WEBVTT

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 Introducing on the, on the tape that today is Tuesday, January 23rd of

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2007. And we're doing an interview for
the Living History video project of

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the Arizona State University Retirees
Association. Um I'm Pam Stevenson

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doing the interview. Manny Garcia is
our videographer and I'd like for you

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to introduce yourself. Yes, I'm Marvin
Fisher. I came to a U in 1958 to

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join the English Department with half
time responsibilities also in the

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humanities program. Uh Well, let's go
back and start earlier. Um Let's get

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you here. I'll start at the beginning.
Tell me when you were born and

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where you were born, when I was born.
Well, I was born in the, that's the

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last month of 1927 in Detroit
Hospital. Uh

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The Nuns at Providence Hospital
probably recorded my accurate birthday as

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November 20 my mother went in, she
knew on the 19 th and it wasn't until I

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was able to read a birth certificate
that I realized that

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uh she thought I arrived one day
before

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the actual delivery.

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I had to when I reached the age of, I
think my first driver's license

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probably said that November 19, but I
had to change everything to November

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20th

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for Social Security and other
purposes. This was in Detroit, Michigan. I

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went through the Detroit public
schools

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entered the University of Michigan

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in

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1945.

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Ok. Finished one very heavy full time
engine engineering curriculum

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semester that is with many classes

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a year's class compressed into one
semester class because of the, the war

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effort and uh the need for manpower.
It was a heavy curriculum. I was

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lucky to pass everything and I was not
disappointed at having been drafted

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at the completion of that first
semester. Uh into what was the tail end of

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World War Two. Let's go back and talk
about growing up. You say you grew

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up in Detroit, Michigan? But what did
your family do for a living there?

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Uh

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My father had worked in several
automobile factories. Uh during the

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depression days, they opened, my
mother and father opened a small

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laundry and cleaning establishment and
in the days of economic strife, he

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returned to factory labor while my
mother ran the store. I give you an

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idea of what the uh economy was like
in those days. I, I just had a little

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encounter talk with

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Ray Bowles, the barber who had cut my
hair for the well over 40 years in

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Tempe Center. And uh we both wish he
was still on the job. But uh the

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price of a haircut when he was growing
up in Arkansas and the price of a

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haircut. When I was growing up in
Detroit, there was a barber shop right

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next to our laundry and cleaning
establishment was 25 cents. And if you

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wanted to shave as well, that was 10
cents more. It was exactly the same.

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Uh, I can remember when my father who
was working at Ford Motor Company at

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the Rouge plant, uh, came home
exultant at the wage had been raised to $5

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a day.

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Um

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I also,

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now when I, when I was just discharged
from the army a couple of months

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earlier than, uh, ok, I expected to
serve in order to return to college.

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I wasn't sure that I wanted to
continue in engineering, but I didn't know

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what else to list as a major

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engineering had served me well, while
I was in the army,

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I know that I was after basic training
and after having been assigned

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first to the fifth Infantry division,
which was one of the first to have

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gone overseas, landing in Ireland and,
and then with additional training

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in England and, uh in the forefront of
the Normandy and I, I invasion

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well, I probably still 18 or maybe,

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well, but, but they're 19,

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was thrust into this band of battle
hardened veterans. Uh It wasn't by any

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means bad and, and, uh I don't think
there was any harassment because of

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my youth. Uh I always regret that my
mother didn't after I went off to

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Minnesota for a phd eight years later
that she didn't think all the

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trapper I left behind first from the
fifth division unit citations. And

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then when the fifth was demobilized, I
was assigned to the third infantry

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division

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of battle hardened veterans who had
were at Anzio make making a, you know

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, a second landing.

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So that as luck would have it, I

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I was twice assigned to divisions that
had come, just come back from

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overseas. But when it was my turn to
go abroad,

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I was packed up not to go to Europe,
which the war was over in Europe by

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this time. But to go to

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the Aleutian Islands in Alaska where

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I expected to serve at least 10 months
to 12 months, testing winter

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equipment and rain wear through all
those arctic storms called willow.

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In fact, that's what the operation was
called. Operation. Willa Wa uh

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we were, I was all packed up to go,
let's say on a Friday night, we were

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leaving Saturday morning. I just
gotten into bed when my name came over

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the battalion loudspeaker report to
battalion headquarters. Uh I I did

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quickly got dressed and they had
gotten an urgent call for a topographical

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draftsman to lay out

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flame thrower and close combat
courses, turning

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Kentucky Tennessee orchard and
farmland into uh you know, courses to be

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used in training men to avoid injury
in battle conditions.

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Uh And uh why did I get that call
because I taken, I, I had a, a good

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grade in drafts in drafting and uh it
was temporary duty. It did not

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possess any possibility of promotion,
but it was much easier. A group of

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perhaps a dozen similarly assigned.
Not all I was the only draftsman but,

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and uh frequent

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three day passes which could be
combined

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with a weekend to give five days away.

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This was at what was then Camp
Campbell on the Kentucky Tennessee border.

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It's now Fort Campbell and uh
headquarters of the

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forgotten now, whether it's now the
82nd airborne or I think it's 101st.

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But at any rate, uh they are in Iraq
now. And so it was the third Infantry

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Infantry Division which to which I was
at this point assigned. Uh

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I did that until my discharge uh
before I was 20 to return to college,

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my discharge came in May.

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Yeah. And didn't enable me to start Af
Freshh and I debated whether to

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return to the University of Michigan.
But since I knew that engineering

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was not what I really wanted to do,
the army gave me a chance to consider

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the future. Uh

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And with my father's help, I went to
work for Hudson Motor working from,

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for, from

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May until

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probably September or early October.
But long enough to establish

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uh did you had to get off probation to
establish the uh the uh U Union

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version of tenure? So that as soon as
I had six months in, I could get

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leave

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for educational purposes. And I could
also count my time in the army as

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seniority.

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So that when I decided to return and
go to what was then the City

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University in Detroit called Wayne
University, it subsequently became a

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state university.

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Uh Let's back up a little bit. Um A
couple of things, I want to go back

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and talk about growing up in Detroit.
But you mentioned in the army that

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you were assigned to these units that
we were on Normandy and, and, but

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you didn't actually, no, no, no, they,
they just returned from there. So

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were you actually overseas when you
joined them or no, my overseas

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experience as you can see from my
resume uh all occurred during my years

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at A SU and I am very grateful to a su
for those opportunities

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to see the world who broaden my
cultural experience uh to contribute to

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universities. In one case, one that
was really an emerging university, in

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other cases, universities that had
considerable centuries of history as an

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army. Were you? Yes, you never did go
overseas. No, I didn't.

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But I have during the years of a su

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spent four years at three different
European universities. Talk about that

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a little later. Why don't we talk
again about you growing up? You, you

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grew up in Detroit, you talk about
during the depression years.

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You said your mother ran a laundry and
dry cleaning shop. Did she have

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other Children? You? No, I was an only
child. Um, so did you help out

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there? Did you, did you work as a boy
growing up? No, I delivered

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newspapers. Which boys don't do
anymore? Oh, it, it, it was work. And, uh

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, well, II, I also remember, uh,

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having completed my Sunday morning
deliveries

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and

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probably what was it? December

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7, 1941.

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And then

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an extra

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was published because of Pearl Harbor
of radio communication existed but

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television didn't. And the

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I spent about three times as long both
delivering and selling extras on

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the Japanese detailing a Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor. Uh That must

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have been an exciting day. What, what
were you thinking during that time

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when you were doing that? No one's
been talking to you about it?

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Well, I don't know, how could I tell
what I, what I, I don't think I

00:14:45.690 --> 00:14:51.106
thought all that much about. Uh uh
the,

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I may have made a week's income on
that day.

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I have a, a friend who, who, who uh
designs and sells T shirts,

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particularly at major sporting events
and has

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copyrighted in some of the slogans and
logos. So that actually,

00:15:22.869 --> 00:15:29.875
I don't think he, he couldn't break
into the A U

00:15:29.908 --> 00:15:37.908
monopoly, but Phoenix Suns and the
Diamondbacks and what he does outside

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Marley's when there's a basketball
game is the same kind of thing that I

00:15:42.759 --> 00:15:50.759
did. Um selling the extras on Pearl
Harbor day. Uh, except

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my income was probably in, uh,

00:15:58.308 --> 00:16:04.246
dollars that never exceeded

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probably less than $10. And, uh, uh, I
think he can make 2000 on a, on a

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good night. Well, tell me about that
day. Did you get, how did you hear

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about that? That they were gonna do an
extra, that the bombing had

00:16:19.298 --> 00:16:26.167
happened? Uh, actually by, by
telephone from the, uh, what, what, what,

00:16:26.200 --> 00:16:34.200
what do you be called? The uh uh uh uh
the manager who uh ran the, the

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neighborhood delivery station? Come on
back. We've got work to do.

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I'm not sure that I heard a radio
report. Uh But I read every p every line

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of that extra that came out.

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Uh

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You know, that reminds me of
something, something more and maybe you don't

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want to jump ahead to this. But

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when we came to Arizona in 1958

00:17:10.708 --> 00:17:18.708
we spent a year living in what was
Victory Village. Uh

00:17:20.108 --> 00:17:26.085
Not the concert huts that dotted so
many campuses housing junior faculty

00:17:26.118 --> 00:17:34.118
and graduate students, but in this
case, frame buildings um resembling

00:17:34.250 --> 00:17:42.250
apartments, perhaps, only one story
but not with it with one or two

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bedrooms perhaps and one bath and, and
so on. Uh It was a while before I

00:17:51.519 --> 00:17:57.075
learned that these buildings had been
moved to the A SU campus from a

00:17:57.108 --> 00:18:03.535
location uh on the Hilo River,
probably down near Sako to where they had

00:18:03.568 --> 00:18:06.936
been used for Japanese internment.

00:18:06.969 --> 00:18:14.926
So that my first year at ASU, I didn't
think of it at the time uh was

00:18:14.959 --> 00:18:20.085
connected with my 1941

00:18:20.118 --> 00:18:26.127
experience of disseminating the news
of Japanese internment. It was the

00:18:26.160 --> 00:18:34.160
penance I served for the American
policy that sent American citizens into

00:18:34.578 --> 00:18:42.578
concentration camps. Uh I don't know
if you remember a film that was made.

00:18:44.930 --> 00:18:46.930
Uh Dennis Quaid was in it called Remember the Paradise. And it, it had to

00:18:51.239 --> 00:18:58.496
do with a uh an, a, an Anglo uh

00:18:58.529 --> 00:19:06.529
member of the army who was in love and
married a Japanese American woman

00:19:10.078 --> 00:19:17.686
who had to move with her parents into
one of these internment camps

00:19:17.719 --> 00:19:25.719
and her first child was born. But
those interior signs,

00:19:27.009 --> 00:19:30.315
I don't remember what theater we saw,
my wife and I saw this in but it was

00:19:30.348 --> 00:19:35.597
in Tempe. Uh that was,

00:19:35.630 --> 00:19:42.117
we remember it all too well. Mhm Yeah.
Um Well, going back to when you

00:19:42.150 --> 00:19:47.226
were growing up, um you know, it was
the depression years. Do you remember

00:19:47.259 --> 00:19:52.246
going to school? Did you go to a, a
big school, a small school?

00:19:52.279 --> 00:20:00.279
Uh I went to a neighborhood elementary
school

00:20:00.489 --> 00:20:06.986
then to a what was called in the
educational terminology at times, an

00:20:07.019 --> 00:20:15.019
intermediate school. The the, the, the
elementary I went to and uh

00:20:16.519 --> 00:20:19.127
one,

00:20:19.160 --> 00:20:22.726
one through eight I believe,

00:20:22.759 --> 00:20:28.516
then I spent one year at an
intermediate school as it was called, which

00:20:28.549 --> 00:20:36.549
had ninth grade and then to a high
school that had 1011, 12. Uh,

00:20:40.259 --> 00:20:46.756
the high school, it was one of the
oldest in Detroit,

00:20:46.789 --> 00:20:54.266
at least three stories high. I don't
remember there being an elevator

00:20:54.299 --> 00:20:59.206
and by contemporary standards, it
would be an archaic building. It doesn't

00:20:59.239 --> 00:21:06.236
stand anymore as I think, I said it
was one of the earliest eastern high

00:21:06.269 --> 00:21:11.766
school it was called. Uh,

00:21:11.799 --> 00:21:18.285
I suppose we might compare it although
it is much older than any of the

00:21:18.318 --> 00:21:24.236
Phoenix High schools like Central and
North that still stand. But both of

00:21:24.269 --> 00:21:31.436
those have been uh north was virtually
rebuilt. Uh Well, the Eastern High

00:21:31.469 --> 00:21:36.717
no longer stands. Uh It has been
supplanted though I have not seen the

00:21:36.750 --> 00:21:43.137
school myself by Martin Luther King
High School when you were going to

00:21:43.170 --> 00:21:49.196
school was the school segregated then.
No. Uh

00:21:49.229 --> 00:21:51.877
but

00:21:51.910 --> 00:21:59.397
in my graduating class and we I I
don't recall

00:21:59.430 --> 00:22:04.305
segregate, their schools were not
segregated in Detroit, except by

00:22:04.338 --> 00:22:07.805
neighborhood at times

00:22:07.838 --> 00:22:11.736
and at, at athletic

00:22:11.769 --> 00:22:17.676
events, you had a sense of this. Uh

00:22:17.709 --> 00:22:20.597
There were,

00:22:20.630 --> 00:22:27.196
there were one or two high schools
that were probably 98%

00:22:27.229 --> 00:22:33.627
African American had. But

00:22:33.660 --> 00:22:38.467
in my graduating class

00:22:38.500 --> 00:22:46.107
and I don't know how many there were
in, in, in total, but there

00:22:46.140 --> 00:22:53.436
or at least 12 African American
graduates

00:22:53.469 --> 00:22:58.196
who skipped the graduation ceremony
because there was a race riot going on

00:22:58.229 --> 00:23:03.006
in Detroit and it was not safe.

00:23:03.039 --> 00:23:05.325
Uh

00:23:05.358 --> 00:23:10.526
The race riot was triggered by

00:23:10.559 --> 00:23:16.456
a rumor, not an occurrence

00:23:16.489 --> 00:23:24.325
that two white sailors had, throwing a
black woman and it might the rumor

00:23:24.358 --> 00:23:29.335
may even have been pregnant black
woman off

00:23:29.368 --> 00:23:35.156
into the Detroit River off the Belle
Isle Bridge. Ok.

