whole class in lotus position? Shep: Mackley? He was the professor. Yeah. Pretty much. Sue: That's like a telling detail of— Shep: It was a very telling detail, and I'll tell you what was also very telling—I thought that most of what he was talking about was a bunch of bunk. I didn't really get it. And I didn't buy it either. We're talking about Jung, and other philosophers—it was way too heady for me. Especially 3 when it was presented with a slant from where he was coming from, which was probably pretty far to the left and out there. But I remember taking the exam for that class, and I understood the questions, but I didn't have a lot to say. And, you know, you get those blue exam books. And in a philosophy class with an exam that's going to last an hour-and-a-half or something like that, you're going to fill up a blue book or a blue-book-and-a-half or two. And I remember that I wrote—for the two essays—I just had one-page-and-a-half for each of those essays, and I figured that I had answered the question, and I got up, and I left. And I remember I got a B. And that told me that you can get across the message of what it is that you know and what you've learned without a lot of words.