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".