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The UnAmerican4 From then on, our quarrels decreased in frequency and vehemence. We thought it was because we were avoiding them. Sheila confided opinions that clashed with mine in Keith and Laura. I turned to Thelma and How to discuss mine. I had two guardian angels, Sheila who warmed my heart and Thelma who stimulated my mind. Although Sheila laid claim to my soul, I didn’t tell her that I had discarded it. Souls are more trouble than they are worth. We didn’t realize that our passion was cooling to affection. The time we were spending together seemed less precious to us because we knew we would meet for meals and come home to each other in the rooms we shared winter, summer and fall. All the evidence reassured us. Although our studies diverged, I discussed her term papers with her and she helped me when I needed it with assignments by the editor of The Advocate. She was already thinking of a career in teaching French and I, of one in journalism. We were going to parties with her friends, who tolerated me because they were used to me, except for Laura, who was a genuine friend. We also joined Thelma and How for lectures, plays, concerts and films. Because of my contempt for sports and religion, Sheila sometimes went to games and church without me. I didn’t realize that my guardian angels were tugging me in opposite directions, but I think they did and regretted it. Does my incurable naïveté about women have something to do with the indifference I inspire in most of them? I have always wondered. One afternoon in the fall, I returned to the room I was sharing with Sheila and found all of her belongings gone. Thunderstruck, I wandered around in search of a note, a sign, anything that would explain what I understood only too well. Yet Sheila had neither said nor done anything that warned me. The pain crushed my chest and churned my brain. I felt as if a huge piece of my life had torn away leaving shreds flapping in the wind. I was hoping she would come back or at least call, send an e-mail message or a letter. For two days, I roamed the campus looking for her and the yellow Golf her parents had given her. Avoiding her friends and mine, I looked through the windows of the cafeteria after dark... How long did it take me to make any of the decisions necessitated by the situation? I had lost track of time. I may have begun to cope with the consequences when I began to wonder whether I was suffering because Sheila had left me or because of the manner in which she had done it. Finally, I felt desperate enough to call her home. I didn’t even want to think about what I would ask her or her parents. No one answered. 78 © I resumed my routine the next day, which surprized me. The ease with which I explained what had happened to Thelma and How surprized me too. I surprized myself even more when, running into Letta Abby in the Student Union, I invited her to have a sundae with me. Ice cream has always had a therapeutic effect on my morale.
So I explained what had happened.
“ Do I look like a wife... I mean a girlfriend beater?”
“ So did I. I must have been boring her. She didn’t give me the slightest hint she would come back... How about a sundae?”
I blushed. She chuckled, took my arm and turned me towards the café.
I had forgotten that she didn’t have a sweet tooth. “OK!” We dated from then on, but seldom more than once a week and we never went any further than a goodnight kiss on the cheek. Often we double-dated with Thelma and How, who got along with Letta better than Sheila had. I had heard nothing from or about Sheila for another week when I ran into Keith, who appeared a little too happy to see me. Neither his curiosity about the effects of Sheila’s departure on me nor his wish to tantalize me by parcelling out what he knew and I didn’t escaped me. Yet I hoped, with patience, determination and courtesy, to dispell some of the mystery. Unfortunately, my questions revealed that he didn’t know much more than I did, only that Sheila had transferred to Gertrude Farr College.
“ An all-day drive!” I enjoyed his disappointment. I had better luck with Laura, whom I saw playing tennis with another girl. She was pounding the ball into the corners of the backcourt where her opponent couldn’t reach it and wore herself out trying. The score was 6-0 in no time, Laura spoke to her more tactfully than Richie could have and came over to me.
“ No thanks! I already had my shower.”
“ No, of course not!” 79 ©
“ We disagreed on just about everything, so we didn’t have much to talk about any more. Maybe that’s why she didn’t want to explain. I can see her point, but I would never have done that to her.”
How often over the next few years did I decide to forget Sheila and live the rest of my life without her? No sooner did I think I had forgotten her than she slipped back into my conscience riding on a memory or an idea. I even caught myself dreaming, asleep or awake, of chance encounters, reunions and reconciliations with her. These dreams began happily and ended sadly, except for one that puzzled me. I was sitting on the balcony of the Mapleton Auditorium listening to an orchestra. Someone sat down beside me, I turned and saw Sheila, who was naked, smiling and focusing her eyes on me. Only then did I realize that I was naked too and we were the only two in a full house. One warm night, I hankered for some ice cream and headed for Frosty Flavors a few blocks off campus. The traffic and the noise surprized me at first, but then I remembered that the Zipping Zenas had reached the finals of the NCWBA tournament scheduled for that evening. Finding that news on the front page of The Advocate had irritated me that morning. The further I went, the more rowdy young men I saw on the sidewalks and even in the street, where others were driving by, honking their horns and leaning out of the windows. Both the pedestrians and the passengers were gesticulating, shouting and waving ZU flags. I asked a young man headed for the campus what was going on.
“ Did the women win?”