00:23:35.189 --> 00:23:41.887
The entrance to that bridge was at the
intersection of Jefferson and East

00:23:41.920 --> 00:23:45.006
Grand Boulevard.

00:23:45.039 --> 00:23:48.906
My high school was about

00:23:48.939 --> 00:23:54.766
two miles north of there on East Grand
Boulevard and on Cross Street

00:23:54.799 --> 00:24:01.766
called Mac. So that was very close to
the occurrence. And uh I don't know

00:24:01.799 --> 00:24:09.726
whether we ever got a, a truly
reliable record of the casualties in that

00:24:09.759 --> 00:24:12.117
riot.

00:24:12.150 --> 00:24:18.756
It was one of two that I remember from
my

00:24:18.789 --> 00:24:21.656
adolescent years

00:24:21.689 --> 00:24:27.107
um

00:24:27.140 --> 00:24:34.295
riots that were like out in the
streets, burning cars. Yes. Yes. And uh ok.

00:24:34.328 --> 00:24:40.335
 And they, a second such instance,

00:24:40.368 --> 00:24:44.545
uh

00:24:44.578 --> 00:24:47.926
occurred

00:24:47.959 --> 00:24:52.335
during the years I was associated with
ASU

00:24:52.368 --> 00:24:57.026
but at the conclusion

00:24:57.059 --> 00:25:02.627
a year that my wife and I and our
Children had been in Norway where I

00:25:02.660 --> 00:25:08.065
taught at the University of Oslo. Uh

00:25:08.098 --> 00:25:10.946
oh,

00:25:10.979 --> 00:25:16.526
our three Children went back with my
mother in law who would come for a

00:25:16.559 --> 00:25:24.335
visit so that my wife and I uh could
stop on the way back

00:25:24.368 --> 00:25:28.315
to OK,

00:25:28.348 --> 00:25:32.397
to visit places we had been to earlier
and people we knew while we were

00:25:32.430 --> 00:25:39.585
still in Europe

00:25:39.618 --> 00:25:42.686
in Greece, Dubrovnik,

00:25:42.719 --> 00:25:50.719
uh Utrecht in London. And it was while
we were in Holland, one of the few

00:25:51.209 --> 00:25:56.416
and not all European cities had Sunday
newspapers

00:25:56.449 --> 00:26:04.449
that I suddenly saw in a Sunday
newspaper, front page race riot, you know

00:26:05.029 --> 00:26:09.186
, race riot in Detroit. I could make,
you know, make out what and I

00:26:09.219 --> 00:26:14.967
recognize the scene of devastation we
could not get through by telephone

00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:18.696
to Detroit where

00:26:18.729 --> 00:26:23.756
two of our Children remained with my
parents and the oldest went with her

00:26:23.789 --> 00:26:27.406
grandmother back to Minneapolis.

00:26:27.439 --> 00:26:33.097
Uh We couldn't make contact by, by
telephone

00:26:33.130 --> 00:26:41.130
until a couple of days had passed. And
uh when we did return to Detroit,

00:26:42.459 --> 00:26:48.545
the street that I had seen in the
newspaper looked like a war zone

00:26:48.578 --> 00:26:55.575
buildings gutted, burned out, uh,

00:26:55.608 --> 00:27:00.256
smashed, you've seen television. Uh,
and that was in the sixties, that

00:27:00.289 --> 00:27:04.035
would have been 67 but I didn't
realize that they had race riots like that

00:27:04.068 --> 00:27:09.897
in the forties also when you were in
high school.

00:27:09.930 --> 00:27:14.325
So that must have been pretty
traumatic for you. I mean, where, where was

00:27:14.358 --> 00:27:21.656
it safe where you were living? You
know,

00:27:21.689 --> 00:27:25.246
also in the,

00:27:25.279 --> 00:27:32.436
the period that we were in Greece from
61 to 63

00:27:32.469 --> 00:27:36.916
there were race riots in other cities

00:27:36.949 --> 00:27:44.949
and uh

00:27:45.140 --> 00:27:50.756
we returned in 63

00:27:50.789 --> 00:27:53.976
in time to

00:27:54.009 --> 00:27:56.196
witness

00:27:56.229 --> 00:28:04.229
the assassination of John Kennedy and
subsequently

00:28:06.509 --> 00:28:14.226
Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King
in quick succession.

00:28:14.259 --> 00:28:19.676
Uh,

00:28:19.709 --> 00:28:27.627
my wife was appearing in an as u
dramatic production on the night that

00:28:27.660 --> 00:28:31.736
Robert Kennedy

00:28:31.769 --> 00:28:36.446
was shot. Or maybe it was, maybe,

00:28:36.479 --> 00:28:43.266
do you remember what John Kennedy was
killed in 93?

00:28:43.299 --> 00:28:47.555
6363.

00:28:47.588 --> 00:28:53.026
No, and that was in June, I believe

00:28:53.059 --> 00:28:57.696
a bit. But I know that that night

00:28:57.729 --> 00:29:01.266
production,

00:29:01.299 --> 00:29:08.717
which was of the play Liz Arata about
Greek women banding together and

00:29:08.750 --> 00:29:15.406
denying conjugal rights to their
husbands who are going off to fight a war

00:29:15.439 --> 00:29:20.897
in Athens versus Sparta. And

00:29:20.930 --> 00:29:28.127
the play is about withholding sex
until men

00:29:28.160 --> 00:29:34.877
cease to participate.

00:29:34.910 --> 00:29:42.910
Organized murder. Uh

00:29:42.979 --> 00:29:45.467
I

00:29:45.500 --> 00:29:53.500
and

00:29:54.789 --> 00:30:01.676
those were, the years from 61 to 63
were easy years to be abroad. American

00:30:01.709 --> 00:30:09.246
prestige was high. The popularity of
President Kennedy was great. Although

00:30:09.279 --> 00:30:16.246
I remember when we moved into our
first apartment, having a, I had studied

00:30:16.279 --> 00:30:19.835
Greek on LP records before going. So I
was able to have a conversation

00:30:19.868 --> 00:30:25.436
with a man who we moved into a brand
new apartment,

00:30:25.469 --> 00:30:30.696
no closets. You know, we had to buy
arm wars uh into his store clothes and

00:30:30.729 --> 00:30:34.117
uh

00:30:34.150 --> 00:30:39.926
uh but there was electrical work that
needed to be completed or it was

00:30:39.959 --> 00:30:47.959
even mortar, stopping up the drains in
the bathroom, sinks and bathtub. So

00:30:48.269 --> 00:30:56.269
I had to buy tools to chip the mortar
out of the bathtub drain. Uh Well, I

00:30:57.689 --> 00:31:03.877
had had this conversation with the
electrician.

00:31:03.910 --> 00:31:10.426
Oh, had high hopes for President
Kennedy. But he asked me, what kind of

00:31:10.459 --> 00:31:16.387
school does this or do his Children
attend? Would they go to private or

00:31:16.420 --> 00:31:21.436
public schools? I don't think I knew
at the time. But you know that those

00:31:21.469 --> 00:31:26.387
are the questions that they were
asking in Europe early on. I don't think

00:31:26.420 --> 00:31:29.916
they're old enough to go to school
first, but they weren't old enough. No.

00:31:29.949 --> 00:31:32.795
No, they weren't. They weren't. Well,
let's go back a little bit and talk

00:31:32.828 --> 00:31:36.137
about your grad. What year was it that
you graduated from high school?

00:31:36.170 --> 00:31:43.936
1945? And then what, you decided to go
on to college? Um, had your, your

00:31:43.969 --> 00:31:48.107
parents gone to college? No, I was the
first. Well, the only one in my

00:31:48.140 --> 00:31:50.597
immediate family. Why did you decide
that you were going to go to college

00:31:50.630 --> 00:31:52.676
?

00:31:52.709 --> 00:32:00.315
I don't think it was ever a question.
Uh

00:32:00.348 --> 00:32:04.835
Immigrant families

00:32:04.868 --> 00:32:11.627
often have this as a Sinqua non for
their Children and whether it's

00:32:11.660 --> 00:32:18.516
college or not, it is an educational
level higher than their parents

00:32:18.549 --> 00:32:20.976
detained.

00:32:21.009 --> 00:32:26.666
Uh

00:32:26.699 --> 00:32:31.805
For one year, I worked when I got out
of the army, I, I worked, I

00:32:31.838 --> 00:32:39.838
mentioned at Hudson Motor and uh it
was in a department that my father

00:32:40.789 --> 00:32:48.789
also worked in. Um my father was born
in Poland,

00:32:56.509 --> 00:33:01.206
deserted the Polish Army

00:33:01.239 --> 00:33:03.756
went to Germany,

00:33:03.789 --> 00:33:06.285
uh

00:33:06.318 --> 00:33:09.617
had a quarrel

00:33:09.650 --> 00:33:17.055
with the, oh, an officer

00:33:17.088 --> 00:33:23.085
in a and

00:33:23.118 --> 00:33:27.686
socialist party organization

00:33:27.719 --> 00:33:32.627
that he worked for. And

00:33:32.660 --> 00:33:36.637
yeah,

00:33:36.670 --> 00:33:43.035
when he was not being paid for the
work he did uh the altercation led the

00:33:43.068 --> 00:33:51.068
blows and he, he left there after
decking the, the guy who, who said, uh

00:33:51.709 --> 00:33:57.617
uh you don't have any money coming to
you. Uh When he went to France and

00:33:57.650 --> 00:34:00.726
ultimately from France,

00:34:00.759 --> 00:34:06.555
uh left for Canada. And then

00:34:06.588 --> 00:34:13.416
um after working for a time in Canada
crossed over the Detroit River. I

00:34:13.449 --> 00:34:19.655
don't know about whether or not both
tunnel and bridge existed by then.

00:34:19.688 --> 00:34:23.796
And I can't be sure that

00:34:23.829 --> 00:34:30.666
and there were no border guards. Uh

00:34:30.699 --> 00:34:34.997
He may have been an illegal immigrant

00:34:35.030 --> 00:34:40.517
when I told Harry Mitchell that at his
victory celebration. So trying to

00:34:40.550 --> 00:34:46.057
soften his view of uh

00:34:46.090 --> 00:34:54.090
current immigration problems, his eyes
grew wide. Uh

00:34:54.648 --> 00:34:57.577
He became a citizen.

00:34:57.610 --> 00:35:05.610
I have this paper. It's probably

00:35:06.139 --> 00:35:09.586
in the early 19 twenties.

00:35:09.619 --> 00:35:16.356
My mother who came to the United
States in 1919, my parents

00:35:16.389 --> 00:35:20.385
met though had they had come from
different

00:35:20.418 --> 00:35:24.456
cities in Poland, they met in Detroit.
But what I was getting to is that

00:35:24.489 --> 00:35:29.796
my father had one year of night school
in English.

00:35:29.829 --> 00:35:35.336
And I was amazed

00:35:35.369 --> 00:35:41.876
before the start of the work day,
people had the morning newspaper, uh

00:35:41.909 --> 00:35:49.909
workers who were born, particularly
in, in the uh

00:35:51.309 --> 00:35:53.327
oh

00:35:53.360 --> 00:36:01.046
West Virginia. And uh the Deep South

00:36:01.079 --> 00:36:07.445
would come over and ask him what a
word in the morning newspaper meant

00:36:07.478 --> 00:36:13.807
because he always read and he always
read. Well, uh and I remember that

00:36:13.840 --> 00:36:20.537
looking forward to Sunday mornings
because he would read to me for an hour

00:36:20.570 --> 00:36:26.146
out of, you know, it was not a work
day and we were in bed together and he

00:36:26.179 --> 00:36:33.517
would read Jack London or some other
kind of adventure story.

00:36:33.550 --> 00:36:37.316
Uh

00:36:37.349 --> 00:36:41.376
Maybe I think of Jack London because
at one point in the 19 nineties, we

00:36:41.409 --> 00:36:47.066
had a department chair in the English
department who had never had a

00:36:47.099 --> 00:36:54.767
course in English. She was a dance
major as an undergraduate and took a

00:36:54.800 --> 00:36:58.856
doctorate in linguistics.

00:36:58.889 --> 00:37:03.287
But she thought that Jack was

00:37:03.320 --> 00:37:07.376
a contemporary American author. I just
happened to come up, you know, and

00:37:07.409 --> 00:37:13.066
I could, you know, remember it, you
know, at ages

00:37:13.099 --> 00:37:21.099
four and five listening to the Call of
The Wild and other stories.

00:37:21.500 --> 00:37:25.195
So your father was somewhat literary
even though he didn't have a formal

00:37:25.228 --> 00:37:33.228
education. True. So you grew up with
books and yes, yes. And uh

00:37:35.610 --> 00:37:41.077
if anything, I'm flooded now with
reading matter that comes into the house

00:37:41.110 --> 00:37:46.695
daily and, and uh magazines that I
can't even get to. I think the

00:37:46.728 --> 00:37:51.845
president administration has uh

00:37:51.878 --> 00:37:59.175
probably quintupled my membership in
and contributions to

00:37:59.208 --> 00:38:04.717
conservation and social action

00:38:04.750 --> 00:38:09.296
activities, most of whom publish
journals

00:38:09.329 --> 00:38:17.329
that I sympathize with but cannot
begin to read in their entirety. But the

00:38:18.168 --> 00:38:21.537
,

00:38:21.570 --> 00:38:28.026
the magazines that came into our house
nowhere approach the kind of

00:38:28.059 --> 00:38:34.365
reading matter that's available today.
But you always did have reading

00:38:34.398 --> 00:38:37.077
matter.

00:38:37.110 --> 00:38:43.537
Uh

00:38:43.570 --> 00:38:46.146
I just

00:38:46.179 --> 00:38:54.179
recall an incident probably from the
early days of, of the depression. We

00:38:54.260 --> 00:39:02.260
lived at that time in a flat above a
row of commercial stores and its role

00:39:03.989 --> 00:39:11.989
also included a large Chinese
restaurant, a few doors away. So that down

00:39:12.519 --> 00:39:18.736
below, we were, as I say on the second
floor, there was a, a back porch.

