History of My Reading: Two Cultures (Part 1)

According to what I hear and read, a high school student selecting a college these days involves at least one family road trip to target campuses, follow-up visits to the short list and then serious negotiations with the top choice (or two), involving conversations in person and on the phone with administrators and teachers. Colleges often bus or fly "prospectives" to campus for group and personal tours, while prospective interest expressed in a particular field of study might mean texts, emails and a phone call from the relevant department chair.

 So my experience in choosing a college in the early 1960s might seem unbelievable. But when I committed to Knox College, I hadn't spoken to a single person there. Until I got out of our black Mercury station wagon in front of Anderson House, my first year residence, I had never set foot in Galesburg, Illinois. The first representative of Knox College I'd actually met was the student who ticked my name off his list and showed me my room at the back of the third floor.

 Nevertheless, I had carefully considered what college I would decide to go to. But my decisions were made mostly sitting at my old varnished wood desk in my room, reading. Or lying on my bed, staring up at the light fixture that had been there since the room was new, and I moved in at the age of five. The Roy Rogers bedspread of my childhood was gone by then.

Probably the brown linoleum with cowboy scenes that covered the hardwood floor of my room was gone by then, too. But the shade on the overhead light was still there: a gold colored fixture shaped like the wheel on the bridge of an old sailing ship, with a pearl white shade that had various nautical decorations on the sides. But facing down at me was a kind of compass, with the four cardinal directions marked in red. The question was: which way would I go?

I wasn't sailing east, down Route 30 a few miles to St. Vincent College, where many of my high school classmates were headed. But should I go south, to Georgetown in Washington, D.C.? That was unlikely. I only applied there to keep my Central Catholic high school teachers off my back--their only interest seemed to be that I go to a Catholic college. I deliberately chose a school that was unlikely to give me the scholarship I would need even to think about it. If lightning struck however, it was the one Catholic university I knew of that I might consider.

 But basically I wanted out of the stifling insistence of Catholic schools. I had some idea colleges wouldn't be as doctrinaire as high school but I didn't want to take the chance. I could go north, to Michigan State. The only person I knew who was actually in an out of state college, a second cousin, was going there, and she was enthusiastic. Plus it was pretty cheap. My shot in the dark was Columbia University in New York, which I had visited for a high school journalism convention, but  it was very expensive.

 Or I could sail west--either a little ways west, to the University of Pittsburgh. Or farther west, to this school nobody I knew had ever heard of, that liked to call itself the Harvard of the Midwest.

I'd only heard about it because I'd entered a Scholastic Magazine Writing Awards contest my junior year, and I placed in one of the categories (Dramatic Script.) It turned out that in addition to a small cash prize, this award made me eligible for a Scholastic Magazines Writing Awards Scholarship at the two institutions of higher learning that gave one: the University of Pittsburgh, which I certainly knew something about (it was 30 miles away, and I'd been on campus several times) and this other place, Knox College, that I knew nothing about.

 They were both described as full four year scholarships--just what I needed. I wanted to go away to college. But any chance of college necessitated a scholarship.  So I applied for both.

 As for the choice, I was pretty much on my own. Neither of my parents had gone to college. I was the oldest in my generation on both sides of the family, so nobody else had yet gone through this. I literally did not know anyone who had gone to college, except my Aunt Toni (who lived far away in Maryland), my Uncle Carl, and eventually a few students a year ahead of me in high school who were just starting. (I don't count the priests and nuns who taught at my high school, at least some of whom presumably had degrees. They were useless.) Nobody I knew had experience in this process.  I talked about college a little with classmates, but college shopping was still basically yet another middle class mystery.

 My uncle and aunt had gone to the two local Catholic colleges, and had lived at home. Most of the students I knew from high school were going to these same schools. Those that weren't--who went off to Pitt or Carnegie Tech or Penn State--just seemed to disappear. I didn't have much of anyone to talk to about my strong need to seek a bigger world, let alone how best to accomplish it. So I researched the only way I knew how. I read. And most of what I read was what these institutions sent me.

  Probably in the spring of my senior year, and certainly by the time I was getting ready for college that summer, my parents presented me with two new matching Samsonite suitcases. They looked like this:

I used one or another of them on trips home, and for years of train, air, auto and bus travel. Decades later they became storage units, repositories of whatever improbably survived from high school and college. In one of them is stored a number of items relating to that college decision (though it was my mother who saved the important papers.)

