Wasted Year: The Last Hippies of Ole Miss

by Douglas Gray

  “The prodigal returns,” I say, by way of welcome.

  Blake appears not to hear, or see, me. The guests scatter about our tiny living room and kitchenette. Flop holds her position in the middle of the floor as a herd of clumsy feet stomp around her. Joan trips into the empty chair beside me at the table.

  “You won’t believe what’s happened,” she says. “Blake’s been offered a teaching position at Tulane. Assistant Professor, tenure track.”

  “That is friggin’ unbelievable,” I admit.

  “That’s where he’s been all this time, being interviewed. He didn’t tell anybody, so as not to jinx his chances. He starts at the end of August, and he wants me to come with him. We’re moving to New Orleans!”

  “Mississippi will grieve your departure,” I say, “but you’ll take the town by storm.”

  “All he needs to do,” Joan says – and at these words, I feel an undertow of dread grab my legs, “is finish his dissertation by the deadline.”

  We both turn our eyes toward Blake, who’s now attempting to chug down half a bottle of Stolichnaya as his crowd of friends clap in rhythm to egg him on.

  “Okay, a party tonight,” Joan says. “He’s earned one. But starting tomorrow, it’s the straight and narrow for him until he’s finished. You’ll help me watch him, won’t you? Keep him away from alcohol?”

  Naturally, I say “yes.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Monday, April 24

  “Elvis wants to study Physics at Ole Miss?” Dr. Glass repeats after me, once I’ve explained the reason for my visit to his office.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Elvis Presley?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And he told you this himself?”

  “Yes, sir. A week ago Saturday, at Skeeter’s in Holly Springs.”

  Dr. Glass switches the intercom button on his phone to reach the department’s secretary. “Miss Lief, please hold my calls.” He leans back in his chair, folds his hands over his big paunch of a stomach, and regards me. His jowls and mismatched eyes make him look like a superannuated bulldog, but his voice is like molasses. “Elvis Presley,” he muses. “My, my, my. He would be quite a feather in our caps.”

  “Yes, sir,” I agree.

  “We’d truly outshine the University of Kentucky,” he says. “Do you know that their Physics Department was only able to recruit Pat Boone?”

  “Sir?”

  “Texas A&M has the Everly Brothers in their department, which I find a little embarrassing, to be honest with you. Tony Bennett is at Penn State, and I believe Bobby Darin’s up in Michigan. Word is that Stanford’s department is courting Wayne Newton pretty seriously. That would be a coup for them, but it’s nothing in comparison to Elvis, is it? And just imagine having him as an alumnus. Big movie star like Elvis could provide very lucrative bequests. What do you think – maybe a particle accelerator for the college?”

  He pronounces it “pah-ti-cul.”

  Glass wears his most ironic expression. He doesn’t believe me about Elvis. Upon reflection, I lost faith in this tale myself. The whole thing is ridiculous.

  “I wouldn’t know,” I say, rising to leave.

  “Oh, I think it’s a fine idea,” Dr. Glass continues. “The University of Mississippi Elvis Presley Particle Accelerator. Yes, sir, that sounds nice.”

  “Shall I see myself out?” I ask.

  “Yes,” he answers. “If you’d be so kind.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Tuesday, April 25

  The crowd at the Rebel Buddha appears to be thinning out as I drive past on my way back to the trailer, so I decide to stop for supper instead of trying for a tv dinner at Kroger’s, where the manager – if he’s on duty tonight – will be sure to hassle me again.

  The beautiful waitress (whose name, Garrett tells me, is Bella) greets me at the door. “The chef is taking a breather,” she tells me, with a glance that assures me that we both understand what that means. “The kitchen is closed for right now, but I can get you soup or an egg roll.”

  I ask for a bowl of wonton soup and a Coke. She invites me to take any empty table I fancy. It’s then that I notice Keith with three fraternity brothers in the booth by the wall. I choose a seat at the far end of the dining room, with my back to them.

  I may not have to look at them, but their conversation is loud enough for the entire room to hear.

  “Goddamn, what is that shit on your plate?” one asks another.