00:39:18.769 --> 00:39:22.425
Uh,

00:39:22.458 --> 00:39:29.577
in those days, I don't think we had a
refrigerator but an ice box,

00:39:29.610 --> 00:39:35.186
something that my wife and I got used
to using the first year that we were

00:39:35.219 --> 00:39:43.006
in Greece. We lived on the sixth floor
and Iceman who also a half owner of

00:39:43.039 --> 00:39:47.635
a little grocery store across the
street was not permitted to use the

00:39:47.668 --> 00:39:53.365
elevator. So he had to bring up his,

00:39:53.398 --> 00:39:56.517
I, I don't know whether we got

00:39:56.550 --> 00:40:01.526
10 kg blocks of ice. That's probably
£25

00:40:01.559 --> 00:40:06.615
up six flights of stairs, put it in
the refrigerator,

00:40:06.648 --> 00:40:12.916
but we had an ice box and in winter,
we could store more food because we

00:40:12.949 --> 00:40:19.217
put an orange crate on the window sill
so that you, you, you raised the

00:40:19.250 --> 00:40:26.595
window to take out the temperatures
never, rarely fell

00:40:26.628 --> 00:40:32.477
below 35 or 40. And of course, they
were much colder at night. But I

00:40:32.510 --> 00:40:35.885
remember standing on this balcony

00:40:35.918 --> 00:40:43.918
and there were big trash containers
down below concrete with metal doors,

00:40:47.260 --> 00:40:52.267
a door for removing trash. Like the uh

00:40:52.300 --> 00:40:57.606
it was hinged and you lifted it
upward, deposit trash through a hinged

00:40:57.639 --> 00:41:03.115
door at the top. And they were at the
height of today, a child couldn't

00:41:03.148 --> 00:41:11.148
open the top door. I remember looking
down one morning and seeing

00:41:11.148 --> 00:41:15.006
the most got

00:41:15.039 --> 00:41:22.316
hollow eyed man, I could have
envisioned

00:41:22.349 --> 00:41:30.106
not only having lifted the top but in

00:41:30.139 --> 00:41:36.776
extracting the edible trash, including
the restaurant

00:41:36.809 --> 00:41:39.037
discards,

00:41:39.070 --> 00:41:43.287
there was a small Kroger store, not a
supermarket but a Kroger store also

00:41:43.320 --> 00:41:48.436
in this block. So, there were,

00:41:48.469 --> 00:41:55.066
you know, unusable or at least
unsalable vegetables and like in there. And

00:41:55.099 --> 00:42:02.675
, uh, actually he, he, he was
frightening. I called my mother because I, I

00:42:02.708 --> 00:42:10.708
didn't, I was too young to fully
understand what the depression meant. And

00:42:10.809 --> 00:42:18.557
she came out, looked down and saw, I
went back and closed up the loaf of

00:42:18.590 --> 00:42:23.296
bread. She opened that morning and I
still remember it was the brand that

00:42:23.329 --> 00:42:31.276
the Lone Ranger on radio advertised
and called him and dropped the bread.

00:42:31.309 --> 00:42:34.767
 Yeah,

00:42:34.800 --> 00:42:40.936
a memory. Yeah. You know, it's, it's,
it's iconic.

00:42:40.969 --> 00:42:47.606
I also remember a neighbor who was
quite a tinkerer,

00:42:47.639 --> 00:42:51.885
persuading my father

00:42:51.918 --> 00:42:59.918
who was one of the few people to, he
had a 1928 Chevrolet. This man had

00:43:01.958 --> 00:43:05.296
brewed up

00:43:05.329 --> 00:43:07.506
I

00:43:07.539 --> 00:43:15.539
and fuel made up of, you know, of

00:43:16.079 --> 00:43:23.316
it wasn't ethanol, but it was a home
made ethanol, some kind of

00:43:23.349 --> 00:43:31.349
distillation of uh potato peelings and
the like of of, of uh uh

00:43:34.340 --> 00:43:41.606
vegetable discards. And uh

00:43:41.639 --> 00:43:48.856
they put it into our car and tested it

00:43:48.889 --> 00:43:55.195
and it was a long time before that car
could be made to run. Normally it

00:43:55.228 --> 00:44:03.228
just jerked. It resisted the full
utilization of the fuel. It was the most

00:44:08.458 --> 00:44:13.626
there were bumps on smooth roads. You
understand what I mean? The car

00:44:13.659 --> 00:44:20.566
acted as if there were, it just
jerked. So, so it had its comedy as well

00:44:20.599 --> 00:44:26.236
as its uh pathos.

00:44:26.269 --> 00:44:30.635
So you sort of grew up through the
depression and then the war years when

00:44:30.668 --> 00:44:33.577
you were thinking about what you were
gonna do when you grew up, what did

00:44:33.610 --> 00:44:40.206
you think that you would do?

00:44:40.239 --> 00:44:43.227
Well, I,

00:44:43.260 --> 00:44:50.695
that I re entered college first as a
psychology major.

00:44:50.728 --> 00:44:57.276
And, uh, you know, I wanted to know
more about how the human mind worked,

00:44:57.309 --> 00:45:04.506
but the first psychology course, never
got out of the inner ear. It was

00:45:04.539 --> 00:45:08.037
much more physiological

00:45:08.070 --> 00:45:12.115
approach. And,

00:45:12.148 --> 00:45:20.148
you know, education is often shaped by
the experiences

00:45:20.750 --> 00:45:27.006
of your peers who are in different
areas. And I found that in conversation

00:45:27.039 --> 00:45:29.287
,

00:45:29.320 --> 00:45:37.320
some of the people who were in English
and reading British and American

00:45:37.599 --> 00:45:44.865
and European novels had far more to
talk about than I ever learned in my

00:45:44.898 --> 00:45:52.898
psychology class. So I somewhere
probably in the second year switched to

00:45:53.228 --> 00:45:57.057
English, which was an undergraduate
major.

00:45:57.090 --> 00:46:01.276
And uh but I continued

00:46:01.309 --> 00:46:06.115
through to graduation, spending the
summers returning to the job in the

00:46:06.148 --> 00:46:12.365
factory because I had tenure and

00:46:12.398 --> 00:46:19.537
uh and the pay was good. It was better
than I could make uh in any other.

00:46:19.570 --> 00:46:23.267
OK.

00:46:23.300 --> 00:46:28.095
I should also say that after I got out
of the army, I worked for a short

00:46:28.128 --> 00:46:33.836
time until I felt this. No, this was
no longer, this was not what I wanted

00:46:33.869 --> 00:46:41.626
to do. Uh One of the reasons I, I
decided to go to college in Detroit is

00:46:41.659 --> 00:46:45.046
coming out of the army. I wanted to
have a car at the University of

00:46:45.079 --> 00:46:52.066
Michigan. Freshmen could not have
cars. Uh,

00:46:52.099 --> 00:46:57.086
and women could not enter the Memorial
Union through the front door, you

00:46:57.119 --> 00:47:05.119
know, just a, a kind of, uh, old boy
prohibition,

00:47:05.619 --> 00:47:10.796
those kind of adolescent and, and, or
maybe they're more than adolescent.

00:47:10.829 --> 00:47:14.256
 You know, it,

00:47:14.289 --> 00:47:22.146
it's almost like fraternity hijinks.
Uh,

00:47:22.179 --> 00:47:27.066
and with a car I first got a job

00:47:27.099 --> 00:47:29.956
collecting.

00:47:29.989 --> 00:47:34.477
It wasn't a furniture company. It was
a furniture outlet

00:47:34.510 --> 00:47:40.155
that sold, I didn't know the word at
the time and I wonder if you know it

00:47:40.188 --> 00:47:43.517
now, Borax Furniture.

00:47:43.550 --> 00:47:49.077
Do you know what Man Bora furniture
is?

00:47:49.110 --> 00:47:57.110
Yeah. Ok. Cheap and cheaply made
furniture often sold in the poorer areas

00:47:59.208 --> 00:48:05.017
for small weekly payments

00:48:05.050 --> 00:48:10.695
as low as 50 cents a week

00:48:10.728 --> 00:48:17.635
were a small and a down payment. But
the furniture was so cheap that

00:48:17.668 --> 00:48:21.626
the down payment in the first couple
of months probably paid for the

00:48:21.659 --> 00:48:26.986
furniture. Uh

00:48:27.019 --> 00:48:35.019
90% of it probably was sold in the
poor black neighbors.

00:48:37.438 --> 00:48:45.438
And as soon as I learned what the
economy behind this uh

00:48:46.409 --> 00:48:51.727
industry and collection was,

00:48:51.760 --> 00:48:59.760
I was deeply troubled by the

00:49:00.648 --> 00:49:08.236
have by the welcome. I usually got in.
Coming to the door rarely, you know

00:49:08.269 --> 00:49:12.807
, was there.

00:49:12.840 --> 00:49:18.026
Uh you know, any kind of

00:49:18.059 --> 00:49:21.675
in hospitality.

00:49:21.708 --> 00:49:24.086
I also

00:49:24.119 --> 00:49:32.119
remember seeing some of my rounds

00:49:34.188 --> 00:49:38.017
the Saturday morning,

00:49:38.050 --> 00:49:40.115
uh

00:49:40.148 --> 00:49:48.148
attendance of the origins of Black
Muslim movement and was fascinated by

00:49:49.898 --> 00:49:56.675
the uh the way the men and the women

00:49:56.708 --> 00:49:59.787
dressed. It was

00:49:59.820 --> 00:50:03.175
the first,

00:50:03.208 --> 00:50:06.695
the first meeting place. I don't know
whether it was probably called

00:50:06.728 --> 00:50:10.506
Mosque of Elijah Muhammad.

00:50:10.539 --> 00:50:13.865
Uh

00:50:13.898 --> 00:50:15.977
I,

00:50:16.010 --> 00:50:18.066
oh,

00:50:18.099 --> 00:50:25.896
well, I, that was a AAA an experience.
I don't know how many months I

00:50:25.929 --> 00:50:29.086
worked at that, but I,

00:50:29.119 --> 00:50:36.017
that was in an experience as important
as the one I just described seeing

00:50:36.050 --> 00:50:44.050
the starving man picking through trash
to find something edible. Uh and

00:50:44.188 --> 00:50:52.188
knowing how exploitative this industry
was.

00:50:55.969 --> 00:51:03.969
No, I didn't. I much preferred factory
labor to uh

00:51:06.010 --> 00:51:11.675
collecting in the valley. The Valley
was also known as Paradise Valley. It

00:51:11.708 --> 00:51:14.017
is,

00:51:14.050 --> 00:51:19.595
it is ians away from the Paradise
Valley. You know,

00:51:19.628 --> 00:51:23.836
that was why you were in college that
you were doing that.

00:51:23.869 --> 00:51:28.896
No, it was before I returned to
college. I never did it while I was in

00:51:28.929 --> 00:51:31.365
college, while you were in college,
you came back and worked at the

00:51:31.398 --> 00:51:37.115
factory. Yes. Let me also say that

00:51:37.148 --> 00:51:40.026
when I was first

00:51:40.059 --> 00:51:46.856
took leave to return to college, uh

00:51:46.889 --> 00:51:51.345
The Union Stewart,

00:51:51.378 --> 00:51:59.378
the UAW Cio uh who, who was in some
ways very effective in his job. But he

00:52:00.389 --> 00:52:04.816
also uh

00:52:04.849 --> 00:52:10.106
was taking advantage of the economy.

00:52:10.139 --> 00:52:16.006
He wrote numbers in the, in the plant.
You know, do you know what the

00:52:16.039 --> 00:52:18.845
numbers?

00:52:18.878 --> 00:52:26.878
It, it's a lot, a lottery. The uh uh
you can take three digits and play it

00:52:27.519 --> 00:52:32.836
or you could get the three digits and
box it, which meant any three digits

00:52:32.869 --> 00:52:39.876
in any form, uh, could be a winning
combination. Uh, and, you know, it, it

00:52:39.909 --> 00:52:45.727
, it, it, people become addicted to,
uh, you know, as just as they come,

00:52:45.760 --> 00:52:50.236
become addicted to, to our lottery.
But that was, that was more in cents

00:52:50.269 --> 00:52:58.269
than in dollars. And, uh, he offered
me the concession at college.

00:52:59.000 --> 00:53:05.477
I, I wasn't gonna do that, uh,

00:53:05.510 --> 00:53:11.307
for many reasons among them the way

00:53:11.340 --> 00:53:19.340
this is exploitation of those who can
least afford it. So when you went

00:53:19.570 --> 00:53:22.967
back to college and became an English
major, what were you thinking you

00:53:23.000 --> 00:53:28.247
were gonna do with your college
degree? Uh I was interested in university

00:53:28.280 --> 00:53:33.717
teaching, but by the time I

00:53:33.750 --> 00:53:39.717
entered a master's degree program, I
came to know many of the young phds

00:53:39.750 --> 00:53:45.717
in the department who had come, who
had not been, been able to come to

00:53:45.750 --> 00:53:47.787
fight

00:53:47.820 --> 00:53:53.945
permanent employment. They, they had a
whole uh

00:53:53.978 --> 00:54:01.978
I would say at least 30 people, maybe
40 who were hired with phds as

00:54:03.699 --> 00:54:10.517
instructors with no guarantee of
continuity. Some on one year, some on

00:54:10.550 --> 00:54:15.997
three year contracts,

00:54:16.030 --> 00:54:20.115
there were no teaching assistants at
the time. I don't think that Wayne

00:54:20.148 --> 00:54:27.816
had a phd program in English. It
developed afterward just as didn't have a

00:54:27.849 --> 00:54:35.236
phd program in English. When I came
here in 1958 it was established later

00:54:35.269 --> 00:54:38.517
in the sixties.

00:54:38.550 --> 00:54:41.336
And

00:54:41.369 --> 00:54:46.146
so that university teaching was not

00:54:46.179 --> 00:54:50.945
and economically attractive. It was

00:54:50.978 --> 00:54:54.977
maybe emotionally, intellectually
attractive.

00:54:55.010 --> 00:54:57.256
Uh

00:54:57.289 --> 00:55:02.046
during the time that I worked

00:55:02.079 --> 00:55:10.079
my masters. I also got what would now
be called teaching assistantship.

00:55:10.590 --> 00:55:17.307
But since there was no phd program, I
was also an instructor, which is how

00:55:17.340 --> 00:55:23.836
I came to know many of these who had
phds. And when I saw how many of them

00:55:23.869 --> 00:55:30.916
did not have a future that they could
count on. I decided I would, while

00:55:30.949 --> 00:55:38.195
teaching two classes and completing a
master's degree, I would also take

00:55:38.228 --> 00:55:43.796
it was 10 hours a semester and I could
complete

00:55:43.829 --> 00:55:48.925
what the college of education required
for a high school credential. In

00:55:48.958 --> 00:55:55.186
that time, I also did some

00:55:55.219 --> 00:56:00.635
practice teaching in the high schools
and some substitute teaching. My

00:56:00.668 --> 00:56:06.086
experience in the high schools even
in,

00:56:06.119 --> 00:56:12.936
well, it would be the early fifties,
51 or 52

00:56:12.969 --> 00:56:17.195
was enough to, to tell me that

00:56:17.228 --> 00:56:22.686
this was not, uh

00:56:22.719 --> 00:56:30.719
this was a life of personal sacrifice
and that

00:56:33.050 --> 00:56:38.856
the problems faced, particularly in

00:56:38.889 --> 00:56:42.557
urban inner city schools

00:56:42.590 --> 00:56:47.557
could quickly bring on burnout.

