It’s a popular 2019 myth, and it goes like this: Never has America been more divided. Never have we argued with this level of frightening fire.

Nope. No way.

We have our battles of right vs. left and those who adore our president vs. those who don’t, but we faced more dangerous disagreement on, say, Oct. 13, 1973.

That was the day Air Force’s football team last visited Boulder to play the University of Colorado. In the stands, Air Force Academy Superintendent Lt. Gen. Albert P. Clark, an American hero, watched his staff get pelted with eggs by CU students who opposed the violence of the Vietnam War while embracing chaos on their campus. Cadets’ hats were stolen and uniforms ripped while Clark watched helplessly.

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The cruelty crested when a protester with a dim light in his (or her) head tossed a full beer can that hit Clark in the neck. Clark had survived three years of Nazi cruelty as a German prisoner of war. Clark was a kind man who excelled at listening, but he could be stern and direct. He soon made the calls required to end the football series. The Buffs traveled to Air Force the next season, ending a promising and thrilling football rivalry.

On Saturday in Boulder, the series will, finally, be blessed with a fresh beginning. Yes, the CU-Air Force football series required a break. It did not require a 45-year break.

I’m optimistic. The Falcons, struggling to sell tickets, need to renew acquaintance with Denver-area fans who forgot the team exists. And past sins need to be forgiven.

Clark, who died in 2010, failed to share my enthusiasm for the renewal of the series but declined to prohibit the Falcons returning to Boulder.

“I don’t hold bitterness forever,” Clark told me from his Colorado Springs retirement home in 2009. “I would not make any protest if the present leaders of the school decided to get a contract again.”

Not all Air Force supporters share my enthusiasm. Hans Mueh, a 1966 Air Force grad, remains angry about football trips to Boulder in the ‘60s. On one, he was sitting in his uniform beside girlfriend Sally (now his wife) at a restaurant near the CU campus when the owner asked him to leave. The owner, Mueh says, feared CU students would see his uniform and start a restaurant riot.

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Later, Mueh was sitting in the stands at Boulder when Air Force running back Dick Czarnata suffered a broken leg. CU fans, Mueh says, cheered the injury as the public-address shouted gleefully, “Shoot your cannon now, Air Force.”

Mueh takes a long pause.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he says. “I’ll never forget it.”

Mueh served as AFA’s athletic director from 2004 to 2015. He says the series never would have been renewed under his watch.

“You weren’t there, but I was and I know how ugly it was when I was a cadet,” Mueh says. “I hope that I’m wrong. I hope that CU fans accept Air Force the way Michigan, Oklahoma and Tennessee fans have accepted us. I hope CU has turned that page and that they are as welcoming.”

Another pause.

“I am skeptical.”

Lt. Gen. Wally Moorhead, a 1969 Air Force Academy grad, has known Mueh for decades, and he’s skeptical of his friend’s skepticism. Moorhead played wide receiver for the 1968 team that stampeded the Buffs in Boulder, 58-35.

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He often traveled to Boulder as a cadet to see friends. He sometimes encountered light hostility, but nothing more than what he experienced in other college towns. He has sweet memories of Boulder, and the sweetest are from Nov. 23, 1968.

Coach Ben Martin and his staff were upset with the Falcons when they arrived at CU’s stadium. Martin shouted his team lacked intensity and loudly predicted the Buffs would crush the Falcons.

This criticism incensed massive Air Force lineman Ed Epping. As he ran from the locker room toward the field, Epping faced a closed wooden door. He declined to bother with the handle. Epping knocked the door from its hinge, and the Falcons went berserk.

Utilizing a “Buffalo” offensive formation installed just for the game, Air Force romped to convincing victory. That night, Moorhead strolled near the CU campus in his uniform, listened to taunts from Buffs fans and laughed.

He had, after all, just conquered their team.

“It was college harassment,” says Moorhead, who lives in the Springs. “It was enjoyable. It was fun.”

Moorhead plans to sit in Folsom Field on Saturday to watch his former team. He expects to sit in peace. Ugliness from the past, he says, will fail to invade the present.

“How long has it been? The situation in the state has changed. The situation in the world is different,” he says.

“It’s totally changed. So there was some stuff back then and some people had some bad experiences, but this game is a good thing for Air Force football. I think it’s going to be exciting.”

So do I, Wally.

Clark made the wise and required move after the disaster of Oct. 13, 1973. While America struggled with an Uncivil War between young and old and war protester and war supporter, Air Force’s football team could not travel to Boulder for a tranquil football game.

That was a long time ago. Let’s give peace a chance in Boulder on Saturday.