Tag Archives: Vanderbilt

Versus 1981-82

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Today was faux spring. That happens occasionally even in darkest winters. The aspects of spring we got today were non-freezing temps, drizzle and mud. The dog at least is happy. And it is better than a subzero day.

Last year, when looking up William F. Hagerty, a VU alum who eventually became the current U.S. ambassador to Japan — succeeding such notables as Caroline Kennedy, Walter Mondale, Douglas MacArthur II, Joseph Grew, Townsend Harris and arguably Commodore Perry — I also came across this photo in the 1982 Vanderbilt Commodore yearbook.

Pictured are staff members of Versus magazine, the student magazine, 1981-82. Actually only about half of the staff; the editor for that year is not even pictured. I’m third from the left, top row. Or third from the right, come to think of it. These days I’m on Facebook with four of the people pictured, including Dan, bottom row right. I correspond by postcard and email with another person in the picture who doesn’t do Facebook.

The present generation of VU student journalists will not know the joys and irritations of producing a paper magazine. At least not Versus, nor a paper version of the student newspaper, The Hustler. At some point in the current century, those were unceremoniously dumped, as was the terrestrial radio station, WRVU, though that was sold for a mess of pottage.

Birm-Tex ’17

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Before spending the last week in San Antonio visiting family, I spent about 36 hours in Birmingham, Alabama, during the first weekend in December. I went there to visit my old friend Dan, whom I hadn’t seen in about 18 years.
That’s too long, as the Wolf Brand Chili man said. See your old friends if you can, because we’re all mortal. I was also fortunate enough to become reacquainted with his wife Pam, whom I’d only met once, more than 20 years ago.

Dan and I had a fine visit, talking of old times and places — we’ve known each other 36 years — but not just that. He grew up in Birmingham and has lived there as an adult for a long time, so he was able to show me around and tell me about the city’s past and about recent growth as an up-and-coming metro. In this, he’s quite knowledgeable.

I’d heard something about that growth, but it was good to see some examples on foot and as we tooled around hilly Birmingham in Dan’s Mini Cooper, which was also a new experience for me. Not to sportiest version, he told me — he’d traded that one for this one he now drives — but it had some kick.

On the morning of Saturday, December 2, we first went to Oak Hill Memorial Cemetery, very near downtown Birmingham, and the city’s first parkland-style burial ground. Dan told me he’d never been there before. Not everyone’s a cemetery tourist. But he took to the place, especially for its historic interest, and he even spotted the names of a few families whose descendants he knows.

From there we drove to Sloss Furnaces, which, as the postcard I got there says, is “the nation’s only 20th-century blast furnace turned industrial museum.” Iron mining and smelting made Birmingham the city that it is. So it was only fitting that we went to Vulcan Park as well, to see the mighty cast-iron Vulcan on his pedestal on a high hill overlooking the city.

Toward the end of the afternoon, I suggested a walk, and so we went to the Ruffner Mountain Nature Preserve, which has 14 miles of hiking trails. More than that, the earth there is honeycombed with former mines, all of which are now sealed. But we got to see the entrance of one of them, dating from 1910.

After all that, we repaired to Hop City Beer & Wine Birmingham, a store that has an enormous selection of beer and wine in bottles, as well as a bar with a large draft selection, where we relaxed a while. Had a cider and a smaller sample of beer that I liked.

Along the way during the day, we also visited Reed Books, a wonderful used bookstore of the kind that’s increasingly rare: owned and run by an individual, and stacked high with books and other things, with only marginal organization. I bought Dan a copy of True Grit, which he’d never read.

We drove through some of Birmingham’s well-to-do areas, sporting posh houses on high hills and ridges along roads that I could make no sense of, twisty and web-like as they were. Luckily, Dan knew them well.

In downtown Birmingham, we also drove by some of the historic sites associated with the civil rights movement, including the new national monument. According to Dan, it would take a day to do the area right, so we didn’t linger. I got a good look at the 16th Street Baptist Church, the A.G. Gaston Motel, where King and others strategized, and Kelly Ingram Park, where protesters were attacked with police dogs and water cannons.

During my visit, I ate soul food, breakfast at a Greek diner — Greek immigrants being particularly important to the evolution of restaurant food in Birmingham, Dan said — excellent Mexican food (mole chicken for me), and a tasty breakfast of French toast and bacon made by Dan and Pam. On the whole, we carpe diem’d that 36 hours.

In San Antonio, as usual, I was less active in seeing things, but one sight in particular came to me. On the evening of Thursday, December 7, I looked out of a window at my mother’s house and saw snow coming down. And sticking. “I’ll be damned,” I muttered to myself.