00:56:47.590 --> 00:56:52.026
I won't go through any of those
experiences with you. You want to extend

00:56:52.059 --> 00:56:59.626
this beyond the, the time we have. And
of course,

00:56:59.659 --> 00:57:06.646
this was a period of far less violence
than you now have in high school

00:57:06.679 --> 00:57:12.106
situations. Drugs existed but not

00:57:12.139 --> 00:57:18.436
and so conspicuous a form as they
exist today.

00:57:18.469 --> 00:57:20.517
Uh

00:57:20.550 --> 00:57:24.666
When it opportunity

00:57:24.699 --> 00:57:31.807
came to teach in a

00:57:31.840 --> 00:57:36.997
uh an unusual form of higher
education, I don't know whether you noticed

00:57:37.030 --> 00:57:41.396
on my resume that there is a year
spent at something called the General

00:57:41.429 --> 00:57:48.066
Motors Institute. It was a technical
school that offered bachelor's

00:57:48.099 --> 00:57:52.566
degrees in engineering

00:57:52.599 --> 00:57:56.997
and in business or sales.

00:57:57.030 --> 00:58:01.405
Ok. It involved,

00:58:01.438 --> 00:58:08.037
I think we call it Cooper education
that is students would spend but say

00:58:08.070 --> 00:58:12.396
two months in the classroom a month

00:58:12.429 --> 00:58:20.429
in the factory or in the sales outlet,
they would write what we called co

00:58:22.668 --> 00:58:29.066
ordination reports that a

00:58:29.099 --> 00:58:34.195
dealt with their real life experiences
or problems or assignments that

00:58:34.228 --> 00:58:38.896
they had in the,

00:58:38.929 --> 00:58:43.577
in the various General Motors
factories. And they were

00:58:43.610 --> 00:58:49.155
far more active and prominent than
they are today.

00:58:49.188 --> 00:58:54.606
And you know, they, they included not
only the automobile manufacturers

00:58:54.639 --> 00:59:01.017
but uh Saginaw Gray Iron Dow Chemical,

00:59:01.050 --> 00:59:06.046
the General Motors Institute in Flint.
Michigan was bounded by streets

00:59:06.079 --> 00:59:09.106
with names like

00:59:09.139 --> 00:59:13.807
Chevrolet Dupont

00:59:13.840 --> 00:59:21.840
Buick uh as a as a place to grow, to
spend your time in

00:59:26.829 --> 00:59:29.967
Flint was probably

00:59:30.000 --> 00:59:38.000
the most complete company town I could
have imagined. Uh I can see why

00:59:40.860 --> 00:59:48.860
Michael Moore who lived his youth and
early life in Flint focuses on the

00:59:49.059 --> 00:59:54.287
subject he makes documentaries about.

00:59:54.320 --> 01:00:00.997
So after you got out of uh just one
year there. So let's talk about after

01:00:01.030 --> 01:00:04.945
you got your, your masters and you
were working at the, the Institute

01:00:04.978 --> 01:00:09.796
there. Yeah, General Motors Institute.
Um Did you have career plans at

01:00:09.829 --> 01:00:16.155
that point of what you were going to
do? Well, Flint was so gray and grim

01:00:16.188 --> 01:00:21.296
a city and it also was one of the few

01:00:21.329 --> 01:00:26.506
uh really deadly tornadoes

01:00:26.539 --> 01:00:30.396
to hit a shelf.

01:00:30.429 --> 01:00:36.686
Central Michigan devastated Flint, uh,

01:00:36.719 --> 01:00:39.796
the streets

01:00:39.829 --> 01:00:46.276
as short as two blocks away from where
I lived where flattened by the kind

01:00:46.309 --> 01:00:54.309
of tornado you associate with the,
with Kansas and Nebraska. And, uh, it

01:00:54.550 --> 01:01:02.550
made it even, even grimmer, uh,

01:01:04.019 --> 01:01:08.776
from a colleague at General Motors
Institute. I

01:01:08.809 --> 01:01:13.666
who came to teach there

01:01:13.699 --> 01:01:18.986
from an American studies program at
the University of Minnesota. He hadn't

01:01:19.019 --> 01:01:24.686
finished his phd and unfortunately, he
never did. But from his discussion

01:01:24.719 --> 01:01:29.856
of that program, I thought that was
the kind of doctorate I wanted to take

01:01:29.889 --> 01:01:37.889
, it was an interdisciplinary program
combining uh literature, history,

01:01:39.159 --> 01:01:44.655
philosophy,

01:01:44.688 --> 01:01:48.057
our history, economics.

01:01:48.090 --> 01:01:51.217
In other, in other words, a broad

01:01:51.250 --> 01:01:54.416
cultural

01:01:54.449 --> 01:01:58.945
exploration

01:01:58.978 --> 01:02:06.586
of the past and present of the society
we live in.

01:02:06.619 --> 01:02:10.206
And I decided after a year to

01:02:10.239 --> 01:02:16.517
attend University of Minnesota, which
was one of the pioneer programs in

01:02:16.550 --> 01:02:22.307
American studies. Uh

01:02:22.340 --> 01:02:29.126
If you look at my resume, you will
note how many publications

01:02:29.159 --> 01:02:36.537
do not necessarily focus on purely
literary subjects. Even my doctoral

01:02:36.570 --> 01:02:39.115
dissertation

01:02:39.148 --> 01:02:47.148
on this Detroit was probably a factor
in this was and European reaction to

01:02:47.860 --> 01:02:52.296
what were really the beginnings of
American industrialization.

01:02:52.329 --> 01:03:00.329
I focused particularly on the area and
years between 1830 1860

01:03:00.659 --> 01:03:08.416
which was in literary terms, a kind of
golden age or did you use the title

01:03:08.449 --> 01:03:13.796
of a famous book, The The Flowering of
New England? Uh But at the same

01:03:13.829 --> 01:03:20.247
time, the handwriting of the American
future was already on the walls. And

01:03:20.280 --> 01:03:27.796
Europeans noted it sometimes with
admiration, sometimes with shock and

01:03:27.829 --> 01:03:33.497
despair about what was happening,
let's say to women in the Lowell textile

01:03:33.530 --> 01:03:38.046
mills. Uh

01:03:38.079 --> 01:03:46.079
And uh uh some of the most interesting
courses I took were in our history

01:03:47.148 --> 01:03:52.635
, in economic history. Uh

01:03:52.668 --> 01:03:57.327
So did you leave your job to go then?
Yes, I did. OK. To go up to the

01:03:57.360 --> 01:04:02.517
University of Michigan, Minnesota.
Minnesota. Ok.

01:04:02.550 --> 01:04:07.945
And what year was that, that would
have been uh 1953.

01:04:07.978 --> 01:04:14.727
And I was at Minnesota for 53 to 58.

01:04:14.760 --> 01:04:22.760
Came to a U in 58 met my wife at the
University of Minnesota where uh she

01:04:23.579 --> 01:04:26.845
had been a theater major

01:04:26.878 --> 01:04:31.787
but had taken graduate work in English

01:04:31.820 --> 01:04:35.276
uh from some of the

01:04:35.309 --> 01:04:43.309
most eminent critics, particularly of
American literature. Uh While you

01:04:43.878 --> 01:04:46.925
were at the University of Minnesota
working on your phd, what were you

01:04:46.958 --> 01:04:49.736
doing to earn a living

01:04:49.769 --> 01:04:54.896
again, a teaching assistant initially?
And I think after the first two

01:04:54.929 --> 01:05:02.929
years of the last three as instructor,
which is uh uh and I somewhat

01:05:03.699 --> 01:05:11.699
higher rate pay. But instructor in, in
a there were what she went to at

01:05:14.039 --> 01:05:19.126
least three choices for fulfilling the
freshman English requirement.

01:05:19.159 --> 01:05:26.467
They were on a quarter system. One was
English ABC which really was,

01:05:26.500 --> 01:05:31.467
which really focused on

01:05:31.500 --> 01:05:33.925
uh literature

01:05:33.958 --> 01:05:36.646
and,

01:05:36.679 --> 01:05:44.577
and some as a in, in uh British among
British writers, American writers,

01:05:44.610 --> 01:05:51.796
uh international writers it carried
three hours of credit,

01:05:51.829 --> 01:05:57.896
but you met the class five times a
week you've met every day. In other

01:05:57.929 --> 01:06:01.456
words, you uh students

01:06:01.489 --> 01:06:06.155
had to want to take literature. Let's
say it's the most, it was the most

01:06:06.188 --> 01:06:14.188
selective. Uh There were also grade
or, or, or entry level requirements

01:06:16.139 --> 01:06:19.896
like SATS or something.

01:06:19.929 --> 01:06:22.767
A second choice

01:06:22.800 --> 01:06:30.195
was Engineering English, which I did,
I think for two years and after my

01:06:30.228 --> 01:06:36.626
year, you know, at, at General Motors
Institute, uh I knew more about

01:06:36.659 --> 01:06:42.026
engineering English than the two men
who wrote, ran the engineering

01:06:42.059 --> 01:06:49.856
English program was Engineering
English uh uh co col English taught in the

01:06:49.889 --> 01:06:53.345
College of Engineering to engineering

01:06:53.378 --> 01:06:57.626
students. In other words, technical
writing.

01:06:57.659 --> 01:07:01.827
And only in the last three years did I

01:07:01.860 --> 01:07:08.236
yet to teach? What interested me most
and, and

01:07:08.269 --> 01:07:15.537
uh literature of aesthetic and
historical significance?

01:07:15.570 --> 01:07:20.537
Then the uh there was a third

01:07:20.570 --> 01:07:24.655
and it was called communication.

01:07:24.688 --> 01:07:27.905
Uh

01:07:27.938 --> 01:07:34.936
it met three times a week for three
hours credit. It included,

01:07:34.969 --> 01:07:38.816
it's really what that as U would be
the equivalent of rhetoric and

01:07:38.849 --> 01:07:41.537
composition

01:07:41.570 --> 01:07:48.807
little if any emphasis on the
aesthetic qualities, uh

01:07:48.840 --> 01:07:56.840
more on more formulaic forms of
writing,

01:07:56.840 --> 01:08:01.077
description, exposition, analysis.

01:08:01.110 --> 01:08:04.066
Oh yeah,

01:08:04.099 --> 01:08:07.767
it wasn't

01:08:07.800 --> 01:08:11.816
as historically based as

01:08:11.849 --> 01:08:14.865
some rhetoric programs

01:08:14.898 --> 01:08:19.486
are and uh

01:08:19.519 --> 01:08:24.916
it was less intellectually
challenging.

01:08:24.949 --> 01:08:30.576
There was something else and I don't
know whether as U is developing that

01:08:30.609 --> 01:08:38.609
also there was a general college which
was a two year associate of arts

01:08:39.220 --> 01:08:45.786
program. In other words, a community
college, right on the main campus

01:08:45.819 --> 01:08:50.527
that was in the 50 s and I guess
there's something like that plan for

01:08:50.560 --> 01:08:58.560
downtown. So, what made you decide to
leave Minnesota then in 1958

01:09:00.779 --> 01:09:08.265
58? Ok. That was, uh,

01:09:08.298 --> 01:09:14.817
I guess my wife and I were 31 years
old or approaching it. And, uh, it

01:09:14.850 --> 01:09:18.937
spent the bulk of our lives in the
Midwest.

01:09:18.970 --> 01:09:26.546
I had an offer in the same year from
the University of Wisconsin.

01:09:26.579 --> 01:09:34.579
Uh I had an an oh another from
Appleton. Uh I had an invitation to

01:09:35.668 --> 01:09:39.844
interview at UCL A

01:09:39.877 --> 01:09:43.897
in economic history based on

01:09:43.930 --> 01:09:50.305
the dissertation I had written even
before I published,

01:09:50.338 --> 01:09:56.256
was published in the sixties as a
book. We'll get to that I hope published

01:09:56.289 --> 01:10:02.126
by Oxford University Press, which I
was teaching in Norway at the time

01:10:02.159 --> 01:10:10.159
that book appeared. And uh Homer
Durham uh

01:10:10.750 --> 01:10:18.750
uh wrote to me saying, uh you know,
today we open the new College of

01:10:23.810 --> 01:10:28.857
Business Building that's now the old
College of Business building. And I

01:10:28.890 --> 01:10:33.976
received a copy of your book.

01:10:34.009 --> 01:10:39.357
I don't know which is the more
important event, you know, Homer was trying

01:10:39.390 --> 01:10:47.390
to build not the new American
University but the Athens of the West.

01:10:48.430 --> 01:10:52.357
So if you were interviewing at all
these other places, how did you happen

01:10:52.390 --> 01:10:55.786
to end up at a su

01:10:55.819 --> 01:10:58.187
Yeah,

01:10:58.220 --> 01:11:03.326
because we had never been to Arizona,
uh because it seemed like uh you

01:11:03.359 --> 01:11:10.506
know, a, a new experience, obviously,
my mother in law had come here for,

01:11:10.539 --> 01:11:15.006
uh, as a winter visitor several times.

01:11:15.039 --> 01:11:17.536
Aye,

01:11:17.569 --> 01:11:24.296
the salary was, you know, by
contemporary standards, amazingly low, but by

01:11:24.329 --> 01:11:28.237
the standards, well,

01:11:28.270 --> 01:11:32.166
it was higher than the University of
Wisconsin offered. And how much was

01:11:32.199 --> 01:11:38.397
it? Do you mean? How much did I think
I was going to get, or how much the

01:11:38.430 --> 01:11:43.095
contract said?

01:11:43.128 --> 01:11:49.336
58 $55,850

01:11:49.369 --> 01:11:57.369
for an academic year. Uh I not only
exceeded the requirements, I answered

01:11:59.810 --> 01:12:03.956
an ad in a uh professional

01:12:03.989 --> 01:12:07.866
journal or probably it, it came to the
to the placement, they had a very

01:12:07.899 --> 01:12:13.866
active placement office at the
University of Minnesota uh that called for

01:12:13.899 --> 01:12:20.126
it. Uh phd or a BD.

