Call Me Ted (6 page)
There is no question but this type of useless information will distinguish you, set you apart from the doers of the world. If I leave you enough money, you can retire to an ivory tower, and contemplate for the rest of your days the influence that the hieroglyphics of prehistoric man had upon the writings of William Faulkner. Incidentally, he was a contemporary of mine in Mississippi. We speak the same language—whores, sluts, strong words and strong deeds.
It isn’t really important what I think. It’s important what you wish to do with your life. I just wish I could feel that the influence of those oddball professors and the ivory towers were developing you into the kind of a man we can both be proud of. I am quite sure that we both will be pleased and delighted when I introduce you to some friend of mine and say, “This is my son. He speaks Greek.”
I had dinner during the Christmas holidays with an efficiency expert, an economic adviser to the nation of India, on the Board of Directors of Regents at Harvard University, who owns some 80,000 acres of valuable timber land down here, among his other assets. His son and his family were visiting him. He introduced me to his son, and then apologetically said, “He is a theoretical mathematician. I don’t even know what he is talking about. He lives in a different world.” After a little while I got talking to his son, and the only thing he would talk to me about was his work. I didn’t know what he was talking about either so I left early.
If you are going to stay on at Brown, and be a professor of Classics, the courses you have adopted will suit you for a lifetime association with Gale Noyes. Perhaps he will teach you to make jelly. In my opinion, it won’t do much to help you learn to get along with people in this world. I think you are rapidly becoming a jackass, and the sooner you get out of that filthy atmosphere, the better it will suit me.
Oh, I know that everybody says that a college education is a must. Well, I console myself by saying that everybody said the world was square, except Columbus. You go ahead and go with the world, and I’ll go it alone.
I hope I am right. You are in the hands of the Philistines, and dammit, I sent you there. I am sorry.
Devotedly,
Dad
We were really feuding now and this correspondence set me off. I decided that the best retaliation was to send the letter to the college paper, which reprinted it in full. The letter soon became the talk of the school. In subsequent days, to get a rise out of his students, Professor Noyes—whom my father knew to be an epicurean chef—ended class by telling students he was off “to make jelly.” The room erupted in laughter.
My father described my move as “dirty pool” and his anger over the letter’s publicity drove a further wedge between us.
I was in a bad place at this point. I sensed that my college days were numbered and I was really upset with my father. I could have gotten a commission to the Naval Academy but he didn’t want me to go. When we settled on Brown he promised to support me for four years. His business was successful and he had more than enough money to pay my way. I don’t know if any of his negative feelings about college had anything to do with the fact that he never finished a full four years himself but regardless, it didn’t seem fair. Whenever I tried to talk to him about it, he’d only say that it was his right to do “whatever I damn well please,” and the case was closed.
I worked for my dad’s company again that summer, saving as much as I could to pay for another year at Brown. I was living with my father and new stepmother at their plantation home in South Carolina but since most of my friends were back in Savannah, that’s where I’d go on weekends and evenings to enjoy some nightlife. Despite the strains on our relationship, my father let me borrow his car for these trips, only because he felt it was important for me to maintain a place in those social circles.
That summer he had a new Plymouth Fury. This was the fastest production car built in the United States at that time, able to reach speeds as high as 150 miles per hour. One night I was driving back roads through rural South Carolina, in a hurry to get to Savannah for a debutante party. I was going about 120 mph when I approached an unmarked railroad crossing. I’d gone this way a bunch of times and had never seen a train pass, so I assumed it was just a side track. This was back in the days when many crossings didn’t have blinking lights or gates or other markings.
Slowing to about 90 to cross I noticed an elderly black man standing on my side of the road and when he saw me he started going crazy—waving his arms and jumping up and down. I didn’t understand what he was doing until he was in my rearview mirror. Looking into that mirror as I skipped over the track, I saw a train flying through the intersection! I was going close to 100 mph and it had to be doing 70. We missed each other by a flash of a second. Once I was on the other side and realized what had just happened, my heart was beating out of my chest. I made it to the debutante party on time but when I got there my hands were still shaking. I came really close to dying that night—and I’ve driven more carefully ever since!
