(Scrolling back to 1949 in this memoir will provide baseball junkies with the very essence of baseball and the father/son relationship)

                                                    THE LITERARY WORLD

1963

     Mother, upon coming home from her job as school nurse at Bolsa Grande High school in Garden Grove, was careful not to disturb the budding genius clacking away on a $10 Smith-Corona typewriter in his bedroom. When she asked if she could read my pieces, my retort was, “Maybe someday.”

   Professor Edwards advised me to write about “anything that comes into my mind.” Like pals, we sometimes met in the student union to drink coffee and discuss literature, writers and writing. I told him of my experience with coach Kincaid. He seemed amused, felt Kincaid a reasonable man considering he was a coach. When I pointed out Dawn Meadows, sitting with a handsome preppie she was engaged to across the room, the two involved in intimate whispers broken up by sudden laughs, longing gazes, and tender touches indicating they were on fucking terms, I disclosed to Edwards she’d been my flame and dumped because I was “defeatist and negative and without direction.”

     Edwards burst out laughing. “Oh, heartbreak and rejection are great fuel for writers, Dell. I’ve found you can fall for many different types of women over the years, and the last thing you want at this point in your life is a steady who’s planning out your future together. I’ve been in and out of relationships, and as a writer myself, it can be difficult. I’m still searching at 34. There are times I don’t mind being alone. It was Somerset Maugham who wrote, “No object is more deserving of pity than the married bachelor.” Seeing that young girl with that fellow, well, that’s a sure sign she was never for you, but somebody else might be.”

     Edwards suggested I pursue sports writing. I could make a living and on the side write serious fiction. I’d ALWAYS be writing, and therefore improving. I informed Edwards I had a foul taste in my mouth from baseball and dreaded hanging out in clubhouses or locker rooms. Instead, I wanted to travel the world, then go in the military, and gather experience. Edwards said I already had plenty of experience and to write about my Dad and our relationship, but right now I couldn’t and instead found myself writing about people and subjects and situations I’d never experienced and knew nothing about. He did not discourage this, as long as I wrote.

     Observing fellow writing students, I realized they had nothing in common with me or anybody I’d ever known. With the exception of the two 40ish adults, they were Bohemian and therefore skeptical of established conventions and at times belligerently rebellious, often bickering with these older students who accused them of being naively idealistic. Edwards slyly orchestrated literary, social, political and even cinematic disputes and smiled as he observed them flower into snarling and vituperative shouting matches. Several of the more shabbily dressed girls, who seemed to purposely make themselves look the opposite of Dawn Meadows, sided with J. Hampton Mills and hung out with him in a small and malodorous clique in the student union. They read poetry and idolized the Beat Generation writers, especially Burroughs and Ginsburg, who confused me. They were in love with Fellini movies, abstract art, and hybrid folk/protest music. Half the time I did not know what the hell they were talking about, but I could not wait to get to Edward’s class and join the rousing debates, even if I was regarded as class stooge.

     These days, walking around campus, I observed a vast sea of students as having little inclination to question or rebel against the powers that be or test the authority of the system. They were sheep, searching for mates, single-mindedly pursuing a diploma and the gateway to soulless suburban anonymity, contentment, security, the procreation of more indistinguishable lives and the eternal acquisition of material possessions and a tiny plot of turf on which to build shelter so as to justify their existences. My new classmates vilified such ambitions and in the process established themselves as eloquent haters.

     This anger and hatred caught fire in my gut, providing me with a new, surging passion to express it. I hissed at the prissy and immaculate and well-endowed coeds I had previously drooled over and thought of as potential life-mates. As for the girls in my creative writing class, whose attire approached mine in slovenliness, I viewed them with disgust and fascination, wondering what really lurked beneath the costumes and facades. They ignored me, except to roll their eyes and sigh when I expounded sententiously. In the student union, I was snickered at as an outcast.

     I began to take stock of myself. What was baseball, a simple game, in the great realm of discovery on this planet? How futile was it, poring over major league box scores with hunger every morning as I followed my idols? Christ, I actually had a brain! When Dad looked at me, the worry and consternation on his face was palpable and we had little to say to each other, though Mom and I seemed to be talking about subjects she’d always wanted to talk about with me while Dad appeared suddenly odd man out.

     (Next Sunday installment: The Bohemian Brigade)