  “It’s called Moo Goo Gai Pan.”

  “It looks like baby vomit.”

  Keith’s voice follows. “As educated gentlemen, we should endeavor to be open to different cultures. No matter how ignorant or corrupt other nations may be, in comparison to the United States of America, the Lord created them as part of His unfathomable plan.”

  “Egg rolls look like a fried dicks,” says the voice of the baby vomit metaphorist. Clearly a deep thinker. I’m starting to wish I’d gone to Kroger’s instead.

  “I agree with Keith,” another says. “We need to try new things. For example – did I ever tell you boys about the time I had sex with the Chinese girl?”

  “No,” says the deep thinker. “How was it?”

  “An hour later, I was horny again.”

  The kitchen door swings open, and Bella enters the room with a tray bearing my soup and the Coke I ordered, just in time to overhear this last exchange of information. She sets the food at my table without a word, and then turns to them.

  “You guys can either clean your mouths, or leave,” she commands.

  I expect a retort from the booth, but none comes. She’s got them cowed.

  Keith waits a few moments before answering on his table’s behalf. “I apologize for my friends, Miss. They are unaccustomed to being in polite society. However, it isn’t seemly for a woman to address men in that tone of voice.”

  “I’m not kidding around,” Bella warns them. “I’ll kick your asses right out of here.”

  Bella returns to the kitchen. I turn to my wonton soup, and do my best to pay no attention to the conversation from the booth. The voices have lowered, and sometimes cease altogether, replaced by the noise of eager mastication. Then more talk, followed by an explosion of snorting that I believe suggest outbursts of laughter. Forest sounds, animal noises.

  The kitchen door opens a sliver. Dr. Hirsch’s face peeps out through the crack, and grins at me. He enters the dining room with a tray of his own, bearing a teapot and a cup, and invites himself to join me.

  “I never see you anymore, now that you’ve moved out of the house. Garrett’s new friends are fun, but it hasn’t been the same since you left.”

  “I hear that James will be home soon,” I say.

  “Yes, we’re all very excited. We’re hoping, of course, that he’ll be here for the pilgrimage.”

  “What pilgrimage?”

  “Next Sunday’s pilgrimage. You’re invited, too, of course.”

  “There’s a pilgrimage on Sunday? Where to?”

  Dr. Hirsch doesn’t get the chance to answer. As he opens his mouth, Keith and his friends rise from their booth and begin a noisy trek through the dining room to the cash register, where Bella waits, casting baleful looks at them.

  One clutches his stomach. “Oh, man, think I’m gonna’ be sick.”

  “What do you expect?” another replies. “You’re not supposed to eat baby vomit. You’re an American, boy.”

  A bit of stagecraft follows, as the third member of the party pretends to spot me for the first time. “Keith!” he shouts, “Isn’t that the son of a bitch that’s trying to snake your girl?”

  Keith’s voice is cold, the expression on his face colder. “That is the one,” he says, and turns to pay their bill.

  “Hell,” the friend says, “he’s no competition. You got nothing to worry about. Look at him. He’s just a queer boy, having himself some dinner with a queer old man.”

  The one claiming a stomachache pretends to reel about, clutching his gut
. “I’ve been poisoned!”

  Keith seems eager to get out. “Let’s not have a scene,” he advises his brothers. “Remember that we represent our House.” He hands the check and several bills to Bella. “Just keep the change.”

  “You boys aren’t welcome here,” Bella says, slamming the cash register closed. “Don’t come back. We’ve got a madwoman with a meat cleaver back in the kitchen who’d just love to chop the four of you into tiny little pieces.”

  “There is no need to threaten,” Keith says. “We will not patronize this establishment in the future.”

  The room breaks into spontaneous applause at this announcement. There may be 20 or so customers left – students, professors, townies, middle-aged couples, elderly women – all of us aligned against Keith and his brothers.

  Keith blanches, then blushes, scowls once at me, and departs.

  ~ ~ ~

  Wednesday, April 26

  I arrive ten minutes earlier than usual for today’s shift in the Museum, and discover Dr. Goodleigh in what appears to be a serious conversation with Little Becky. I consider knocking to enter, but the dark glance Dr. Goodleigh shoots toward me at the doorway tells me to stay out of it.

