Lincoln Trail College
I always said if you have a year and you change one or two people’s lives in that year in the classes that you teach. If you change one life, make one life better. It’s been a great year.
ABOVE LEFT: Harmon’s photo in the 1979 edition of Lincoln’s Logue.
ABOVE RIGHT: Harmon sits at his desk in a photo from the 1981 Lincoln’s Logue.
were going to hell in a handbasket, what we’re going to do. Finally, Steve McDevitt, who is my favorite, favorite people, said, “You know, if all we have to do is worry about chalk dust and the cigarette ash in the ashtray, this would be the greatest community college in the history of the United States.” That kind of quieted her down a little bit.
TV, bring it out to put it in the room, hook it up to the tape and we’d be off and running. That was the routine. Well, one day, one Thursday, I put tape on the desk, went to get the TV, brought it in, plugged it in, took the tape, put the tape in, and it was a triple X porno, right in the middle of the tape. I’m up there and I’m trying like hell to get the TV turned off. The class is roaring. They’re down on the floor. And I’m thinking, how did that porno tape get in my Vietnam tapes? It turned out the students had made an exchange of the porno tape for the videotape while I was gone to get the TV. They thought that was the great - est coup, probably in academic history. Anyway, it was years, years later, one of my students came to me and said he was the one who had, he had dreamed up that little incident. But it was one of those funny things and what I remember most, though, was trying to turn the TV off, and I couldn’t find I couldn’t find the right button. My tests were always short answers and essays. I did three essay questions, pick two, and short answer ques - tions were, oh, something short answer. And one of the questions I always ask is what is history. What is history? You know, it’s a simple question, but you gotta think of history. What is it? And I got a lot of great answers over the years.
Shenanigans in the classroom
I developed a class called A History of Vietnam. I’d been drafted and, you know, and did a little stuff in the Army and well, I wasn’t a very good recruit. I’ve always often maintained that was probably the worst soldier in the history of the U.S. Army. Anyway, I developed this class on Vietnam and I went to the Foundation board and asked them for 13 tapes, the history, it was broken into PBS tapes and they had made 13 tapes. I think the whole shebang was worth about $130 to get the tapes. I built the class around the tapes and the way we were doing it was on a Tuesday, Thursday class, Tuesday, I came in and lecture, and then Thursday we would see a film of what I lectured on Tuesday. And so Thursday, the way it went, I would go to a little room where all the TVs were and the VCR. I’d come in, I’d throw the tape on the desk and my notes or whatever, and then I’d run to this room, unlock the door, get a camera and
Forward Together 11
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