Kenny Smith | Omnes hic sumus discere.

Unsteadily steady for a new week

It was a weekend with a little bit of lot of things. It wasn’t busy. It wasn’t overly productive. It was peaceful and some fun was had. The weather was nice. Then it was wet. And today was nice again. I caught up on some stuff. I’m dangerously close to getting ahead on some things. Also, there was a lot of cat cuddling.

I lived the bachelor life for part of the weekend. When the cats figure that out they get especially clingy. Also, we are coming up to cuddle season, when the temperatures dip just enough that they want the extra body heat. Last night a truce was declared in the sibling war and I went to sleep with one on either side of me.

Friday I went to campus for a tour with one of the rock star biology professors. She introduced us to the oldest tree on campus, a ginko, and an oak that’s believed to be older than the nation. We walked through the oak grove.

She hated on lawns. We talked about insects and other native bugs. We talked about how lawns are a traps for bugs and insects.

We saw a space that was designed to be an outdoor classroom. Almost no one uses it, apparently, but it also seemed like none of the faculty in our tour group even knew it existed. It’s only three-tenths of a mile from most of my classrooms. Maybe I should figure out a way to use the space.

We visited what they call the arboretum, which might be the case one day, but they’re overselling it now.

We walked through a meadow that they are returning to purely native plants. We walked through it. Reader, it sounded different. The critters chirped and critted. The birds tweeted. The bees buzzed. It somehow muted the nearby road noise.

It’s a narrow strip of land, in the scheme of things, but the things that live there can help other nearby plots of land. I’d be curious about how that works, but it surely varies species-to-species. Unfortunately, there wasn’t someone with that sort of expertise on the walk. The experts that were there were great, though. And, for a change, I tried not to turn this experience into a class-generating walk.

OK, my idea for the day was a Get To Know Your Campus course. Couple of days of walking. Couple of days of history. Couple of days of different resources and activities that are available to students … stuff that helps people build up investment in the campus community. Maybe it’d be a course for transfer students.

After that tour my lovely bride and I got our flu shots. I also got a tetanus shot because I fell, and also, when was my last tetanus shot? While the woman was giving me my shots I was very brave.

The person that stuck me, twice, offered me a sticker. I declined. We were just going home and there would be no one to propagandize. We did take her up on a lollipop, though. Because we are mature, responsible, pillars of our community, we drove home amusing ourselves by demonstrating weird, noisy ways to enjoy Dum-Dums.

I went for a ride Saturday, my first one since the Wednesday crash. The first day you’re sore. The second day you’re more sore. After that you’re just down lingering pain, or something real and lasting. You have to find out, so I went out.

I reproduced the first ride we took here when we moved three years ago. It was a good time of day for those particular roads and I hadn’t been that way in some time. For some reason I can’t explain it isn’t my favorite route, so I just don’t give it its due. But there are plenty of lovely views.

After you get over the water, get into the county seat, turn back toward home and then go over another bit of water, you get back into the farmland. Maybe that stretch is why I don’t like the route. There are some small hills which are just enough, and perfectly spaced, to break up any momentum I have.

It’s a 20-mile route, which is an easy ride, but I was a bit sore, still. The first six miles my neck and shoulders hurt. But, then, my shoulder felt exactly this way for about two years after my big crash in 2012. I had to stop at a red light, though, and managed to stretch things out just after something in my neck popped. After that, the next 12 miles felt great. I wasn’t fast, but it all felt smooth.

Physically speaking, anyway.

In the last five miles, or so, though, something weird started happening.

This whole route is a lot of straight lines. You turn left at a stop sign. You turn left at another stop sign. You turn left twice more with the flow of traffic. Then there’s the final left and right to get back home. Sprinkled in there are two red lights. The first one was where I had my little stretch. The second red light is four miles from home, and somewhere just before that I lost a lot of confidence in the stability of my machine. And in those last couple of turns after the light I realized I have lost all of my confidence in my limited cornering skills.

This is no way to ride.

Sunday it rained all day. All day. And all night. It rained so much that I even forgot about it. The only time it wasn’t raining was when I took the garbage can down to the end of the drive. I was able to get a lot of class prep done, though. Just as importantly, I plotted out the rest of the week. Just knowing when I’m going to get this or that done feels good. It was such a great use of time that I’m thinking that, by Thursday, I might be working on next week’s class prep.

