Abio 17: Second year of learning at college and back home - April 7 2024

Sunday April 7, 2024 1,015 words

By the start of my second year of college, I had learned many things that I didn’t know I needed to know.

If I hadn’t enrolled, I may have died in the house I was born in, blissfully ignorant.

Instead, I had a head full of new concepts: I’d learned that time is bigger than it looks; infinite smallness fits the universe inside of us; the Socratic Method is a great way to fend off bull; you can travel in time, but its fixed. Physics explains the Twin Paradox. Passion controls reason. I learned to edit a newspaper, practiced a tracheotomy when I earned my Lifeguard Certificate, made a movie in a boxcar graveyard, and I can speak a little French.

Over the summer I become a hotel-motel-restaurant manager, by default, and many of our guests were French Canadians who arrived by the bus loads. My weak French came in handy. Several families invited me to visit Montreal to stay with them. They had kids, and we all got along. I visited Montreal that fall for a couple weeks and visited both families.

I earned C’s in French because Mr. Sims insisted I roll my r’s, but I couldn’t. Half my family are Oakies. I still laugh every time I try to speak French with an accent.

While in Montreal I got to meet one woman’s executive boss in his office. He was from Texas. He was on the phone speaking French with a southern drawl when we walked in. No one minded. I had a reckoning moment. Does this mean I don’t have to roll my r’s to speak French?

I remarked that he didn’t roll his r’s while on the phone. “Never was too good at that,” he said, like it didn’t matter. Oh, Mr. Simms.

Year two went by uneventfully. We were all busy studying. Love and sorrow were in the air because many couples had started serious relationships, and now it was departure time. For associate-degree candidates this was graduation; for bachelorettes it was time to leave little DuBois, move into dorms at the University Park, and knuckle down. Gino graduated and moved back to Norristown.

For summer two, I decided to stay home in Elk County, on Boone’s Mountain, 14 miles from Ridgway, spend quality time with mom, reconnect with my Ridgway homies, share my learning, and revisit the old swimming holes. I still had a lot of cash left over from my $1,500 loan last fall, so I didn’t need a job.

I moved into my room in the aluminum trailer with my window opening directly over an artesian well that perpetually gurgled, 365. It sounded like an elephant with a sinus infection.

I hitched a few rides to Ridgway to hang out with the old friends. After attending a few parties and sleep-overs, I learned a sad thing. I can’t go home again.

To my homies I was no longer Steve. I was College Boy Steve. They had pent-up emotions about college students, as did I long ago. In conversation, if I shared something I learned in college, I was showing off. Campfires became troublesome. Don’t casually bring up Shirley Jackson. Has anyone read X, Y, or Z? No, no, and no.

My two years of exhilarating learning did not bring me closer to old friends. Instead, it seemed to keep us apart. They probably knew that soon I’d be moving away. Most college graduates did leave town. It was the fabled brain drain.

My last visit to Ridgway was to attend a college returnees party from my high school era, so I attended. Met a lot of old friends. At the party, to my surprise, was a dear, old friend – Suzi Sunshine, natural blonde from Rancho Palos Verdes, California, who attended Ridgway High for four high-school years while living with her aunt. Suzi and I were art classmates for four years. She could paint, draw, sculp, carve, make jewelry, and pottery. She just happened to be visiting her aunt this summer.

No car, I took a job across the highway from our trailer on Boone’s Mountain. A landowner was paying $1.50 an hour to trim 100 acres of pine trees.

On hiring day, I wandered over to his parking lot where a crowd was forming and became a core member of the group. Why? Because all the other applicants were 14 and 15. I was 20 and the tallest. I could reach the higher branches. Mr. Richardson even paid me two dollars because I was in college.

When the owner drove off, we got work done, but we fooled around a lot. This crowd, unlike my Ridgway homies, enjoyed hearing my stories and jokes when we were in the back acres. I told them jokes because they didn’t know any. They were too young and innocent. We fixed that.

Another reason I came home for the summer was to do a full inspection of the wildlife-class log cabin near our house. I was the heir apparent. Wildlife Technology students graduated and moved away. The cabin was abandoned. I kept the place going, and often camped out there with Artie, my St. Bernard.

I brought Suzi Sunshine out there that summer for an overnight weekend. Mostly we sat and talked. Built fires. I chopped wood and carried water. I didn’t even know that was a thing.

One last reason I chose an easy summer at home – I needed to rest up for my third year. It would be the hardest year of all. I had a full schedule packed with my toughest classes. I kept my electives on hold for year four.

My college-long motto was to “Live for the 4th Year.”

Get all the hard classes out of the way. Save three electives. In year four, go to school only three mornings a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I was a year from seeing it happen, and it did happen: Fiction, Play writing, Screen writing, Poetry.

However, a third-year course I took changed my life forever.