Those were heady days back in 1971 and 72. George and I shared room 226 in Snyder Hall at Michigan State University, I a sophomore, he a socially awkward freshman. Before the leaves started to turn, we became best buddies. The Stones blared and we guzzled quarts of Colt 45. Dozens of boys from the down the hall would wander in and out our open door to appraise our latest rendition of chaos. Neither of us had started to shave.
Some might have said that as copacetic roomies go, we were an unlikely pair. George had a ponytail and abhorred smoke of any kind. I also had a ponytail but adored smoke of several kinds. I fancied myself a revolutionary and joined SDS. George mocked my left windedness and all hell could break when our clashing ideologies were fueled by malt liquor.
One spring evening an angry mob of student protesters marched past our second-floor window. Hundreds filled the space between Snyder and Abbott halls. The American military that day had bombed Cambodia. I would soon join that anti-war mob, grab a bull horn, and help lead a takeover of the Administration Building. But on that night, half drunk on Colt 45, George thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle. He cranked open the window and screamed, "Go Purdue! Go Purdue!"
George grew up on a pig farm in western Michigan, but his father also worked as a chemist. He was an intellectual, a descendent of blue bloods back in Boston. Visiting George at the farm made for a collision of senses. Inside, family members sat by lamps reading novels. Outside, pig stink wafted through cottonwoods while chickens in their coops clucked and pigs grunted from within the hog barn.There was a milk cow named Bossie and an old, fur-matted collie snoozing on the porch by a row of high rubber boots ready for chores. Fly paper hung in the kitchen. Meanwhile, George's mother sat in the parlor doing the New York Times Crossword Puzzle. He and his family had shed any social graces out on that farmland of Allegan County
George had no aspirations to acquire his father's pig farm. He hated the place. But he shared his dad's keen aptitude for chemistry and toddled off to MSU in 1971 to major in the subject. The plan was short-lived. By his second semester, he switched from chemistry to English, my major. He would later say that I had had a major impact on his decision. I did argue that his passion for Robert Burns the poet far outweighed any curiosity he might have had about carbon interacting with hydrogen. I did argue that his love for Kurt Vonnegut was unmatched by any love for the laboratory. I did argue that he was a fine writer with a fine wit. But I suspect it was just easier to be an English major when your academic demands were tempered by dormitory mayhem.
So, George and I, both students now of the humanities, took a course entitled, "The History of Famous Art in Europe from April 12, 1165 to July 29, 1354, Mainly Paintings but Some Really Old Architecture Too." The class fit nicely around important stretches of sleep and priority beer activities. One hundred students, about ninety eight of them girls, attended. We sat up in the back of a darkened, stadium-style lecture hall where the professor presented slide after slide of really, really old paintings.
For ninety minutes one day, the prof presented an endless stream of Madonnas. Evidently, pre-Renaissance Italians just loved their Madonnas and couldn't get enough. With all the proportion of a second grader's crayon drawing, those old painters unleashed a buttload of madonna classics. Slide! Here we have Madonna with Child, and notice how the artist... blah, blah, blah. Slide! You got your Madonna with Saint Agnes, and notice how the saint holds an olive branch... blah, blah, blah. Slide! You got your Madonna with Child and the Saints! Slide! You got your Madonna with Child in the Manger. Slide! Madonna with Saint Ignatius. Slide! Slide! Slide! Droning and droning, noticing and noticing, the professor persisted in monotone. And each medieval madonna wore the face of an unpleasant woman with uncomfortable gas. Madonna with This. Madonna with That. You could hear a smattering of snores.
At about the seventy minute mark, George gave me a poke and handed me a note. This was odd. In the dim light, carefully, I opened it. It read,
"Madonna with Beard!"
I was unprepared. I lost it. I laughed loud and I laughed long. The professor stopped mid-sentence and froze. And all those eyes, those two hundred eyes, they searched the room and fused their gazes upon me. But I was a goner. I was in mid explosion. There! There seared into my brain, I beheld the most precious madonna of all, Madonna with full cheeks of hair.
Before Giotto, DaVinci, Michelangelo, and all the other Renaissance Boys came around, you wouldn't have seen any painters down at the Florence Comedy Club. Those old masters, back in their musty studios, they could have used a guy like George. For hundreds of years, saints just stood around adoring. Baby Jesuses just laid around being adored. And hundreds of madonnas, they just stood or sat there with unpleasant faces. It would have been nice, if one of those Madonnas, just one, would have been depicted sneaking two fingers behind the head of an unsuspecting pope. Rabbit ears!