Let’s see what happens next.

What happened today, though, was that I finished some grading. I wrote my online class. I wrote much of my next message to that class. I made the final changes to Tuesday’s slide deck. I finished Thursday’s slide deck. I ignored Wednesday’s slide deck. That’s for tomorrow.

Today was a beautiful day and after I’d done the day’s work I enjoyed another little bike ride. This time, I took what was one of our other regular routes. It was a long seven-mile stretch into a headwind. My next two turns gave me more speed because of a crosswind and a tailwind. But those were two turns that felt still felt shaky.

The problem with this route is that there are two ghost bikes on one road. They sit right before my next turn, and as I was trying to line up that turn I could hear a car approaching, I could see the little dot that represented it on my Garmin, I could watch it drawing close, I could see the ghost bikes. I could see the turn. I could see the poorly patched ruts in the new road right where I wanted to turn. And, anyway, I need to find my confidence again.

I made the turn safely, of course. Here we are, after all. And the payoff was riding under this lovely canopy of trees. This is a great road.

And the payoff was the sun over this field. It felt then, and looks now, like I’m pedaling through a knockoff Van Gogh painting. Just needs windmills and some of his other trademarks.

I took on some other roads I enjoy, a perfect one-mile ribbon, a long uphill stretch that I crushed, and then another up-and-down bit where the bottom is some oddly shaped pond-creek-canal thing I can’t understand that reeks of sulfur. Here I faced a conundrum. If I don’t get out of that little valley I might asphyxiate. Should I pedal faster to get up the hill and away from the smell? If I pedal faster I’ll have to breathe in more of this stuff. Also, what’s causing that? And why is it worse now than it usually is?

On the next road I ran across a cornhawk.

If you see it from the side, this strip of corn husks stretches almost all the way to the treeline. I wonder if it’ll still be standing when I go back by there later this week.

Anyway, on balance, my balance on the bike felt a little bit better. Still felt dreadful about each real turn, though. And some of the bumps, too! I didn’t even have a real hard crash — I still have a small bandage on my elbow, but my knee is fine, and most of the soreness has worked its way out as expected and I’m fine — but it has succeeded in getting in my head.

Oh, hey, that’s almost 1,500 words. And there’s new stuff to grade and other things to do. Let me see to those now.

Catober / photo — No comments
12
Oct 26

Catober, Day 12

Catober / photo — No comments
11
Oct 26

Catober, Day 11

Catober / photo — No comments
10
Oct 26

Catober, Day 10

Auburn / Friday / Glomerata / history / photo — No comments
09
Oct 26

The 1936 Glomerata, part four

We go back once more some 90 years into the past for a few more glimpses at the people haunting the steps of my alma mater. It was the Great Depression. It was 1936. (Part one is here. Part two is here. Part three is right here.) This is hardly a complete look, but there’s a lot to find in 1936. Let’s see what is inside.

What is today the War Eagle Battalion traces its origins back to 1916, when President Wilson signed into law the Natioanl Defense Act. That gives us the modern ROTC, but the university’s military training program goes back to some of the earliest days of the institution and draws a line from Morrill Land-Grant Act. Back then, all males attending Auburn had to participate in the program for at least two years.

It hasn’t been compulsory for decades, but today it is a four-year program with cadets graduating as junior grade officer going into active duty, the national guard, or reserves.

Auburn University has produced more than 8,000 Army commissioned officers. Among the graduates include Ralph “Shug” Jordan ’32, who would invade Europe in between stints becoming a legendary coach, Rep. William Nichols ’39, Astronaut Jim Voss ’72, NFL Hall of Famer Kevin Greene ’84, Olympic Gold Medalist Ruthie Bolton ’89, and, even in this book, a few important future generals.

But, first, here’s the cover.

It’s a short little section, so we’ll try to concentrate on finding out who a lot of these people are. But, first, here’s a parade shot.

They’re standing in front of Ross Hall, which is still at the center of things. I can’t get in that exact spot on Google Maps, but here’s the view. You can scroll around through here a great deal, if you like.

