Forty-eight years ago, I packed up my 1967 Ford Custom with all my earthly possessions and headed off to college.

I actually started to go to college in the fall of 1972 at Tulsa Junior College, which is now Tulsa Community College.

I lived at home with my Dad during my freshman year at TCC. I worked 40 hours a week a J.C. Penney and went to school when I wasn’t working. I actually accumulated 34 credit hours at TJC because I tested out of some classes.

Frankly, TJC back then was easier academically than Nathan Hale High School. I graduated from Hale in the spring of 1972.

After my freshman year, I originally was planning to transfer to Oklahoma State University – mostly because so many of my friends were already there as freshman. All of my course credits would transfer to any state school and OSU seemed like a good choice.

However, a recruiter from The University of Oklahoma came to TJC and we had a great visit. He told me about the journalism curriculum and he said he would get me some much-needed financial aid plus he would give me a part-time work-study job in his office on campus.

That sealed the deal.

I applied and was accepted. With some financial aid and the campus job, I could afford to go. Tuition back then was $14 a credit hour. (It was $6.25 an hour at TJC).

I can still remember loading up my car. My Dad came out in the front yard and said, “This is it. Your are on your own.”

He didn’t have the resources to pay for my college. All he could offer was a place to stay during the summers.

That was a sobering announcement that I pondered as I drove my car down the Turner Turnpike toward Norman.

I could save money by not living in the dorms. OU back then required freshmen to live on campus but since I was a sophomore transfer, I could live in an apartment away from the campus.

A friend from church – David Ritz – was also transferring to OU and we decided to find an apartment to split.

We wound up in a three-story white apartment house that had been converted from a fraternity or sorority house. It was right next door to the Baptist Student Union. (That apartment building later was torn down and the BSU was sold and a new one built on campus).

When we moved in, it was easy to see why the building was abandoned by the sorority or fraternity. Our third floor apartment, which cost a total of $50 a month, had no window shades or curtains.

It had a tiny refrigerator – the kind you might have in a dorm room – and a stove with two top burners and a small oven.

The beds were lumpy (thank goodness we didn’t know any history about them) and the shower was so small that is was hard to turn around when you were in there.

But it was so exciting to be in college, away from home and in a bachelor pad that those shortcomings didn’t matter that much.

OU had a great football team that year. Under coach Barry Switzer, they won the national title. I was working for the student newspaper and there was great excitement on that campus.

For the spring semester, I moved into the first floor of a house with two different roommates. It was bigger and better furnishings. It cost more but there were three of us and it was affordable.

I made some life-long friends in college. I learned a lot even though I admit I wasn’t a great student. My grades were pretty good – I could have done much better if I had applied myself.

I had great fun in college because of my friends. They were almost all Christians. We didn’t smoke or drink or go to wild parties. Most of us went to church every week and we were in weekly Bible studies. And a lot of us went to vespers every Thursday night at the BSU.

I had some professors who were radical progressives even back then but I also had some professors who were devout Christians.

I am concerned about life at OU and other schools these days. I am sure my circumstances are not the same.

It would be hard for a conservative Christian professor to survive in a secular college now.

My kids are grown. If I had to advise a young person where to go to college now, I would recommend a Christian college. Some kids are strong enough in their Christian walk to survive a secular school, but it’s just not like it was when I was a student.