The Fourth Day
The job at the lab was the first significant civilian job I had had since sea going days. It was the most routine, middle American type of job I have ever had. I had a degree in Physical Science which made it possible for me to walk into a civil service job at beginning professional level--GS 5. After one year I was more or less automatically promoted to GS 7. Had I stayed there I could have expected to win promotion gradually until I had a virtual Brahman type existence, and with a minimum of pressure, struggle, tension.
But after a couple of years it had become too boring to continue. In the beginning I worked for a man named Leo Loeb, a Jew, but a good Christian by my definition. He had a crew of 6 or so research chemists working on important secret military cotton fabric processing. In the course of this work I acquired a couple of patents, signed over to the government of course. I was fairly well satisfied working for Leo.
But after about a year he left to go to work at Appliance Park, a GE research facility at Louisville. I was put under another Jew named Leon Segal. Leon and I did not get along together, and I went to see the division head, Dr. Conrad and told him I would have to resign since I could no longer work for Mr. Segal. Fortunately Mary Rollins, the head of the photography section, was willing to take me on, so Conrad transferred me to her area. She proved to be one of the best employers I have ever had; she had enough interpersonal skill to keep me fairly happy in the job.
I did a good bit of developing and printing of micrographic material. We had an electron microscope, and we were studying the cotton processing that was going on in the other sections. I don't remember many of my work associates in those years. There was a boy named Charlie Peacock. I had great contempt for Charlie because he had a high voice and seemed obviously effeminate. He also worked for Mary Rollins. When I transferred to her section, I had occasion to work more closely with him, and my opinion underwent a marked change. He was not effeminate, at least not homosexual. His voice he had come by honestly, and his manner as well--probably just hadn't been around any males in his childhood. He was one of many friends I have had that I started out with unfriendly feelings about.
Although I found working conditions in Mary's shop much more pleasant than they had been in Leon's, I was getting pretty bored after about two years at the lab. Dr. Fagley, a professor at Tulane, was doing some work at the lab, and I must have gotten superficially acquainted with him. I had only one more year to fool around before losing my educational benefits on the GI bill. So I decided to request educational leave, and go to Tulane to pursue my master's in Physical Chemistry. The director granted this and I duly enrolled in Fagley's undergraduate course in Physical Chemistry in the summer of 1956. I was 30. The government was to pay all my expenses and give me a modest living allowance, for up to four years of school.
My educational leave began in the early summer of 1956. I enrolled in Fagley's undergraduate course in Physical Chemistry, since I had never had any Physical Chemistry. Fagley was thought to be a holy terror, who failed half the Tulane engineering students, all of whom had to take his course. He was a brilliant man, and seemed wholly dedicated to his discipline. I had seen in him these qualities and chose him for my graduate professor.
The summer course was the usual accelerated program, and we boned away on Physical Chemistry. I just remember a couple of things that happened in that course. First the lab. I've always had more trouble with hands on stuff than with theoretical. We had an experiment in which I foolishly neglected to take the initial parameters, so I didn't have a prayer of successfully concluding the thing. We were using the blackboard for calculations. I started plotting a series of curves trying to find where the initial points might lie. Fagley came in and looked at what I was doing. He wasn't in the least interested in the fact that I had missed the initial values; he was just interested in the mathematical operations being carried out.
The other incident concerns some help I gave one of my classmates. This boy was trying hard, but he found it pretty difficult. Exam time came, and I suggested he come over to study. He did, I concentrated on helping him prepare for the exam. The next day I made 100 on it. No one ever made 100 on Fagley's tests. The simple lesson I learned was that I learned more trying to help someone else than I would have just trying to help myself.
Actually more important things were happening to me that summer, my 31st. As I intimated at the end of the THIRD.DAY, I had become discontented with my circumstances and my life in general; I began to look for something else, something beyond the flat, one dimensional existence which I saw stretching ahead.