If you happen to visit Florence, join the throng at the Uffizi Gallery, and visit the madonnas of the Pre-Renaissance. If you get bored and don't mind some playful sacrilege, you can let George be your guide: Madonna with Personal Flotation Device. Madonna with Mohawk. Madonna with Burrito. Your appreciation for art will skyrocket.
I remember him sitting in our dorm room with a book in his lap, laughing at a Robert Burns' verse or at a passage in a Vonnegut novel. His love for a turn of phrase rubbed off on me.
We took a class on Chaucer together and learned to read Middle English. He tutored me. Responding to George's final paper, the professor at first accused him of plagiarism. He hadn't, but his thoughts coincidentally had mirrored a scholar's thoughts. After George stormed the professor's office, the professor became persuaded. George got an A. Besides, cheating was beneath him.
I sometimes wonder what draws people to become friends. Kindred interests, of course, and kindred spirits. I lost it when I read the note that read, "Madonna with Beard." But of the hundred students in that class, how many would have had a similar response if passed the same note at the same time? A minority, I would bet.
One afternoon on an East Lansing street, a group of us were clambering into my parked Pinto when from out of nowhere a large friendly puppy bounced up and jumped headlong into the back seat joining George and another friend. They suddenly became ensconced in a tornado of frenzied dog like three characters spinning full tilt in a clothes dryer. No one could grab the beast as it bounced from floor to roof to front seat and back, its tail slapping faces and its tongue splattering froth as it gyrated.
Springing from some demented recess in my brain, I thought in that moment to shout, "Out damn Spot!"
And off Spot ran. Look! See Spot run. George howled at the joke but my other two friends comprehended nothing funny. That was a big thing that made good buddies of George and me, to twist from the events of a day some absurd irony.
Two young strangers assigned to Room 226. Kindred spirits, kindred thirsts, kindred points of view. I admired the kid who celebrated a crazy connection between an anti-war mob and a football rally, who was inspired to pass a note in art history class. I admired the kid who grew up on a pig farm and would sit down with a 19th century Scottish poet. He celebrated my hair-brained connection between MacBeth and the puppy in the Pinto.
We got each other.
Some might have said that as copacetic roomies go, we were an unlikely pair. George had a ponytail and abhorred smoke of any kind. I also had a ponytail but adored smoke of several kinds. I fancied myself a revolutionary and joined SDS. George mocked my left windedness and all hell could break when our clashing ideologies were fueled by malt liquor.
One spring evening an angry mob of student protesters marched past our second-floor window. Hundreds filled the space between Snyder and Abbott halls. The American military that day had bombed Cambodia. I would soon join that anti-war mob, grab a bull horn, and help lead a takeover of the Administration Building. But on that night, half drunk on Colt 45, George thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle. He cranked open the window and screamed, "Go Purdue! Go Purdue!"
George grew up on a pig farm in western Michigan, but his father also worked as a chemist. He was an intellectual, a descendent of blue bloods back in Boston. Visiting George at the farm made for a collision of senses. Inside, family members sat by lamps reading novels. Outside, pig stink wafted through cottonwoods while chickens in their coops clucked and pigs grunted from within the hog barn.There was a milk cow named Bossie and an old, fur-matted collie snoozing on the porch by a row of high rubber boots ready for chores. Fly paper hung in the kitchen. Meanwhile, George's mother sat in the parlor doing the New York Times Crossword Puzzle. He and his family had shed any social graces out on that farmland of Allegan County
George had no aspirations to acquire his father's pig farm. He hated the place. But he shared his dad's keen aptitude for chemistry and toddled off to MSU in 1971 to major in the subject. The plan was short-lived. By his second semester, he switched from chemistry to English, my major. He would later say that I had had a major impact on his decision. I did argue that his passion for Robert Burns the poet far outweighed any curiosity he might have had about carbon interacting with hydrogen. I did argue that his love for Kurt Vonnegut was unmatched by any love for the laboratory. I did argue that he was a fine writer with a fine wit. But I suspect it was just easier to be an English major when your academic demands were tempered by dormitory mayhem.