01:12:20.159 --> 01:12:25.305
I had just completed my phd, I already
had two publications, publications

01:12:25.338 --> 01:12:30.857
were not required as they would be.
Now, even for an entry level assistant

01:12:30.890 --> 01:12:36.476
professorship and in my conversation,

01:12:36.509 --> 01:12:42.376
I may have had two conversations, one
with because of the,

01:12:42.409 --> 01:12:48.036
the position involved half time in
English and half time in humanities,

01:12:48.069 --> 01:12:54.857
humanities was and directed by Dorothy
Schilling. I don't think I met her

01:12:54.890 --> 01:12:58.536
before I came here. So that my, my
only conversation I think was with

01:12:58.569 --> 01:13:06.569
Arnold Tilden who was Dean of Liberal
Arts and Sciences and, and uh uh

01:13:10.689 --> 01:13:15.946
and I was told by telephone that the
salary was going to be 5850. When I

01:13:15.979 --> 01:13:20.737
came here, the contract read 5450.

01:13:20.770 --> 01:13:27.925
Uh, that's not, it's almost 10% but
it's not, it, you know, it,

01:13:27.958 --> 01:13:33.385
yeah, I pointed this out to,

01:13:33.418 --> 01:13:40.317
to the Dean Tilton and he said, you
know, we have made more appointments

01:13:40.350 --> 01:13:47.246
in this year than we have made any
other year in the history of this

01:13:47.279 --> 01:13:51.836
institution. And this was a slip up
that I apologize for and it was

01:13:51.869 --> 01:13:57.305
immediately change to the original.

01:13:57.338 --> 01:14:04.506
But, you know, if I hadn't pointed it
out, uh And

01:14:04.539 --> 01:14:08.616
um

01:14:08.649 --> 01:14:13.666
the irony of course is that on the way
out,

01:14:13.699 --> 01:14:16.857
I got a more

01:14:16.890 --> 01:14:20.836
costly and troubling bait and switch

01:14:20.869 --> 01:14:24.687
and, but I don't think we wanna go to
that yet. Let's not go to that.

01:14:24.720 --> 01:14:28.626
Let's talk about coming into a su. So
you decided to accept the offer and

01:14:28.659 --> 01:14:36.659
come to a su and what were you going
to be teaching here? Uh Initially,

01:14:36.970 --> 01:14:42.376
you know, because

01:14:42.409 --> 01:14:50.086
had no big graduate program, new
assistant professors often taught three

01:14:50.119 --> 01:14:55.777
composition courses and maybe one
literature. In my case, the literature

01:14:55.810 --> 01:15:03.810
was in the humanities program and I
had 22 courses in English 101 English.

01:15:05.189 --> 01:15:13.189
12, a little later, they added a kind
of honors English called 105

01:15:15.359 --> 01:15:18.866
in the humanities program.

01:15:18.899 --> 01:15:25.586
Uh So they actually hired then by the
English Department and Humanities.

01:15:25.619 --> 01:15:32.976
Humanities was not a department. Uh It
director Dorothy Schilling uh was

01:15:33.009 --> 01:15:35.706
in the English Department.

01:15:35.739 --> 01:15:38.357
Uh

01:15:38.390 --> 01:15:45.116
She did not have a broad
interdisciplinary background herself, but in a

01:15:45.149 --> 01:15:53.149
very mechanical fashion. Felt this
program should focus on

01:15:54.619 --> 01:15:57.425
the best of

01:15:57.458 --> 01:16:02.135
uh literature,

01:16:02.168 --> 01:16:07.217
art,

01:16:07.250 --> 01:16:12.576
philosophy,

01:16:12.609 --> 01:16:20.305
but not touch history, the social
sciences. Uh uh the, the fourth, it was

01:16:20.338 --> 01:16:24.607
music, uh literature,

01:16:24.640 --> 01:16:32.640
art, music, philosophy. And when I
tried to, but literature in some kind

01:16:33.699 --> 01:16:38.027
of social context,

01:16:38.060 --> 01:16:45.456
her answer was simply I know that in
some programs, they include the

01:16:45.489 --> 01:16:52.076
social sciences, but we don't. And
that was.

01:16:52.109 --> 01:16:55.256
So when you took the position, had
you, did you come out to a su to

01:16:55.289 --> 01:16:59.946
interview? Had you actually been here?
That would have been too expensive

01:16:59.979 --> 01:17:07.979
for the uh budget at the time. Ah It
was uh you know, the a dossier plus

01:17:09.979 --> 01:17:15.956
uh

01:17:15.989 --> 01:17:20.916
dossier including a letter of
application and then, and then one telephone

01:17:20.949 --> 01:17:22.956
conversation.

01:17:22.989 --> 01:17:28.996
So when did you actually come out to a
SU and what on the hottest day of

01:17:29.029 --> 01:17:33.987
July of uh 1958?

01:17:34.020 --> 01:17:38.897
And I

01:17:38.930 --> 01:17:42.635
um

01:17:42.668 --> 01:17:50.668
drove carrying as many of our worldly
goods as I could pack into a,

01:17:52.439 --> 01:17:56.416
a dodge station wagon

01:17:56.449 --> 01:18:03.826
with a car top carrier and a U haul
trailer behind

01:18:03.859 --> 01:18:08.376
my wife was two young Children.

01:18:08.409 --> 01:18:13.996
Flew here a week later. Uh

01:18:14.029 --> 01:18:22.029
Our youngest daughter was born here in
1961.

01:18:22.958 --> 01:18:28.006
So what was your first impression then
when you arrived out here?

01:18:28.039 --> 01:18:31.076
How do people?

01:18:31.109 --> 01:18:36.217
Well, I hope we go call back. Uh

01:18:36.250 --> 01:18:44.250
I called AAA to get the best routing
to come through here. Whoever

01:18:45.000 --> 01:18:51.647
put me through the Salt River canyon
did not know and carry, you know,

01:18:51.680 --> 01:18:59.680
with, with the kind of load I was
carrying would not um did not know what

01:19:00.409 --> 01:19:06.126
that route entails. And also there was
road work going on so that there

01:19:06.159 --> 01:19:14.159
was so much stopping and starting.
Fortunately, I had started out with AAA

01:19:15.329 --> 01:19:21.206
gallon container of iced lemonade.

01:19:21.239 --> 01:19:29.239
So along the route, I added water to
that at every opportunity, I didn't

01:19:29.279 --> 01:19:37.279
have one of those desert bags which I
acquired after we got here. Uh

01:19:39.418 --> 01:19:45.470
By the time I reached the Salt River
Canyon, that lemonade was very dilute.

01:19:46.989 --> 01:19:48.989
And I wouldn't have gotten through that canyon if I hadn't been able to

01:19:50.029 --> 01:19:53.046
use that jug

01:19:53.079 --> 01:19:58.006
to pour into the radiator.

01:19:58.039 --> 01:20:06.039
But I didn't know how badly I strained
the car in making that trip after

01:20:08.119 --> 01:20:15.647
my wife came and, and, and we settled
in,

01:20:15.680 --> 01:20:19.666
we decided that we could uh

01:20:19.699 --> 01:20:23.576
leave Tempe and spend

01:20:23.609 --> 01:20:29.406
several weeks in Northern California
where her father

01:20:29.439 --> 01:20:34.826
had a industrial consultant business
in

01:20:34.859 --> 01:20:42.859
San Francisco and a large house with a
cantilever swimming pool in Marin

01:20:44.338 --> 01:20:50.876
County up in uh

01:20:50.909 --> 01:20:57.706
the wood of the mountain side on the
way back. Even without the load, the

01:20:57.739 --> 01:21:05.739
car threw a rod and the Salt River
Canyon was the last gasp for that car.

01:21:07.979 --> 01:21:13.487
Uh

01:21:13.520 --> 01:21:19.226
I pulled into Victory Village,

01:21:19.259 --> 01:21:23.967
the first man I encountered

01:21:24.000 --> 01:21:30.796
was tanned bare chested,

01:21:30.829 --> 01:21:35.746
but obviously a weightlifter. And I
thought to myself, well, this is a guy

01:21:35.779 --> 01:21:41.976
who helped me unload. Uh

01:21:42.009 --> 01:21:50.009
I should have known that his shaved
chest was not a good omen. Uh,

01:21:52.069 --> 01:21:55.817
he was in the College of Business.

01:21:55.850 --> 01:22:01.376
Uh, he said, well, I'd help you but I
just took a shower.

01:22:01.409 --> 01:22:06.476
I did get some help from a man who
turned out to be in the, in the

01:22:06.509 --> 01:22:12.226
department of English.

01:22:12.259 --> 01:22:15.925
Certainly a good Samaritan.

01:22:15.958 --> 01:22:20.666
His was one of the two funerals I
attended between Christmas and New

01:22:20.699 --> 01:22:24.536
Year's of this year.

01:22:24.569 --> 01:22:29.385
Uh You want to name him George Herman.

01:22:29.418 --> 01:22:32.845
Uh

01:22:32.878 --> 01:22:36.506
So you arrived at Victory Village,
when did you actually get onto campus

01:22:36.539 --> 01:22:42.467
and see where you were gonna be
working? What was that like the next day?

01:22:42.500 --> 01:22:46.836
Uh

01:22:46.869 --> 01:22:54.027
The English Department was housed in
what is now the University club.

01:22:54.060 --> 01:22:58.515
The first office I had

01:22:58.548 --> 01:23:04.987
was sort of, well, if you walked into
the, you know, at one time was the

01:23:05.020 --> 01:23:10.546
old, it was an agriculture building.
Uh

01:23:10.579 --> 01:23:14.586
As you walked in through the front
door,

01:23:14.619 --> 01:23:19.086
the first office on the right was the
main office of the English

01:23:19.119 --> 01:23:21.256
Department.

01:23:21.289 --> 01:23:26.675
Uh an office that you entered, not at
the front, but at the uh it would be

01:23:26.708 --> 01:23:33.925
the south side of the building would
be the latter part of what's now the

01:23:33.958 --> 01:23:37.095
bistro.

01:23:37.128 --> 01:23:40.567
And that, that was my first office

01:23:40.600 --> 01:23:44.187
shared with two other people.

01:23:44.220 --> 01:23:48.817
Uh uh

01:23:48.850 --> 01:23:52.076
I, I never dreamed

01:23:52.109 --> 01:23:59.385
you'd be able to order a drink in
that, in that building or

01:23:59.418 --> 01:24:07.418
that they would ever go beyond the
huge evaporative cooler

01:24:09.298 --> 01:24:15.326
that chilled one half of the building
while the other half roasted.

01:24:15.359 --> 01:24:20.296
Bye. And so that was where your office
was. Is that also where your, your

01:24:20.329 --> 01:24:27.536
classes were held? Uh There were, I, I
had one class in a room

01:24:27.569 --> 01:24:34.576
immediately adjacent, just separated
by a wall from that office. I had

01:24:34.609 --> 01:24:39.055
classes in old main classrooms.

01:24:39.088 --> 01:24:41.746
Uh

01:24:41.779 --> 01:24:47.567
What were you teaching? But the
humanities classes were down in. What's

01:24:47.600 --> 01:24:51.595
the name may have changed now? Because
it was, when I got here, I think it

01:24:51.628 --> 01:24:55.286
was called the Academic Services
building. It had been, I think the older

01:24:55.319 --> 01:24:59.456
college business

01:24:59.489 --> 01:25:05.796
and you know, it, it is adjacent to
and, and, and, and, and uh I think

01:25:05.829 --> 01:25:09.675
connected to the uh

01:25:09.708 --> 01:25:13.366
administration building.

01:25:13.399 --> 01:25:16.626
Uh

01:25:16.659 --> 01:25:19.156
I'm sorry,

01:25:19.189 --> 01:25:26.116
what were you teaching? Composition
classes and the humanities? And I also

01:25:26.149 --> 01:25:30.656
introduced a new course

01:25:30.689 --> 01:25:33.456
with shared responsibility

01:25:33.489 --> 01:25:41.489
from a man with a doctorate in music
named uh Alton or Alden Bucher. Uh He

01:25:44.560 --> 01:25:49.836
had no broad knowledge of American
Society at all. It was called the

01:25:49.869 --> 01:25:55.546
Humanities and America and then one
semester of humanities in modern

01:25:55.579 --> 01:25:59.317
America. Uh

01:25:59.350 --> 01:26:04.576
uh he left here early afterward

01:26:04.609 --> 01:26:08.925
uh to become a dean at one of the

01:26:08.958 --> 01:26:16.958
Pennsylvania State Colleges. But as I
said, he had no interdisciplinary

01:26:16.979 --> 01:26:21.046
background at all and

01:26:21.079 --> 01:26:25.946
uh a very great tendency to

01:26:25.979 --> 01:26:30.166
tilt the chorus to popular culture.

01:26:30.199 --> 01:26:37.246
It's not that I had a, you know, a
more intellectual or aesthetic

01:26:37.279 --> 01:26:43.166
orientation. It was that I had a
broader cultural orientation, my

01:26:43.199 --> 01:26:51.199
conception of humanities or humanity
or interdisciplinary humanities.

01:26:51.829 --> 01:26:56.607
What sort of, what came later to be
called cultural studies, who was

01:26:56.640 --> 01:27:02.406
chairman of the Department when you
came port,

01:27:02.439 --> 01:27:07.277
who also did not have a degree in
English,

01:27:07.310 --> 01:27:15.310
but uh degree in Spanish,

01:27:15.739 --> 01:27:20.416
a phd in Spanish,

01:27:20.449 --> 01:27:23.406
as did her husband

01:27:23.439 --> 01:27:29.595
who may also have taught French. Uh He
had already died when I got here,

01:27:29.628 --> 01:27:31.946
but

01:27:31.979 --> 01:27:36.786
Kise and her husband were colleagues
of Grady Gamage. When Grady Gamage

01:27:36.819 --> 01:27:41.277
was president at Flagstaff

01:27:41.310 --> 01:27:45.487
and uh the

01:27:45.520 --> 01:27:50.687
foreign language Department at ASU

01:27:50.720 --> 01:27:58.720
bridled at bringing husband and wife
into the same department. They

01:28:00.159 --> 01:28:03.006
felt that this,

01:28:03.039 --> 01:28:06.885
what's the term

01:28:06.918 --> 01:28:13.546
blocked on it for the moment?
Obviously not incestuous but nepotism. Yes,

01:28:13.579 --> 01:28:19.626
exactly. Uh And uh

01:28:19.659 --> 01:28:27.659
oh, yes, I think, I think that also uh
a great many people in the English

01:28:28.128 --> 01:28:31.726
Department at that time

01:28:31.759 --> 01:28:34.527
had shared

01:28:34.560 --> 01:28:40.345
with Lewis Myers, Mac Myers as he was
known, experienced during World war

01:28:40.378 --> 01:28:46.567
I I in uh

01:28:46.600 --> 01:28:50.796
cryptography in Washington,

01:28:50.829 --> 01:28:58.829
uh in a kind of uh early form of, of
uh intelligence and

01:29:03.350 --> 01:29:05.996
that,

01:29:06.029 --> 01:29:14.029
that Mac headed and uh it included
Fred Ostenberg and uh Katherine Turner.