  She finds me at my little desk a short time later, and makes a demand. “Mr. Medway, I need your car keys.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “I need to drive to town. Right now.”

  “I thought you didn’t know how to drive.”

  “Of course I know how to drive. I just happen to be a very bad driver, and elected to take myself off the road out of concern for public safety and welfare.”

  “How bad?”

  “Twelve accidents in five years.”

  I reach, reluctantly, into my pocket, but can’t bring myself to hand the key over to her. She taps an impatient toe of one thigh-high leather boot at my indecision. I return the keys to my pocket with a feeble, “I’m sorry. No.”

  “All right,” she snaps. “You drive us, then. But you’re to stay in the car, and not ask any questions.”

  Becky and Dr. Goodleigh are waiting on the porch of Bondurant as I pull into the parking lot. Becky climbs into the back seat, without a word, without even a glance in my direction. Dr. Goodleigh takes the passenger seat, and directs me to the Square.

  It’s just turned after noon when we arrive, the busiest weekday time for the Square, and no parking spaces to be found. I drop them off at the corner of South Lamar.

  “This will only take a few minutes,” Goodleigh tells me. “Just drive. Keep circling. We’ll rendezvous back here.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “No questions.” She slams the door behind her.

  I’m on my sixth circle round the courthouse, and am starting to worry over having been tricked into driving the getaway car for the ladies’ heist of the First National Bank, when I finally see them and ease over to the corner to pick them up.

  Becky’s mood seems to have lightened. It almost looks like she’s been laughing. Dr. Goodleigh, by contrast, is clearly angrier after their errand – whatever it was – than before it.

  I remember her injunction against questions, and figure that my safest course is to say nothing at all.

  ~ ~ ~

  Thursday, April 27

  Some freak has commandeered the Lyceum’s fake carillon again. For this particular class change hour, it normally plays a tinkley version of “The Old Rugged Cross,” cut six on the All Hail to the Red, White and Blue: Carillons for Patriots album the college has been playing since my junior year.

  Today, however, it’s playing Country Joe McDonald’s “Feel Like I’m Fixing to Die Rag.” A classic Garrison Mason trick, I think to myself, and suddenly feel a little vertigo of disorientation, as if I’ve stepped through a time portal into the past, and I’m back in one of those heady spring afternoons before the Mickey Mouse Brigade bust.

  A chance glimpse of my reflection in the side mirror of a panel truck returns me to the present. Yes, that’s me now – several degrees shabbier, and a good 30 pounds skinnier than I was back in those happy days.

  I think of Jenny and the Barefoot trial. She advised me, the day of the Commercial Appeal interview, that I mustn’t appear in Judge Watters’ looking like a vagrant. She said I needed to get a haircut, and she was right.

  I decide to ditch my afternoon class. I dig around in my pockets and find $4.86 in bills and change – enough, I guess, to afford a barber – and turn back toward town, crossing the Grove, down the steps to the railroad tracks, past the depot (now designated off-limits with a sign announcing “Private Property of the First Baptist Church”), and onto Jackson Avenue.

  The two-chair barbershop that I used to visit every other week as a freshman, then less and less often in my succeeding undergraduate days, is still in business. As usual for a weekday, only one barber is on duty, giving a shave to a white-haired gentleman who’s most likely a lawyer from the firm three doors up the street. Five straightback chairs in the waiting room are occupied, but I find an empty sixth, sit, open a September 1969 copy of Field and Stream, and wait my turn.

  The shave ends. The lawyer pays the barber and leaves. The barber slaps his towel on the newly-vacated chair and calls, “Next!”

  The shop is silent. I’m reading an article about smallmouth bass fishing in Ohio.

  “Next!” the barber calls again.

  I sense eyes on me. I look up from the magazine, to find every head in the place turned in my direction.

  “Next!” the barber repeats. “That’s you, kid.”

  “What about them?” I ask, glancing at the other customers.

