Carol:
Letters Home
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| First day of college, 1966 |
Freshman Year—Nevada, Missouri
“For the past two days we have had a guest speaker from the Danforth Lecture Series. His name is Dr. Robert Speaight . . . a Shakespeare scholar, and an actor. He is considered to have given one of the best performances of King Lear in this century. . . He gave four lectures in the two days he was here and he was just terrific. Spoke on Macbeth, Shakespeare and the Theater, a comparison of British and American theater, and King Lear. Often he would give a few lines from one of the plays and he was just amazing.”
Sophomore Year—Spring Break trip to Washington, D.C.
“Guess I’ll start at the beginning . . Saturday morning we went to the White House but found out we could take the nicer Congressional tour on Tuesday, so we went up to Arlington to see the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and Kennedy’s grave, which is very impressive. While we were at the graveside, Ethel Kennedy and most of her children arrived, knelt and prayed before the grave, then left. (This was about one hour before Robert Kennedy announced his presidential plans, and their appearance at this time of day was considered very unusual.)
Tuesday, our last day in D.C., we went on the Congressional tour of the White House, and up to the Capitol. Mullie and I went to our Senator’s office (didn’t meet Murphy, though), got passes to both galleries, then went on the Capitol tour while waiting for the Sessions to open. We were quite disappointed to see only three Senators at the session although one was Margaret Chase Smith. We had seen Mark Hatfield earlier, but he never showed up."
“For the past two days we have had a guest speaker from the Danforth Lecture Series. His name is Dr. Robert Speaight . . . a Shakespeare scholar, and an actor. He is considered to have given one of the best performances of King Lear in this century. . . He gave four lectures in the two days he was here and he was just terrific. Spoke on Macbeth, Shakespeare and the Theater, a comparison of British and American theater, and King Lear. Often he would give a few lines from one of the plays and he was just amazing.”
Sophomore Year—Spring Break trip to Washington, D.C.
“Guess I’ll start at the beginning . . Saturday morning we went to the White House but found out we could take the nicer Congressional tour on Tuesday, so we went up to Arlington to see the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and Kennedy’s grave, which is very impressive. While we were at the graveside, Ethel Kennedy and most of her children arrived, knelt and prayed before the grave, then left. (This was about one hour before Robert Kennedy announced his presidential plans, and their appearance at this time of day was considered very unusual.)
Tuesday, our last day in D.C., we went on the Congressional tour of the White House, and up to the Capitol. Mullie and I went to our Senator’s office (didn’t meet Murphy, though), got passes to both galleries, then went on the Capitol tour while waiting for the Sessions to open. We were quite disappointed to see only three Senators at the session although one was Margaret Chase Smith. We had seen Mark Hatfield earlier, but he never showed up."
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| Hacienda Restaurant, 30 years later |
Junior Year—Aix-en-Provence, France
“Lor and I both worked at the Hacienda [restaurant] this week. . . while the cook Jean-Pierre and his wife Francoise the waitress took a trip. Monday night I worked in the kitchen peeling potatoes, cutting bread, etc. It was really fun for one night and we got our meals free for two days. Casualties: Lor cut her finger on the bread knife and ran into a low doorway, which was a kind of laugh because she said I was the one who’d have all the accidents. We also had fun because the husband of the girl who works in the kitchen did the cooking and nobody really knew what he was doing, so we laughed a lot and Georges [the owner] almost had a heart attack. The couple’s really cute, Rabaye is 18 ½, Chafee 24, they’re from Tunisia, been married for 2 years and live in a tiny apt above the Hacienda. They like us because we are good sports, and asked us to Sunday dinner sometimes. (I can imagine you’re sitting there amazed at all this, thought you’d never live to see the day when I’d get a kick out of peeling a potato. I have to admit it took me 15 minutes to figure out how to work the potato peeler, but after that….)"