I don’t remember us talking much about it but by the time I headed back to school that fall—for what would be the second half of my junior year—it was clear that my father would not be supporting me financially. My life savings at that point were about $5,000 and even back then that wouldn’t get you far in a private college like Brown. I made some spending money working in the school cafeteria but I could never earn enough during school to make my room and board payments. I met with people at the admissions department to see if some kind of financial aid or academic scholarship might be possible. They were polite but made it clear that Brown University did not make a practice of extending these sorts of opportunities to the children of wealthy parents. I doubt they had ever seen a situation quite like mine and found it hard either to understand or sympathize with my predicament.
I managed to pay my bills those first few months and threw myself into my schoolwork, sailing, and partying.
I was proud to have been named captain of varsity sailing as a junior. I led the team to a successful fall season, but that campaign ended with a Thanksgiving regatta in Chicago. The trip there would turn out to be a low point in my life.
The school didn’t provide transportation to these sorts of events. There were four of us heading out but the one car among us was a little Volkswagen. After cramming in all of our luggage and gear, we realized that only three of us could fit in for the ride. Rather than debating the solutions, as captain of the team I decided to let my luggage go with them and volunteered to hitchhike to Chicago.
Relieved by my gesture, the other three wished me luck and sped off. Without the money to do it any other way, I headed down the hill from campus prepared to hitchhike halfway across the country on Thanksgiving weekend. I was wearing an oxford shirt and tweed jacket and I had one of those tacky old raincoats that’s “weather resistant” but not really waterproof. It started raining almost immediately and by the time I was picked up outside Providence I was already soaked. My first ride got me all the way to New York City and after standing in some more rain there I was able to catch a series of lifts that took me across New Jersey and onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The next ride dropped me off at about 2:00 in the morning in the middle of the Pennsylvania Mountains—miles from anywhere. Still soaked, I stood there with my thumb out as the temperature dropped. The rain turned to snow—it was freezing.
I remember saying to myself, “I’m going to die out here.” It was as simple as that.
Adjacent to the exit where I’d been dropped was a sign that said “Next Rest Area 10 Miles.” After standing there for more than an hour I grew desperate and decided to start walking those ten miles. About five miles into the walk a truck pulled over.
“Where’s your car?” the driver asked.
“I don’t have one,” I told him. He said he couldn’t pick up hitchhikers and I said, “Well, I’m going to die out here. Would you please take me as far as the rest area?”
He was kind enough to do that and when he dropped me off at the rest area I was the only person there. It was kind of like a Howard Johnson—it was comfortable inside and I just sat at the counter, trying to dry off and warm up. Eventually, another guy came in and sat down and I told him that if he were heading west I’d really appreciate a ride. He took me as far as Ohio and I made it to Chicago later that next day. I really thought I might freeze to death that night and was about as down as I’ve ever been. After we competed in the races that weekend, I volunteered to head back alone—but only after we had pooled together enough money for me to take a bus.
Those final weeks and months at Brown I was like a tragic character. I knew the end was near but I couldn’t figure a way out. I burned the candle at both ends. I was drinking, chasing women, staying up late, and hardly going to class at all. It was all coming to an end but there are two commonly told stories about my final days at Brown that I’d like to clear up. One is that I burned down the Homecoming display and the other is that I was kicked out for having a woman in my room. Both of these tales are only partially true.
As for Homecoming, we did burn something down. Each fraternity built stationary structures outside their house for a school-wide competition. On Sunday night, after Saturday’s judging was over and everybody was taking their exhibits down, some guys and I did get a little carried away and instead of dismantling ours in an orderly fashion, we set it on fire. Regarding having a woman in my room, it is true that I was caught and suspended (it was against the rules back then but they allow it today—I was ahead of my time on this one!). What’s not accurate is to say that this was the reason I left the school. I’d already run through nearly all of my savings—I knew this would be one of my final nights on campus so I figured I might as well make it a fun one. I got caught and suspended, but I was already preparing to leave.