Then I saw a car go up in flames. I called Ten, the editor of The Advocate, who hadn’t even heard about the unrest, and he urged me to cover the story. Next I called Letta, told her what was happening and asked her to meet me with notepads, ballpoints and anything else we needed to cover a riot. She agreed so eagerly that she surprized me and I realized that other young women would at least have hesitated. Finally, I called Thelma and How, who 80© also promised to meet me promptly. What a team we were! Even as I was calling, I saw two more cars go up in flames and heard store windows shattering. Cheers celebrated each of these crimes. The rioters started a few fights with local youth, beat a few bystanders up and molested a few local women. Fortunately, there were no rapes or deaths. The Concordia police, both the men and the women, were rushing everywhere and everywhere the crowds swallowed them up. A big black policeman, whom I later identified as Chief Thomas, waded through the young men, preventing one crime after another. I was already wondering how this riot could be quelled when some rioters stole a police car and drove around flashing the lights and sounding the sirene. Letta, Thelma and How took only a quarter of an hour to reach Frosty Flavors, where I had asked them to meet me. Although I was the only journalism major, my three friends were as eager as I was to cover the riot. It never occurred to me to assign tasks, since we agreed on who would do what spontaneously. Letta proved effective in interviewing young men, whose attempts to cajole or intimidate her only emboldened her. Crowding them with her bosom and riveting them with her upturned eyes, she chirped a reply to every question or remark that backed them away from her. Equally effective, Thelma had a different approach. The sympathy of this plump black girl who looked so dumb enticed drunks into admitting things they would sorely regret when they sobered up. Some refused to talk and some were too drunk, but others gloated over the spectacle or even bragged of their contribution to it. Nearly all of them were more or less drunk. Both girls got a lot of useful testimony from worried young men arrested by the police or waiting in the emergency ward of the hospital. How felt more at ease interviewing victims and bystanders, among whom he knew which ones to choose and how much time to spend on each. I was busy observing, assessing and counting: how many rioters were there, how few were women, how many cars were burned, how many windows were smashed? Letta had lent me her digital camera and tried to explain how to use it in the dark. The first twenty photos I shot were bad, but they improved from there on and I accumulated over a hundred, including three that appeared in The Advocate the next morning.The one on the front page showed Chief Thomas rolling the stolen police car over on its side. By then, the campus police had been ordered to reinforce the town police and the rioters were beginning to lose their nerve. Late that night, the four of us were in my room distributing papers among four or five piles on the floor. I had asked the editor for an extension of our deadline and he had given us another hour. How could we get an article written in time? Well, we did. Sitting at my 81 © computer, I wrote as we composed the article sentence by sentence, suggesting, correcting and agreeing among us. None of us had ever known such mutual enthusiasm. Once a text had satisfied us, we had to cut it to fit the space reserved for it by the editor on the front page. Eliminating a word here and a phrase there didn’t suffice, so we had to make some painful sacrifices. I sent the text to the editor, who made a few changes and approved it, much to our joy. The next morning, it appeared under a banner headline: “Women Lose, Men Riot.” A few hours after the edition was distributed it ran out and the editor ordered a second one for that afternoon. Excitement pervaded the campus, many were talking and few were listening, opinions ranged from outrage to hilarity, teachers faced empty seats and distracted students, we were hearing cheers and jeers everywhere we went. Calls, e-mail, faxes and letters to the editor expressing every possible reaction to the riot and our coverage came pouring in over the next few days. We supplemented our investigation, reviewed our documentation, composed follow-up articles, neglected our courses, forgot meals, lost sleep, lived in ecstasy. One day, we were sipping coffee around a table on the patio of the Student Union.
Me: “... Sheila?” They all laughed. “No, she hasn’t heard anything from me either.”
“ Sympathizing with the rioters.” They all laughed again,
One of our follow-ups was an interview I had with Chief Thomas. Once a star tackle on the ZU football team, Tom-Tom, as he told everyone to call him, had distinguished himself even more as the chief of the Concordia Police Department. I had witnessed his physical prowess and my interview confirmed his intelligence and charm. He would have made a president worthy of Lincoln, Jefferson and Washington if our society were capable of promoting its best leadership talent. This I said in the editorial Ten invited me to publish in The Advocate a week after the riot. Tom-Tom summed his opinion up in the following statement, which I quoted:
82 ©
Since no one dared to question Tom-Tom’s competence and integrity, my enemies accused me of misquoting him or quoting him out of context. They ignored the sentence in which I reported that he had read and approved the text. This editorial and an interview on WFZU radio, in which I made the same points, aggravated the resentment of the funguys, their families, friends and sympathizers over our coverage of the riot. The funguys not only called me a traitor and threatened me, but also molested me twice on paths I took through woods on the campus. The first time, they browbeat me with insults, accusations and questions, squelching me every time I tried to reply. The second time, a different group began with the same tactics, but then they shoved me back and forth until I fell down. Three or four of them spat on me and they left. After washing myself as best I could in a nearby stream, I reported the aggression to the Campus Police. All three of them were lounging comfortably in their office. Recognizing me as an author of an article that reported their reluctance to reinforce the town police, they told me they didn’t have the time to intervene in such trivial incidents. The fat one behind the computer who had a bald head and a big mustache opined:
A few days later, I returned to my room after lunch and found the door ajar. Inside, everything was scattered on the floor, soiled, torn or broken, except for a term paper and an article for The Advocate, which were missing. Sarcastic quotes and misquotes soon appeared everywhere I looked, such as bulletin boards, blackboards, even sidewalks. I heard them in taunts sneered at me everywhere I went, when I passed funguys in corridors or seated at tables in the cafeteria for instance. I reported the break-in and the theft to the Campus Police, three of whom received me in similar comfort, the one behind computer being the same. How pedantic they were in citing regulations that kept them from taking any initiative that might take a little trouble! The break-in had occurred in the morning, hence in broad daylight, but they swore they couldn’t find any witnesses. When I reported the experience in The Advocate, the chief deplored the inaccuracy of my account and demanded an apology, which he didn’t get because he couldn’t find anything inaccurate in it. The funguys’ lust for revenge soon petered out, but their parents, friends of their parents and alumni who sympathized with them posed a more durable threat. Many of these people contributed regularly and generously to the Zenia University Foundation. They accused me 83 © and my friends of overdramatizing and exaggerating youthful exuberance, which, although it had gone too far, didn’t deserve the reprobation we had given it. This hypocrisy disguised resentment over bad publicity. The parents would also have to pay for lawsuits against their offspring by victims of their violence and owners of property destroyed and damaged by them. They confided in the presidents of ZU and the ZUF their regret that this litigation would impair their generosity. Administrators owe much of their success to the skill with which they let their subordinates know what they want without ever saying it. I realized that I had embarrassed Randal Hines Perkins, the president of ZU, only when Ten reassigned me to cover students who worked in restaurants to help pay for their education. The suggestion had come, he told me, from the dean of journalism, who negotiated the level of the annual subsidy on which The Advocate depended for publication. Evidently the dean had thought this assignment would keep me and my friends out of trouble. Ten’s smile indicated that he had