I was coming to understand that my problem was spiritual in nature. I had a checkered career in the religious realm. I had read the Bible cover to cover by the age of 9, and the same year I responded to my father's altar
call with a "profession of faith". Little was made of it; nothing overt happened in our family in the religious realm other than a pro forma table blessing. In my teens I wandered from my childhood orientation, as we all do. I suppose I became a deist. I felt that God had created the world and left it to its own devices. The idea that God had any personal interest in an antlike creature like me, and everybody else, seemed ridiculous. At 17 or so I remember going to First Methodist with mother once. I came out into the sunshine with the comment, "I guess it's possible that people may become a little less ornery because of going to church". That's the best I could say about it.
I always had ambivalent feelings about the preacher. What did his words have to do with his real life? Did he really mean all that, or was he just giving us a great big snow job? I could not see the congruence between the religious words and the reality of people's lives. I still find it mighty hard to see that sometimes. Around 1955 I had drifted into a small group at St. Charles Ave Presbyterian looking at the meaning of membership. Seems like there were four of us. Dr. Land, who had been there all his life, eminently successful, and I suppose an archetypal clergyman met with us. One evening I remember a middle age lady saying that her faith was such a comfort to her. I said, "yes, it can be mighty comfortable."
Nevertheless by 1956 I had become aware that I had spiritual deficiencies and spiritual needs. I also knew it was unlikely I would find a significant answer in a conventional religious service: I was too sceptical, too disposed to doubt the sincerity of the words being said. In desperation I prayed that I might find something to read that would prove helpful. That's when things started happening changing my life dramatically.
The next day I was in a barber chair, getting my routine haircut. A Roman Catholic barber was cutting my hair, and he began to rave about this Protestant clergyman who had been such a help to him. Norman Vincent Peale, and a book entitled The Power of Positive Thinking.
Well I went to the library and got a copy of the book, and it changed the direction of my life. My life has taken many directions, many changes, but never another one as drastic as that one. Peale convinced me that God is personal and that he cares about me and is accessible to me. Since August of 1956 I have never for a moment doubted that reality. I can tell you that it makes a tremendous difference whether or not you believe that.
The minute I started believing in God (in that new way) I started believing in myself. My whole self image changed drastically. I no longer found people threatening. People became fun. They saw in me the gifts, the intellectual power that had for so long been hidden. People were attracted to me. I found myself the center of attention--a very pleasant experience. Most of my life I had been starved for human contact, for affirmation, for love. Now suddenly it seemed to come from every direction. I remember going to school a few minutes early one morning and how entranced I was that everyone came over to talk with me; I had a sort of charisma, a power I had never had before. I remember a neurotic girl at school, who I could tell had terrific needs. It came to me that I could establish a relationship with her and maybe do something for her. Lucky for me I had sense enough not to act on that impulse. I am describing a subjective experience of course. I must try to do it more objectively:
In this new life I could see for the first time how loveless my former life had been. I prayed to my newly discovered Father for someone to love. The next Sunday evening I was eating at the Presbyterian church with the usual friends. But somebody new was there, a girl named Mary Gordon with a sort of come hither look in her eyes. We became friends, and I was soon loving her excessively. It turned out she already had a husband and a little boy, and had had a hard time, living in Houston, and had come home to her parents, the Perdues. We had some rounds, but loving her well was entirely beyond my capability at that time, and it didn't last. Nevertheless it was a spiritual experience of the first magnitude.
I had always known I was gifted, but I had never had the power to exercise any gifts in the social realm. Now suddenly I had that power. I prayed for a chance to share this, to exercise some sort of leadership. The next Sunday a lady at Rayne Memorial named Laura Rickson asked me to teach the young adult class. (There were four of us in it.) I said I couldn't teach, but I would lead the class temporarily.
One of the original four was a boy named Larry Floyd, a very strange sort. Larry was quite young, perhaps in his late teens, large, bright, disturbed. We learned that some years before he had chased his stepmother around the kitchen table with a knife, which earned him a place in an institution and thereafter homelessness. He had been knocking around the world since then and must have had some very strange experiences.