  “They’re just loitering, like they do every day, exemplifying the fundament Cartesian attribute of mass as occupying space. My space,” he answers. “What do you want?” he asks, draping the sheet around me. “Crew cut?”

  “Just a trim,” I say. “Maybe two, three inches off all the way around. Kind of tidy it up. I’m going to have to testify in court.”

  “I know,” the barber replies. “Next month, on the 18th. You’re the kid that’s suing the college.” The scissors and the comb come out. I feel a tug on the back of my head, hear a snipping sound. “You’re probably wondering how I know that,” he says.

  “Yes, sir,” I admit.

  “You’re one of Duck’s tenants. He’s pointed you out to us a couple of times. Duck’s one of my regulars. When he’s not out on a job, you can usually find him here. We’ve had many a lively conversation about your case, him and the boys and me. Hoyt over there,” he points to the old-timer closest to the door, dozing in the sunlight coming through the plate glass window, “is a firm advocate of the state’s right to regulate artistic expression, as distinct from political expression, which he says should never be abridged in any way.”

  Hoyt rouses at the mention of his name. “Read your Milton,” he says. “Areopagitica.”

  “’Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties,’” the man seated next to Hoyt quotes. “But Milton actually draws no distinction between political and artistic speech.”

  “Vergil Posey, you imbecile,” Hoyt complains. “You don’t grasp Milton’s argument at all. He never claimed the state can’t prosecute in the case of libel and blasphemy, only that authorities can’t exercise prior constraint. You’ve got to let something be published before you can censor it!”

  “If the Duck were here,” the barber says, “he’d point out that that’s exactly what the college is doing – it shut down the magazine for obscenity before it was even published. Took it and locked it away in a safe. Where’s your Milton now?”

  “They’re protecting community standards,” Hoyt answers.

  “Which community?” Vergil Posey wants to know. “Whose community? If you’re talking about the young people’s community, there’s not a problem. You’ve seen that Woodstock movie. Remember? We all caught it at that Saturday afternoon showing at the Ritz. Young kids runnin
g around naked, rolling around in the mud, cussing on stage. God love ‘em! I wish I were that age.”

  “Our community! Oxford’s community! We got to protect our wives and our children from filth coming outta’ the college.”

  “Bull . . . shit!” Virgil Posey replies. “Your wife ran off with the county agent after she caught you cheating with that motel maid over in Batesville, and your children are too ignorant to read, anyway. All those boys of yours can do is drink and whore around. You seriously think they’re gonna’ be corrupted by a short story?”

  “Only if it was in comic book form,” one of the other patrons volunteers. “And even then they’d only look at the pictures.”

  “Be fair,” the barber, says. “Hoyt is a sensitive soul. He doesn’t want anything published in this town that might bring a blush to the cheek of Mrs. Watson, the night clerk over at the Ole Miss Motel.”

  “Chief Justice Holmes said the limit to free speech is that you can’t yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.”

  “That has nothing to do with anything,” Vergil Posey counters. “Nobody’s yelling ‘fire’ nowhere. What about yelling ‘fuck’ in a crowded theater?”

  The haircut continues. I watch my reflection across the room, rapt, as my shoulders and the base of my neck appear from beneath their veil of hair. Then my eyes and eyebrows. Finally the tips of my ears as the barber finishes his work.

  Toward the end, a silent man in the middle seat catches my eyes. “Hey, kid,” he says. “I just finished reading Baudelaire. Is your story as depraved as that?”

  “It’s not my story,” I say. “Another guy wrote it. I haven’t even read it, but my friends tell me it’s not dirty at all.”

  He aims a wad of tobacco at the spittoon before answering. “Reckon I’ll skip it, then,” he says, “and move on to Ulysses.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Friday, April 28

  A row of parked yellow school buses line the north berm of University Avenue, all the way from the Alumni House to Ventress Hall.

  The Grove is a sea of junior high and high school students from all over Lafayette, Pontotoc, Yalabusha, Panola, Union, and Marshall Counties, teens from as far away as Tupelo and Batesville, all converging on our hapless campus for the annual Arbor Day celebration.