already guessed otherwise. Even before I discussed the subject with Letta, Thelma and How, I realized that the possibilities ranged from a benign synopsis of student waiters’ experience to a critical investigation of their employment and the restaurants they worked in. As soon as I told them the assignment, they expressed their enthusiasm for the radical interpretation. Reporting the riot had made a foursome of us. We were doing almost everything we could together and independently of others; meeting in the cafeteria, the café in the Student Union, the library; attending lectures, plays, concerts, highbrow films, exhibitions... Others who sympathized with us, called us “the four soars” because we soared over sports, pop music, people and even gossip. Discussing our courses with each other seemed exaggerated to them: Didn’t we get enough of them in class, studying for them and doing term papers? Those who didn’t like us and especially the funguys conflated soars with sores in their sarcasm, which we ignored. They resented the intellectual and cultural superiority they accused us of usurping. We were snobs showing our pretentions off. Some of our enemies saw us coming out of the library one evening when nearly everyone else was partying and soon all of them were snickering. Hardly did we care! We did go to parties occasionally, but never at fraternities or sororities, to say nothing of Slash and Burn. We took pride in our independence although, as we realized, there was nothing especially original about it. Now that I have reached the age of reminiscence, I dote on that second semester of my sophomore year at ZU. 84 © Although Letta didn’t fill the void left by Sheila, we were as friendly as a young couple could be without sex. We kissed each other goodnight on the cheek at the entrance to her residence and separated. When I felt affectionate, I threw an arm around her and she snuggled up to me. After a few seconds, however, we separated. I couldn’t have imagined going any further and I doubt that she could either. On the other hand, we shared ideas and emotions, whether they came from me or her. If one of us stopped in mid sentence for lack of the right word, the other supplied it. We felt so congenial with each other that we tended to forget the minor courtesies that limited our friendship. Once in my room, for instance, I started to unbutton my shirt and she turned towards the window. Blushing, I went to the bathroom, closed the door and finished changing my shirt. We spent most of our leisure together without minding separation from each other. When we met, each of us took an interest in what had happened to the other. Though not an intimate couple like Thelma and How, we enjoyed the friendliest of relations with them. The two couples even teased each other over the difference between them.
Letta and I replied simultaneously: Letta: “$2327.” Me: “$1521.” We looked at each other as if to ask: ‘Where did you get that from?’
Another time, they were meeting us.
This time, Letta and I were laughing. Me: “When I visit Letta, everything is put away.” Letta: “When I visit You too, except a toothbrush or something.” Me: “A toothbrush? When was that?” 85 © We began to interview student waiters and waitresses. Our first article in The Advocate concentrated on the difficulty of dividing twenty-four hours between study, work and sleep. The students averaged seven hours of work, except on weekends that attracted more customers than usual, and seven hours of sleep when they didn’t have a test to prepare or a term paper to write. When they did have a test or a term paper, however, they could devote the extra time they needed only by cutting back on sleep. Tired the next day, their performance at work and in class suffered. All too often, they faced two tests or two term papers or one of each, which kept them from sleeping more than a few hours.
The fewer courses they took, the better their performance, but the more semesters they needed to earn a degree. All of them complained that they didn’t have enough time for recreation, entertainment or even friends, essential ingredients of a college education.
When these students recognized our names, they praised our articles on the riot and lavished their contempt on “the funguys.” Invented by Tom-Tom and published by us, this term was on every tongue a few weeks later.
We devoted a paragraph in this article to the unfortunate division of the student body into a comfortable minority and a precarious majority, which the administration touted as diversity. It tolerated unruly students with wealthy parents to encourage the latters’ generosity. This policy undermined the statutory purpose of the university: providing the youth of the state with a college education. This paragraph angered the minority, both those who had participated in the riot and those who hadn’t, as well as their parents and sympathetic alumni. A rumor suggested that Randal Hines Perkins frowned at the dean of journalism at the next cocktail party. 86 © The dean hadn’t mentioned the student waiters and waitresses who worked in the restaurants on campus, such as the upscale Aulde England. Ignoring this omission, we had interviewed them too. When we begin to interview the managers of the off-campus restaurants who hired students, we interviewed those of the on-campus ones as well, such as Aulde England. Welcome Hotels held the contract to manage all on-campus restaurants and catering. The chain also ran the Palate, another upscale restaurant in the Concordia Welcome. Comparisons between the Palate and Aulde England began to appear in our second article, hence further innuendos of disapproval from Randal Hines Perkins to the dean of journalism. This article concentrated on the financial constraints of student waiters and waitresses. We also interviewed nonstudent waiters and waitresses in Concordia restaurants to compare their earnings with those of the students. All newly employed students started at the minimum wage, but some received raises for skill and experience, while others didn’t depending on the restaurant. The more expensive restaurants, such as Aulde England, the Palate and Bianchi’s, hired students who had already worked in the cheaper ones and paid them more. While nonstudent waiters and waitresses also started at the minimum wage, their wages improved faster and averaged above the students’ since they worked all year long and kept their job from year to year. Many of them resented their youthful competitors, who, though less skilled and experienced, took jobs away from them because they earned lower wages and were more attractive to customers. Restaurant owners and managers who hired students confirmed these advantages, but added that students learned the job more quickly. Students found fast-food restaurants the least pleasant to work for and the most likely to mistreat them. The hectic pace at mealtimes and demands for overtime without time and a half were their most frequent complaints. The difference between the highest and lowest earnings of students, wages and tips combined, amounted to a few hundred dollars a month. They averaged several hundred less than the nonstudent waiters. The students who worked for the Palate earned roughly the same as those who worked in Aulde England. Up to this point, our article offended few of our readers, although it made the administration, Welcome and other restaurant owners and managers nervous. From there on, however, it increasingly annoyed the administration. The students’ earnings didn’t even cover their living expenses and yet they rented the cheapest accommodations they could find on or off-campus. We wouldn’t have liked to live in the rooms and apartments they showed us. Except for the meals provided by the restaurants, the students couldn’t afford adequate fare for the others, such as breakfast and, on off-days, lunch and supper. One of them joked about the peanut butter that got him through the end of the month. For the rest of their living expenses and their tuition, they depended on partial 87 © scholarships, for which they had to compete, and loans, which burdened them with debt that increased every semester. Disciplines that required extra fees, such as the experimental sciences, added to this debt, which disadvantaged them during the early years of their working life. Thus far, our article merely annoyed the administration, who knew the public would hold them responsable for this privation. Yet we enraged them by asking how much the funds wasted on the inflated salaries of administrators and mediocre faculty favored by the administration would alleviate student poverty. Our coverage of the riot had enabled student waiters and waitresses to recognize funguys as their customers. Funguys and fungirls came frequently, ate and drank lavishly, sometimes got drunk or sick, made a mess at their table or in a restroom. Worse they slighted, mocked or even harrassed their waiters and waitresses, whom they knew to be fellow students.