At about 7:30 the next morning, I went outside to take pictures. Nearly two inches had fallen, according to the NWS. The snow was already melting. A view of the front yard.

Of the back yard.

It occurred to me that hadn’t seen snow on the ground in San Antonio since 1973.

The Ambassador in His Salad Days

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Today was about as foul a day as can be, marked by cold rain that varied unpredictably from drizzle to downpours. Strong winds blew nearly all the time. As much as 60 MPH, the National Weather Service said. At least it was warm for January, above freezing, or it might have been a blizzard.

Did a short item about Bill Hagerty recently, who will probably be the next U.S. ambassador to Japan. A little research told me that he went to Vanderbilt. A little more research told me he was Class of ’81, or two years ahead of me. I didn’t know him, and he certainly didn’t know me, unless it was as one of those characters who wrote for the student magazine Versus. Which he wouldn’t have, because no one pays attention to bylines, even if they read the articles.

I hauled out my copy of the ’81 VU yearbook, The Commodore. The spine cracked a little. Grumble. Anyway, Bill Hagerty’s with the other SAEs on p. 301 and his senior picture is on p. 396, which lists him as William Francis Hagerty IV, econ.

Bill Hagerty at Vanderbilt 1981

The girl immediately to his left — who presumably had nothing to do with him except for alphabetical placement — is a sad story I don’t know, and didn’t know then. Her caption reads, “Haberman, Harriett Susan, elem ed. May 20, 1959 — January 23, 1981.”

RIP, Mike Johnson

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Again I’m sad to report a passing. Mike Johnson, my friend for almost 35 years, has died in Nashville. Michael Owen Johnson, in full. He leaves behind his wife Betra, two stepchildren, father Ensign Johnson, older brother Lee, twin brother Steve, younger sister Susie, and many friends. Here’s Mike in 1987 at a wedding we both attended.
Michael Owen Johnson 1987There’s something special about the camaraderie of young men, and I’m glad Mike and Dan and Steve and Rich and I shared that in the early 1980s, late in our respective college careers. A recalling of most of the things we did together wouldn’t be all that interesting to other people, so it’s enough to mention in passing the meals shared, music heard, movies seen, books and girls explored, parties attended and thrown, intoxicants enjoyed, and the late-night (and sometimes afternoon or evening) bull sessions rising from the friendship of bright, curious lads, of whom Mike was definitely one.

It was Mike’s engineering skills that enabled us to build, in the spring of 1982, an isolation tank in the house we rented, and keep it running through all of the next school year. He planned it and oversaw construction. It was no small undertaking: the thing was a wooden box with a hatch door on the side, and large enough to hold an adult. You floated inside, door shut, in the dark and quiet, buoyed by water saturated with Epsom salts held by a swimming pool liner affixed to the inside. It had ventilation and a heating system that had to be turned off when someone was in the tank (otherwise, Mike told us, there was the risk of being electrocuted by all the power the TVA could offer).

One time Mike was our cicerone in the only bit of non-commercial caving that I’ve ever done. In the summer of ’82 — that fine summer, and Mike was part of it — Mike and Steve and I went to rural Tennessee to an undeveloped cave whose name I’ve entirely forgotten, and we rambled around inside for most of the day, eating lunch under the earth, getting caked in mud, and making our muscles sore. I’m sure it wasn’t a technically difficult cave, but it was a thrill all the same. Here’s something I’ve never forgotten: always have three sources of light, Mike told us. For each of us in that cave ramble, that meant a helmet with an acetylene lamp; a flashlight; and a candle and matches.

By training and inclination, Mike was an electrical engineer. After finishing school, he worked for NASA for a few years, doing I couldn’t tell you what at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. In early 1984, I visited him, and he showed me around the place, a thing that might not be possible now in our more paranoid times. That morning there was a Shuttle launch, and we went to a meeting room with a lot of other engineers to watch it on closed circuit TV. Off it went, and the engineers filed quietly out to their jobs. “They only would have reacted if something had gone wrong,” Mike said.

Though he clearly had a keen engineering mind, I have to add that Mike wasn’t stereotypically narrow. Most engineers probably aren’t, but whatever the truth of that notion, he had a wide array of interests: science, literature, politics, history, and much more I probably didn’t know about. He had a sometimes dry wit and leftist inclinations. We always had something to discuss.

