Stray Thoughts

By

William D. Dannenmaier

John Edwards, pursuing his quest for the Democratic nomination for president, advocated college for everyone. That’s just what professors’ need, more below average bodies in class, including morons and idiots.  On second thought; considering the writings and proclamations of many professors, particularly in such intellectual areas as popular psychology, sociology, social work, feminist studies and black studies; we have many professors who will communicate well at the level of less than intelligent and stupid students.

The worst thing that happened to higher education was when President Johnson flooded the universities with federal money.  It provided stipends for students with no experience in life to gain doctorates and become professors.  Uneducated in the reality of life, they taught from books written by other professors uneducated in the reality of life.  As a student, I never realized how excellent an education I was getting in my little teachers’ college as a result of being taught by professors who had successful prior experience in actually teaching in the public schools.

Stephen, who is in college, was unhappy with his low pay (six dollars an hour) in his part-time job.  It made me think of my past.  As a seventeen year old freshman in college I was making five dollars a day as a stock boy in the men’s clothing department at Famous-Barr in St. Louis.  One of my first purchases was of a red and black plaid jacket, a left-over from the previous year’s stock.  It was on sale for four dollars.  I desperately wanted a pair of Levi jeans, but they cost eleven dollars – more than sixteen hours of work.  I also worked as a theater usher, three dollars a night and as a lab assistant in the biology department, a dollar an hour with a maximum of twenty hours a month. 

In today’s world, many things are much less expensive.  At six dollars an hour, one eight hour day would pay for a shirt and a pair of Levi pants.  It is only non-essentials that have gotten so more expensive.  We bought White Castle hamburgers for a nickel, now they cost a dollar.  A better hamburger, which cost us then a dollar, is now four dollars.  People on middle-class incomes, with no children, buy three and four bedroom, and bathroom, homes.  In my youth, people with young children had two bedroom homes, boys and girls slept in the same room.  As infants became children they would gravitate to three bedrooms; one for parents, one for boys and one for girls.  One bathroom still did the job.  It is still possible to live inexpensively if you control the big items: the meals and the home.  Home made soups are extremely inexpensive (and much better than the canned soups sold), if you make them yourself and homes are reasonable, if you purchase to fit the family.

Judge Judy (other than football and local news) is the only program on television that I watch.  Recently, however, after two years of watching I’m able to predict most of the cases.  A young man and woman are living together, anywhere from two or three months to two or three years, and have now separated.  They met through the internet, at a bar or worked together, briefly, at some business.  During this time he or she borrowed several hundred or thousand dollars from her or him to pay rent or debts or bail.  Now the borrower has left to return to a wife or husband or former lover.  The rejected one is bitter and wants the money back.  This is almost a standard case.  It occurred to me the other day (it is beginning to get boring) that I have yet to hear of a single case in which the couple attended and met at the same church.  Neither can I recall couples who met in college and married.  

Ordering a Stark’s Brother’s catalogue, I held the young man on the telephone while I hunted for a pencil.  While looking I commented that my wife always hid things to write with and he started laughing.  Asking if he were married, he said, “Yes.”  I came back with, “At the age of 77 let me say that if you are married to a good cook, you can overlook a lot of lesser things.”  He agreed whole heartedly and said, “And there are always a lot of lesser things.”

The reason this is late is that a branch that came down from our maple tree in a wind gust has occupied my mind – and efforts – for the past two weeks.  Before the cries of “age will tell,” let me comment that four feet from where it joined the tree, the branch was 58 inches in circumference.  Yes, four feet, ten inches, round.  I still haven’t cut up that segment.