Sunday, September 6, 2015

Student Housing

In 1968, I left south Alabama for northern Virginia to go to school. In earlier essays, I've explained why, just too uncomfortable not knowing why our previously perfectly wonderful home with scads of future plans had turned into a camp of sullen strangers.

There's that word again. God needed another laugh, got one in spades that time.

Northern Virginia was chosen due to having an aunt and uncle plus three cousins I liked a lot living there and we (my family & I) had visited them in 1966 when their 3rd child was born. I figured they would point me in the right direction on jobs, school, and housing and I was not let down a bit. It turned out they knew much more than us kids did, didn't say a word until we were told by our parents, in my case, four years later. It's amazing how much damage “falling in love” with father's best friend will do to kids kept in the dark. Bad enough without knowing anything, permanently changes one's attitude about marriage after learning. What does “forsaking all others” mean? Is it like Clinton's:

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'forsaking' is. If the--if he--if 'forsaking' means forsaking and never has been, that is not--that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement....Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true."

Couldn't help it. The truth has been out for years, old Willie has trouble with his willie, no sense trying to twist logic into something a blithering idiot could see through.
 
On living arrangements, 30 years ago it became necessary to recall all of them for the “Q” clearance and during my student days, there were 18 of them! One had to be 21 or have a co-signer for a rental agreement or lease and I was having no obligations with family at all. Couldn't get Virginia residency due to underagedness (fun word, wonder if it's real?), therefore, out of state tuition, went to jail due to out of state license plates on my Monkey-Ward mail-order Italian motor bike (guess why), and paid a huge fine on a starving student's income.

Of the memory about the 18, several were “interesting.”
I wouldn't recommend them for the non-cold-hardened, acrophobic, or squeamish about little things like being shot.
 
                         Barrack 517 - condemned, 1969

When I was staying at the Fort Myer barracks seen on the right, the ground was covered with slush, about the best one can get in the DC area. My “nest” under the drooping evergreens behind the Iwo Jima Memorial had finally gotten too wet to camp comfortably camp there.

There was one little flaw in my staying at the barracks. I wasn't in the service. Keep in mind this is in 1968-69, students were less than popular with folk like drill sargents. My friend, a translator (learned Vietnamese so the army sent him to Germany), said it would probably be mostly safe (made me feel all warm & cosy, love that word “mostly”) if I waited until 2230 to bed down and be out of there before 0430. My little barracks room was private, about the size of what I live in here at the mouth-breathing drooler storage facility, and I did very well waking and leaving knowing the penalties for failure!

I went to work at Northrup Page early to put on my work clothes (dress slacks, white shirt & tie), and enjoy my morning work session. Afternoons, changed for school clothes, lit up my ride, and headed out for an afternoon and evening at school. Homework was done at school and at a fellow starving engineering student's place. I had the only typewriter and all assignments had to be type-written.

                                   Me at 19 all shiny and warm.

They made me wear a tie. Remember, this is the East coast establishment. Everybody including cook staff, mailfolk, appliance repairmen, and starving students wore ties.

To this day I loath ties. I still have (had) the one in the photo, pink & white silk, given to me by my uncle Ernest. I found this picture in a old, moldy box back in 1998 after the el Nino flood. 30 years in the box with my old college papers. ...and my little black book. Empty, of course. Starving engineering students unfortunately have a G-rated life.

Meanwhile, back to the fellow starving engineering student, Frank. We usually spent every evening doing the endless homework the course material required, typing it up on my old, beat-up Underwood. It had two keys that stuck together whenever one exceeded about 15 words per minute so there was a constant mumbling of disparaging terms.

His father, an Air Force fighter pilot, was shot down and killed a short time before and Frank was planning to follow in his beloved dads footsteps. Frank couldn't be a pilot due to his less-than-perfect vision, however his studies in engineering might lead to an appointment to the Air Force Academy.

Did you hear plans being made again? This time a resounding belly-laugh was heard.

Frank was a straight-shooter, no drinking, smoking, especially no dope. He was cleaner than me, I had to be due to my uncle being the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force and anything I might do would come down on Ernie's head. My cousin, his son, got in some trouble not his fault and the sheist hit the fan.

Once a month, Frank drove his “car” (rust held together by road-grime) down to Blacksburg to see his mom. One trip he didn't return. Busted by the red-neck cops for having three roaches in his ashtray. He DID NOT! I knew him better than anyone, he honored his country, his flag, and the memory of his father too much to even consider such.

He went to trial, was convicted on the cop's word, and sentenced to 20 years. Way too poor to mount an effective appeal, besides, he was a student, automatically guilty. Remember, this was 1968-69, the cops and most of the sorry-ass crackers that were a jury of his peers (white trash) were Nixon's “silent majority.” He never stood a chance.

The ruin of a fine young man's life.
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