Despite my father’s assurances, the truth is he didn’t support me through all four years at school. My college career was over.
Billboards
W
ith my college career over I’m sure my father assumed I’d rush home to work for him once and for all. But I was in a state of rebellion and couldn’t bring myself to do it. Peter Dames, my best friend and fellow mischief maker at Brown, had decided to take a leave of absence and we planned our next move together. It was just after Christmastime and turning cold in Rhode Island so we got the idea to head south, all the way to Florida. I bought a beat-up old car for about $100 and we packed it full of our belongings and hit the road. We stopped by my dad’s place in South Carolina for a good night’s sleep and a couple of meals and he was cordial, wishing us luck in our travels. He probably figured I’d be back before long. I might have been angry and rebellious, but I was also broke.
A TED STORY
“It All Sounded Good to Me”
—Peter Dames
Our idea was that we would pass through South Carolina to pick up Ted’s Flying Dutchman sailboat. We’d sponge a few free meals off his old man, I would get to see his father’s place, then we’d continue down to Florida where we would both get jobs and earn enough money to make his boat seaworthy so we could sail it around the world, get laid everywhere we went, and be the toast of every continent. I was brought up in New York and didn’t know anything about boats other than the Staten Island Ferry but Ted was a good salesman, I was very gullible and it all sounded good to me. We stopped at my parents’ house in Queens on the drive down and they weren’t very happy with me. They were immigrants and the thought of me being educated was the most important thing in their lives; now here I was blowing it.
When we arrived at the plantation Ted’s father was very gracious. We pulled up in that old jalopy and he met us in his smoking jacket. We had drinks and dinner with his father and his new wife. Ted was never much of a drinker and he wanted to get up early the next morning to go frog gigging or something so he went to bed early. Mr. Turner’s new wife excused herself after dinner but the old man felt like talking so he and I stayed up and drank and talked into the wee hours. He gave me a lot of great insights.
By the time we left a couple of days later, our plans had changed. Right before we got to South Carolina a hurricane had come through the area. It was almost like the hand of God came down and the better part of an oak tree fell across Ted’s sailboat and destroyed it into splinters. So that killed the original sailing-around-the-world idea. Now we had to get to Miami, get a job, and make that much more money so we could buy an even better sailboat.
For the first several weeks in Florida we lived out of our car like bums, completely down and out. Eventually we managed to find a cheap room in the Cuban section of town. Castro was still in the hills at that time but there was already a sizable Cuban population in South Florida. To save money, we ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches off reused paper plates and ripped pages from public pay phone books to use as toilet paper. Work was hard to come by and the highest paying job I ever got was selling
Miami Beach Sun
subscriptions on commission. For one thirteen-week subscription I got $1.50 and on my best day I sold four. A $6 per day income just wasn’t going to cut it.
We were low on cash and short on options. Dames decided to give up and go back north to New York for a steady job as a bank clerk. I then got the idea that now would be a good time to fulfill the two months of reserve time I owed the Coast Guard after leaving them that past summer. I could either attend evening meetings once a week for two years or go full-time and meet the requirement in just two months. Given my situation, the latter was the clear choice. Not only would they pay me $100 a month, they’d put a roof over my head and feed me three meals a day.
I was stationed in Fort Lauderdale on a search-and-rescue vessel called the
Travis
. The work was interesting but conditions on the ship were rough. We had to limit our possessions to what we could fit in our sea bag—a duffel that hung from a pipe. Sleeping quarters consisted of metal-rimmed canvas bunks stacked four-high. As a reservist and the newest guy there, I was given a bottom bunk beneath the fattest guy on board. His weight stretched his canvas down so low that I had to lie flat on my back all night—I didn’t even have room to roll over.