Publishing these observations brought the funguys, their parents and sympathizers back into the fray, hence another avalanche of calls, e-mail, faxes and letters to the editor. This time, our detractors concentrated on what they denounced as the liberal bias of four reporters on The Advocate staff. When I participated in a forum on WTZU, another participant accused me of “communist nostalgia.” Rumors of cuts in The Advocate budget unless Ten fired me made him laugh:
“ In a safe deposit box.”
A majority of the student body and the faculty were cheering for us. Assuming that our second article had exhausted the possibilities of investigating student waiters and waitresses, the story he had assigned us by insinuation, Randal Hines Perkins reassured the funguys’ parents and sympathizers. Like all youthful provocation, ours would peter out. He didn’t know about the demon that was driving me. I had persuaded my three friends to help me evaluate the restaurants themselves on the criteria of food, service and atmosphere. We already had considerable testimony from the students and the managers. Two professors of nutrition in the Medical School and a professor who specialized in the restaurant industry in the Business School gave us generous advice and encouragement. Likewise the reporter on The Concordia Semaphore who covered restaurants. Ten let us 88 © organize a poll of administrators, faculty and students to determine campus opinion. I even asked him for funding to reimburse us for dining in all of the restaurants, but he laughed me out of his office.
We nonetheless recruited some volunteers from The Advocate staff including Ten himself, and some friends such as Laura, so at least one of us could dine in each of the restaurants open for business in Concordia. After three weeks of hard work, Thelma, How, Letty and I were ready to write a third article on the restaurants. We began by dividing the market into three segments: 1. permanent residents; 2. seasonal residents and 3. visitors. Between thirty-five and forty restaurants competed in a lucrative but volatile market, with a few opening and closing every year. The fast-food category included prosperous chains and precarious independents, both of which appealed mostly to students, sports fans and local youth. Five pizzarias belonged to this group. The five Chinese restaurants charged the lowest prices in the ethnic category, but a Mongolian, a Moroccan and a Peruvian boasted exotic fare. Less expensive were two Mexican and more expensive, a Japanese, a French and Bianchi’s, an Italian. Students, faculty and administrators as well as the more sophisticated visitors frequented these establishments, which the locals shunned. Eight American restaurants ranged in cost from the level of the Chinese to that of Bianchi’s, the Palate being the most expensive. Local, conservative and/or older diners preferred them. We needed a miscellaneous category to accommodate restaurants that didn’t belong to the others: Fresh Refresh specialized in healthy food, Momma’s served Afro-American cuisine and the Forty-Niner Saloon offered far-western fare such as “thumb-thick steaks.” Each had its own clientele, which you can imagine. Next we turned to nutrition, which most of these restaurants subordinated to taste or even, in some cases, neglected, with the prime exception of Fresh Refresh. To begin with, the portions were overcopious. It took a football lineman to clean a plate and a habit of eating half as much would have resulted in eventual obesity. The guilt inspired by waste moved many customers to request and managers to offer take-home cartons to keep leftovers out of garbage cans. This expedient disguised the abuse of charging customers for more food than they should eat. Competition not only motivated excessive portions, but also excessive seasoning. Few of the restaurants in all of our categories resisted the temptation of sacrificing the stomach to the palate. While they avoided bacterial or toxic contamination that would make their customers sick, they overseasoned their food with condiments that caused thirst, indigestion and insomnia. Too much salt, pepper, sugar, butter and spices 89 © ensured the immediate pleasure of diners at the expense of their comfort a few hours later. The Mexican cooks lavished hot peppers on their cuisine. The fat in the food served by most of these restaurants ensured pleasant flavor, but it endangered the health of their customers. The fast foods and the other cheap restaurants loaded their menus with fried food, which we could smell at a surprizing distance. They saved money by replacing the oil less frequently than they should have. French fries were anything but healthy for children and young people who craved them. The more expensive restaurants, except Bianchi’s, waited until their guests had finished their main course before tempting them with overpriced deserts full of sugar, butter, cream and chocolate. The weak-willed ran the risk of obesity, diabetes and arteriosclerosis. The American restaurants tended to concentrate on the quality of meat and neglect vegetables, seldom fresh and often overcooked. This shortcoming plagued Aulde England, but not the Palate although Wecome managed both. Bianchi’s won our first prize for food, service and atmosphere. To wait on his tables, Giorgio Bianchi recruited Italian students and majors as well as students from the Music School who specialized in Italian opera. He trained them to a high degree of skill, instilled surprizing elegance in them and imparted his enthusiasm to them. They surpassed the professionals who worked in other upscale restaurants. He paid them well and treated them as if they were his own children. They dressed in white shirts or blouses with brief black jackets and trousers or skirts. Under their chins, the men wore bow ties and the women, bow-tied ribbons, both in the same warm yellow as the walls. The tables consisted of a circular or oval black and white, marble-like slab supported by one or two spiral pedestals in brushed aluminum; the seats, of a brushed aluminum frame with white leather-like cushions. You could raise the seats enough for children and lower them enough for tall adults. Hung with autographed portraits of opera stars, the yellow walls contrasted with flat, white Corinthian columns built into them. Stucco rosettes decorated the high white ceiling, which left a plenty of space to absorb the noise of conversation that plagued the other