From this distance in time I can't remember many of the details of that eventful fall. Larry had pressing needs, which he articulated to our group. I had this great new power and desire to help people. I found myself praying for the power to help Larry; I desperately wanted to help him. It was so urgent to me that I bargained with the Lord as follows. Lord, if you let me help Larry I'll do anything for you...and I cast about in my mind for the worst thing God might ask me to do....I'll even be a minister, which at the time seemed to me a fate little better than death.
Immediately my attitude about that took a 180 degree change, and I realized that was what I really wanted. I took Larry into my home. But it turned out this was more than I could safely handle. As I have said Larry was a strange sort. I've never known anyone quite like him. He seemed to have been sent to me. He had a lot of spiritual maturity, combined with a lot of emotional insecurity. I asked him if he thought I would make a minister.
He said, "Larry, you'll make a lot more than a minister." He was right.
This was in December I believe. The past four months had been very stressful. The sort of things I've described had been happening; life had become extremely intense. I had lost the ability to sleep. I called Daddy, and he met me and took me to the hospital. They may have called it a nervous breakdown; more likely nervous exhaustion. I was in the hospital for a couple of days. After I got a couple of night's sleep, I could manage again. But I had gone close to the edge, and I felt shaky for some time thereafter. I drew in my horns emphatically.
I think it was after that experience that I made the trip to Houston. I had been through considerable emotional turmoil with Mary Gordon. She was ill, too, in a different way, sick from a destructive relationship with her husband. He was a PR man in Houston. As she said, he did an awful lot of partying, drank too much, neglected her and the boy, etc. etc. As our relationship developed she must have transferred some of her hostility over him to me. I told her I was going to Houston to talk with him and try to see if anything between them was possible.
I flew over to Houston and got a room in the Y. I met their next door neighbors, who were lovely young people. We talked about the Wilsons' problems at great length. They had the pastor come over, and we talked some more. He advised me to get on the bus and go back to New Orleans. I believe I did meet her husband and got the impression he wanted nothing to do with her and basically wanted to protect himself legally. I flew back to New Orleans. It was my first good will tour and certainly as unsuccessful as any I've ever had. I was in a highly exalted, emotionally fragile state by the time I got on that plane. The old lady next to me seemed an understanding sort, and I compulsively poured out the whole story into her sympathetic ears. I could see that I was near the edge, and I more or less retired from my relationship with Mary at that point.
During that fall I had been going through the motions of a graduate student in Physical Chemistry. I was sitting in class, but not really functioning as a student. I was going through these tremendous changes of personality, from one extreme to the other, extreme introvert to extreme extrovert. Or perhaps just adding a new dimension to my life.
I had chosen Dr. Fagley as my teacher and model because he was an admirable man, brilliant and totally dedicated--to Physical Chemistry. He was a veritable priest of science. Had I stuck with him and worked at it I, too, might have become a brilliant Physical Chemist. But my mind was on other things. On interpersonal relationships, on spiritual matters, on ultimate meanings which chemistry doesn't address.
Although I didn't learn much Chemistry that semester, I learned something about Fagley. It happened like this. Fagley's mind worked about five times as fast as anybody else's. When he tried his very best to be slow, deliberate, and repetitive, and his students tried their very best to catch what he said, occasionally the minds would meet and learning would ensue.
One day he was going along in a very methodical and patient way, writing his equations on the board slowly so we'd be sure to get it. I was getting it, and I took the freedom to light a cigarette. He made no overt sign that he had noticed; he just accelerated his pace about 10 fold. As if to say, okay, you think you got that, huh, see if you can get this. My God, the man was emotionally immature--to the nth degree.
Reflecting on that I came to feel that if I was going to be totally dedicated, it might as well be to the highest value. You can see how this led directly into the vocational change I made. The weird thing is that when I went into Fagley's office to tell him I was abandoning Chemistry for the ministry, he told me that I was the third one of his students to do that. Strange!!!
The semester had about a month to go, and I stayed till the end, just going through the motions. I remember sitting at a table, drinking a coke, and smoking a cigarette with some fellow students. One of them pointed out that I had best quit smoking. More about that a little later.