After his stint at NASA, he returned to Nashville, where he’d grown up, determined to be his own boss. Or as he put it to me, “I don’t like having a boss.” And so he was an independent contractor for the rest of his life, with all the ups and downs that go with that — something I can appreciate these days. He acquired a house in the Sylvan Park neighborhood, a vintage property, and did a lot of the necessary renovation himself. While I still lived in Nashville, we hung out a fair amount. Once I went with him to visit a client of his: a refrigerator factory in Middle Tennessee, to see the parts and the guts that went into that everyday machine — something I’d never have seen otherwise.

Mike introduced me his old friend Wendy Harris around Thanksgiving 1982 (there’s that year again), who’s been a dear friend of mine ever since. In fact, once I heard about Mike’s death from Dan on Tuesday, I knew I had the difficult task of calling Wendy to tell her, since I didn’t think she’d heard. So I did. They went to Hillsboro High School in Nashville together, and in fact before I moved away from Nashville, I was friends with about a half-dozen other people Mike had gone to high school with, many of whom Wendy introduced me to. A guy like Mike has a lot of friends.

Late in life — I suppose about 10 years ago — he married the charming and intelligent Betra, a woman originally from Sumatra. I believe they met in Singapore, where she was working and he had been sent for a while by a client. I never heard the full details of their courtship; I don’t usually ask about that kind of thing, and Mike wasn’t talkative about it, but no matter. I visited them twice, and they were clearly happy together.

Unfortunately, Mike wasn’t much of a correspondent, so my occasional visits to Nashville over the last three decades were our main connection over those years. He offered me a place to stay during my visits a number of times, and sometimes I accepted. I sent him postcards now and then. He did get to meet Yuriko, and younger versions of my children; I’m glad about that. I saw him for the last time a few years ago, and despite his manifest health problems, we had a fine visit, talking of old times and more recent things, spending much of the time in the Johnson back yard, where Betra had cultivated a lovely garden.

He will be missed. RIP, Mike.

RIP, Jim Ridley

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I didn’t know Jim Ridley, but I knew of him, and had I lived in Nashville longer than I did, I might have easily made his acquaintance. Lately he was the editor of The Nashville Scene, the alternative paper in that city, but was best known as a film critic. Stricken with heart attack late last month, he died Friday at the unnerving age of 50.

As it was, I also just missed knowing him at Vanderbilt, which he attended as a freshman the year after I graduated. He wrote for both Versus (the student magazine) and The Hustler (the student newspaper) that year, both of which I had just finished writing for. This is the picture of the Versus ’83-84 staff from the ’84 yearbook.

Versus Staff 1983-84Jim Ridley’s the large fellow toward the right of the picture with his hand on his head. As I said, I didn’t know him, but I did know more than half of the other people in that picture, all of whom were involved in one way or another with VU student publications when I was there.

Here’s his obit from his own publication, and an appreciation from another film critic. RIP, Mr. Ridley.

Also: a fellow named Archie Dees has died. I didn’t know him either, but Indiana University remembers him as a basketball star whose heyday was in the 1950s (he was 80 when he died). I noticed that he was originally from Ethel, Mississippi, though he went to high school in Downstate Illinois. His central Mississippi roots and his surname very likely mean we’re cousins of some kind. Go back far enough — a century and a half, maybe — and we’re sure to have some common ancestors.

The Going Away Party

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In January 1987, I moved from Nashville to Chicago to change jobs and my surroundings. It was also the only time anyone’s ever held a going away party for me. (I went to a pre-deportation party in Osaka for a gaigin once, but I wasn’t that gaigin.)

DaveStephDees1.16.87Anyway, on January 16, 1987, Stephanie — she’s the one in the middle, flanked by Dave and me — hosted my going away party. There was actually a theme: sleepwear. Some people came dressed that way, some didn’t.

PaulSteveJonPaul, with his eyes closed; Steve, whom I don’t remember much about; Jon up in the corner; and way in the back, Raggedy Ann. Some of the attendees were coworkers of mine, others were part of a poetry reading group that I attended from time to time in Nashville. It was an informal group that met in members’ apartments. After all this time, the only verse I remember from those events was ahead of Christmas one year, when one of us (not me) recited some of Walt Kelly’s “Boston Charlie.” First verse below. It’s not as easy as you think.

Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla Walla, Wash., an’ Kalamazoo!
Nora’s freezin’ on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower alley-garoo!

SusieLibbyOne the bed, Suzie, and on the floor, Libby. Others in attendance were Wendy, Mike, Barbara, Donna and Tanya, and maybe more I’ve forgotten. Note that someone brought doughnuts, and not just any doughnuts. Krispy Kreme, back when that treat wasn’t available at every gas station from here to Timbuktou.

