Fifties: Going back to Alfred

The fifties are sneaking up on me.  I mean those fifty-year anniversaries.  I am starting to notice them and even contemplate the meaning behind some of those half a lifetime events.  Not, of course, half a lifetime to me.  That passed some time ago.  These are events that happened when I was in my late teens and early twenties my personal golden (rhymes with olden) years.  That must be why those anniversaries are called golden. 

It started even before I decided to attend my fifty-year reunion at Alfred University.  A couple of years ago I remembered that it had been fifty plus years since what I like to call “The Great incident on the Village Green”. I was going to write a whole blog about it, a beautiful July day when the police attacked a group of young people peacefully singing songs and playing guitars on the Woodstock Village Green. I was there along with Geoff Brown, a friend from my college years.   It’s true.  It happened.  You can look it up if you feel like rattling through the archives in the Woodstock Library.   I have always assumed the police were worried that the civil rights movement might be sneaking into Woodstock along with those other beatnik types.   The town had a special report about the whole thing, and I was going to look it up and read it, but it sapped my energy just thinking about it.   Joan Baez showed up to sing outside the police department where they were holding the songsters. I’m sorry.  These days Woodstock exhausts me.

Me back then

If the year ends with a zero or five, it means Alfred University will be

calling me home for a reunion. This year it is my 50th. I am planning to

attend along with several of my old friends who had wonderful nicknames way

back then like BeBe, Tickie, Martie, CJ, Scottie, and, of course me, DJ.  I Love

the trip across New York State. I'm going through the Finger Lakes area to

that place "nestled away mid the Empire State hills".  Alfred was the perfect place for me in the fall of 1961. Alfred was dry because the county had never repealed Prohibition. At that time, the school had eight men to every woman attending because they had a large engineering school and very few women entering engineering. There were very strict curfews for women, but none for men. Fraternities and Sororities ruled the campus social life. The Twist was the dance and beer the preferred drink, so we could

twist the night away until curfew. There was no fear of meeting last night's date in the breakfast line as dining halls were separate for men and women. It was such an innocent time, a bubble,  with big surprises in the near future. I was such a terrible student, regularly appearing in a coat covering my pajamas, smoking cigarettes and looking through my notes for some hint of what was happening.

When I return to Alfred University for our half century reunion, I will be sure to walk past C.D. Smith's house. He was one of those wonderful professor teachers, part of the great Alfred faculty my genius friend, author and professor, Dave Ball still appreciates .[i]C.D.  lived across from Sigma, my house for junior and senior years and had a black cat I called "Cellar Door" who would scamper across the rooftops and in my window. I admit to feeding him because he was great company. "C.D" was a pretty good sport about it. His powers of observation were impressive. From the sidelines, as I managed props or costumes, I watched him work with actors, never a bully and always interesting and engaging as the group moved towards opening night.

I have been back to visit Alfred University several times since 1965. I have seen the campus changes, and I don't mind them at all.  There are many improvements.   Because this is the 50th reunion, I am thinking about ideas I actually brought forward with me as I went on in my daily life. Fellow student, Jim Morgan (later: James Franklin Morgan, teacher, lyricist and author) ruled the Theater Barn where all sets were constantly under construction. He taught me how to use a staple gun. We worked to the music of The Beatles, Motown and jazz, and we used whatever we had on hand covering and repainting old furniture for whatever play was in production. For some reason we had bolts of red velveteen, so it made many appearances on stage. His designs were ingenious works of art at least in my memory. Important life lesson learned: grab your staple gun, use what you have and move forward. You left us too soon, Jimmy. I miss you.

Terrible, world-altering events happened on the national scene during my years at Alfred.  Marilyn Monroe died, The Cuban Missile Crisis (I actually called home to see what my parents thought about the whole thing), JFK was assassinated.  Everyone remembers the day JFK died.  Students were gathered around in stunned silence.  I walked out of Alumni Hall, and someone was saying, “they shot the President”, and I really thought it must be a joke, a psych department experiment. The Beatles arrived to save us from the gloom, and the world went forward, or around or in various directions.  Little did I know that soon I would step from Alfred into the world of the free speech movement on the Berkeley campus.

Looking back at our food selection a half century ago reminded me that I had never tasted a bagel before living at Sigma Chi Nu.  Our president, Martha Lewin said we should have them available, and voila, our cook, Mrs. Baker obtained Lenders frozen bagels, and we had them as a major food group from that time forward.  Steak and cake was served every Friday in the dorm cafeteria.  Other food favorites:  knife-sliced English muffins and second cups of coffee at the campus center, and BLT’s made at midnight in the kitchen under the director of Scottie who understood how to cook crispy bacon.  Others who tried often set the broiler on fire.

There will be more observations when I return.  See you in a couple of weeks. 

Selfie

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[i] David Ball wrote: I agree about CD Smith. I also really liked the other theater guy, Ronald Brown. And we had an amazing English literature faculty. E.B. Finch, David Ohara, Mel Bernstein.... Ohara succeeded, astonisngly, in making me like neoclassical literature. Most people have only a teacher or two in their pantheon of major influences. We had many. Alfred was an enclave of top level professors who didn't want to play the idiotic publish-or-perish academic game, so instead came to Alfred where they could focus on their subjects and subjects. No grad assistants in sight. So surviving the medieval social framework was worth it.

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