upscale restaurants. A discret surround-sound system played CDs and vinal records of Italian opera from Giorgio’s extensive collection. He encouraged guests to make requests, which he could usually satisfy even if they asked for a specific aria or singer. When singers dined in his restaurant, he invited them to sing an aria and often joined them for duets, for he was a retired singer himself. He had an uncanny ability to remember guests and their names, which enhanced the popularity of his restaurant. He and his staff made them feel at home without fawning on them. Eugenia Bianchi, whom everyone including Giorgio called “la Signora”, 90 © ruled the kitchen, from which she let nothing substandard leave. For the primo piatto, the Neapolitan menu offered mostly pasta and, for the secondo, the traditional meats, poultry and fish, scaloppina di vitello being the favorite that waiters recommended to unsavvy guests. The vegetables were so fresh and carefully cooked that some customers settled for them alone, while others settled for pasta alone. Bianchi’s was the only upscale restaurant in Concordia that served reasonable portions and offered half portions for children or seniors at half price. Even the desserts were reasonable, both in quantity, nutrition and taste. La Signora limited the sugar to the minimum that you could taste. Bianchi’s also boasted the best wine cellar in the state and, in addition to the usual vintages, Giorgio stocked some excellent Castelli Romani. He and La Signora drove to Mammoth once a week to negotiate with wholesalers and flew to Italy for a month every summer to keep abreast of culinary art. They loved their business. Fresh Refresh and Momma’s tied for second place in our ranking. Twin sisters dedicated Fresh Refresh to refutating the assumption that
It seemed so stupid to them that Hope and Joy exposed it to their customers’ derision on the wall of their dining room and the cover of their menu. They were the only restauranteurs in Concordia who cared about their customers’ health as much as their taste. Overweight, allergic, high cholesterol or blood pressure, diabetic, whatever your condition, you could depend on Hope and Joy to serve you a pleasant and appropriate meal, whether they anticipated it in their menu or adjusted the menu to suit you. There were exceptions, of course, but they happened rarely. The Mongolian woman who demanded horse milk and urine was probably a hoax. A weekday lunch place, Fresh Refresh served sandwiches, salads, tabbouleh, soups, fruit, nuts... The sisters baked their own bread every morning and many customers bought some to take home, but you didn’t ask for white. If you ordered coffee, you got decaf and, if you ordered a coke, you were offered fruit juice. The sisters and their staff couched their rebukes in such good humor that some customers asked for something outrageous, like goulash or pulque. Hope dismissed goulash on the grounds that it soiled napkins and Joy remarked that cacti didn’t grow spines just for fun. All the ingredients of the food they served were organic, which cost their customers more. As they reminded them, however, cheaper food grown with chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides might eventually cost them more than money. Most of the students we polled agreed that their low-salt ham and low-fat cheese in their toasted whole-wheat panino beat the best hamburgers in town. In summer, Hope and Joy could usually boast that their lettuce 91 © had been picked yesterday. Their frozen yoghurts attracted children and teenagers in hot weather; their soups, adults and seniors in cold. They recruited jolly, plump, rosy-cheeked students to wait on their tables; dressed them in straw hats, white blouses and shirts, jeans and aprons; taught them all about organic from the field to the kitchen. A garden bordered the terrace and abudent flowers and plants decorated the dining room, while loudspeakers played bird songs from an extensive collection. No wonder Fresh Refresh attracted many regular customers and provided friends with a favorite meeting place. Momma’s attracted blacks because they found the menu familiar and whites because they found it exotic. Neither mentioned the irony of food originally left to blacks and now appreciated by whites. Both recognized the genius of Siesta McCrumby, who had improved this traditional cuisine more than enough to dedicate a restaurant to it. Okra, turnips, lima beans, hush puppies, pork chops and other surprising delicacies kept customers coming and coming back. They all assumed that Siesta was Momma, but none dared to ask or hint. She greeted them at the front door, led them to a table, took their orders and coaxed hesitaters to decide. Seldom did she smile or laugh and, unlike Giorgio, she treated you like a stranger even if you came every day. If you asked, she showed you her kitchen and let you ask her cooks a few questions. Their whites blinded you and the kitchen gleamed with a cleanliness that turned the state inspector on his heel. Siesta recruited mostly black students to wait on her tables, but also a few Asians and Caucascians. She had the ability to chose the most cheerful, polite and assiduous candidates among the many who applied. They could dress as they wished provided they looked decent and passed an inspection when they arrived for work. They all loved Siesta, although she never did anything to endear herself with anyone. She had recently moved Momma’s into a yellow Victorian house built by a banker for his wife, seven children, three cats, two dogs and a pony. A porch across the front and down the side offered comfortable seating which included rocking chairs, chaises-longues and swings at both ends. It accommodated diners who had to wait for a table or who wished to linger after they had finished or even visitors. They could order coffee or tea if one of the waiters or waitresses weren’t busy in the dining room. The first booby prize went to Zipp’s, which catered to sportsy students. Big flat panels showed games and other events continuously. Team photos, autographed portraits of stars and coaches, jerseys with names or numbers, even jock straps and bras hung on the walls. Autographed balls, rackets, sticks, clubs and bats as well as shoes, scates and dancing slippers, crowded ledges, shelves and other surfaces. Beer flowed from the bar while monsterburgers and US fries poured out of the kitchen. The waiters and waitresses were 92 © high-school