Twelve Steps To Marriage (Step 5)

STEP 5            QUITERRIA

So it's the fall now and I am at the University of Massachusettes @ Amherst..........and compared to where I have been this place is heaven! I've gotten a $2500 PELL Grant, some work study and my father is coughing up tuition.

I am sharing an apartment in Sunderland, at the end of the bus line.......My roommate is a guy I met at Berkshire Community College.......we were in some Chemistry courses together and became freindly. I called him the Buddy....and he calls me the same........

we pretty much  had it made.....at least I thought we did......With our Associates Degrees we were starting at the halfway point.....I was now a Bio-Chem  Major and it looked like I just might Graduate from a decent Four Year College after all. Mark was a very smart guy.......even though he was from Pittsfield........ He had a photographic memory........ which would allow Mark to pontificate on any subject matter what-so-ever even when he had no idea what he was talking about ............

Later it turns out Mark is basically  "Full Of Shit " all the time! ....as I would find out increasingly over the course of our year living together.....

So I'm taking a full load of courses....Calculus , Organic Chemistry , Biology, Bio-Chemistry and for some odd reason "German", which I had taken in High School. But I am not a totally dedicated student. With 25,000 students there were a lot of distractions about.......I found mine after about three days wanderring around the campus......

I was in the basement of the Union somewhere and I stumbled upon the offices of the school newspaper "The Daily Collegian". They were looking for photo techs who owned their own cameras......... I walked in and was offerred a job photographing some professor who had just written a book...after that photographing some Fraternities........I caught Hell for show casing a Black Fraternity instead of a White Fraternity that had raised the most money during a Cancer Dance-a-Thon......I  photographed Jerry Garcia, Holly Near, Dexter Gordon, and most memorably "The bare assed "Dancers from the Kingdom of Bhouton"

I was offerred the responsibilities of editing the paper's photographs one day per week. It meant I spent 4-5 hours every Thursday night helping put the paper together for Friday's edition. I couldn't wait to get my copy of the Collegian on Friday mornings.......It was great to see my photos in Print......I was taught the three
essential requirements for a good photo journalism, the three B's Baby's, Beasts, and Babes......

It was however the 1980's......and  the University was sporting a very strong Women's Movement.....almost to the exclusion of men....... I mean it was much to difficult to hook up at the time.......it seemed like all the women I was attracted to were turning  out to be lesbians......one after the other.......not that there is anything wrong with that.........but I went two  whole semester barely registerring with the opposite sex.........

So while I was doing Great with my involvement as a photo tech in the school newspaper, and I was attending all of my classes, my grades were not so good. I liked my courses and all but I was taking some serious courses, that required some serious studying and well I was never a real serious student, not for very long anyway  ....... After two semesters I summarily flunked out of college again and went back to spend another summer  as a maintenance manager  at camp  "Johnny Appleseed" in Vermont.

I had to spend a mandatory semester off in order to return to the University....so I stayed at the Camp after the Summer...got a job working with some real Vermont carpenters ....I mean the guy's name was "Bud Carpenter"......building Pole Barns for "AGWAY" until the snow fell.......then I did my best to clean up the camp and prepare for the coming Winter.....I had been warned it would be rough!

It was fun for a while.....The horses hadn't been picked up yet and I got to ride them around a bit.... I had a couple of goats to milk ....and at least a dozen chickens.....and there was the pond, the sailboats, canoes, row boats, and the wonderful solitude of being alone in a cabin on a mountain in  middle Vermont. After all I had always callled the place "God's Country"......I had been left the camp truck and I knew of both Middlebury College and the University of Vermont in Burlington......I could always drive up to them and look for companionship....here out in the middle of "nowhere" I wouldn't be having very many visitors!

It all got old very quickly...with all the snow and the cold  I became increaseingly isolated at the Camp......I was heating with fire wood and I could not afford to let the temperture drop very much or my water pipes might freeze.......so I could never really leave the cabin for more than twelve hours......

Somewhere in late November I ran out of money,  food, and firewood. I was determined to make it thru my first Vermont winter so I just dug in.....after all I had total access to 160 acres of farm and woodlands  .....  There was a Mountain Pass Overlook in Middlebury where when anyone drove up to it with a load of firewood the locals would know you were in trouble and someone would help out by buying that firewood.    It was for if things got real bad.......I decided I neded to sell some firewood and that's how I met Raymond.

Well before I know it  it is 10 degrees out , there is two feet of snow on the ground, and I am outside three or four hours a day just cutting firewood for myself and some extra to try and sell on the mountain.....It takes me two hours to cut, split and load the camp pickup truck....it's an hour's drive and takes $10 in gas to get to the Middlebury Mountain Pass and back, and I still have to stack and deliver it...one full truck-load of wood sells for..... get this.......... $20!  Like I said that's  when I met Raymond.......

Raymond was a well known Middlebury Realtor and took pity on me with my load of firewood......he also took advantage of me and orderred Five truckloads all for $20 a chord! In his late fifties.....Real Estate was a struggle in Vermont...sometimes there were long intervals between checks....but Raymond had enjoyed some success...with an office in Burlington and a home and family in a fancy suburb off lake Champlian, Mallets Bay......he was a likeable guy and most importantly he knew people!