Such as the letter received by my high school principal on May 3, 1963 from the Scholastic Awards announcing that I had won a second in the national writing awards.  In addition to a $25 check and a pen from the Sheaffer company sent three days later, I learned in a separate letter from the Scholastic Awards that the University of Pittsburgh and Knox College each gave a four year scholarship in connection with the Writing Awards, and as a junior I was eligible.  I could apply for either or both.

 The letter included forms to fill out and send to them in the fall (between September 15 and November 15), to be passed on to the respective schools. I applied for both. Junior and senior years involved taking a lot of tests related to college and eligibility for scholarship, the most important being the S.A.T.  There were few guides to taking these tests in those days--too much help was considered unethical. But we did take the PSAT and then the SAT in both junior and senior years.

I remember towards the end of this test-taking process being roused on a Saturday morning and driven to an unfamiliar school to take one.  I was drowsy and in a bad mood and I did badly.

 But fortunately I had a good day for the senior SAT, soaring over 700 in verbal and actually topping 500 in math--each being at least 50 points higher than my junior test.  Of course these numbers don't mean much now--the tests have apparently changed several times since then.  I didn't do as well on my senior Achievement Tests, and actually scored higher on American History than English.  Maybe those were the ones I took that Saturday.

 I have a December 1963 letter from Michigan State about sending them a deposit to confirm that I was coming, so I must have received the acceptance letter earlier. In early January 1964 I got a letter accepting me into the University of Pittsburgh, with a scholarship offer a few weeks later.

I don't have anything surviving from Georgetown, but I was accepted without scholarship.  I believe I was wait-listed at Columbia. In February 1964 I got a letter from Allan Christiansen, Director of Admissions at Knox, informing me that I'd been awarded the Scholastic Magazines Scholarship. I had until April 1 to notify them if I was accepting.  Pitt wanted to know by May. So then it was time to decide.

  I'd read somewhere--probably in some august publication like the Reader's Digest--that to make a big decision you should list all the pros and then all the cons.  So that's what I did, and I actually still have the three legal size card stock sheets I used.

 I had apparently already eliminated Michigan State.  I'm sure one factor came in the envelope asking for my deposit.  It was my student punch card, the kind with the little holes.  The "do not fold, spindle or mutilate" cards that were even then a symbol of depersonalization. I was a little leery of such a big school anyway.  High school was claustrophobic, so a large university had some appeal.  But it was also overwhelming and hard to make judgments about.   Their academic programs seemed lost in skills and prep-professional majors, like hotel management. Anyway, once acceptances came in from elsewhere, I had no interest in Michigan State.

 So my decision sheets started with what had to be the first consideration: cost. Surprisingly, on paper, Georgetown was not more expensive that Pitt or Knox--in fact, even with room and board, it was slightly cheaper.  But no scholarship. Once scholarship offers came in from elsewhere, it wasn't a practical choice.

I'd marked Georgetown as "large, urban, fairly distant."  Pitt was "large, urban, close."  I actually did know someone who was a first year there, and she loved it.  But Linda tended to be enthusiastic about everything.

She showed me around one day. There were three new high rise residence halls shaped like cleanser cans.  They were officially designated buildings A, B and C, but the students had dubbed them Ajax, Bab-o and Comet. I'd been to the Pitt campus before (and a few more times at Forbes Field across the street, where the Pirates played.)

I was always impressed by the Cathedral of Learning--a building that should be more famous than it is--and the magic I felt the first time I walked into its small offspring, the Steven Foster theatre, never left me.  (I subsequently saw a lot of Shakespeare there.  And eventually, taught a writing course in the basement of the Cathedral.)  Still, I left that visit with the campus still a blank of buildings.

One day my Uncle Carl visited, and came into my room for a private chat.  We sat on my bed, under those four directions on the ceiling lamp.  He suggested that I would make a lot of contacts at Pitt that would be useful to me later.  He was assuming I would stay in western Pennsylvania, an assumption I wasn't making. But this was the best informed advice I got in my decision-making process.

Pitt Cathedral of Learning

Pitt had sent me a few sheets of information they distributed to Scholastic Magazines applicants, about the English and writing programs.  I noted that these looked good.  My comment was "could not make a mistake going here."  That was the ultimate consideration: the fear of making a huge mistake.

 Pitt made sense in many ways.  The campus was far enough away for some independence, close enough for whatever support I might need.  I knew of at least one high school friend who was likely to go, so I wouldn't be starting out completely alone among strangers. So for awhile, it must have looked like Pitt was it.

