Matriculation Memories

Here's a little something to counter the seriousness of the times in which we live:

    The reason I attended East Carolina University was that I thought I would play baseball there under the tutelage of a coach I met at a baseball camp in Ohio following my junior year of high school.  His name was Earl Smith, and he encouraged my presence at ECU. 

    As memorable a character as he was, though, he served only to get me to Greenville.  He retired from coaching after Fall baseball practice my freshman year, in which I participated, but I don’t think there was any connection.  Similarly, I opted to suspend the pursuit of my Big League dreams about the same time.  Again, no connection.

    At ECU I never really thought of the instructors as “professors” in the same light I would later consider my mentors at seminary, but some memorable ones popped up along the way.  On the disappointing side was my academic advisor in the business school (I was an accounting major), whose name I no longer recall.  That’s fair, though, because I had the distinct impression he neither remembered my name nor any prior conversations whenever I stopped by his office for another confusing interaction. 

    Some of us suspected that the head of the accounting department spent her evenings in pursuit of liquid courage, but then, perhaps she was weary and close to the end of the line, unfortunate enough not to escape the campus scene prior to the upheaval and dismantling of everything sacred.

    A few of my teachers at ECU had distracting idiosyncrasies.  Of course, in those days several of them smoked in class, as did numerous students.  My philosophy instructor, in a deadening and tortuous 3:00 p.m. class in the Spring quarter, no less, forced us to spend the weeks pondering the question, “What is temperance?”

    He personally didn’t display temperance in his fumbling with cigarettes and matches, and perhaps it was supposed to be an object lesson.  While we carefully tracked the number of times he articulated the word, “uh,” he lit his cigarette, inhaling thoughtfully as the match flamed longer than necessary.  Then he blew out the match, slowly shook it eight or ten times, blew on it some more, shook it again, all the while lost in philosophical rumination, before finally dropping the match on the floor and grinding it into total submission with his cowboy-booted foot.  While fragrant spring flowers and bushes gracefully blossomed outside the classroom window attracting rejoicing bees, and every beautiful, great-to-be-young Friday afternoon seemed horribly wasted, I can report there were no fires in the building.

    Another teacher spent the class time pensively rolling his shirtsleeves up to his elbows, rolling them back down, and then up again.  A favorite of mine often displayed more interest in Transcendental Meditation than in his field, which was economics.  He was a calm person who drove a Corvette and lobbed slow-pitch questions on multiple-choice exams.  For instance, we once had to decide whether Congress actually repealed the “law” of supply and demand, or if another suggested choice applied. 

    My tax accounting teacher advised that we apportion the yellow smudges from our highlighters on the few unimportant sections in the official IRS tax code book we used as our text, rather than following the more traditional reverse practice. 

    One instructor was christened “Shorty” for unkind and obvious reasons.  In his class there seemingly was an ongoing battle of wits with some of us, and I will admit after all these years he usually won.  I remember one day when for some reason there was an old-style wind-up alarm clock on his desk in the classroom.  I’ll just pretend now I can’t remember whether my friend Gary or I came up with the idea of setting the alarm so it would disrupt the lecture with its distress call. 

    The class was an extended once-per-week session lasting two-and-a-half- hours, and when the hall bell rang that day, relieving other students on a normal class schedule, I looked at Gary.  He barely could contain himself.    

    The time approached for the alarm to sound. The clock’s hands reached their anticipated alignment.  Gary and I tensed up --- and stunning silence mocked us.  We exchanged flabbergasted looks.  At the end of class, I mingled unobtrusively with the inevitable gaggle of students seeking a clarifying parting word with Shorty.  I casually looked at the clock, and sure enough, the alarm switch was in the off position.  He had beaten us again! 

    Coach Earl Smith had a catalogue of stories from his decades of seeing it all on a baseball field.  It seemed many of the stories contained the lesson that not following instructions led to disastrous results not only in baseball games, but also in one’s life:  some of his players suffered severe injuries from physical attacks, and one, I believe, was killed in a helicopter crash shortly after failing to heed Earl’s in-game wisdom.

    One day we were standing around on the infield during practice and Earl launched into criticism of Jim “Catfish” Hunter, then the ace pitcher of the Oakland A’s team that within a few weeks would win the first of three consecutive World Series.  Hunter eventually was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Earl objected to his mustache and the length of his hair.  I suspect some of the animus was related to the fact that Hunter was from a nearby North Carolina town and did not see fit to play ball at ECU under their esteemed coach. “That Catfish, he dumb,” was how Earl phrased it.

    On another occasion I was in the trainer’s room getting treatment for a minor injury.  Also present was Tommy Toms, then the best pitcher on the team.  Tommy later appeared briefly in the Major Leagues with the San Francisco Giants.  On this particular day he and I got to talking about Earl’s rules regarding hair length because Tommy clearly was in violation.  Tommy reported Earl’s comment about him.  Imitating Earl, he said “You know, that Tommy Toms may be a hippie freak, but when he gets on that pitcher’s mound he’s a pretty good boy.”