I had a minimal amount of guidance during that period. Al Jernigan was associate pastor at Rayne as I recall, and I talked with him a few times. Clarence Snelling was Director of the Wesley Foundation at Tulane. We had known his family for many years. His father was director of the Mercy Memorial Home for Unwed Mothers. His grandfather, a Methodist minister, lived to a great age. I remember seeing him on a horse at the age of 94. I must have gone to some functions at Wesley. I remember one where Spencer Wren, who was my cousin Mildred's pastor, was trying to convince us of the existence of the devil. I opined that we had created the devil in our own image just like we had created God. I suppose it marked the beginning of many intellectual struggles with the faith.
In January they had a retreat of some sort over on the Gulf Coast. I went to it in a very casual way. I met a number of young ladies there, among them one named Eleanor Babylon, but didn't pay much attention to any of them at that time. I was to get better acquainted with Eleanor a few months later.
I had some other romantic interests during this period. I had never really had the social courage to form relationships in the past, but now I did. In particular Joan Beck, one of the original four in that group at Rayne, a recreationist from the Midwest She had just been through an unhappy relationship with a professor or something of that sort. We both got acquainted on the rebound. She was a very healthy minded girl, should have made someone a good wife, but I was not ready to go that far with her. I did a really foolish thing--went to her apartment early in the morning--I suppose after a torrid evening, and requested admittance--too insistently. I more or less ended the relationship with that folly.
I had now struck out twice--first with Mary Gordon and then with Joan. These experiences left their mark on me and both gave me needed experience. I had to grow from my retarded adolescence, so they were perhaps a sort of crash course. The next entanglement was for real.
After Christmas it was clear to me that I must change my vocation, but not quite so clear how. My choices sort of boiled down to social work or religious work. Basically I wanted to help people, but I knew it was a journey of a thousand miles. Clarence Snelling was a Methodist minister; his wife was a social worker. I consulted with him about my course of action. I communicated that whatever I did would be to a large extent in the nature of a growth process. I remember one thing he said: the School of Social Work is no panacea for spiritual growth. I suppose that had some influence in moving me in the other direction.
He and three other professors at the school had studied at Edinburgh (I've never known why Edinburgh was an acceptable educational experience for Southern Baptists, but there it was). These four men represented, in my mind at least, the liberal faction of the faculty. I registered for a class with each of them. The other three were good teachers, very likely the best at the school, but none of them was the equal of Billy.
Billy McMinn taught Religion and Philosophy. He had a very small class. He assigned creative work for us. We studied the religious philosophers of the Middle Ages. I chose Meister Eckhart for my paper. I turned it in and, graded by Billy's graduate assistant, Jimmy Dye, it got a IV (a fairly low grade). But Jiy Bme a II for the course. Jimmy was about the only teacher I have ever had with the faculty of relating personally to his students in a creative way. He had us at his home on at least one occasion.
When I enrolled at the seminary, I had one small problem. I was employed at Arthur Murray's at that time, a dancing instructor. This is something I had just sort of drifted into; I wasn't well fitted for it, and luckily for me, they let me go before it became an issue at the seminary. If the good Baptists had known I was working at Arthur Murray's, they would have been horrified. I did learn to dance pretty well, a gift almost never used since that time.
The student body at the school were largely from the rural south. By and large they considered New Orleans roughly comparable to Sodom and Gomorrah, but they wanted the certification of a theological degree. Billy's students were largely the liberal fringe. Even so I got the impression that Billy more or less took these kids off the farm so to speak and threw them out into the deep water of developing an individual faith, where they might sink or swim.
One boy I remember, Fred, seemed to sink. He left school, moved down to the French Quarter, and seemed to be trying to develop a Bohemian lifestyle. He came back to the campus a few times, as if to gloat. I remember one conversation he had with some of us. One student asked him how it felt to be out there in the wilderness. He said I like it out here. I thought about Moses, who spent 40 years in the wilderness. I wasn't worried about Fred, but rather glad that Billy had delivered him from the mindless fundamentalism which characterizes so many.
