By: Daniel Acosta, Jr.

Prologue

“Danny, that’s great news you’re coming to KU for graduate school to study pharmacology and toxicology; perhaps we can share an apartment”, Carlos excitedly told me over the phone.

“I’ll see you in a couple of days”, I replied.

My trip in early June of ’68 from Austin to Kansas in my one-year-old Mustang went relatively smooth. Carlos, who I knew from my first job at the Data Analysis Center at Texas Western College, was working on his master’s in physics at the University of Kansas. We thought finding an apartment in Lawrence would be easy but after several attempts we saw the looks in the faces of white landladies as they informed us that there were no longer any vacancies. We were in white middle America and two Mexican guys wanting to room together was not going to be successful. We split up and tried to get a place on our own.  

I was used to being around Anglos and Mexicans in Texas. Sure, I experienced discrimination by some whites, but it was something I had handled growing up in El Paso, which was more Hispanic than white, and then later at the University of Texas in Austin. It helped that I was often the top student in my high school and college classes. I had a few casual white friends, but they never brought up my “Mexican-ness” when I was around them. Would it be different in a place that was mostly white, with only a few people of color living in Kansas?

Actually, it turned out that many Kansans didn’t know what to think of me. One of my first experiences in Kansas was when I was able to find a room in a home owned by a white woman. After Carlos and I had split up, I saw an ad for a room near campus; the neighborhood was quite nice, unlike some of the other places I had seen.   

The landlady answered the doorbell, and I quickly asked if the room was still available.

“Are you a student at KU?”, she asked. “I prefer graduate students to live in my home”, she continued. 

“Yes, I just arrived and will begin my graduate studies in the school of pharmacy. My name is Dan Acosta, and I’m originally from El Paso”, I explained.

“You are kidding! I’m a golfer and am excited to see that a new pro from El Paso is leading the US Open. Please come in and let’s talk about Lee Trevino”, she smiled at me.

What a coincidence that I found a great room near campus, just because Lee Trevino and I were from El Paso and my landlady loved golf. Or was it? Several other events like this one would happen while I was studying in the land of Oz.   

It turned out that another graduate student in the school of pharmacy’s medicinal chemistry department had also rented a room in the same house, next to mine. He was from West Virginia and had a dry sense of humor. We hit it off and often went out together to have supper at a local restaurant. I was beginning to like Kansas. 

The landlady and I often talked when she saw me going to my room. She wanted to know more about my family background.

“Dan, you seem to have a European background”, she discreetly probed with her questioning.

She wanted to know if I was Italian because my last name ended in a vowel.

“No, my grandparents emigrated from Mexico”, I answered quickly.

I told her more about my Mexican heritage, and she gently nodded. While I was in Kansas, some whites asked me if I was an international student because of my looks and skin tone. Later in my career when I traveled to international scientific conferences around the world, I was often asked if I was born in the Middle East, and when I said I was an American they still didn’t

believe me. But when I told them that I was a Texan they all grinned and wanted to know more about the great state of Texas!

After the 9/11 downing of the Twin Towers in New York City and the near miss of a plane crashing into the Pentagon, I was routinely stopped and frisked at airports before I was allowed to reach my gate.

I was lucky to be at the University of Kansas that summer because of my draft deferment. But I had miscalculated, a major blunder on my part, about what I’d need financially to get started in Kansas. I stupidly thought my graduate stipend started at the first of the month; instead, it began after I had been in the department for one month. I just had enough money to pay my first month’s rent and to pay for gas for my trip from Austin.

“Dr. Wenzel, is it possible for me to work a few hours in a drug store to earn some money before the fall semester begins?”, I asked my PhD advisor.

“Dan, I have a rule that my graduate students not have outside jobs. I know part-time pharmacists make good money, but I believe going to graduate school is a fulltime job and demands your full attention to coursework and research”, he explained.

I said I understood and dejectedly walked out of his office. I didn’t want to tell him that I was running out of money for the month; I was too embarrassed. I secretly found a job as a kitchen worker at a private girl’s dorm, which provided enough money to buy food and cover minor expenses for a month. I had already worked two years at a girls’ dorms during my studies at the University of Texas, and I could do it again for another month at KU, even though I was a licensed pharmacist.

Every morning, I got up at 5 AM to work the morning breakfast shift. The dorm was an expensive private one and a group of freshman girls were taking orientation classes before they began their classes in the fall. The job was relatively easy, and I knew the month would fly by fast. Lawrence was a small town, and if I had taken on a pharmacist job, I am sure my advisor would have learned quickly about it. I didn’t want to start my graduate career on the wrong foot.

My advisor was collaborating with a young assistant professor on an experimental rat stroke model, and I was chosen to be a part of the team. During that first month I had made significant progress on my potential thesis research project by learning how to operate on the experimental rats and how to conduct a library search on my future dissertation topic.

