In Love With A Voice

In 1968 I was a sophomore at the Eastern Kentucky School of Partying in scenic Richmond , Kentucky. The world seemed pretty simple as we were trying to obtain an education and dodge the draft that was becoming increasingly close to the carefree days of our lives. Robert McNamara was becoming as much a part of our lives as Robert Martin , the President of our college. Now Robert Martin undoubtedly is the driving force that made old EKU what it has become today, much unlike the current ,smiling lady attorney whose sole objective seems to be hogging the photos in the Alumni Magazine (37 times last issue). It was an age of innocence at a risk of sounding trite, but it definitely was an uncomplicated time of our lives. Most of our time was taken in going to class often enough to keep our 2-S deferrments, and to see just how many love connections could be made on limited time and finances. There were many different groups and subgroups that looked upon socializing in diverse ways. There were the Frat boys who did everything together. These fair haired wonders partied together, attended classes together, and picked fights together. I always liked to get one isolated from his brothers and then look him in the eyes. They were not comfortable one on one and usually found an excuse to exit the situation. They generally dated the Sorority babes with the bouffant hair and the drink till you pass- out attitude. Think Marlo Thomas or Mary Tyler Moore At Specks with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I worried that sometimes they would pair up and get their diamond studded pins hung together, but somehow they survived. My own world and that of my friends was a lot different than that of the frats. The golden haired boys in Weejuns were the top and we were the near bottom feeders. The real lowlifes were the Rotsie Lifers but that's another story. One of my casual compadres was named Eddie, and he was a business major from Indiana whose love in life was playing cards all night and smoking unfiltered Camel cigarettes. Eddie , like the rest of us in Todd Hall never changed his sheets but once a twice a semester and never made his bed, which was the card table. Imagine a dirty grey table cloth with ground in cigarette ashes, pizza stains, and you 've got a visual image of Eddie's sheets. Eddie himself was somewhat a clean cut Jerry Garcia who tended to dress in Madras shirts and levi jeans. Think maybe Richard Dreyfuss in American Grafitti and you have mostly Eddie. One memorable night Eddie and the boys were playing euchre and the phone rang; Eddie answered and she had him from hello, again coining a phrase. Now Eddie wasn't much of a ladies man in the broadest sense,but the room sat back in awe as he skillfully converted a wrong number into a blind date the next night, which coincidentally was Thursday, the biggest night for socializing on a suitcase campus. We half-heartedly tried to tell Eddie that he didn't know what his blind date looked like, yet to no avail as Eddie was enraptured by the sound of her voice," The Voice Of An Angel"!WE tried to look her up in the yearbook but she wasn't there, another ominous omen, but Eddie wouldn't listen. He was so enamored with his success with a woman that he lost at cards the rest of the night. He crawled in between his filthy ash-encrusted sheets that night with visions of an angel in his mind.Now the truth of the matter is that even today college campuses have students that everyone knows by sight as either beautiful sights or the extreme opposite. Now EKU at that point had a couple of girls that through no fault of their own are the living barometers of how ugly a woman can be. Unkind as it may be, men have to have things to compare other things by. As Eddie headed out to Walters hall that eventful fall evening in 1968, we all wished him the best , yet with dread in our hearts, for Eddie's picture was in the yearbook and we knew no Babe would have accepted a date with him. Simple as that. Think Eagles" There's going to be a Heart Ache Tonight".Well as I said we almost christened him with champaigne as he departed Todd Hall in his crisp madras shirt , his Bass lace ups buffed to a glow and his Camel pack(s) bulging from every pocket. Eddie was our man on a mission, probably the second date in his college career but with the hope of all humanity as he swaggered over to Walters Hall in a Cloud of Camel Smoke and spitting shreds of tobacco. True to form the Maiden came down at his bidding, and true to form it was one of the two aforementioned coeds that the campus judged ugliness by. She said' "Are You Eddie"? He was so shocked he honestly said"Yes". I would have said NO but I wouldn't have been ther in the first place. They started downtown and nature came to the rescue. A fall drizzle started and neither had an umbrella, whereas the girl told Eddie she had a friend in Clay Hall that she could run in and borrow an Umbrella from. Eddie , being an Indiana gentleman, agreed and waited as she went upstairs to get the thing. Eddie, again being the gentleman did the honorable thing and ran like hell back to his dorm as soon as she was out of sight. He entered the room where the card game was in full force with a red faced, out of breath state. Eddie wasn't used to physical activity and had run a quarter mile at record speed , much as if the Headless Horseman was after him. In hindsight the Headless Horseman was probably more attractive. We all learned a lesson that night,what I'm not exactly sure, but Eddie slipped into that card game afterwards just as easily as he crawled into those filthy sheets every night. Somewhere Eddie is probably a grandfather who has a woman that changes sheets once a week ,needed or not, and who once took a walk on the wildside. Thanks Eddie for the memory.

