Well – some of the ol’ gang wanted me to make-my-way back to the Zoo for our 30th …the big 30th Year Reunion of the Class of ’79. I had to politely decline – because I truly don’t want to remember any-of-my-fours-years-there.
Don’t get me wrong – I love the people that I shared my four years at “The Zoo” with – so-much-so, in fact, that I tried out the 5th, 10th, 15th and 20th reunions. It was Arthur Lee who sang that “people are the greatest fun”: And so many of the K-folk were a-ton-of-fun. I just don’t need to relive any-of-the-Madcap-Nights (or days) for that matter.
K-College is purportedly the oldest college in Michigan. Legend has it that K-College started out as a Baptist teaching college. When I got there in 1975, K-College was certainly a school for the elite – at $10,000.00-a-year – it was rather pricey for that day-in-time. So you can well imagine that most-of-us came from a rather conservative Republican (did I say Nazi?) background (I know I did). And while many made lip-service to pseudo-liberal causes – that’s all it really was: lip-service. Very few K-collegians went on to volunteer for the Peace Corp, or, take up begging.
My old roommate, Tris, majored in philosophy – and later sang in a barbershop quartet while working for a company that made miniature models. Upon his return to Michigan Tris began working for Chrysler Financial, and, dare-I-say – became a stick-in-the-mud. I am certainly not suggesting that I have attained any greater “level of success” – I just remember foregoing my own dreams and desires for a period of time — because K-College taught me “tunnel vision” more than it taught me anything else. I also recall viewing Tris’s accomplishments and meta-cognition with awe.
It took 2 moves to the West to realize that there was much more to life than the mid-West provincialism dished out by K-College. Hell! I remember going to a K-College alum reunion here in Lost Angeles that had K-College alum and some traveling professors agog that I was wearing my Oxford sweatshirt (I just bought the damned thing while I was visiting Oxford). But Man! It got me some props with the K-College alum – who were all about form over substance.
I remember being incredibly disappointed that Dr. Walter Waring didn’t put in an appearance at the K-College 20th – but he had to have been rather old and frail by 1999. I was also disappointed that Coach Kent allowed the annual alum swim meet to become a silly affair – because the classes of ’79, ’80. ’81 and ’82 took the event much more seriously than our successors.
It’s just not the place I need to be. Most everyone I know from that era still enjoys the evil weed (and some every-hour-on-the-hour) and I just haven’t been able to do that funky stuff for 22 years (I just never knew where the bus would stop).
At the 20th – I got to play the grand piano in the Kalamazoo Hilton’s grand lobby. That was a treat. But I also listened to TC express his ancient desires for JP – and rediscovered that I, too, had ancient desires for JP. I am thankful that we all ended up too drunk to worry about consummating anything that hadn’t been consummated before.
And that is why I must stay away: it was a time of consumption and excess – full of sound and fury and signifying nothing. But I will never forget the night that I cooked for Sweet Sara, and, amidst the MD 40-40 and Columbian Gold – we managed to solve the world’s problems while sitting on my frosty roof…so, a toast to all-of-You-survivors, and, Happy Trails…