01:29:15.119 --> 01:29:17.119
And I think K had also been in that

01:29:19.970 --> 01:29:25.956
in that program. And uh no, I, I may
be wrong on that. Uh But who was the

01:29:25.989 --> 01:29:30.555
Dean of the College Arnold Tilden? And
of course, Grady Gamage was

01:29:30.588 --> 01:29:36.187
president, uh had the college be
coming. It was a su university, was it?

01:29:36.220 --> 01:29:42.857
No, it wasn't, it was I, I,

01:29:42.890 --> 01:29:46.437
I think my first contract

01:29:46.470 --> 01:29:53.885
Arizona State College, however,

01:29:53.918 --> 01:30:00.996
my wife was very quickly recruited and
that's not even the, the right word

01:30:01.029 --> 01:30:03.496
conscripted

01:30:03.529 --> 01:30:10.717
into a faculty wives force

01:30:10.750 --> 01:30:16.717
whose task it was

01:30:16.750 --> 01:30:23.906
to knock on doors in Maricopa County
advocating

01:30:23.939 --> 01:30:29.187
support. I don't remember for what
proposition it was. But as you may know

01:30:29.220 --> 01:30:34.546
, Arizona State became a university

01:30:34.579 --> 01:30:41.616
in a by pro by the plebiscite, the
voters had to approve it. There was

01:30:41.649 --> 01:30:48.916
intense opposition from PM car and
especially centered in the University

01:30:48.949 --> 01:30:51.265
of Arizona.

01:30:51.298 --> 01:30:56.976
Uh my wife was not a very political
person and this was a uh a difficult

01:30:57.009 --> 01:31:04.147
kind of thing for her to, to get used
to. But she was told in clear terms

01:31:04.180 --> 01:31:12.180
, your husband's future depends on it.
And uh there was an incident at one

01:31:13.109 --> 01:31:19.635
of the, one of the first social
gatherings up in the

01:31:19.668 --> 01:31:25.796
what now the alumni lounge?

01:31:25.829 --> 01:31:32.237
Is there a ballroom in the m as well
as the alumni lounge.

01:31:32.270 --> 01:31:37.746
It is probably in the ballroom and

01:31:37.779 --> 01:31:45.036
my wife was talking to uh uh somebody
else in the line she she had met and

01:31:45.069 --> 01:31:48.656
you know, we we came without

01:31:48.689 --> 01:31:53.135
right out of grad school and did not
have money to put down as a house

01:31:53.168 --> 01:32:01.168
payment uh with a va loan I did, I was
able to pay for a home the next

01:32:01.569 --> 01:32:03.746
year

01:32:03.779 --> 01:32:10.916
to make a down payment on a very
miniscule down payment.

01:32:10.949 --> 01:32:18.866
But in that first year we did not set
foot in a real house. There was no

01:32:18.899 --> 01:32:24.076
social entertainment. Uh, the only
house that I recall our setting foot

01:32:24.109 --> 01:32:31.206
and was a, a party given by our
Children

01:32:31.239 --> 01:32:37.656
on the evening of the first football
game. And it included, uh, you know,

01:32:37.689 --> 01:32:42.897
a barbecue dinner. I don't know, but
you had to get to the stadium on time

01:32:42.930 --> 01:32:48.925
for the football game. So it was the,

01:32:48.958 --> 01:32:55.866
everything had to be cleared by, let's
say 637.

01:32:55.899 --> 01:32:59.385
Uh

01:32:59.418 --> 01:33:07.418
But my wife was describing to somebody
she had met or maybe had known

01:33:07.520 --> 01:33:12.937
before in the line what things were
like in Victory Village? For one thing

01:33:12.970 --> 01:33:20.970
, the archery range was just behind
where

01:33:21.869 --> 01:33:27.196
our house stood and where the clothes
lines were.

01:33:27.229 --> 01:33:31.817
So you had to be careful and not to be
out there hanging clothes while a

01:33:31.850 --> 01:33:39.850
stray arrow might have been directed
uh at the close lines.

01:33:42.628 --> 01:33:49.607
And of course, these were cooled by
evaporative cooler and

01:33:49.640 --> 01:33:54.237
they were very affordable. We were
grateful

01:33:54.270 --> 01:34:00.536
the rent was something between 50 $60
a month in utilities included, it

01:34:00.569 --> 01:34:05.166
made that less than $6000

01:34:05.199 --> 01:34:08.206
stretch pretty far.

01:34:08.239 --> 01:34:16.239
Uh But, but she didn't know that she
was within earshot of K Gage who was

01:34:19.009 --> 01:34:24.946
listening to this and who as she the
punch said, I'm sure they're not that

01:34:24.979 --> 01:34:27.206
bad.

01:34:27.239 --> 01:34:33.916
You know, the housing in Victory
Village. Uh You know, it, it was uh you

01:34:33.949 --> 01:34:41.850
know, the president's lady and did you
get to know King. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes.

01:34:43.189 --> 01:34:45.189
I'm glad we weren't on their list that they made

01:34:48.600 --> 01:34:52.086
church Sunday calls

01:34:52.119 --> 01:34:56.086
unannounced.

01:34:56.119 --> 01:34:59.746
Do I have to say more?

01:34:59.779 --> 01:35:04.726
I mean, not even a phone call,

01:35:04.759 --> 01:35:10.437
but we did, we didn't, we didn't go to
Victory Village for that. No. No.

01:35:10.470 --> 01:35:15.626
So, do you have any other memories of,
of gray damage or a cake damage?

01:35:15.659 --> 01:35:19.885
Yeah.

01:35:19.918 --> 01:35:25.925
A K was, I think, in many ways more
sophisticated than radio.

01:35:25.958 --> 01:35:33.958
Uh, Grady, I was quite authoritarian
and, and uh

01:35:34.810 --> 01:35:37.515
um

01:35:37.548 --> 01:35:43.515
it was not an institution

01:35:43.548 --> 01:35:48.857
in which academic freedom was
understood.

01:35:48.890 --> 01:35:53.336
And uh we tenure

01:35:53.369 --> 01:35:59.696
only a semblance of tenure,
euphemistically called stability of employment

01:35:59.729 --> 01:36:07.729
existed. But the atmosphere, even
among

01:36:07.729 --> 01:36:12.476
people who describe themselves as
democrats

01:36:12.509 --> 01:36:20.256
found tenure an unacceptable form of

01:36:20.289 --> 01:36:24.546
uh illegitimate job security.

01:36:24.579 --> 01:36:30.616
And

01:36:30.649 --> 01:36:34.256
I do remember

01:36:34.289 --> 01:36:36.996
issues of

01:36:37.029 --> 01:36:43.726
today would have been serious
infringements of academic freedom

01:36:43.759 --> 01:36:45.845
involving

01:36:45.878 --> 01:36:50.696
dismissal of a faculty member in the
College of Business

01:36:50.729 --> 01:36:58.116
who had just been promoted to
associate professor the year before

01:36:58.149 --> 01:37:03.756
for

01:37:03.789 --> 01:37:09.067
giving too many low grades based upon

01:37:09.100 --> 01:37:17.100
uh an end of semester project or term
paper, uh

01:37:18.609 --> 01:37:26.609
which too many business students did
not perform well on. Uh

01:37:26.970 --> 01:37:31.666
And when I told

01:37:31.699 --> 01:37:37.476
when I heard of this from my colleague
in Victory Village Village, who was

01:37:37.509 --> 01:37:42.416
from the College of Business and who
hadn't helped me when I first arrived.

01:37:42.449 --> 01:37:50.449
But we became friends and my wife baby
sat sometimes with discomfort at

01:37:51.489 --> 01:37:57.385
their place and they exchanged the
service when we wanted to go out. But

01:37:57.418 --> 01:38:00.326
at their place,

01:38:00.359 --> 01:38:03.696
my wife always shuddered at the

01:38:03.729 --> 01:38:10.067
sort of glass aquarium that housed

01:38:10.100 --> 01:38:18.100
snake, a live white rat and a cat
perched on top.

01:38:18.579 --> 01:38:22.576
Uh, but yeah.

01:38:22.609 --> 01:38:27.046
So when you came here, did you intend
to stay here all these years, or?

01:38:27.079 --> 01:38:33.817
What were your thoughts when you moved
here? Well,

01:38:33.850 --> 01:38:40.626
I did have the opportunity to move and
was very much attracted to a

01:38:40.659 --> 01:38:47.446
position. I was offered at the
University of California Davis in 1970

01:38:47.479 --> 01:38:51.756
I'd gone there as a visiting
professor. They were on a quarter system.

01:38:51.789 --> 01:38:56.616
After the first quarter, the man
directing the program in American studies

01:38:56.649 --> 01:39:00.635
whom I had known at Minnesota and
where it was the kind of American

01:39:00.668 --> 01:39:04.116
studies program

01:39:04.149 --> 01:39:08.857
uh I was familiar with

01:39:08.890 --> 01:39:13.156
uh

01:39:13.189 --> 01:39:18.876
he did not want to continue in this
administrative position. I took it

01:39:18.909 --> 01:39:21.456
over and

01:39:21.489 --> 01:39:27.906
in the spring of 70 was asked to stay
on. But our oldest daughter

01:39:27.939 --> 01:39:33.217
who was in school at as in Tempe

01:39:33.250 --> 01:39:38.446
uh

01:39:38.479 --> 01:39:42.305
had moved out of the dorm

01:39:42.338 --> 01:39:45.095
and we were troubled

01:39:45.128 --> 01:39:51.296
her decision to move in with a
boyfriend, a colleague in political science

01:39:51.329 --> 01:39:54.616
told me

01:39:54.649 --> 01:40:00.826
he is suspected of a small time drug
dealer, but also his advised in

01:40:00.859 --> 01:40:07.345
political science. And we knew we had
to come back. And by the time we got

01:40:07.378 --> 01:40:14.135
back that relationship was over and
she was willing to continue in college.

01:40:14.168 --> 01:40:20.805
 Uh but not to live in the dorm and

01:40:20.838 --> 01:40:28.675
she did choose a place we didn't
approve of, which did turn out to be as I

01:40:28.708 --> 01:40:34.506
felt insecure. But that's another
story, but that's why we came back. I

01:40:34.539 --> 01:40:41.296
also, after coming back was offered
invited to apply

01:40:41.329 --> 01:40:44.976
for the directorship of the American
studies program from which I

01:40:45.009 --> 01:40:50.826
graduated at Minnesota.

01:40:50.859 --> 01:40:55.046
We had just put in a swimming pool.

01:40:55.079 --> 01:41:02.277
Uh This is our second house in Tempe,

01:41:02.310 --> 01:41:09.765
uh where we lived for 29 years before
the house that I

01:41:09.798 --> 01:41:16.737
now still live in. My wife died 3.5
years ago.

01:41:16.770 --> 01:41:22.546
Uh And we did not at that point

01:41:22.579 --> 01:41:26.607
long to return to Minnesota winters.

01:41:26.640 --> 01:41:34.640
Uh and both these positions, obviously
Davis, which had a,

01:41:38.390 --> 01:41:45.397
it was the agricultural branch, the
land grant branch of the University of

01:41:45.430 --> 01:41:53.430
California system. It has risen in
other areas of research as rapidly

01:41:54.229 --> 01:41:58.296
as, as has but not,

01:41:58.329 --> 01:42:03.987
doesn't have the numbers the size, but
it also has a med school, a

01:42:04.020 --> 01:42:12.020
veterinary school and, you know, all
all of the and obviously a very large

01:42:13.229 --> 01:42:21.229
agriculture department. Uh It was a, a
uh

01:42:23.819 --> 01:42:30.336
research one before as was

01:42:30.369 --> 01:42:36.027
uh I think we're running a little bit
long on this. Let me, let's get on

01:42:36.060 --> 01:42:40.147
to some of your um your career here at
a su and what, what are some of the

01:42:40.180 --> 01:42:46.595
outstanding points that you wanted to
be sharing with you? Uh

01:42:46.628 --> 01:42:54.628
Well, you know, in a, in a way. Uh
Yeah, I'm grateful to a su for having

01:42:55.378 --> 01:43:00.956
given me the opportunity to explore
other opportunities while maintaining

01:43:00.989 --> 01:43:08.989
a base here. Uh During the sixties,

01:43:10.128 --> 01:43:16.876
we spent two years in Greece on a
Fulbright where I had a major challenge

01:43:16.909 --> 01:43:20.595
uh to

01:43:20.628 --> 01:43:25.006
introduce

01:43:25.039 --> 01:43:30.595
the serious study of American
literature

01:43:30.628 --> 01:43:33.437
in a department

01:43:33.470 --> 01:43:38.476
where there were no Greek

01:43:38.509 --> 01:43:46.509
faculty members on permanent
appointment.

01:43:47.699 --> 01:43:52.237
The department was headed by the
director of the British Council, which is

01:43:52.270 --> 01:43:56.196
a cultural organization

01:43:56.229 --> 01:44:03.187
to a greater degree than U SI S United
States Information Service or USA.

01:44:03.220 --> 01:44:11.067
The same thing by one letter away
which mixes a little more politics into

01:44:11.100 --> 01:44:16.687
its programs than the British Council
does. But the British Council was

01:44:16.720 --> 01:44:21.456
the department chairman and he handled
the British half. I handled the

01:44:21.489 --> 01:44:29.317
American. I was lucky enough to have a
very talented group of students. I

01:44:29.350 --> 01:44:31.937
taught

01:44:31.970 --> 01:44:37.607
both third year and fourth year
students. And then in the second year, I

01:44:37.640 --> 01:44:42.656
offered my own

01:44:42.689 --> 01:44:49.305
on a voluntary basis, the second year
class to prepare the students for

01:44:49.338 --> 01:44:54.967
opera division work to give them more
writing experience, expository

01:44:55.000 --> 01:44:59.527
writing experience. Uh

01:44:59.560 --> 01:45:04.416
I said I had such an exceptionally

01:45:04.449 --> 01:45:12.449
eager and qualified group of students.
Uh at

01:45:13.239 --> 01:45:15.607
we have had

01:45:15.640 --> 01:45:19.576
three students from that university

01:45:19.609 --> 01:45:21.906
uh

01:45:21.939 --> 01:45:27.156
take doctorates in English at a su or
all of them in American literature.