“Lor and I both worked at the Hacienda [restaurant] this week. . . while the cook Jean-Pierre and his wife Francoise the waitress took a trip. Monday night I worked in the kitchen peeling potatoes, cutting bread, etc. It was really fun for one night and we got our meals free for two days. Casualties: Lor cut her finger on the bread knife and ran into a low doorway, which was a kind of laugh because she said I was the one who’d have all the accidents. We also had fun because the husband of the girl who works in the kitchen did the cooking and nobody really knew what he was doing, so we laughed a lot and Georges [the owner] almost had a heart attack. The couple’s really cute, Rabaye is 18 ½, Chafee 24, they’re from Tunisia, been married for 2 years and live in a tiny apt above the Hacienda. They like us because we are good sports, and asked us to Sunday dinner sometimes. (I can imagine you’re sitting there amazed at all this, thought you’d never live to see the day when I’d get a kick out of peeling a potato. I have to admit it took me 15 minutes to figure out how to work the potato peeler, but after that….)"
“I had the strangest thing happen when I was driving the Bluebirds home yesterday. Debbie started asking me all about government, and [why] there hadn’t ever been a black president, could there be a black president? All of a sudden, after three years with those girls [as their Bluebird leader] I had finally heard the question of color brought up. She also asked me if there was going to be a war in this country, and that some people said the blacks were going to start a war because people treated them like slaves. Then she said, “A person can’t help what color he is.” I was kind of sad because, well for two reasons. One, that a nine-year-old child would worry about that kind of thing, and two that I wouldn’t know how to answer them.”
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| Graduation Day, 1972 |
Love, Carol
Megan:
Typical British Students
When I first moved to England to study my junior year, I was placed in the residence halls with a group of first year students. Being several years older than them I didn’t immediately make friends with them, and spent the first couple of months annoyed by the inconsiderate way they would run screaming down the hall at 3 AM after getting in from the Brighton clubs.
My class schedule was light. I had a two hour class on Tuesday mornings and a one hour class on Wednesday (at the end of the term I would discover that there had been a supplemental lecture twice a week and I had missed every single one – but no matter, I still passed the exams). This left quite a bit of free time so I took long walks and went to the movie, and was generally bored and homesick. On Thanksgiving (which of course is not observed in England), I bonded with the other residents over a shared resentment of being locked out of our kitchen while the other American student made a turkey dinner for her friends. That I was not invited bothered my new friends more than it did me, and sitting in the hallway, I was introduced to what would become a regular experience for me all the time I lived in England. Drinking and Insulting America and Her People (“But not you, Megan. You’re all right.”) This was late 2002, the US was preparing to invade Iraq, so there was a lot of animosity.
My class schedule was light. I had a two hour class on Tuesday mornings and a one hour class on Wednesday (at the end of the term I would discover that there had been a supplemental lecture twice a week and I had missed every single one – but no matter, I still passed the exams). This left quite a bit of free time so I took long walks and went to the movie, and was generally bored and homesick. On Thanksgiving (which of course is not observed in England), I bonded with the other residents over a shared resentment of being locked out of our kitchen while the other American student made a turkey dinner for her friends. That I was not invited bothered my new friends more than it did me, and sitting in the hallway, I was introduced to what would become a regular experience for me all the time I lived in England. Drinking and Insulting America and Her People (“But not you, Megan. You’re all right.”) This was late 2002, the US was preparing to invade Iraq, so there was a lot of animosity.
From that point on, we were a united group of three girls and three boys and they showed me how British students spend the 165 hours a week they are not in class -- Binge drinking and dancing, smoking pot and watching Asian action films. We became nocturnal. During the winter months, we would rise at sunset spend the night in gleeful debauchery and go to bed as the sun came up. It was the craziest, most fun time I had in college and it’s a wonder any of us passed our exams (in fact, one of us didn’t). But that kind of lifestyle is unsustainable.
When I returned to Brighton for library school, I lived in off campus housing with most of the same group. Now in their third year, things had calmed down considerably. Our workloads were bigger and we were all a bit more serious about studying, saving money, and graduating from our respective programs. Nights out clubbing were reduced from several times a week to maybe once a month (although the Asian action film routine was still popular with the boys). The girls had boyfriends and the boys had Playstation and I was just grateful to be back in England again.
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