I groused when I heard one recent afternoon that Occupy St. Louis protesters were gathered near the Missouri end of the Martin Luther King Bridge. I wished they would just move on and occupy somebody else's route home.

Then I felt guilty. A voice inside asked if I had remembered nothing from four decades ago.

So I refreshed an old piece of my education by referring to pages 41-45 of the 1970 edition of the Muse. It was the yearbook back when Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and most other colleges had one.

A section labeled simply "Moratorium" used five sentences and 16 pictures to describe campus demonstrations in fall 1969 for and against ending the Vietnam War. The topic sits just ahead of a two-sentence, 22-picture remembrance of "Homecoming 1969."

I had observed both as a student reporter for the SIUE newspaper, the Alestle. As for the war, well, I believed in a journalist's neutrality.

Privately, I leaned toward the war. I was steeped in the America of John Wayne movies, raised by the generation that fought the Axis. I reached college age with a naive confidence that the United States would never be on the wrong side of a battle.

Plenty of us felt such patriotic certitude. Consider the implicit support of the conflict when "The Ballad of the Green Berets," glorifying the Army's elite warriors, reached No. 1 on the Billboard song chart for five weeks in 1966.

By 1969, some people my age were spitting on Green Berets and others returning from the unpopular war. I was disgusted by the disrespect for those who risked their lives to do their duty and had no more choice than anybody else about the policy behind it.

So it became easy to classify people in one of two ways: Americans or spitters. I figured the anti-war protests were like a circus, and all the performers were clowns.

While I may have been quietly pro-war, I was also one of many who desperately tried to stay out of it. I did not sign up. I clung to my 2-S student deferment. I was aware of the contradiction but found no cause to dwell on it.

With increased maturity, I developed a better grasp of this kind of circus. Protests, by their nature, accept all willing acts. The movement showcased an array of potheads, freeloaders, anarchists, contrarians and, yes, spitters. While a few with explosives proved very dangerous, there were plenty of fine minds in the ranks, too.

An illustration was a 'silent vigil" of demonstrators on the SIUE quadrangle, standing solemn and mute behind signs remembering the war dead. Their approach suggested that with all viewpoints fully debated, it was time just to think.

On Muse page 42, you can see the sincerity in their faces, and feel the quiet.

Over time, I came to recognize the futility of the war, the vile motives of some profiteers and the unspeakable pain of the needless sacrifice. I learned to appreciate that carrying a sign into a protest can be as patriotic as carrying a rifle into battle. And I promised myself never again to be so quick to judge the essence of discord by its rag-tag fringes.

America is splitting painfully again, reminiscent of those Vietnam days. The agony of 9/11 had united us, but the misery of the recession is dividing us. Some people are in panic over fears that what they lost may be permanently shifted to benefit someone else.

While these issues are different from the late 1960s, some of the emerging scenes are not. The videotaped spectacle of a California cop spraying pepper spray into the faces of peacefully sitting protesters looks like something we hoped was left in the deep past.

Sure, the national Occupy movement will offer its share of potheads, freeloaders, anarchists and contrarians. Yes, some of the protesters drive cars and talk on cell phones and sleep under tents built or financed by some of the very corporations they seem to resent. But those are just distractions.

I am grateful on this Thanksgiving to remember the lesson I learned so long ago about the protest circus.

You cannot develop an informed opinion about what's happening in the center ring if you don't get past the sideshow.