  I'd gotten my first letter from Knox in September 1963, when I'd first applied for the Scholastic Awards scholarship.  That's when they sent me several brochures and a course catalog.  I'd been looking at them for months, but now in the early spring it was time to give them one last examination.

Prof. Douglas Wilson from 1960s Knox Idea

Unfortunately I no longer have the actual material they sent me, though I picked up similar brochures in 1968.  In addition to the course catalog, the probably sent a brochure introducing Knox College, and they certainly sent the more substantive Knox Idea, and a thin brochure, probably four pages counting the title page and the back, on heavy cream white paper.  On the cover it said "The Writing Program At Knox."

The contents of the late 60s Knox Idea I have appears to be largely the same as the one I received in 1963, especially since the photos of students seem from at least a few years before my time (though I do seem to recognize one or two), and all the faculty are familiar, though perhaps younger. I remember the same photos of dorm rooms, which made them look improbably large, as students later complained.

I  remember the same photo of Everett Dirksen (Republican Senate leader from Illinois, who bowed to the Civil Rights bills with the quote about an idea whose time has come) in the section on guest appearances.  (And there were no examples of notable guests from my years or later.)  But the booklet itself is not as I remember it.   I recall the Knox documents I got as being on glossy paper with a unique but old fashioned typeface, and borders and backgrounds of purple and gray.

 One element that is definitely different is the trees.  The brochures/booklets I got had photos of the Knox campus, with many trees leafily lining the brick walks and sheltering the grass between earnest old buildings.  The trees were a comfort, a hope, as they were to me in my western Pennsylvania reveries.  Later editions don't have these photos, probably because most of the trees were cut down.

Those trees gave me an impression of the campus that was very important to its appeal.  But Dutch Elm Disease came.  Some of the trees were gone when I got there, and I awoke in Anderson House too many mornings to the portentous whine of chain saws several blocks away on campus. Still, many trees survived, including the persimmon trees in Standish Park that Mary Jacobson loved during our few walks there in a future year.

 What turned me towards Knox? The financials were slightly better than Pitt, enough to cite to my parents as a basis for my decision.  That cream white brochure on parchment paper called "The Writing Program at Knox" was modest but elegant, and gave me a sense of the writing program's independence, importance and its context.  That my scholarship was identified as the Scholastic Writing Awards Scholarship.  That it was a coeducational liberal arts college.  That it was an unknown land, and yet, in a town I might understand, in the Land of Lincoln.

The campus, the trees, and above all how they filled out the image of the Knox Idea: The Knox idea of education is to lead students to learn and to think. The Knox idea encourages students to enter into the spirit of free inquiry essential to a liberal education....Knox College wants its students, in and out of class, to question, to probe, to decide for themselves what is true--and to accept the responsibility for their decisions. The Knox idea emphasizes that the faculty has, as its principal concern, the intellectual development of Knox students. 

 Faculty members are firmly committed to the belief that the students' progress is most important and must be served by, rather than subordinated to, an interest in research or in books, buildings, or equipment.

 It said that Knox students are expected to "acquire certain abilities:" To think logically To speak and write clearly and effectively To be resourceful in obtaining further knowledge.... And so on. All of this represented the culture I wanted to be part of.

 It meant leaving the culture I was in.  Leaving the limited and deceptive "free inquiry" of  Catholic schools, and the limitations of the time and place that had brought me up so far. Though it was becoming economically middle class, the world I knew was culturally working class.  Most men didn't see the point of college, when there were secure and well-paid jobs in union plants.  But even those who saw college as a step up into professions, expected those students to return to home and family.

 It was a delicate dance at best.  Even those who got their education locally and stayed near would run into the attitude expressed in the phrase we all heard: "Who do you think you are?"  Improving your earning ability or even status was understandable, to a point.  But suddenly, betterment meant you think you're better than us, better than me.  Their sense of betrayal and alienation, or simply of inability to understand why, were never far off. My world had been expanded by television, newspapers, movies, magazines and books.  There was a world I saw in ideas and images, though had not yet touched. A world of principles and expression, of potential to be realized, of gifts to be developed and then given.

So I set sail for Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Did I find any substance to the Knox Idea there?  It was never that pure, seldom articulated, often lost.  But in the end that wasn't the point.  It wasn't a question of whether Knox College believed in the Knox Idea and tried to live it.  It was that I did.