athletes who hadn’t made the cut at ZU. They were taking it out on the swinging doors through which they kicked their way in and out of the kitchen. The waitresses were competing to see which could expose the most flesh: bosom, midrift and thigh; the boys, to carry the heaviest load on the large trays they balanced on an uplifted hand. The most lucrative tips determined the winners. Waiters and waitresses banged glasses down on the table beside customers, slid plates across to them, tossed rolls, buns, bagels and doughnuts to them. The noisiest place in town, Zipp’s not only attracted loud customers, but also played the loudest pop in fashion. The louder customers shouted, the louder they had to shout to be heard. When the place was crowded, you had to shout in your neighbor’s ear if you wanted him to hear you. The students who frequented it liked the noise and enjoyed contributing to it. Zipp’s, which attracted a crowd every evening except Sunday and Monday, made more profit than any other restaurant in Concordia. Standing room only on the afternoon or evening of a game. Aulde England, which differed entirely from Zipp’s, won the second booby prize. The half-timbered walls, the rough-hewn beams and the dark woodwork tried to reproduce Tudor architecture and failed. Anyone who had examined authentic examples would have noticed an urge to correct the very mistakes that ensured their charm, such as sagging rooves, leaning walls, lopsided structures, cracked stucco and odd additions such as turrets stuck on corners. The symmetry and the regularity of this imitation exposed the pretentions of the architect. Worse, he had wasted his skill on adaptation of the style to flatter bourgeois dreams of nobility, illustrated by the coats of arms on the stained glass window at the end of the room. This decor impressed the parents of students more than the faculty. The waiters and waitresses always seemed to be trying hard, a sure symptom that they weren’t succeeding. They forgot things you had ordered, brought you things others had ordered and disappeared when you needed them. The manager, they complained, gave them extra tasks that delayed the accomplishment of their routine duties. When they made a mistake, he scolded them instead of explaining how to avoid it next time. Overcooked, undercooked or unevenly cooked food and unwarranted delays undermined their morale. The vegetables were the worst in town. Aulde England’s menu and prices compared with those of the Palate, a much better restaurant. The two restaurants made similar profits, however, apparently because the prestige of Aulde England’s campus location offset its incompetent manager and cooks, who had lower salaries than those of the Palate. In our article, we didn’t say why we thought Welcome was skimping on its management of Aulde England, but, we heard a rumor that the company reprimanded the manager and the chef after we 93 © published it. Food and service improved for a few weeks, then declined to their previous level. Evidently Welcome earned more from this restaurant by skimping. Our articles on restaurants in Concordia kept the circulation of The Advocate well above the usual level. They incited another controversy between many of the same friends and enemies as the previous ones on the riot. The board of trustees, the administration, funpeople, sports crazies, the more generous third of parents and alumni, local and state Republicans, most of the Concordia business community and especially the owners and managers of the restaurants we had criticized complained, protested and demanded that our subsidy be cut or suspended. They accused us of ignorance, incompetence and meddling in affairs that didn’t concern us. The Advocate had no business evaluating off-campus restaurants. A majority of the students and the faculty, the less wealthy majority of parents and alumni, the Democratic mayor, governor and members of the legislature, and especially the owners and managers of the restaurants we had praised defended us and the freedom of the press. Of course we had a right to report on restaurants that would go out of business without the University! Ignorance and incompetence? None of our enemies had found the slightest error or inaccuracy in our articles. Hadn’t The Concordia Semaphore and The Mapleton Vigilant reprinted them? Ten told us of a tense meeting between him and the dean of journalism. After each had stated the opinion on his side of the controversy, Ten told the dean that, instead of recycling a third of the copies of The Advocate, he was printing a third as many extra ones to meet demand.
The dean realized that any attempt to force him to censure our articles would only backfire in a protest against a violation of the freedom of the press. Besides, Ten was a senior about to graduate. Returning from a trip to the far east, Randall Hines Perkins learned that his hint to report on student waiters and waitresses had resulted in a comprehensive series of articles on restaurants in Concordia, including the ones on campus. All of the groups offended by the articles complained and urged him to “do something” about The Student Advocate, which was “out of control.” Thus another hint came down to us expressing his annoyance and making the same threats we already knew not to take seriously. I asked Ten for permission to interview him on the latest of his many trips, which he justified by claiming to raise 94 © money, enhance the reputation of the university and establish relations with other institutions. His critics exposed the insignificance of the amounts he raised and the relations he established. How could a mediocre history scholar, they wondered, enhance the reputation of the university? The Great Gallivanter as we called him loved to travel in luxury and receive a lot of attention, he enjoyed official hospitality, made clever speeches that reassured everyone without committing himself to anything and he even distinguished himself as a gourmet. His hosts and hostesses found him far more eloquent on food and drink than the Crimean War, his special field. Although Ten and I both had all of this in mind, neither of us mentioned it and he turned me down.
“ Because,” he replied, aware that he didn’t have to explain. Many students recognized Thelma, How, Letta and me when they saw us.They smiled, spoke to us, stopped to talk to us, about restaurants, the riot or other subjects.
“ I asked Ten. He turned me down.”
“ I don’t blame him.”