01:45:27.189 --> 01:45:29.937
I should say

01:45:29.970 --> 01:45:37.970
one of my original students from 1961
to 63 who's already retired from

01:45:38.649 --> 01:45:42.976
Aristotle University in Solani,
another who has retired from the

01:45:43.009 --> 01:45:51.009
University of Athens. Uh At one point
I had six former students, two

01:45:52.409 --> 01:46:00.409
generations as it were, who were
teaching at the Aristotle University and

01:46:01.628 --> 01:46:09.628
who had established the most prominent
American studies journal in the

01:46:12.060 --> 01:46:18.116
Balkans Hellenic journal of American
studies.

01:46:18.149 --> 01:46:23.317
Soliciting contributions from not only

01:46:23.350 --> 01:46:31.350
local but throughout Europe and the
British Isles. Uh

01:46:33.579 --> 01:46:38.027
you know, the, the greatest teaching

01:46:38.060 --> 01:46:40.226
honor

01:46:40.259 --> 01:46:48.259
I've ever received was Yeah, in a
letter a couple of years ago from the

01:46:48.520 --> 01:46:55.385
last doctoral candidate whose work I
directed, she is at University in

01:46:55.418 --> 01:47:03.418
Turkey. E many Turkish words are
formed by compression of its Aegean like

01:47:04.770 --> 01:47:12.770
the restaurant in Tempe is called E
which is E uh and

01:47:14.918 --> 01:47:19.116
during the years that she was

01:47:19.149 --> 01:47:26.336
graduate student that would have been
1992 to 96 working on her doctorate

01:47:26.369 --> 01:47:28.885
at

01:47:28.918 --> 01:47:35.796
she had the opportunity to visit to
meet either two or three of my former

01:47:35.829 --> 01:47:39.246
Greek students.

01:47:39.279 --> 01:47:42.987
And uh also

01:47:43.020 --> 01:47:49.446
at a conference that was held in
Volvos, Greece, she met 1/4 who was at

01:47:49.479 --> 01:47:57.479
the University of Athens. So she met
these Greek older Greek counterparts.

01:47:58.909 --> 01:48:00.909
And two years ago, her apartment in Izmir, which was the Greek city of

01:48:07.310 --> 01:48:09.385
Smyrna.

01:48:09.418 --> 01:48:13.586
Uh

01:48:13.619 --> 01:48:15.616
I

01:48:15.649 --> 01:48:22.326
had what they called a cultural
studies conference

01:48:22.359 --> 01:48:27.756
participants from throughout Europe
and perhaps some from the United

01:48:27.789 --> 01:48:33.265
States. And I know that another of my
former students from ASU had gone to

01:48:33.298 --> 01:48:35.987
that conference,

01:48:36.020 --> 01:48:43.095
the chairman told this woman's name is
Dilek told Dilek that

01:48:43.128 --> 01:48:47.737
knowing that she had some
acquaintances at Aristotle University in Greece.

01:48:47.770 --> 01:48:54.509
There are two young women from that
department here presenting papers.

01:48:54.850 --> 01:48:56.850
Would you like to meet them? And, oh, yes, she was very interested. Well,

01:48:59.548 --> 01:49:02.256
she said

01:49:02.289 --> 01:49:08.317
she pointed out on the conference
program where they were and they didn't

01:49:08.350 --> 01:49:15.756
meet afterward. And the Turkish woman
introduced herself and then said, I

01:49:15.789 --> 01:49:20.226
know I have some friends in your
department and you mentioned these people

01:49:20.259 --> 01:49:26.607
and as you may know, Greek and Turkish
relations are not without friction

01:49:26.640 --> 01:49:29.467
,

01:49:29.500 --> 01:49:35.555
Greece was and they'll never let you
forget it. 500 years under Turkish

01:49:35.588 --> 01:49:37.796
domination.

01:49:37.829 --> 01:49:43.675
And uh you know, the name for this
period is in Greek, the Turko Gratia,

01:49:43.708 --> 01:49:47.027
which the Turk

01:49:47.060 --> 01:49:51.786
uh

01:49:51.819 --> 01:49:55.956
the young women, they both turned out
to be doctoral students. And I

01:49:55.989 --> 01:50:03.989
imagine at 26 years old, maybe or 25.
So we were surprised

01:50:05.500 --> 01:50:12.076
that they knew, uh that they like knew
some of their teachers. And then

01:50:12.109 --> 01:50:17.946
one of them said, and you know, these
are young women, I've, I've never

01:50:17.979 --> 01:50:20.246
met.

01:50:20.279 --> 01:50:28.279
And this is what, 45 6 years after the
fact she said, I can't, I can't say

01:50:28.588 --> 01:50:36.286
this without choking up. Are you part
of that of FG

01:50:36.319 --> 01:50:41.406
Dr Fisher's gang? As if it were a
mafia

01:50:41.439 --> 01:50:44.946
and verse first

01:50:44.979 --> 01:50:51.857
di you know, dick laughed, then they
laughed and she said, and then we

01:50:51.890 --> 01:50:54.925
cried.

01:50:54.958 --> 01:50:59.196
Uh So that, ah,

01:50:59.229 --> 01:51:06.546
so you have a real legacy over here.
Uh And Uh

01:51:06.579 --> 01:51:13.036
Well, the I, in 19

01:51:13.069 --> 01:51:17.237
90 seven,

01:51:17.270 --> 01:51:22.647
a couple of years after I was
president of the Melville Society, that

01:51:22.680 --> 01:51:28.437
group held its first international
meeting uh at a city in Greece called

01:51:28.470 --> 01:51:32.956
Volos. It on the uh GNC

01:51:32.989 --> 01:51:37.967
and

01:51:38.000 --> 01:51:44.906
three of my former students from
Greece participated and also the Turkish

01:51:44.939 --> 01:51:52.939
woman. Well, the Greek co chair of
that conference was not a, a university

01:51:54.520 --> 01:52:02.520
figure or literary figure. He was a
liar who had by avocation

01:52:03.149 --> 01:52:10.305
chosen to translate all of Melville's
work into Greek and also to do

01:52:10.338 --> 01:52:13.717
elaborate illustrations.

01:52:13.750 --> 01:52:16.967
Uh

01:52:17.000 --> 01:52:25.000
early on the first evening of the, of
the conference,

01:52:26.149 --> 01:52:33.326
uh I was introduced to his son, his
son said, who, who was a graduate

01:52:33.359 --> 01:52:39.996
student in the English Department and
has since taken a doctorate at uh

01:52:40.029 --> 01:52:45.555
Texas A and M which is a very good
American literature department. But he

01:52:45.588 --> 01:52:49.156
said

01:52:49.189 --> 01:52:55.265
it is an honor to meet you. I have
heard of you

01:52:55.298 --> 01:52:58.046
many times.

01:52:58.079 --> 01:53:02.226
You are a legend in Greece.

01:53:02.259 --> 01:53:06.567
I don't want to stop there because
there are other things I want to say by

01:53:06.600 --> 01:53:14.600
way of experience at ASU. It's not all
been good. The most important thing

01:53:15.399 --> 01:53:23.399
I'm most proud of is having been able
as department chair to hire in one

01:53:24.229 --> 01:53:28.107
year.

01:53:28.140 --> 01:53:34.226
It's got to be 1981. I think

01:53:34.259 --> 01:53:40.286
in my opinion, the three best
qualified minority candidates in the

01:53:40.319 --> 01:53:47.515
Department of English and also to have
during the period I was chair. Yeah

01:53:47.548 --> 01:53:49.675
,

01:53:49.708 --> 01:53:55.336
I think that the, the the course in
American Indian literature or Native

01:53:55.369 --> 01:53:58.265
American literature

01:53:58.298 --> 01:54:03.976
may have been. No, I think it was
introduced while I was chair as were of

01:54:04.009 --> 01:54:12.009
course is in African American
literature and in Chicano literature, the

01:54:12.259 --> 01:54:18.536
three people whom we were able to hire
in 19

01:54:18.569 --> 01:54:21.086
81

01:54:21.119 --> 01:54:27.576
were of

01:54:27.609 --> 01:54:32.265
went on to be a Pulitzer Prize winner,

01:54:32.298 --> 01:54:35.366
served two terms

01:54:35.399 --> 01:54:39.286
as poet laureate of the United States.

01:54:39.319 --> 01:54:41.885
Uh

01:54:41.918 --> 01:54:48.425
and who was understandably lured away

01:54:48.458 --> 01:54:54.345
from as by the University of Virginia,
which which offered her an

01:54:54.378 --> 01:55:02.378
appointment as a Commonwealth
professor after, as had said, no, you can't

01:55:02.539 --> 01:55:08.536
be a regions professor until you've
been here 15 years. Really? That was a

01:55:08.569 --> 01:55:11.647
term,

01:55:11.680 --> 01:55:17.925
Jose Salar,

01:55:17.958 --> 01:55:25.958
who was here, I think for either two
or maybe three years.

01:55:26.088 --> 01:55:31.397
Uh and who is now

01:55:31.430 --> 01:55:37.817
professor, I don't think it's English
but it's, it's, it's

01:55:37.850 --> 01:55:42.116
uh hello

01:55:42.149 --> 01:55:49.595
Chicano Literature at Berkeley. And
the only one who was still here is

01:55:49.628 --> 01:55:54.147
Alberto Rios all in one year.

01:55:54.180 --> 01:55:57.467
I'm very proud of that,

01:55:57.500 --> 01:56:03.726
but I am not proud of the three years
that followed because we had

01:56:03.759 --> 01:56:08.027
somebody in the department who was so
opposed to Rita Dove's joining the

01:56:08.060 --> 01:56:10.666
faculty.

01:56:10.699 --> 01:56:18.357
OK, that he continued to humiliate her
for a reason that I had no

01:56:18.390 --> 01:56:23.286
knowledge of it. At the,

01:56:23.319 --> 01:56:28.956
at the time, he insisted we were
looking for somebody to direct our

01:56:28.989 --> 01:56:34.076
creative writing program. He had

01:56:34.109 --> 01:56:40.696
an impressive record of national
publication and, and several novels

01:56:40.729 --> 01:56:47.135
turned into films. His name is Mark
Harris

01:56:47.168 --> 01:56:55.168
films. I mean, his, his novels dealing
with baseball, uh

01:56:55.399 --> 01:57:00.536
South Paw particularly Bang The Drum
Slowly

01:57:00.569 --> 01:57:08.569
or good films. Uh

01:57:10.378 --> 01:57:13.786
He did not

01:57:13.819 --> 01:57:21.656
want read it of here in this program,
he refused in, in, in his

01:57:21.689 --> 01:57:26.046
appointment, he made something that
we, we couldn't understand. Uh he

01:57:26.079 --> 01:57:32.196
preferred not to be appointed with
tenure but tenure to be granted.

01:57:32.229 --> 01:57:37.635
Yeah, two years down the line or
sooner at our mutual convenience. That

01:57:37.668 --> 01:57:43.666
was his phrase. I subsequently found
out that this was part of a deal that

01:57:43.699 --> 01:57:47.286
he made with his previous university,
which was so anxious to get rid of

01:57:47.319 --> 01:57:53.956
him that they, they agreed to continue
to offer educational subsidy for

01:57:53.989 --> 01:57:59.166
his youngest son if he didn't come
back.

01:57:59.199 --> 01:58:02.095
Uh

01:58:02.128 --> 01:58:05.866
Yeah,

01:58:05.899 --> 01:58:08.786
he went so far

01:58:08.819 --> 01:58:13.976
in opposing reader's appointment
threatening to write her and tell her she

01:58:14.009 --> 01:58:19.576
would not be welcome here. The
university, there was no in house attorney

01:58:19.609 --> 01:58:25.366
, but there was a law firm that
handled university affairs. Said, well,

01:58:25.399 --> 01:58:33.399
our view of this, oh, yes, I should
say that in 19,

01:58:34.390 --> 01:58:42.390
it may have been 1980 at any rate when
he made this, this specification

01:58:42.390 --> 01:58:48.567
tenure to be granted automatically two
years down the line. I told Dean

01:58:48.600 --> 01:58:52.836
Wagon, Guido Wagon that this was not
something we could do at our level,

01:58:52.869 --> 01:58:58.226
you know, write or rewrite tenure
regulations.

01:58:58.259 --> 01:59:02.607
And I composed a letter and the dean
approved it, you know, saying, you

01:59:02.640 --> 01:59:09.055
know, if, if you want an appointment
without tenure. Uh We will grant it

01:59:09.088 --> 01:59:16.076
with tenure to be granted uh in the
date in two years down the line, what

01:59:16.109 --> 01:59:19.796
the date was

01:59:19.829 --> 01:59:23.095
9282

01:59:23.128 --> 01:59:26.366
would have been

01:59:26.399 --> 01:59:32.237
according to standards with which you
are very familiar publication. Well

01:59:32.270 --> 01:59:36.635
, he didn't want that because he knew
he wouldn't get it. He had been

01:59:36.668 --> 01:59:41.656
every place he'd ever worked, it
turned out, but they wouldn't, wouldn't

01:59:41.689 --> 01:59:44.187
tell you up front

01:59:44.220 --> 01:59:49.256
what kind of trouble he had made. I
also subsequently discovered

01:59:49.289 --> 01:59:55.256
that he had a psychological discharge
from the army

01:59:55.289 --> 02:00:00.876
that in his autobiography, he detailed

02:00:00.909 --> 02:00:08.909
spousal and child abuse. Yeah, blaming
is giving up smoking for

02:00:10.560 --> 02:00:13.996
breaking his daughter's 16 year old
daughter's nose when she talked back

02:00:14.029 --> 02:00:17.845
to him, throwing his

02:00:17.878 --> 02:00:25.878
younger middle son down the stairs and
breaking his leg and returning from

02:00:26.259 --> 02:00:31.885
a ball game with the youngest son who

02:00:31.918 --> 02:00:36.286
when he said something, the father
didn't like

02:00:36.319 --> 02:00:42.706
hit him in the hand with a wooden coat
hanger, broke his hand. Uh The next

02:00:42.739 --> 02:00:48.897
three years I think we need to change.
Yeah, there's a, the next three

02:00:48.930 --> 02:00:53.496
years were spent in litigation

02:00:53.529 --> 02:01:01.529
and I had the three best years and the
three worst years of my life

02:01:02.220 --> 02:01:05.515
dealing with that situation.