Another boy had a somewhat comparable experience. He "lost his faith", but went to work in the City Manager's Office or something of that sort. I remember one other of Billy's students, one of the people I felt most in common with at the seminary. He was from Arkansas, which I rightly or wrongly considered a slightly more liberated environment than LA and Mississippi.
Just before graduation Billy had Dr. Witmore over from the Tulane Philosophy Department. He came looking for students and recruited this boy from Arkansas. He was a nice boy, with a fresh and natural mind and manner. I ran into him a couple of years later and felt like his time in the Tulane Philosophy Department had been really unkind to him. His vocabulary had become so unnatural.
Speaking of the Tulane Philosophy Department reminds me of a strange experience the year before back in the Chemistry Department. At a meeting of our Science Club a philosophy professor had been invited. He must have been a Logical Positivist. His attitude seemed to me obsequious in the extreme; he seemed to feel that he was talking to his superiors, scientists although largely only graduate students. He was trying to present a scheme of philosophy that would be acceptable to us. Everyone was very polite to him, but when it was over Charlie Brent, my lab partner and I, unlocked our lab, went in, closed the door and burst out laughing. It was hilarious. I've never had any respect for the philosophical idea that only material concepts have any meaning; in my mind it leaves philosophy a curiously shrunken nub. In the 50's it seemed to be dominant; hopefully they have improved their act since then.
Dr. St. Amant taught Church History--also an intellectual and he must have had greater political skills than Billy. We went to the Louisville Seminary for a while, then a seminary in Switzerland.
Ted Clark, I think, taught Philosophy of Religion. He was another enlightened man. I remember once in class asking him how we can distinguish among the ambiguities of life. He said we can't, but God can. He went to Harvard on sabbatical, studied with Paul Tillich, wrote a book which he unfortunately entitled Saved by His Life and lost his position. He did get another faculty position at Stetson, a Baptist school in Florida, and apparently somewhat more liberal than the seminary.
Dr. Eddleman, from Kentucky, became president of the seminary while I was there, and proceeded to run off all the best teachers. He relieved me from any lingering feelings of loyalty to the place which I might have developed. After all the Baptists paid for my education. Tuition was extremely minimal, and they treated me exactly like their own. No one ever made any attempt to convert me. I was the first Methodist student to go through the school, but not the last; I apparently broke ground for others to come.
Clarence invited me to join the staff at Valley Camp, a camp for under- privileged children which he and his wife ran in Pewee Valley, near Louisville. It was a way to earn a little money and do something in the helping way, so I accepted. I got up there early and found a little girl named Eleanor; in camp she had the nickname of Holly.
After the two aborted romances which I have already described, I was a bit more cautious, although still very anxious to find companionship. I determined that I would be receptive, but not pushy. I just let happen what might happen, which means that in essence Eleanor chose me. Soon we were practically married. That made the summer camp an altogether successful experience.
I served as waterfront director. We had about 50 or 75 kids for two weeks at a time. We used an old quarry for swimming, with a shallow end and a deep end. To be allowed in the deep end they had to prove they could swim. On one occasion these kids--8 year olds that day lined up to pass their swimming test. A couple of them did it. Then this little kid jumped right in the deep water and started to swim, but he was not swimming horizontally, he was trying to swim vertically, trying to go straight up. It took me a moment to realize that he hadn't the vaguest notion as to how to swim. I jumped in and got him.
On another occasion I left the waterfront temporarily and drove my car back to the main camp building for some purpose. Coming back I found one of the kids in distress and the boy I had left in charge just sitting there perfectly oblivious to what was happening. I jumped out of the car (luckily it stopped on its own) and into the water to get the person. We were fortunate not to have any fatalities that year.
At the beginning of the summer and at the end we had a week with older kids--15-17. I enjoyed them more than I did the younger ones. They were close to, but not quite at the level of juvenile delinquents. I let some of the boys drive my car. One was going too fast and I asked him to take it easy. He attempted to reassure me that he didn't wreck friends' car, only hot cars.
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