“ No, he’s not the kind who has nightmares.” While most of these conversations resembled this one, some took a less genuine turn. Student politicians, militants and radicals saw an opportunity in our journalism. A group called Black Action tried to recruit Thelma and How, who declined for lack of enthusiasm for confronting whites. The militants reacted as angrily as you might have expected. Two groups advocating peace approached me. One sought unilateral disarmament by the US on the conviction that the other powers would follow our example. I wasn’t an idealist, I reminded them, but only a student journalist. I didn’t say that slavery would even deprive them of their freedom of speech. The other peace group promoted reduction of the armed forces to a level necessary for home defence. I didn’t ask them why they wanted to extend an inviation to our enemies. An article about groups like theirs would do nicely in The Student Advocate, I told them, but there wasn’t enough time before summer vacation. Perhaps in the fall. Their faces confirmed that they didn’t like association with other groups and particularly the rival peace group. Letta’s prelaw curriculum attracted one supporting abolition of the death penalty.
“ Abolition. How could you reform revenge?” 95 ©
This argument so infuriated them that they tried to browbeat Letta. No one loved a dispute like her. Her bosom threatened you, her eyes flashed up at you, her voice chirped in your ears and every assertion you made met with a devastating rejoinder. The abolitionists resorted to the classes they had to attend. Letta had a job working for a law firm in Mammoth that summer, Thelma and How were nurses aides at Xokchi Hospital and, despite my parents’ objections, I returned to the vehicle parts warehouse, where I lunched with Claw every day. The heat was just as bad and Sheila never got on at her stop. One evening at the stop where I changed buses, however, Dr. Kepp drove up in his blue Mercedes and offered me a ride. He seemed as happy to see me as I was to see him and his air conditioning was a treat. He told me that Sheila had consternated him, not only because she had treated me unfairly, but also because she had alienated me. A father who really loves his child will rejoice in the child’s independence, but Sheila’s conduct had disappointed him. Although he had enjoyed our company, he realized how fond he was of us as a couple only when she told him that she had left me. He had never known anyone as determined to dedicate herself to something significant without knowing what. Her friends had always teased her about that. She hadn’t left me because I treated her badly; on the contrary, she might not have left me if I had treated her badly. She needed a challenge. Challenges raised her hopes of finding her purpose in life. Dr. Kepp sighed and shrugged:
“ I found mine when we investigated parties at ZU. I had always had an itch to tell people what they don’t want to hear. Only then did I realize that you can make a profession of it. That must have been when Sheila and I started separating.”
“ Your advice is welcome. Dad’s no good at it.”
When the four soars/sores returned to ZU at the end of August, we had a happy reunion and told each other what we had done that summer. My encounter with Sheila’s father seemed definitive to me. All four of us had received an invitation to a lecture by “Dr. Tim Shane, anthropologist,” entitled “Where We Came From,” followed by a discussion and a reception. The Science Lecture Series, which we had never heard of, sponsored the event. 96 © After much hesitation, we decided to accept because we had nothing better to do that Sunday afternoon. As soon as we entered the Auditorium, a smiling flock of pretty girls and handsome boys welcomed us, found badges with our names on them and pinned them on us, girl on boy and boy on girl, served us juice and cookies, ushered us to seats in the middle near the stage. Others sitting near us introduced themselves, shook our hands and told us how glad they were to see us. Like the ones at the entrance, they were dressed in their Sunday best, the boys in coats and ties, the girls in high-neck blouses and low-hem skirts. Their faces gleamed as if washed a few minutes ago, both sexes wore a hint of cologne and the girls had no make-up. No hair on any head strayed from the line to which they had combed it in their traditional hair styles. Embarrassed at first by the cheerful and friendly excess, we soon began to tire of a deliberate, persistent and habitual hypocrisy. Even before Shane began to speak, we felt trapped in the enthusiastic crowd around us. How could we leave if we didn’t like his lecture? An older individual of the same species, he came out on the stage walking briskly and the crowd gave him a standing ovation. Clapping politely, we remained seated. Right from the start, his voice, language and manner identified him as an evangelical and not a scientist. To begin with, he called Darwin Satan and evolution blasphemy as if stating universally accepted truths. Self-proclaimed scientists at universities like ours were deceiving their students by endoctrinating them with an unproven theory instead of the truth in Genesis. How could they deny that the complexity of the universe had necessitated an intelligent creator? Shane kept repeating the phrase “intelligent design” in contexts that implied self-evident truth. Although he spoke nothing but propaganda, the faces around us glowed with enthusiasm. Why did I stand up? What was I going to say? I had no idea. Shock silenced the speaker in mid-sentence and stone froze his face.
Shock wrung the cheer from the faces all around us and anger rumbled around the auditorium. A boy stood up in front of us and turned on me as if to start a fist fight. A girl was holding him back. “Blasphemy?” Outrage had soured Shane’s voice. “What you just said is the worst blasphemy I have ever heard. You denied God’s word, the only unquestionable truth we have. How many billions of Christians have certified the divine origin of this text over the last twenty-one centuries?” Thelma stood up and, surprized, the crowd hushed.
Smiling, Shane asked the audience: “How many of you believe that God drew Eve from Adam’s side? Raise your hands.” The entire audience raised theirs, except the four of us.
“ Well, we have a lot of honest Christians here. What’s wrong with asking them?”