Down Rose Street

Today I had several areas to call on in downtown Lexington, and like always I somewhat preplanned the route most advantageous to getting the tasks completed without wasting a lot of time and precious gasoline. Traffic was moderately light as I went from Winchester Road , across East Main , and then hit Rose as I was headed for a destination in Southland. Now Rose Street is always an adventure as it takes you right through the heart of the University of Kentucky School of Big Blue Athletics, and right through the busiest walkways of students heading back and forth to class. There are literally hundreds of students of every description as they remind me of a colorful insect colony invading the concrete streets. It is as if something has rattled the walls of a colony and they have suddenly poured out to attack the intruders. Two things are certain: 1) Every student on the prowl is ages younger than me, and2) It isn't a UK football triumph that has them agitated.I am amazed at how young this group of students look as they scurry across streets both legally and with jaywalking aplomb.They are a mass of pink shirted sorority girls talking with great energy on their cell phones, and they are jerking masses of music listeners as they are wired to the newest and smallest I-Pods. I can't help but think back on my own college days at Eastern Kentucky School Of Partying, and how similar, yet worlds apart we were to this generation. When I started in 1967 Neil Armstrong was just one of several astronauts, and we still had the vision that the moon could be green cheese. We registered for classes the old way without computers, and it wasn't until around 1969 that we had punch cards with colored, striped borders. Have your salmon colored card ready at the end of the line.Don't forget to go through the Deferrment Station to register for your 2-S, or you might end up in The Mekong Delta.The pretty girls were in endless numbers, and the Mini-skirt was the greatest gift from fashion that could ever be expected. Everyone got those gift packages at the Campus Bookstore that had Deodorant, Hair-oil, and toothpaste. We would buy our books , new 33rpm records, and EKU maroon and white t-shirts to wear back home. I listened to Purple Haze and Foxy Lady like everyone else and thought this is a long way from home! It was a magical time as everyone would go down to the Ravine on those warm autumn evenings and dream of getting in trouble with that girl in English 101 class that had the impossibly long and tanned legs. We'd walk downtown Richmond and eat at Ma Kelleys, where for $2.50 you could eat the best fried chicken on earth. Or you could go down to Shepherd's Pool Room and eat chili and onion covered hamburgers that came close to what Mom used to fix. I never remember the students looking so young and baby-faced as I saw on Rose, yet we must have looked somewhat innocent. I remember mini-skirts and tall black boots and a furious snowball fight between the Combs Classroom Building and the Old University Building. Everyone won and everyone lost. I won a blond named Valeria for too short a time, but I was a Freshman and she was a Junior, and Freshmen have notoriously short attention spans. Then there was the angel faced little blond from Louisville that I let cheat off of my tests in Chemistry 101, knowing even then there was a barter available. Little did I know until later that she was letting two Senior Athletes copy from her as she copied from me. Just as well as those two Athletic Idiots had nothing I wanted to trade. As I stumbled along I realized that being from a poor family did not set me apart, as most of my fellow students were equally poor. What did set me apart was my ability to crank out essays and term papers for students who either could not or would not write for themselves. I made a lot of money in my new line of work, and I like to think that many successful students traversed the perils of 101 and 102 because they had a guardian angel watching over their English proficiency. Well maybe "Angel "is a little grand for what I did, but the system worked. Even today I can't help but smile when I hear of the failure rate in English and think of the tricks I pulled with those papers. Sometimes I think I knew as much about Fitzgerald and Zelda as Fitzgerald himself. I wrote enough papers on Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway to go from here to Hazard , Kentucky. That was in the days of the old clip ink pen, and man when Bic invited that new pen I was in heaven . I could not type then , and can do no better now, yet I always traded written papers to girls who could type my own papers for me when necessary. Some could call this unethical or even plagarizing, yet I called it a job. Some of my buddies sat in Todd Hall and smoked cigarettes while playing cards all night while I slaved in the Sweatshop writing for new found friends from the mountains. Fudlow came pounding on my door at 3 o'clock in the morning needing an essay for the next morning, never thinking that he had been drinking at Specks all night and spent all of his term paper money. Not being in a good mood at being awakened at such an hour by a penniless customer , the Angel of writing cranked out a paper in 45 minutes and Fudlow left with an A quality paper, but minus a nice leather coat that I had been admiring since his mother had bought it for his birthday. I said I was A Guardian Angel and Not Mother Theresa . The next day Fudlow got an "A" as expected and his teacher told him" Paul, you have such wonderful Insights" He didn't disagree as those insights had come at a high cost, you know about the wages of sin? I started on Rose and ended back in Richmond 38 years ago. Fudlow is a successful insurance agent and like Harry Chapin says,"We both got what we wanted such a long time ago".