So here my plans to make it thru the winter are falling apart , I am struggling to make a living in the middle of Vermont with scant resources, a lot of pride,  an amazing amount of grit........but not knowing anybody I am tremendously isolated.........I sometimes go for days  with out speaking to anyone........the animals are gone
with the exception of the chickens.....but even they are disappearing one by one....I wouldn't find out until much later  my neighbor's penchant for  chicken dinner's..........

anyway ..Raymond takes me to Breakfast one morning at the "Crest Room" at Middlebury College. The
Cafe is open to the public and is the only place where  both the locals and school community  interact.
A Cheese Omelet with home fries, sausage, wheat toast and coffee is like $3.50.....Raymond seems to know everyone.....He decides for me that I need a better job, and he brings me before the President of Middlebury College at the time , if I remember right he was  "Lawrence Rockefeller".......He tells Mr Rockefeller that I deserve and need a job and that is that!

So the next day I am flipping eggs for Middlebury College Dining Services, working in the coolest Cafe with Middlebury College Students and making $8/hour......it's warm as toast inside and I can eat all I want.......and  as I am serving the locals, some making their living shoveling snow for the college, or the highway workers out in below zero weather I am tickled pink, that somehow and for some reason ...... Raymond has saved me !

I'm commuting  twenty miles to work every day but this is  the best job around....I am getting fed as much as I can eat, and I am making friends with the faculty, staff  and students who come to the Cafe for breakfast and lunch...one Professor invites me to his class on Contemporary American Films....I get to see every film John Cassavettes has ever made....I'm not a student but I am being treated as one.......

That's when I decide to cut my winter short and that it's time to go back to the University of Massachusetts @ Amherst as soon as possible......while in Vermont I had aquired a large Chevy Van a model C-20 with a staight six cyclinder engine. Basically a large Bread Truck, like a UPS Van.  I put a double bed inside suspended by rows of plastic milk cartons filled with books.....I wired it with lights and electric outlets.....

I cut a hole in the floor and one in a side panel to vent a small woodstove I would be using to heat the van with. I hadn't made alot of money during the winter and my plan to save money was to sleep in the Van for one semester. I figured to park it in the school parking lots or a friends driveway, eat out with the money I was saving from not paying rent, try to  find somewhere on the campus to take showers and then just plug-in for the day or night! ........and...........whenever I went somewhere I would't have to unpack as everything I owned in the world was with me in the Van!

I am getting to Quiterria.............

So like I say it's the 1980's and there is this very strong feminine empowerment movement going on
at the college.....and some of it seems to be at the men's expense.....there were no White Male  impowerment groups at the time.....after all we supposedly would be ruling the roost....no one seemed too concerned with  White  Male developement or empowerment..........

I am enjoying my classes......especially Bio-Chemistry which I ACE! I don't do so well in Mr Robinson's
Graduate Level Bio-Chem Lab though, barely eeking out a C......But My Organic Chemistry Classes are FANTASTIC and for the first time im memory I am excited by my teachers.....these guys are brilliant,
and it became a real honor just to listen to them lecture......even if I couldn't recite back every reaction they taught, like my roommate  with the photographic memory.......I learned about Bio-Chemical Pathways, Acid/ Base Reactions, In class I was re-taught the three B's....the  "Basic , Building, Blocks" of life, Molecular and Cellular Biology of life....of plant life, animal life, the evolution of human life.......I learned to seperate proteins,
using electro magnetic techniques, and centrifuge......I learned the differnece between an NMR and an MRI.

Before I knew it the  Spring was over and it was time to go back to Johnny Appleseed Camp one more time again......I had been using the Van to move people  after the semester ended.....The ads said "Man with Van" It was Good  Money.... and my Van was Huge! I took some friends from Bio-Chem Class to their new gig in Boston......one was moving into Cambridge with her new boyfriend, a Harvard Professor......she had a friend with her, an exchange student from Humbolt College in Northern California........Quiterria Perrera...an exceptionally talented Chemist on a fellowship.... of Portuguese descent.....dark eyes, dark skin, long dark hair...and a curiosity and vivaciousness that would not only see her hooking up with me to spend the night and weekend but also would allow me to convince her to come to Vermont and spend her Summer at Johnny Appleseed Camp in Vermont with me.

Quiterria was a breath of fresh air.......her western attitudes, her laid back view, her inate incredibly patient understanding of herself and her relation to others......we were destined to meet...and to explore one and another.....and we spent about a month living together at Camp in a tent in the woods. I resumed my job
as Maintenance Manager and Quiterria was a counselor.....with a bunk of kids......and she did not like it....
she clashed with the Camp Director Dianna..........and it was soon time to go.......

We had become pretty intimate in that one month at the Camp.....We could almost see a future ahead
of us......but not in Vermont....and Quiterria had to go back home to California ....where there might still be someone.....we stayed in touch for quite a while....and again I went to visit an ex-lover in a far away city ...only to come back at a loss and empty handed......

It wouldn't matter, I had spoken to an old friend from home....he was working for the New York City Commissioner of Traffic, Sam Schwartz....and he had a job for me.....it started only as a spotter counting cars and traffic patterns at $8 an hour....but it could and did lead onto bigger and better things.....
moving to New York City was one of them!