So, George and I, both students now of the humanities, took a course entitled, "The History of Famous Art in Europe from April 12, 1165 to July 29, 1354, Mainly Paintings but Some Really Old Architecture Too." The class fit nicely around important stretches of sleep and priority beer activities. One hundred students, about ninety eight of them girls, attended. We sat up in the back of a darkened, stadium-style lecture hall where the professor presented slide after slide of really, really old paintings.
For ninety minutes one day, the prof presented an endless stream of Madonnas. Evidently, pre-Renaissance Italians just loved their Madonnas and couldn't get enough. With all the proportion of a second grader's crayon drawing, those old painters unleashed a buttload of madonna classics. Slide! Here we have Madonna with Child, and notice how the artist... blah, blah, blah. Slide! You got your Madonna with Saint Agnes, and notice how the saint holds an olive branch... blah, blah, blah. Slide! You got your Madonna with Child and the Saints! Slide! You got your Madonna with Child in the Manger. Slide! Madonna with Saint Ignatius. Slide! Slide! Slide! Droning and droning, noticing and noticing, the professor persisted in monotone. And each medieval madonna wore the face of an unpleasant woman with uncomfortable gas. Madonna with This. Madonna with That. You could hear a smattering of snores.
At about the seventy minute mark, George gave me a poke and handed me a note. This was odd. In the dim light, carefully, I opened it. It read,
"Madonna with Beard!"
I was unprepared. I lost it. I laughed loud and I laughed long. The professor stopped mid-sentence and froze. And all those eyes, those two hundred eyes, they searched the room and fused their gazes upon me. But I was a goner. I was in mid explosion. There! There seared into my brain, I beheld the most precious madonna of all, Madonna with full cheeks of hair.
Before Giotto, DaVinci, Michelangelo, and all the other Renaissance Boys came around, you wouldn't have seen any painters down at the Florence Comedy Club. Those old masters, back in their musty studios, they could have used a guy like George. For hundreds of years, saints just stood around adoring. Baby Jesuses just laid around being adored. And hundreds of madonnas, they just stood or sat there with unpleasant faces. It would have been nice, if one of those Madonnas, just one, would have been depicted sneaking two fingers behind the head of an unsuspecting pope. Rabbit ears!
If you happen to visit Florence, join the throng at the Uffizi Gallery, and visit the madonnas of the Pre-Renaissance. If you get bored and don't mind some playful sacrilege, you can let George be your guide: Madonna with Personal Flotation Device. Madonna with Mohawk. Madonna with Burrito. Your appreciation for art will skyrocket.
I remember him sitting in our dorm room with a book in his lap, laughing at a Robert Burns' verse or at a passage in a Vonnegut novel. His love for a turn of phrase rubbed off on me.
We took a class on Chaucer together and learned to read Middle English. He tutored me. Responding to George's final paper, the professor at first accused him of plagiarism. He hadn't, but his thoughts coincidentally had mirrored a scholar's thoughts. After George stormed the professor's office, the professor became persuaded. George got an A. Besides, cheating was beneath him.
I sometimes wonder what draws people to become friends. Kindred interests, of course, and kindred spirits. I lost it when I read the note that read, "Madonna with Beard." But of the hundred students in that class, how many would have had a similar response if passed the same note at the same time? A minority, I would bet.
One afternoon on an East Lansing street, a group of us were clambering into my parked Pinto when from out of nowhere a large friendly puppy bounced up and jumped headlong into the back seat joining George and another friend. They suddenly became ensconced in a tornado of frenzied dog like three characters spinning full tilt in a clothes dryer. No one could grab the beast as it bounced from floor to roof to front seat and back, its tail slapping faces and its tongue splattering froth as it gyrated.
Springing from some demented recess in my brain, I thought in that moment to shout, "Out damn Spot!"
And off Spot ran. Look! See Spot run. George howled at the joke but my other two friends comprehended nothing funny. That was a big thing that made good buddies of George and me, to twist from the events of a day some absurd irony.
Two young strangers assigned to Room 226. Kindred spirits, kindred thirsts, kindred points of view. I admired the kid who celebrated a crazy connection between an anti-war mob and a football rally, who was inspired to pass a note in art history class. I admired the kid who grew up on a pig farm and would sit down with a 19th century Scottish poet. He celebrated my hair-brained connection between MacBeth and the puppy in the Pinto.
We got each other.
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