02:01:05.548 --> 02:01:11.717
Uh I'm proud to say, I, I remember I,
I remain friends with all of the

02:01:11.750 --> 02:01:19.750
people involved and uh I went to great
lengths to not only ok

02:01:22.319 --> 02:01:30.319
recruit, search out but to tell. Do
you know, Tito Manny. No. Uh he was a

02:01:32.168 --> 02:01:36.916
U of a graduate but very, very naive
work working in Globe where his wife

02:01:36.949 --> 02:01:41.305
was li librarian.

02:01:41.338 --> 02:01:44.737
Was there anything more you wanted to
add about that? And you, you

02:01:44.770 --> 02:01:52.437
mentioned that Tito is the nickname of
Alberto. Yes. Uh

02:01:52.470 --> 02:01:56.397
Well, he has remained, obviously, he's
had opportunities to leave, but

02:01:56.430 --> 02:02:04.430
he's remained because he has such deep
roots in Arizona. And so his wife,

02:02:04.739 --> 02:02:06.817
uh

02:02:06.850 --> 02:02:09.876
but I,

02:02:09.909 --> 02:02:14.737
when he was, when he applied from
Globe

02:02:14.770 --> 02:02:20.175
with an address on Ice House Canyon, I

02:02:20.208 --> 02:02:28.208
answered, you know, telling him to get
the placement office at U of A to

02:02:28.529 --> 02:02:33.196
help him prepare a dossier. He did not
think he was entitled to that kind

02:02:33.229 --> 02:02:38.496
of help. He thought that was only for
the professional schools.

02:02:38.529 --> 02:02:46.036
Uh So I had to detail the steps for
him to follow. In other words, I had

02:02:46.069 --> 02:02:49.476
to become his mentor

02:02:49.509 --> 02:02:54.265
and nobody at U of A was doing it and
he hadn't even thought he was

02:02:54.298 --> 02:03:02.135
entitled to it. So we had to do this
step by step. And the opportunity to

02:03:02.168 --> 02:03:07.805
hire him really came about because
Rita

02:03:07.838 --> 02:03:13.956
before we hired her, told us that she
had an invitation from Tuskegee to

02:03:13.989 --> 02:03:19.866
come for the spring semester. In other
words, she would come here for the

02:03:19.899 --> 02:03:27.845
fall but take a 61 semester leave to
be visiting writer in residence at

02:03:27.878 --> 02:03:35.385
Tuskegee something she felt she could
not say no to. And I agreed so that

02:03:35.418 --> 02:03:43.046
Tito was her replacement for the
spring. And you know, her, her leave made

02:03:43.079 --> 02:03:50.147
it possible for us to hire him in the
case of Jose Saldivar talking about

02:03:50.180 --> 02:03:53.706
Tito. I know he mentioned that he
never thought he was qualified to be a

02:03:53.739 --> 02:03:56.925
university professor

02:03:56.958 --> 02:04:02.796
until some somebody told him he was,
he had won an award I think was the

02:04:02.829 --> 02:04:06.437
other thing that brought him to your
attention.

02:04:06.470 --> 02:04:12.607
Uh Well, you know, there's, there's a
good deal that we should have

02:04:12.640 --> 02:04:17.015
covered in this history because

02:04:17.048 --> 02:04:22.836
there is no record of any of this

02:04:22.869 --> 02:04:26.576
in the English Department.

02:04:26.609 --> 02:04:33.906
None of my annual reports to the
college

02:04:33.939 --> 02:04:40.196
exist in the English Department or in
the college office or in the

02:04:40.229 --> 02:04:46.527
Provost's office. And there is no
account of the litigation with Mark

02:04:46.560 --> 02:04:49.217
Harris

02:04:49.250 --> 02:04:57.187
at any of these places. I finally had
to, I finally realized I had to put

02:04:57.220 --> 02:05:05.220
my personnel committee meetings, my
correspondence, uh the

02:05:05.689 --> 02:05:12.317
materials from the court into the
archives because somebody writing about

02:05:12.350 --> 02:05:19.666
Rita Dove, I told her, I asked her,
may I do this? And of course, she said

02:05:19.699 --> 02:05:27.217
yes. And there's somebody writing on
Rita will need to use that material,

02:05:27.250 --> 02:05:35.250
the archives now, yes, in the library
with instructions that

02:05:35.479 --> 02:05:43.036
access for the 25 years after I gave
them there, they are to be viewed uh

02:05:43.069 --> 02:05:45.166
only

02:05:45.199 --> 02:05:50.376
with my permission because I did not
want somebody carrying those out of

02:05:50.409 --> 02:05:58.409
there. Since this is a, this is
history at a wanton destroyed

02:06:00.369 --> 02:06:03.866
the department, the college, the
provost

02:06:03.899 --> 02:06:07.196
maybe didn't want to preserve one
other thing. I wanted to be sure and ask

02:06:07.229 --> 02:06:10.647
you about, I saw you, then you
mentioned the Melville Society. You've done

02:06:10.680 --> 02:06:14.925
a lot of writing about Melville. How
did you get so interested in Melville

02:06:14.958 --> 02:06:22.958
? I realized that this was one of the
American writers who received very

02:06:24.109 --> 02:06:29.147
inadequate attention in his own
lifetime

02:06:29.180 --> 02:06:33.616
and who is sometimes remembered for
and who was recognized for the books

02:06:33.649 --> 02:06:37.706
he thought were his slightest

02:06:37.739 --> 02:06:45.739
and who had such deep insight into the
American character. Ok. It's

02:06:46.810 --> 02:06:48.866
psychological,

02:06:48.899 --> 02:06:53.555
its political,

02:06:53.588 --> 02:06:57.586
its moral implications

02:06:57.619 --> 02:07:05.619
that his writings take on new meaning
with every generation that reads

02:07:08.520 --> 02:07:10.555
them.

02:07:10.588 --> 02:07:14.175
He was not a fortune teller,

02:07:14.208 --> 02:07:20.476
but he did recognize more than anybody
between

02:07:20.509 --> 02:07:28.509
the 18 forties and the 18 through the
early 18 nineties.

02:07:28.628 --> 02:07:32.866
Uh

02:07:32.899 --> 02:07:40.046
what lay at the heart of the American
character and this applies to race,

02:07:40.079 --> 02:07:44.376
to gender,

02:07:44.409 --> 02:07:48.817
to political implications

02:07:48.850 --> 02:07:56.850
to international relations. And you
may see on my resume that the last

02:07:57.199 --> 02:08:01.756
I think it's very soon to be
published. It may be out now,

02:08:01.789 --> 02:08:07.416
uh article on Melville

02:08:07.449 --> 02:08:15.449
deals with one story written in the 18
fifties that is remarkably relevant

02:08:18.048 --> 02:08:26.048
to the events that we've seen in the
past five or six years as American

02:08:26.680 --> 02:08:31.737
foreign policy has taken on a very

02:08:31.770 --> 02:08:35.937
dangerous and debatable turn.

02:08:35.970 --> 02:08:43.970
It's a story that deals with a
confrontation at sea between

02:08:44.699 --> 02:08:48.817
a representative ships representing

02:08:48.850 --> 02:08:54.217
the new world, the old world

02:08:54.250 --> 02:09:02.250
and Africans being transported by the
European ship to slavery in South

02:09:04.029 --> 02:09:08.006
America, the third world.

02:09:08.039 --> 02:09:12.256
And he was writing about all those
things that, what was the name of the

02:09:12.289 --> 02:09:17.277
piece? Benito Serino

02:09:17.310 --> 02:09:25.310
read it mostly he's known for what he
did, which also uh uh is so

02:09:26.798 --> 02:09:29.756
multifaceted

02:09:29.789 --> 02:09:37.675
that it takes on new meaning with
every generation. It's,

02:09:37.708 --> 02:09:42.067
it's a social, it's a political, it's
a religious

02:09:42.100 --> 02:09:44.116
allegory.

02:09:44.149 --> 02:09:49.437
And uh

02:09:49.470 --> 02:09:53.196
it's also

02:09:53.229 --> 02:10:01.229
I said religious, but it's, it's, it's
theological. It deals with

02:10:01.310 --> 02:10:03.706
uh

02:10:03.739 --> 02:10:09.996
the injunction at the beginning of the
Old Testament. Uh

02:10:10.029 --> 02:10:18.029
you know, to go forth and multiply and
exercise Dominion over nature and

02:10:20.350 --> 02:10:22.866
its creatures.

02:10:22.899 --> 02:10:25.687
And

02:10:25.720 --> 02:10:33.720
there have been critics who have seen
ahab a as a

02:10:33.909 --> 02:10:36.376
four

02:10:36.409 --> 02:10:44.409
of fascism. Uh It, it, it and all that
mel would say when

02:10:47.680 --> 02:10:51.265
that's Daniel Hawthorne's wife

02:10:51.298 --> 02:10:59.298
asked if there were not allegorical
meaning in this. He said, uh you know

02:10:59.949 --> 02:11:07.476
, can be some kind of off putting
remark like uh uh you may find it. So,

02:11:07.509 --> 02:11:14.756
but I did not think that when I was
writing it,

02:11:14.789 --> 02:11:17.607
I know we're running short of time
here. Were there any other important

02:11:17.640 --> 02:11:22.286
things that you wanted to be sure to
talk about today? I think we better

02:11:22.319 --> 02:11:27.265
wind, wind it up. We have uh uh
another session and I think you need to

02:11:27.298 --> 02:11:33.006
break. Ok. Um One thing I'd like to
ask everybody and I wanted to ask you

02:11:33.039 --> 02:11:36.527
too is what kind of advice do you give
to young people if they're trying

02:11:36.560 --> 02:11:43.366
to choose their career? Oh, well. Uh,
but

02:11:43.399 --> 02:11:51.399
choosing, you know, in college and
their career, uh, of course, when

02:11:52.199 --> 02:11:57.476
the advice to undergraduates would not
be exactly the same as, as

02:11:57.509 --> 02:12:03.366
graduates. Uh,

02:12:03.399 --> 02:12:07.717
and I think in many cases,
undergraduates

02:12:07.750 --> 02:12:10.616
face

02:12:10.649 --> 02:12:16.675
decisions based upon family finances
and so on, graduate students are

02:12:16.708 --> 02:12:22.116
better able if they have the abilities
to support themselves. But of

02:12:22.149 --> 02:12:24.626
course,

02:12:24.659 --> 02:12:27.336
uh

02:12:27.369 --> 02:12:31.607
student loans are available for both.
But graduate students, I would

02:12:31.640 --> 02:12:38.265
encourage to equate themselves with
the various aspects of American higher

02:12:38.298 --> 02:12:44.226
education. Uh The PPF

02:12:44.259 --> 02:12:50.555
Pff program preparing future faculty
program at ASU does a marvelous job

02:12:50.588 --> 02:12:58.588
that taking them to visit and to
familiarize themselves with the community

02:13:00.048 --> 02:13:05.126
colleges, four year colleges,

02:13:05.159 --> 02:13:08.777
uh

02:13:08.810 --> 02:13:11.496
research universities,

02:13:11.529 --> 02:13:15.826
all of which would have different
standards for retention and different

02:13:15.859 --> 02:13:21.095
missions. I think the

02:13:21.128 --> 02:13:26.576
they have to realize something about
the,

02:13:26.609 --> 02:13:32.527
the degree to which these institutions
adhere to and fulfill their own

02:13:32.560 --> 02:13:35.987
mission statements.

02:13:36.020 --> 02:13:44.020
Uh They have to learn and understand
the reward systems

02:13:44.609 --> 02:13:49.416
in each of these institutions. Yeah,

02:13:49.449 --> 02:13:52.187
in my generation,

02:13:52.220 --> 02:13:57.746
we had to learn to do this ourselves.

02:13:57.779 --> 02:14:01.226
Pff

02:14:01.259 --> 02:14:07.166
provides it on a more organized and
comprehensive basis.

02:14:07.199 --> 02:14:11.126
OK. Anything else you wanted to add?

02:14:11.159 --> 02:14:14.277
I had some notes

02:14:14.310 --> 02:14:21.095
and yeah, you had an in an interesting
uh question that we hadn't touched

02:14:21.128 --> 02:14:29.128
on. You asked, describe what A U was
like when you first arrived. Well,

02:14:29.159 --> 02:14:36.156
I'd say it was like a general store.

02:14:36.189 --> 02:14:43.126
And what it's become is like at
Walmart, Super Mart.

02:14:43.159 --> 02:14:46.746
OK.

02:14:46.779 --> 02:14:50.845
With some

02:14:50.878 --> 02:14:55.675
and even in its present

02:14:55.708 --> 02:14:59.546
manifestation,

02:14:59.579 --> 02:15:06.937
a lot of the work is performed by

02:15:06.970 --> 02:15:12.256
part time,

02:15:12.289 --> 02:15:18.456
we don't just have graduate students
as teaching us working part time, but

02:15:18.489 --> 02:15:26.489
we have far too many part time
employees who if they want to

02:15:27.520 --> 02:15:33.046
an adequate living to support growing
families

02:15:33.079 --> 02:15:37.296
have to put together programs,

02:15:37.329 --> 02:15:42.067
taking them to a su or

02:15:42.100 --> 02:15:50.100
community colleges. Teaching what is
essentially a double load

02:15:51.458 --> 02:15:55.906
is pitifully a half salary.

02:15:55.939 --> 02:16:03.939
I've had too many graduate students,
you know, doctoral doctorates

02:16:05.259 --> 02:16:10.576
who have to put together a program

02:16:10.609 --> 02:16:13.687
toting, totaling

02:16:13.720 --> 02:16:21.217
thousands of miles going from MESA
Community College to Glendale Community

02:16:21.250 --> 02:16:26.006
College.

02:16:26.039 --> 02:16:28.916
It's not easy

02:16:28.949 --> 02:16:31.706
and it's not

02:16:31.739 --> 02:16:36.176
professionally justifiable,

02:16:36.209 --> 02:16:44.209
but it's part of the New American
University too. And the old, right.

02:16:46.859 --> 02:16:48.898
You know,I