Undergraduate was so easy for somebody like me raised to read like all Cambellite boys were in the Ozarks were in the sixties and seventies, I could attend the first class of any of the easier classes, get the syllabus, and maybe not show up again until mid terms and the final. I’d read the books the night before, and study with some poor schumk who took notes.
I swear, for forty years I’ve had recurring nightmares I forgot a final and have to retake the class again as a grown man. Why I abused my reading and testing skills that badly still haunts me, but I had a good time in college.
Finals week of May 1979 was torture. I had five easy classes and I’d blown off all five, and by Friday I’d not slept a few hours all week. At about noon Friday I’d finished my last final, and fired up my Vega GT confident I’d aced all five, and headed towards Humansville from Kansas City. It was just about a two hour drive to heaven.
My mother was in Erverton with my penultimate step father, so I had the house to myself.
At about two thirty I slept the sleep of the saved and thankful, in my bedroom where I could see Bug Tussle just a little more than a half mile North.
Then I awoke, and in the darkness heard clearly
I wonder where he’s hiding?
He’s got to be there somewhere, good buddy!
Panicked I grabbed my Sweet Sixteen and ran to the living room and called the Sheriff at Bolivar.
They answered, but as I explained my desperate situation I heard
Yeah Breaker One Nine, anybody see that bear by the Humansville exit, come back
I’d realized I’d left my CB radio on full blast outside the house.
I explained there was no pending home invasion, it was only about ten o’clock, and I headed off towards a dance at Caplinger Mills.
There was a dark eyed girl there who could dance like a honky tonk Queen with long locks of raven black hair. She invited me to go to her grandparent’s home when the dance ended.
But some in the crowd knew I was engaged, and all I did was dance, and go back home.
She was so pretty, she’d probably been as crazy as my first wife was anyway.
But I remember that night, when I sing Almost Persuaded.