Also, on the right side of the picture, a blue strip. That was part of the design of the movie guide that Sarratt Cinema at Vanderbilt published once a semester. Remarkably, because of my pack-rat nature, I still have some of them, including Spring 1987, which was hanging on the wall. The movie we weren’t seeing that night was Aliens.

Even more remarkably (but not really), I used to record the movies I saw at Sarratt in the Day Minders I used to use. The last one noted before I left for Chicago: My Beautiful Laundrette, January 8. That’s probably the last movie of many I ever saw there — all of which formed part of my informal collegiate and post-collegiate education.

Desk Debris

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The other day, an old friend mentioned a paperweight she has on her desk, one that she acquired when we worked together in Nashville in the mid-80s. I didn’t remember the item, but it did inspire me to take a look at some of the debris on my desk even now.

Desk Debris

The largest item is a plastic durian. A contributing editor at a magazine I once worked for, a woman who lived in Singapore for a while, gave it to me. I think because it came up in conversation that I knew what a durian was. The dog chewed on the stem not long ago, but I got it away from her.

The medallion is a Vanderbilt souvenir. Not sure when I got it, but it wasn’t when I attended school there. It’s a sturdy bronze object, weighing 9 oz., with Cornelius Vanderbilt on the obverse. Made by Medallic Art Co. of New York, according to the rim of the medallion. Maybe the company was once HQ’d in New York, but according to the web site, it’s now a division of Northwest Territorial Mint, which is headquartered in Federal Way, Washington, and has no facilities in New York.

I got the Maple Leaf bouncy ball at a store in Canmore, Alberta, in 2006. It was just after Canada Day, and Canada-themed items were at a discount.

The green item is a glass egg I bought at the Bergstrom-Mahler Museum in Neenah, Wisconsin, last year. A pretty piece of glass, but also inexpensive and hard to break.

I Didn’t Shoot No Deputy, I Was Too Mellow

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Lilly found a bottle of Marley’s Mellow Mood Black Tea “decaffeinated relaxation drink” the other day at one of the grocery stores we visit sometimes. Marley as in Bob Marley. And what’s the secret relaxation ingredient? Something still banned in 48 states?

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOf course not. Besides tea, the ingredients include “pure cane sugar, critic acid, natural flavor, sodium citrate, chamomile extract, lemon balm extract, valerian root extract, hops extract, and passionflower extract.”

I had to look up valerian root. This from the University of Maryland Medical Center: “Valerian has been used to ease insomnia, anxiety, and nervous restlessness since the second century A.D. It became popular in Europe in the 17th century. It has also been suggested to treat stomach cramps. Some research — though not all — does suggest that valerian may help some people with insomnia. Germany’s Commission E approved valerian as an effective mild sedative and the United States Food and Drug Administration listed valerian as ‘Generally Recognized As Safe.’

“Scientists aren’t sure how valerian works, but they believe it increases the amount of a chemical called gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA) in the brain. GABA helps regulate nerve cells and has a calming effect on anxiety. Drugs such as alprazolam (Xanax) and diazepam (Valium) also work by increasing the amount of GABA in the brain. Researchers think valerian may have a similar, but weaker effect.”

Later in the article, the UMMC says that “Valerian root has a sharp odor. It is often combined with other calming herbs, including passionflower (Passiflora incarnata), hops (Humulus lupulus), lemon balm (Melissa officinalis), skullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora), and kava (Piper methysticum) to mask the scent. Kava, however, has been associated with liver damage, so avoid it.”

Except for skullcap and kava, that’s practically the same list of ingredients as Marley’s Mellow Mood. Lilly drank most of it, but didn’t seem noticeably calmer, though she’s usually pretty calm. She springs from phlegmatic people, and comes to the feeling naturally, I think.

I had a little of the tea myself. Not bad. I didn’t feel particularly mellow afterward, either. No more than usual, anyway.

The bottle also tells me, “Manufactured in the USA for Marley Beverage Company LLC, Southfield, MI.” Suburban Detroit isn’t particularly associated with Marley (or Rasta) that I know of, but I don’t really know that much about him. Pretty much by chance, however, I did see Bob Marley in concert. Until today I couldn’t remember exactly when I saw him at Vanderbilt, just that it was freshman year at the not-too-acoustically-good Memorial Gymnasium, where nevertheless the big or biggish acts played (it was the biggest hall on campus).

Remarkably, I’m able to look it up. The concert was on December 10, 1979. I don’t remember it like it was yesterday. I remember it like it was well over 30 years ago. I would have recognized “I Shot the Sheriff,” “No Woman, No Cry,” and “Get Up, Stand Up” on the playlist, but not much else. I wasn’t much of a fan. A girl I knew had persuaded me to go.

