Interesting Friends in College

There were several boys in college that I found interesting and enjoyed being their friend. Grady was a Native American. I wasn’t attracted to him, but he was a good friend. William was a lot of fun to be around and always kept us laughing. I felt it was safe to hang out with him because, like me, he had a significant other. Actually, he was engaged to a girl in north Mississippi, and he wanted to make sure he didn’t step out on her. Jimmy was someone with whom I could have easily formed an attraction if I hadn’t been trying to remain true to Evan. He was certainly smitten with me. He was forever writing me love notes in class. He had big brown eyes, well-tanned skin, and black, almost curly, hair. He reminded me of some of the gypsy boys who came through Newton and went to grade school with me for a few weeks until their families moved on.

There was something about black hair, brown eyes and darker complexion which I found intriguing. Jimmy also had a mild manner and an appealing personality. One day, Jimmy said he needed to tell me something. When he told me I laughed, thinking he was joking because this was Mississippi in the fifties. It was something I didn’t even realize was possible at the time. What he said was, “My father is a negro.” When I realized he was serious, I tried to react as though it was no big deal, but I’m sure he knew his words shocked me. In Mississippi at the time, anyone with a drop of black in their blood was considered black, and forced to go to a separate school. Also, the white race and the black race were not allowed to marry.

I didn’t have anything against black people, but being allowed to go to school and socialize with them was new to me, and Jimmy realized it. It might have been his way of telling me he was having to leave Clarke College. Without another word, he backed off. I felt terrible. I’m sure he didn’t understand that to me nothing had really changed. I still considered him to be a good friend.

Clarke College broke its school year into four six-week sessions. Most colleges had only two semesters and broke the semester at the Christmas break. After completing the first session and without telling me he was leaving, Jimmy was no longer on campus. I thought about him often and hoped the school had not insisted he leave.

My speech teacher was my favorite teacher. He was asked by the local radio station to find someone to read stories to children on Saturday mornings. He gave the responsibility to me.  It was a new learning experience. After each story, I played a children’s song. Several times, I wrote my own stories. The station called me Aunt Wega because the call letters of the station were WEGA. The station manager asked me to come before my last day, as they had something they wanted to give me.

At the time, there was another student named James, who had been walking into town with me every day. He was an interesting character, because he was into the latest trends, which most of Newton was slow in embracing. While most boys wore their hair as a crew cut, James had ducktail hair and sideburns. Most guys wore conservative jeans and blue or brown shirts. James wore pink shirts and black pants.  He asked my taste in music and thought I was ‘a square’ because I liked Pat Boone and Andy Williams. “How about Elvis?” he asked.

“Elvis? What an odd name. Who in the world is Elvis?” I responded. It didn’t take long for me to catch up with the new trends in music, but I wasn’t impressed with the first songs which I heard him sing. They were ‘Hound Dog’ and ‘That’s Alright, Mama’.  By the time his milder love songs started playing, I was hooked.

My friend, James, had a thing for girl’s earrings. At least, he was collecting them one at a time. My ears weren’t pierced so it was easy enough to pull a snap-on earring from a girl’s ear and refuse to return it. He had ruined two of my sets by grabbing them from my ears. The day he went with me to the radio station, he seemed fascinated with being introduced to the station manager. What the station presented me with as gift for working with them was a nice necklace and earring set.

“You aren’t getting one of these earrings,” I said to James. “He keeps stealing my earring,” I added. James’s face turned bright red. I had embarrassed him in front of someone he was trying to impress. As soon as we got outside of the studio, he doubled up his fist and hit a parking meter so hard it broke his hand. I hadn’t meant to embarrass him, but I hoped the experience might have reminded him to stop stealing earrings.

My first college year was coming to a close. At the graduation ceremony, two girls were honored with scholarships for the following year. I was one of the two.  I had maintained all A’s, and I felt it was an honor to be chosen, but my daddy didn’t see it that way. He regarded it as charity, and he was having none of it. Nothing I said could convince him otherwise. “You go right back and tell them to give that to someone else. You’re not taking it.”

I did as he said, and it was just as well because of the way things worked out, I would only attend Clarke for the one year. The incident which brought about this decision, had to do with my friendship with male students, and it almost led to a breakup with the one person who was meant to be my lifetime partner.

There were several other guys who stood out in my mind. Mississippi, in the fifties, was not a time when anyone openly admitted an attraction for someone of the same sex. That didn’t mean it didn’t exist even within a Baptist college. Aubrey was such a person. He was so much so that he could have even been considered flamboyant. This didn’t mean he was unpopular. He was a favorite among the girls because he had excellent taste in ladies clothing and the ability to do wonders with female hair styles. There was another little guy who always hung out with him. Sometimes after class, the two of them liked to walk to town and get food at a local restaurant.

A couple of weeks before the last term of school ended found me and William, the engaged guy, walking into town with Aubrey and his friend. Someone in the group suggested the four of us go get something to eat at the Rainbow Café. This was the incident that almost became my undoing. I’ll cover more in my next chapter.