Profunksticated

Profunksticated now directs you to a funny-azz post by one The Field Negro about whites becoming a minority in America by the time Pro is 83 years young.

August 15.

This date is of special significance to Profunksticated. It was on this day 27 years ago the Big State Supported School in the South conferred upon my person the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Journalism.

To reach that destination required me to travel a long winding road that started with a trip to the Philadelphia International Airport in 1974. You see, it was there that the family and I saw my little sister off on her first plane flight to visit relatives down South. Fascinating me was seeing all those Eastern Airlines (they went defunct in the 1980s) Boeing 727s parked on the concourse. The aircraft bore the words “Whisperjet.”

Which was false advertising. There was nothing quiet about the 727, which sounded like thunder on takeoff. But at the time, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to become an airline pilot.

So I did research. I looked at photos of planes. I gobbled up airline magazine ads. I would look in the sky and instantly identify the make and model of any given jetliner as it passed over our southern Jersey home on approach to Philly.

I learned at the time most commercial pilots learned to fly in the military. So when the Air Force recruiters came to my high school during my sophomore year, I asked how one could become a pilot.

“You have to become an officer.”

“How do you become an officer?”

“You have to have a four-year college degree.”

That settled it. I would go to college. For the first time, I had a real goal. I never viewed myself as college material. I had been drifting along as a disinterested 10th grader who regularly fell asleep in class, drooled on desks and had lousy grades. Now I had a purpose. I was going to buckle down, make up for lost time, get my grades up and get accepted into someone’s college.

And not just any college. It had to be one with an Air Force ROTC detachment, the completion of which would earn me a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force at the same time I receive my degree.

I was accepted to the Big State Supported School in the South. I matriculated in the fall of 1977. I joined the Air Force ROTC detachment. At first the upper class ROTC officers intimidated the crap out of me during those weekly field drills. But I adjusted to ROTC culture and made up my mind I was joining the Air Force when I graduated.

By the middle of my sophomore year, however, I was out. Kicked out. I admitted to using marijuana, and the military doesn’t look kindly upon drug users among their ranks. I was 18 and truly believed I’d get points for honesty. Nope. There’s a back story about how I managed to commit that life-changing blunder. I’ll cover that in a future post. I probably wouldn’t have become a pilot because an Air Force-paid exam showed the sight in my right eye was less than 20/20.

With a military career dashed on the jagged shoals of my naiveté, I had to focus on something else. That something else became journalism, which I also dreamed of doing long before the aviation bug bit.

I did the broadcast track at first, trying radio. But it wasn’t challenging enough. I’d heard the news-editorial track was more difficult, so I went there. It was challenging all right. So challenging that I had to repeat both reporting and copyediting courses. This also meant I had to take a couple of summer sessions to finish out my requirements, hence the August commencement.

I worked for the school newspaper and even got a summer gig with a paper in Florida in 1980, between my junior and senior years. After I received the degree, well, I did newspapers full time, along with drugs and alcohol, for the next 15 or so years.

August 15 marks another anniversary. It was a year ago today that the dude I call Profunksticated launched this blog, this mix of diary, rants, raves, commentary, introspection and old-school black culture. My heartfelt thanks goes out to all of you, commenters and lurkers, who’ve supported this blog and by extension, Profunksticated. May God bless all of you.