He shrugged: “Democracy... ”
The entire audience stood up howling with rage. All I could see were flashing teeth. I looked at my three friends and jerked my head towards the aisle. Thelma and I stood up with Letta and How, we left our row and turned up the aisle. I thought of the ancient Hebrews crossing the bottom of the Red Sea between two walls of thrasing water. We didn’t need a Moses to lead the way. Two boys started to attack us, but their neighbors struggled with them to hold them back. Although none of us had ever been exposed to an angry crowd before, we walked out with our dignity intact. The worst we suffered was the noise in our ears. We submitted as objective an article as we could to Ted, the new editor of The Advocate. Concentrating on the facts we had observed, we eliminated everything that, in our opinion, could be interpreted as provocative. Three evangelicals who also worked for the newspaper wrote their own account of the incident. They tried to be as objective as possible too. Comparison of the two texts made Ted wonder if we were reporting the same incident. Yet both affirmed that the Science Lecture Series had invited us and we had accepted. The evangelicals interpreted our selection of the facts as an insinuation that they had tried to sneak evangelical doctrine into the newspaper. We interpreted their selection as an attempt 97 © sneak evangelical doctrine into the newspaper. We interpreted their selection as an attempt to expose us as guests who had abused their hospitality. New to his job, Ted didn’t want to cause a scandal, so he tried to arbitrate the dispute. We were sitting around an oval table in a classroom dedicated to seminars. They were at one end, we were at the other and Ted was in the middle.
We laughed and Ted started to laugh, but, noticing the outrage of our adversaries, he stopped. “Since both of you limited yourselves to facts, let’s just publish the ones you agree on.”
“ I would rather not approach this negatively. I should think we could all agree on the essential facts.”
Ted was losing his patience: “Look! I didn’t call a meeting of evangelicals and nonevangelicals, I called a meeting of two different groups of reporters who contribute to this newspaper. I will publish what you agree on.”
Ted was uneasy. “How about the lecturer’s name, his subject, the place and the sponsor.?”
Ted looked at the evangelicals, who nodded. When this announcement appeared in The Advocate the next morning, it stirred endless curiosity. Who were the four guests and how had the lecturer offended them? Everyone guessed that we were and many of them asked us. We told them the whole story, including the evangelicals’ censorship. Their attempts to keep the incident quiet only publicized it, exposing them to ridicule during their campaign to recruit more students. We thought we had gotten rid of our political usefulness. A knock on my door one evening: two young men, clean-shaven, clean cut, well cut, well-mannered, their parents were proud of them. Either would have done nicely in a political ad on television. Was I You Gibbons? 99 © They told me their names and identified themselves as Young Republicans. Don’t worry, they hadn’t come to recruit me, although I would be more than welcome. They just wanted to make me a proposal. Did I have a few minutes? I offered them my two chairs and sat on my bed. The tall handsome one complimented us on our articles about restaurants.
“ Thank you! My friends will be pleased.”
How smoothly they collaborated! I imagined them selling a Cadillac or a Lincoln.
“ Wouldn’t most of the content come in the mail?”
“ Do you intend to parallel or supplement The Advocate?”
100 © “ How did you like our articles on the riot?”
“ If we reported another student riot, we would treat the students just as severely, whether they belonged to a fraternity or worked for a restaurant. A newspaper that avoids offending some of its readers misinforms them.”
“ You mentioned startup funding. How will you finance your magazine when it runs out? Advertising?”
“ ... You must be business majors.”
“ You seem to have considered every ramification... I have two objections to your proposal. In the first place, you are going to compete with The Advocate, which appeals to all students. The ZU Conservative will only appeal to part of them, the part that, as you said, has a little money to spend. The competition will weaken The Advocate and, if you get a subsidy from the university, it will probably come out of The Advocate’s. Eventually, you might even be tempted to replace The Advocate as the sole student newspaper on campus.”
101 ©
“ My second objection: We are independents. No matter how fairly we tried to edit your magazine, the radicals who dominate your party would never trust us... Look: I will discuss your proposal with my friends, but I don’t think we will accept it. I will let you know.” Disappointed, they stood up, shook hands with me and left. Letta, Thelma and How agreed with me that we should decline the offer, so I notified my visitors. We frightened Ted into launching an immediate investigation of the rival publication. Advocate reporters hunted Young Republicans down everywhere they could find them and pestered them for information about “this ZU Conservative.” The more they heard that it was confidential, the more they insisted on knowing. Young Republicans less cautious than my two visitors confirmed the intention of competing with The Advocate and eventually replacing it. They even took pride in a campaign run by one of the US president’s advisors to subvert student publications in colleges and universities everywhere in the US. He wanted to expand the influence he already enjoyed over big-city newspapers to student publications. Edited by Ted, the editorial I wrote put these schemes in the context of the president’s ambition of gaining control over the media. This editorial offended the Young Republicans even more than the lead article exposing their project to replace The Advocate. They accused me of betrayal, as if I had agreed to keep the project confidential. Those who had warned against approaching me quarreled with those who had favored it. The derision of the unprivileged minority incited a reaction by the privileged minority, who espoused the claim of bias against them by The Advocate. Letta, Thelma, How and I became the enemies they loved most to hate. As usual, this hatred lasted longer than the praise lavished on us. The last group that tried to enlist us in their cause made a sympathetic impression on us without tempting us to sacrifice our independence. The New Marxists were yearning for the next revolution as passionately as the evangelicals were, for the return of Christ. Both took pride in the superiority of their convictions, for which they expected privileges in the next life. Yet hypocrisy spoiled the evangelicals’ attitude, while sincerity enhanced the New Marxists’. Both disapproved of abuses by their opponents’ which the evangelicals called sin and the New Marxists, greed. The next and final revolution would empower the New Marxists to divide the greedy into those capable of reform and those deserving humane elimination, which remained vague. Then they would establish an uncorruptible society in which all men and women would be equal and without ambition. Hadn’t ambition and 104 © corruption ruined the last great revolution, over which the New Marxists shed a few tears? Intelligence and innocence harmonized more perfectly with them than any of the other groups that approached us. For once, we felt as if they wished to befriend us rather than exploit us, but we could hardly share their dream. We did devote an article to them, in which we tried to do them justice without ignoring their illusions. To our surprise, they thanked us. We had expected the accusations of bias by the other groups. Our popularity with most of our readers, who didn’t belong to any group, lasted a few weeks. We were too eccentric to inspire enduring sympathy.
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