Mount Diablo College

Mount Diablo College is the community college Conrad Hensley attended after leaving home, a brief but consequential stop in his education. In his second and final year there, he found a subject that let him interpret the changing landscape around him—and a teacher who recognized his insight. The memory later sharpened his sense of the future he had not pursued.

Setting and Enrollment

After high school, Conrad left home and enrolled at Mount Diablo College in Contra Costa County. He supported himself with odd jobs and managed to get by, circumstances that place his attendance within a precarious early adulthood rather than a settled academic career. His time there lasted only two years; the second was his last.

The 7-Eleven Land Discussion

In a class taught by Mr. Wildrotsky, Conrad encountered the concept of the bourgeois life: order, courtesy, education, financial success, respectability, pride in one’s children, and domestic tranquillity. Although the instructor was sardonic about that ideal, Conrad found it deeply appealing. The lesson became personal when the class discussed the nearby town of Pittsburg, California, and its successive names, each tied to hopes for a different kind of development.

Conrad proposed 7-Eleven as a new name. He had driven through the area and seen a broad spread of condominiums and inexpensive housing, where repeating franchises—including 7-Eleven, Wendy’s, Costco, and Home Depot—served as the practical landmarks between communities. Mr. Wildrotsky embraced the observation and devoted two weeks of class to the phenomenon he called 7-Eleven Land. Conrad remembered the episode as a rare moment when he felt important.

The Education He Did Not Pursue

Mr. Wildrotsky urged Conrad to apply to the University of California, Berkeley and complete a bachelor’s degree, but Conrad did not follow that advice. Years later, while looking at himself in a bathroom mirror in Pittsburg, California, he recalled the instructor’s persistence and felt the ache of what might have been. By then he was married, had a son, and was expecting another child. Mount Diablo College thus stands in his memory at the point where intellectual promise and a possible academic future were visible, but not realized.

Narrative Significance

The college’s importance lies less in a long record of study than in the contrast between Conrad’s brief recognition in class and his later regret. His account of 7-Eleven Land shows him noticing how commercial development reshaped the names and landmarks of neighboring communities; the instructor’s response briefly confirmed the value of that perception. Recalling the episode as an adult, Conrad measures that moment against the education he might have pursued and the family responsibilities that had since defined his life.