Rhodes College - Lynx Yearbook (Memphis, TN)

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10 as, aris! SN Raa stat sa i Jesse Wife: My husband speaks mostly for the twenties. Yes, everyone could sit in Hardie then and did, for chapel every day, and yes, on Saturday as well. We’d have a prayer, some Scripture or another sacred text- some faculty would kick the orthodox with Hindu stuff or a piece of Blake, | think. And then there were announcements, bump-meetings of sororities in some corner of the hall. Exciting times were when the ODK’s or other honorary groups tapped new members in their seats. We died to see our friends elected, or our enemies. And if you lived in a dorm, as | did (my husband, this guy, not my husband then, and not an intimate friend, either, you can bet — he was from the town, he lived at home), you ate in family style, please pass the peas, in dresses coats with ties. Sophomore Man: Didn’t the college have some famous profs, you know, like Allen Tate and that novelist ... Wife: You mean Robert Penn Warren, teacher, poet, everything there is in literature? Yes, he was here one year. | had a class with Mr. Tate. He was very formal; | was scared of him. | don’t think anyone | knew got an A from him. Warren didn’t stay, but people said he excited them in class; not just the girls said that, innocent, of course. But you are asking from the big end of a telescope. They were not so famous then, and we were not sophisticates in art. S50: In my years Dr. Diehl retired, the college got Phi Beta Kappa, war’s end had brought fresh blood and hot competitors for grades. We thought we’d come into a golden age. 30: You had. That was a-building in my time, | the dream of Dr. Diehl. T'was made by means of tough high-mindedness, for the money wasn’t much. We learned greatly to believe, tl in what | can’t remember. In the school, the honor thing, brilliance of the faculty, on trust, just that. It seemed to work for us; we had no jobs, but plenty character. The decade ahead of me was awful; | can’t figure now why we see some good in that Depression. Well, we were young, had friends, perhaps someone to care about us

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Degrees meant little then to those not trying for professions, but the college had some clout downtown. That place in Buntyn was a teachers’ school. Here was little Princeton on the bluff — the riverback | mean, and if they heard of us up North, we'd say, ‘‘Well, hell, we lost the Civil War.” 50: Mine was the generation of the war. | don’t know that I’d have made it here without the Gl Bill. The cold war thing was scary, but we felt our limit was the sky, and | guess we did quite well before the OPEC troubles came. Some of us could go to Europe several times. | wasn’t one of them. | saved to go. It seemed too big a deal for me. | know there was a death’s head in our yard, a modesty of chances, depression, kids, enlisted men. To have it pretty good made us feel guilt. Our own kids might feel the world owed them a living, but we kept touch with suffering, just a little bit. 30: Yes, my son was quite a lot like that. He’s all stooped over, glum. He teaches music in a public school. No guts, | say, and | believe you have a low opinion of yourself, like him. What do you do? 750: Oh, | teach English in a public school. Wife: Don’t let’s squabble, Ernest, on this day. We’re lucky to be alive, in health today, and we know plenty people high up on the hog in alcoholic wards, full of bluff, with not a shred of modesty. If our son feels low, it’s just because he feels he’s failed in art, to be a concert pianist, his dream. Turns out he’s a teacher, could be worse. 70: | don’t think | understand these things. Man, | just do and everything’s okay. | was into drugs, | was in a commune, | tried ‘| Ching’ and Zen, | spent a while in jail, | can’t think what for. My grades at Southwestern were not so good, yet | got in the Stanford Law School, don’t ask me how. I’ve had a year in old Bologna, that’s where law study started. | don’t get down. If | get ‘“‘No’’ someplace, | go somewhere else. Like, they might even take you in a job because they’re tired of having you apply, but | don’t need that anymore, I'll find a way. Freshman Woman: What I'd like to know is has Southwestern meant anything to you particularly? Did you gain or lose for your four years here? 30: | see our answers to that will reflect what you young people call our “‘lifestyle.”’ In the nineteen twenties college had got fashionable. Football had got popular. Beanies, ukeleles, rumble seats of cars — these were symbols of the fun a well-off father could afford. You couldn’t be too serious if you wanted friends. You’d grow up later. Professors then, they understood all that, but | admit that two or three of them got to me, so that | caught a glimpse of hat it was they found so all-absorbing in cheir reading or their labs. | told myself I'd go their way someday, that is, to think with master-spirits, true men of the mind- and women too, a little bit, for | did dare to marry a woman who had a sharper head than mine and she has taught me much. We’ve read each other many books, debated more things than we quarrelled angrily about. In deeper things together Southwestern made us studious for life. I’m sorry now | can’t call back those profs to tell ’em thanks. Wife: | could second that with sweet coy looks or find something to argue with, or simply talk some more to hear myself wax talkative. It seems to me he speaks for me ... at last. 50: | had been indifferent to studies =