Bartleby explained....
One of the things I’ve been doing recently—one of the many things I’ve been doing—as this semester winds down, and my time at Texas A&M winds down, is saying goodbye to the classrooms I’ve taught in over the years.
All these rooms have ghosts, right? Memories. These were rooms full of good students and rotten students, nice students and rude ones. Sometimes I did some good teaching. Many times education happened!
Some pictures….
Blocker 110
Blocker 121
Blocker 106
Blocker 105
The first classroom I ever taught a class in was Blocker 105, and I’ve written elsewhere about that first day—how I stood there, going over the syllabus for my composition class, and I looked up and out at the back of the classroom, and there was this—stain—on the wall. Stains. Big damn grease stains from where the heads of bored, sleepy students had been bumping and staining the wall—for years. A feeling of futility filled me right there and then! All those generations of bored students! But as I thought about it, I decided to be a teacher whose students weren’t all bored and falling asleep. And I sort of think I have been….
At any rate, the Blocker 105 was remodeled a couple of years ago, and the grease stains were painted over—and now, I guess, the grease stains are ghosts, too.
The Bicentennial Fourth!
I was still living in Mankato, Minnesota, and it was the summer after my father died, the summer after I graduated from high school….
On Friday the 2nd I was at a party—I can’t remember now the host, some kid I knew, I remember talking to KM and KB, and then later I went home and fell asleep listening to the radio. I very clearly remember the dream I had that night—dinosaurs, brontosaurs stomping and marching through the neighborhood, through my bedroom. I was scared but unable to move or get away as they came stomping….
Saturday the 3rd was my friend BP’s birthday, and his mom felt sorry for me or something, and so invited me along to go the family—BP, brother SP, momP and dadP— to 4th of July festivities in the town of BP’s grandparents, Cherry Grove, down on the Iowa border. BP was on home on leave from the army, and, I think, rather unhappy with the world. We drove down in the afternoon and had a birthday dinner at IHOP, and then on to Cherry Grove. Spent the evening with P-cousins and slept out that night in sleeping bags in the backyard—a vast field of stars overhead. CousinP talked about the local pastime of shooting out old televisions with shotguns. “You don’t want to breath the dust from the tubes,” he said, “you’ll get cancer….”
The morning of the 4th we took a walk down along a nearby creek and I packed out some interesting chunks of water-worn limestone. Then to Cherry Grove for the parade! How many cars and marchers were in the parade I don’t know, but it was small community and anyone who wanted to march in the parade, did. I was struck then—and am struck now, in memory, so many years later—but the total sweetness of the parade. It was nice. It made me feel good.
Then we headed back to Mankato. SP drove, and BP gave him a hard time about his driving. At home, I showered and then headed up to Blakeslee Field, the football stadium, for the fireworks show, and as I stood outside the stadium, I encountered PK, a girl I’d had a crush on since the 3rd grade. I haven’t seen her since….
Top photo: '''Fireworks''' taken by Kabir Bakie at Blue Ash Fireworks Display July 4, 2005
In my creative writing classes last week we discussed a story by Oscar Casares, “Yolanda.” It’s a very fine, bittersweet coming-of-age story that features a narrative frame, where the present-day adult narrator sets up the narrative, then tells the story of what happened when he was 12 years old, then returns to the present and closes out, putting the action into perspective. It works really well. By coincidence, this week's Soundtrack Sunday story also has a frame—well, almost. Sort of.
When I began writing “Mexican Brick,” I planned to build a frame around it—Garza coming back to the apartment complex years after the action, seeing it much unchanged though now with different occupants…then falling back into the narrative of that celebrated youthful summer…then closing with—something. Some sort of contemporary action. I never figured out what—never had to—because as the narrative developed, with its cycle of violence and betrayal, it became apparent that the frame was unnecessary. The action from the past stood on its own and did not need mediation.
I wanted to write a ghost story, and this is what happened: the ghost flittered away, leaving behind a bunch of people sitting around an apartment complex during a humid drowsy Austin summer, and the complex itself in many ways became the most important character.
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