Mt. Holyoke in the Sixties
We were allowed to knit in class though it wasn’t a requirement. That click clack metronome helped me get an education – with every row a lesson learned. Somehow it didn’t drive the teacher crazy.
The girl next to me in Classical Studies said she was knitting a sweater for her lover but couldn’t decide which one. To myself I thought, whether she knew it or not, she was making a shroud.
Then on the last day of class – right in front of our teacher – she slowly carefully pulled on the thread until that beautiful sweater and everything she had learned unraveled.
Villanova in the Sixties
We weren’t allowed to smoke in class but the air in the stairway was toxic. Had to wear a jacket and tie to every class, to every meal – after all, it was a Catholic school.
Freshman year I employed the old Windsor Knot – balanced symmetrical conforming – By senior year I adopted a simple overhand knot cocked to one side. I had firm opinions, read too much, thought I was smart. Got interested in poetry, heard about the mess in Southeast Asia. I wore the ugliest combination of shirt and tie. I was a rebel.
Like that kid next to me in Theology class whose hair was long and might have had a mustache. Who wore jeans that were holy and frayed (along with a jacket and tie). Who on the last day of class, as some sort of protest, I guess, pulled out a cigarette lighter and set fire to his pants but he quickly snuffed it out unlike some monk on a street in Saigon.
Jim Smith started writing poetry as a student at Villanova University, but never attended Mt. Holyoke. He lives retired in Silver Spring MD and is delighted to finally get in Gargoyle.