I also remember that the auditorium was smoky – smoking of one kind was allowed during concerts in those days, and smoking of another kind was tolerated – and that between songs Marley would cry out, “All hail Jah!”  “Almighty Jah!” and the like, as well as “Free Zimbabwe!”

At that moment in history, post-Rhodesia Zimbabwe was transitioning toward independence, which would be formally achieved in April 1980. Marley was there to play for the independence celebrations, and the description’s worth reading: “During ‘I Shot The Sheriff’ riots have led [sic] to pause the concert. Marley later reappeared on stage to perform three more songs before the concert was definitely cancelled. A free concert was performed one day later…”

The VU audience was a bit more sedate than that, even without the benefit of valerian root. Sadly, at the time Marley was about at the end of his life, though we didn’t know it. Less than a year after playing at Vanderbilt, he was too sick to go on tour, and in 1981 he died of cancer.

Grad

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This year, I read, Vanderbilt held its commencement ceremony – “graduation” except in the official documents – on Alumni Lawn on the morning of May 9. A Friday in early May, in other words. “Chancellor Zeppos confers degrees and addresses the members of the graduating Class of 2013,” the VU web site says. I hope the undergrads had undergrad fun with that name.

Thirty years ago, Joe Billy Wyatt was VU chancellor, number six since the heady days of Landon Cabell Garland, the first chancellor, who received the Golden Oak Cluster from Cornelius Vanderbilt himself in a secret midnight ceremony. According to an unimpeachable source – Wiki, that is – Garland thought dormitories “injurious to both morals and manners,” which is amusing since Garland Hall, a dorm, is named after him.

Anyway, Wyatt had been in office for a year when he shook a lot of hands at the commencement ceremony of Friday, May 13, 1983. He’s pictured on that day in the image posted here, facing away from the camera.

The fellow facing the camera at that instant, one of the graduates, wasn’t feeling his best that morning, since he was still recovering from an earache that began a few days earlier after a short swim in the waters of Lewis Smith Lake, down in Alabama. As it turned out, graduation from VU marked the end of his formal education. At some point over the last 30 years he decided, “I’ve done been educated.”

Collegiate R&R

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May 4, 1983

It’s a little hard to believe I ever spent an afternoon and evening like this. I made a record of it, and if I think hard enough, I can remember what it must have been like. It was during that rarefied period after exams were over, but before the VU graduation ceremony.

I’m also happy to remember that at no time did anyone I was hanging out with during this period say, “Let’s go rent a video.” It wasn’t an option. We watched a bit of television, and listened to some records, but that was the extent of our electronic entertainment. I’d say we’re better men for it.

Late in the afternoon, Dan made an outrageously good chili-bean-Frito concoction, after he’d spent a few hours lacing up the boat we’ll use later this week (I had a small part in that). We had a fine dinner ’round the table in the Vomitorium [that’s what we collegiate wits called our dining room]. We consumed the tasty concoction, plus bread and the bottle of Egri Bikavér that I provided. Steve made the damnedest ice cream, milk and Italian liqueur drink, whose name I forget, but an apocryphal story says it was invented by a widow.

We played poker after dinner, mostly for laughs. At one point, Rich asserted that the next draw was “going to reveal my soul.” He drew a deuce. Much laughter. “No, it’s this one.” He drew another deuce. Even more laughter. He actually won the hand with his pair of twos.

As I was dealing Mexican Sweat, Rich picked up his cards, which you aren’t supposed to do, so I dealt him a new hand. He started to pick that up, and my hand dashed down to the table to prevent that, knocking over Rich’s ice cream drink. It went everywhere. Everyone howled with laughter, and that was the end of the game.

It was still light enough outside to play frisbee in the street in front of the house. I took the corner of Poston & 31st; Dan was in front of our driveway; Rich was down Long Avenue, in front of the house next to ours; and Steve was on my side of 31st across the street from Rich. We tossed a good many minutes. I got off some fine skips across 31st, aiming down and – thwack! – hitting near the yellow line and back up to Dan. Once, I nearly threw the disk into a cop car. The cop eyed us ne’er-do-wells for a moment and must have decided we posed no threat to public order.

At dusk we quit and came indoors. Dan inspired us to play Risk & it took hours. Eventually Dan was poised to conquer all from Asia and northern North America. I was bottled up in Africa, Rich had South America and part of North America, and Steve had Europe. On the last turn, I threw Dan out of half of Asia, but we were too tired to go on.