We meet at 11
p. m., and stay up till two o'clock in the morning doing work, and go to
nine-o'clock class and do that over and over. We don't sleep.....We're not even compensated financially....This
institution functions on the premises of imperialism, white supremacy,
capitalism, ableism, and a cissexist heteropatriarchy. Heard on the campus of Oberlin College by Nathan Heller, New Yorker, 5-30-16
Dear
Gunner,
Congratulations on finding a decent place. No such luck here. The barracks they're putting up
for vets (yep, same ones, no insulation) won't be ready until February and the
townspeople have run out of attics.
Paul talked a lady into fixing up a place (I mean offered the last of
his separation pay to fix up a place) in her basement, and with Fred's army
cots and a couple of desks they found at Good Will they'll be in business. The college was telling everybody no
housing no chance but Paul said just give us the books, we'll take care of the
rest.
Not a sure thing, those books. The college had to get the GI-Bill paper
work from the government to the bookstores and you know the government but a
guy in the administration told Paul he was going to cumshaw enough for the
Shakespeare course so he was safe signing up. "Why do you veterans insist on going to college
in little towns?" the guy asks.
"Because that's where the education is," Paul says.
Carl may have it easier. By the time he gets out of rehab (about a year, they say)
they'll have the Quonsets set up and the paper work down. The lines ought to be a lot smaller. The administrators here, the 4Fs who
stayed home, are working really hard.
I have to hand it to them.
Who expected the GI Bill to let you enroll anyplace?
But we all had it easier than Brody. You remember Don Brody, in Shelley's Raiders
a year ahead of us? By the time he
got out, with his eyesight back, the housing was really locked up. Zilch in every town with a college he
wanted to go to. So he and Kay
said the hell with dreams we'll find an apartment and go to whatever college is
within driving distance. And
they had to drive all the way to New Orleans before they found one! "What's the college here?"
says Don. "Tulane," says
Kay. "University of my
dreams," says Don. Not
exactly the way Pete got there but he was just as happy. He cried at the first course he had
that didn't wind up with missile trajectories.
Great for a while, Pete says, but too soon for a guy
with Brody's problems. The blindness,
apparently, was mainly psychological and he needed more than Kay, good a nurse
as she was. (You knew he proposed
to her while he was still blind?
"Wait'll you see me," she said. He waited two more months, opened his eyes, said,
"You're beautiful," and she said, "I'm yours." That's the way he tells it.) Wonderful, but two made it harder to
find an apartment, and with his needs.
Then one day they up and leave.
"Just an interruption, " Kay told Pete. "We'll be back. He loves it." Don worked on the student newspaper
with Pete and Pete says he was certainly happy doing that. Good too, for a poet.
You know you hear the Army is no place for poets but
I found a lot of guys (well, three or four) who'd been in high-school clubs like
ours. Or who had a teacher like
Mr. Dickerson, and made a sort of club.
Found out how lucky we were, so many of us, to be assigned to the same
division, and have a library (ha, ha) to meet in.
OK, so who else is going to college and get to read more
Poe and have T. S. Eliot explained?
Nobody besides you, me, and Pete this year but next year a bunch. After they get their minds turned
around. It takes guys like Willie a
while to realize that they actually have the chance, you know, and that the
money is really there. Nick knows
but needs time, as usual, to get his shit together. Bill realizes it, and is together, but he still has to get
out of the machine shop. (Has to
bring his dad around. His dad's
the opposite of George's mother, such a pusher for college. Now she just doesn't have to work.)
The guy who really lucked out was Irv. Got everything Mr. Dickerson told him
to try for, U. of Minnesota (no out-of-state problem whatsoever), Robert Penn
Warren, and the very course itself, "Interpretation of Poetry." Eighty-nine students in it and Warren
let him in. ("Wear your bomber jacket,"
one of the locals told him.
"He can't close out a guy in a bomber jacket.") And Irv is doing great. Warren even read one of his papers to
the class. Ninety students and
Warren reads all their essays himself.
Besides all the poems they give him. And you know what? The guy has only one eye! Irv realized it the first time he sat in his office. How lucky we are.
Hang in there,
Mike
Mike
Good one.
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