Amish Rumble

As I was heading out of Stanford this morning my thoughts were on my appointment with a banker in Hazard, and I barely noticed the Amish Buggy that I met near the Cedar Creek Dam. A couple was riding along in their go-to- town buggy at a pretty fast clip.These buggys are something of a marvel as they have roll-up windows and a windshield. They also have a required set of headlights and turnlights, as well as a huge orange triangle as fitting a slow moving vehicle on a fast travelled highway such as US 150 . As I said I didn't pay much attention to the buggy until I met the next one, then the next one , and finally a total of 10 fast moving Amish vehicles in a row. Wow!! This set my mind to thinking; is it a convention? And then it hit me , I was privileged to see the staging and start of an AMISH RUMBLE! I'd never thought that our humble, kind, stand-offish citizens were capable of any emotions, much less being royally pissed off! As I continued toward Hazard I thought of how little I actually knew about our gentle fellow Lincoln Countians. My previous experience was restricted to standing behind a couple at Food Lion as they bought huge amounts of whole chickens. I remembered two things, one the gentlemen didn't have back pockets on their funky dark blue jeans, and secondly, they paid for their chicken with a First Southern Debit card. Somehow the plastic card and old Dobbin out in the parking lot seemed at odds with each other. These kind people try not to pay taxes to the government, and will not go to war. Some of them drive, but this is a different sect, I think. Mennonite maybe? I couldn't help but think of our contrasting lifestyles. Obviously we are dissimilar in many ways besides the lack of back pockets. I believe that $3 a gallon gasoline doesn't affect them the way it does me , but maybe they have a Brother Thomas who has cornered the market on hay , and they would be equally perturbed. As a matter of fact they may have been going en mass to protest rising hay prices. When I read of rising natural gas bills for the coming winter are they worried? I think not . They'll just cut a little more wood and cuddle up a little closer to their stately wife, and be happy as people without Bob Seeger can be. I doubt from the looks that the UPS delivers many Bow Flex Machines to the Amish, and I doubt that they are terribly worried about Iraq, Katrina, or American Idol. ( You know there may be something in Amishism after all). I stayed in Hazard all day marvelling at how mr. Caterpillar is making it possible for Appalachia to become more like Kansas every day. As I neared home I met the same parade of carriages in about the same place heading in the opposite direction. They all seemed to be smiling, and I perceived they had had a good day. If indeed there was a rumble then they must have kicked some ass. If , on the other hand they were celebrating something else then I surmise it had to do with making money. People who make money smile like those Amish were doing. Go for it Amish People. Feed those horses and wear those funky clothes while you eat Debit card chicken. What could be better? As for me, I'll buy $3 gasoline at BP and listen to Smokey as I elude the Blue lights. Cruise by Manchester listening to BABY BABY DON"T CRY.