Here’s the cadet brigade staff, commanded by Cadet Colonel W.T. Wingo, Jr. He’s second from the left in this formation. We met him recently: William Taylor Wingo was a chemical engineering student from Birmingham. After school he became a Marine. By 1942 he was one of the Corps’ youngest majors. He fell ill in Samoa that year. They flew him to California, but he died there, apparently of pneumonia, just before Christmas, leaving behind a wife and young daughter.

On the left is William C. Piatt, an aeronautical engineering major from Birmingham. He would stay in the army for a while, and was a major in the artillery by the time World War 2 was over. He married a Mississippi girl, and they built themselves a life there. She worked in real estate and owned a dance studio. They were prominent members of their community. He was remembered, when he died at 64 in 1974, as a pioneer in air conditioning — and that’s saying something in the Deep South. His wife survived him. When she passed away at 79 in 1998, they had a son, two daughters, seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Carl K. Warren, Jr., in the back, was a science and literature major from nearby Opelika. He fought in the war, received the Silver Star while in the 4th Infantry Division. Sometime soon after he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel and took a post at the U.S. Military Academy. His wife died while they were stationed in Hawaii in 1959. She’s buried at Arlington. It looks like he remarried. What became of him after that I can’t say.

Eugene Lee was a civil engineering major. He married a Birmingham Southern grad in 1940. He served in World War 2 and in Korea. He worked at Tennessee Coal and Iron, which was, at that time, busy building a certain reputation, shall we say. He died in 1988, at 76. His wife made it to 89, and passed away in 2002. They’re buried Fort Logan National Cemetery, in Colorado.

Herman Harris was a business student from Clanton. While he was a captain of the ROTC, he was also the business manager of The Plainsman. We met him a few weeks back. He became a brigadier general in the Air Force, finally returned from the uniform in 1971. While in the reserves he was an auditor and inspector for General Motors, ran small businesses in south Alabama and a good-sized farm. He also ran a hospital, from 1963 until he died there in 1974. People remembered his role with the local Little League, as president of the Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary, the Red Cross and Community Chest. He was survived by his wife and three adult children.

This is listed as “The Auburn Band.” It’s included in the military section, which probably makes sense for the time, even if we associate them with sports today.

There are 83 members listed. There in the center is the band’s director, Paul “Bedie” Bidez. A generation before he’d been a captain and 175 pound fullback on some of the great early teams. By this point he was coaching and running the band, which marched under his direction for 32 years. The modern band has 380 members. Almost as many members of today’s band are music majors as those in the picture, above. Bidez deserves a bit of credit for that. He founded the music department.

And here’s the rifle team. They’d won the conference championship the year before. The team was looking forward to hosting the championship this season. The program was expanding, too. They were coached by Lt. William Ehrgott, who came from the Military Academy, MIT, and the French Tactical School. He was an engineer before becoming a professor of military science and tactics at Auburn. He was there for four years. He was in North Africa in 1942, later becoming a staff engineer in the Ninth Air Force, rising to chief of staff as they fought in Europe and North Africa. His billets would grow more impressive as his career marched on. He was promoted to brigadier general in 1952. Probably it was all the lessons he learned from this rifle team.

The SEC doesn’t keep records of ancient rifle championships online, unfortunately. I’ve been pouring over the campus paper for a few minutes and other state publications, but can’t find anything elsewhere that tells us how they did particular season. I do know that later in 1936 it was announced that the university would create a co-ed rifle team. That had to be pretty exciting for the 1930s.

Also, I found this, in a March issue of The Plainsman.

They were mistaken here about “no athletic relations.” The two schools met in basketball for the first time in 1924, for example. There may be other sports where the schools tangled, but history is a challenge for the athletic department and I don’t want to spend all night on that. We do know they’d not played in football since 1907. We know why they weren’t playing. They did, too. It’d be a dozen more years before the football teams faced off again, in 1948. The state legislature would have to strongly motivate the two schools to make that happen.

But, as you’ll soon see, even without their greatest rival, the Tigers would have plenty of competition. Next week, we’ll talk athletics.

All of this will wind up in the Glomerata section (eventually). You can see others, here. Or maybe you’d like to click through to see all the covers. The university hosts their collection here.