Point and Shoot, Florida (YU)--50 years ago yesterday, December 21, 1956, Razz Heap dropped out of high school and joined the Air Force.

The first time he got out, they didn't have the GI Bill, so he lived at home and went to Palm Beach Junior College in Lake Worth.

He took a maximum load and made straight A's. The service had been a maturing influence on him.

He took the summer off to fish and drink beer with his brother Bill, who was home for the summer from his freshman year at Florida State University.

At the end of the summer, when Bill went back to school, Heap reenlisted.

He did so (1) to learn a trade, (2) to get back overseas, (3) to have the GI Bill when he got out the second time, and (4) to get out from under his father's thumb, his father's roof, when you live in your father's house, and eat your father's groceries, you obey your father's rules.

Heap learned a trade. Electronics technician, flight facilities equipment installer, writer of Communications Electronics Engineering-Installation Plans (CEIPs). This, along with a liberal arts degree, got him his first job as a technical writer. And the military training and experience were probably more helpful to him than the liberal arts degree.

He got back overseas, to Japan and Korea. And Hawaii. He had been on Okinawa his first hitch.

They had the GI Bill when he got out the second time. He finished college and did a year of graduate work in anthropology with the help of the GI Bill.

He got out from under his father's rules.

Now, Heap was a father.

One son quit high school and went on the road with a bluegrass band when he was 16.

The other son finished high school, enlisted in the Marines, to be a bandsman, and was in a Marine band for four years, including assignments in New Orleans and Okinawa.

Both sons now make a living playing music.

Neither son has a college degree, unless you count the College of Hard Knocks, where, as Scott Nearing says, an expulsion is often a promotion.

Herman Melville said a whaling ship was his Harvard and his Yale.

Heap thought of his two hitches in the Air Force as his Harvard and his Yale.

He graduated from college, and did four years of graduate work, in anthropology, but, as a writer, he was self-taught, like Joseph Campbell.

He educated himself, by doing it.

He went and saw for himself, reported back what he found.

He was a report writer.

Report on the Suppression of Razz Heap's Work by Unknown Forces.

That's what Bill Lee was typing in the movie Naked Lunch.

REPORT ON THE ASSASSINATION OF JOAN LEE BY UNKNOWN FORCES.

"The present writer...."

Of course, Bill Lee killed Joan Lee himself, doing their "William Tell act," to prove to the border guards he was a writer, when he and Joan crossed from Interzone into Annexia.