That all stopped at the end of June with the bad news that I had to report to El Paso for induction into the US Army. During that month, the Vietnam war had worsened and LBJ needed more draftees to fight the war. He canceled all graduate student deferments. I decided to appeal the loss of my deferment with the El Paso draft board.

Return to El Paso

When I arrived in El Paso, I realized I needed some help with my appeal with the draft board. In my senior year of high school my catechism teacher was an attorney. I contacted him; he informed me that he had tried to get some of his clients out of the draft but wasn’t successful.

The country was in turmoil, and some draftees were fleeing the US to Canada. I wasn’t that desperate; I resigned myself to the fact I’d lose my appeal before the board. The meeting lasted less than 15 minutes; I lost my appeal. My only hope was that because I had a degree in pharmacy, I’d might be assigned to a medical facility as a pharmacist after my basic training and not be sent to the battlefront.

“Sirs, is it possible to delay my induction into the Army for a few months”, as I tried to be politically correct in addressing them before I got up to leave the conference room.

“Why are you making that request?”, the chair of the draft board sternly asked.

I convinced the board that I not be drafted immediately but to give me a few months to get my life in order and pay off some of my debts when I thought I was to work on a PhD for the next four years at the University of Kansas. I had spent money on travel expenses, bought clothes for those cold Kansas winters, paid rent on an apartment, bought some books, etc., etc.

I explained that I could work as a pharmacist with a good salary for a few months and recoup some of my expenses. The Board agreed that it was unfair that I had incurred those expenses because of the abrupt cancellation of my graduate school deferment. The board ruled that I’d be drafted in October, not July. The only Chicano on the board shook my hand and wished me good luck.

For the next three months I worked as a pharmacist at Gunning Casteel, the same one that I had worked at as a summer student employee in El Paso. My plan was to save as much money as possible, so when I returned to Kansas, I’d have a good sum for my new life as a graduate student. I worked a solid three months, putting most of my salary in the bank.

But I also wanted to have some fun those three months. I never dated in high school and had only a few dates while I was in pharmacy school. I was ready to meet and date more women, now that I was a pharmacist and had a good salary. My two sisters in El Paso arranged a few blind dates for me. Was I too old to date younger girls? At times, I wondered if I was too shy or uninteresting. Well, I was going to give it my best effort.

But it was just a series of fiascos of dates with some nice women, who took pity on me because I was soon going into the army.

My younger sister, Celia, set me up with a former classmate of hers. I took her out for dinner and the movies–Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? Our conversation at dinner focused on the fact that she guessed that the Dustin Hoffmann character was Harry Kellerman after 10 minutes into the movie and I didn’t. The rest of the conversation was her monologue on how great it was that a former high school classmate had clerked for a Supreme Court Justice. She barely asked me anything about my future career as a scientist.

My second date was with a girl who had a huge collection of owl miniatures in her apartment; was this some type of omen that my evening wouldn’t go well? In addition, she was a groupie who liked to attend country western concerts. She talked all evening on how she met Charlie Pride backstage in Las Vegas after one of his performances. Of course, she had all his albums. Again, no questions about what I was doing. 

My older sister, Tina, arranged a date with her husband’s niece. She was a fun-loving girl who talked absolutely about everything happening in her life, especially about her infatuation with a guy she thought was going to make it big as a folk singer. I’d throw in a word or two to show

interest in the one-sided conversation. We parted ways, wishing each other good luck in our future lives.

My last date was with a younger and somewhat innocent girl. I got to the house early and while she was getting ready, I had a witty and intelligent conversation with her older sister. I now wished that she had been my date that evening.

My sisters ran out of dates for me. It’s funny that they never got me any dates with any Chicanas.

Maybe later after I returned from the Army, I’d have luck in meeting and dating women. Those few months flew by and before I knew it, I was dropped off at the US Army reporting station by my sister, Celia, who I let use my Mustang. I hoped that my first assignment was in the states, and I’d not be sent to Vietnam.

I often wondered how future white politicians who were my age were able to get out of active military service, like Clinton, Bush, Quayle, Cheney, and Trump. When asked, Dick Cheney said “he had other priorities”. It worked for him. Trump was able to get a deferment because of a foot injury while playing college baseball. Clinton got a graduate school deferment as a Rhodes Scholar to attend Oxford University in England. Bush, through family connections, was assigned a jet pilot position in the National Guard as a weekend warrior. Not sure how Quayle got out of the military. 

In October ’68 I was inducted into the US Army at Fort Bliss.

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Daniel Acosta started a new career in writing when he retired in 2019. He has published 25 nonfiction stories on his life as a young Chicano boy growing up in El Paso and about his experiences as a high school, undergraduate, pharmacy, and graduate student in Texas and Kansas.