Crimson Roots

In my humble opinion, my first assignment in English 101 at the University of Alabama was senseless; write a five hundred-word essay on a pleasant memory, a fond memory to be exact. I spent my elementary school years living in fear of the Soviet Union and the shoe-banging Nikita Khrushchevwho was going to bury us. And I did this below the Mason Dixon Line with tumultuous racial tension and a Cold War race to put chimpanzees in orbit. Did the professor think that I spent my summers catching lightning bugs, eating watermelon on the front porch with my grandmother telling us that the only way they survived the Depression was bootlegging?

“Pleasant” was Lustig’s Book Store and the smell of the new books, “fondly” was Santa Claus in the basement of Grant’s Department Store each Christmas, “excitement” was the trip in late August to Loveman’s Department Store in Birmingham to buy five new dresses for the upcoming school year. Although they were pleasant, fond memories, none of these things were worth five hundred words, typed, double spaced, elite.

Growing up I attended Alabama football games with my daddy. We lived close to Denny Stadium and I would tag along behind him on the way to games, trying to catch up with my short legs working as hard as they could. He would say that the only reason I went to the games was to see the Million Dollar Band perform at halftime. I could care less about the tuba players tooting away on the field; my love was the tradition and excitement of the game. My crimson roots began early and that loyalty to the University has never waivered.

I attended elementary school across the street from the football stadium and the row of sorority houses and many of our extra activities were connected to the University; we took music and square dance lessons on campus, routinely went to the Natural Science Museum in Smith Hall, toured the Gorgas Home annually, and generally roamed the campus often taking sack lunches to the Quad. Because of our proximity to the school, we had a plethora of student teachers in each class, tutoring students in language skills and from that point on, my love of reading flourished. They taught me to look words up in the dictionary and use them correctly and meaningfully. Blessed by their guidance, I developed a love for academia, books, libraries, Nancy Drew, Tom and Huck, and the great literary classics. I knew that I wanted to study English literature, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dickens, Scott, and I became a sponge for any learning following that pursuit.

I started the University in September of 1966. My first class was English Composition on the third floor of Woods Hall, a building raised from the rubble after the burning of the University during the Civil War. I knew this place was where I wanted to be, to learn, and be a part of the history and, in some profound way, make a statement in the world that would be meaningful. However, I thought I would be taught how to structure a proper sentence first but that was not what composition was about. I was told to write about a topic that had no meaning to me.

I made it through the first day of classes; which included psychology (all about monkey research) and chemistry (where I was told girls do not make A’s in science classes), and began the walk home. I took a short cut behind the physical education building on University Blvd and walked down a street of dormitories. Stopping at a bench along the tree-lined sidewalk, I sat down to think of pleasant memories that might be logical topics for the essay. The dorm buildings were red brick with only a small roof overhanging the entrance doors, buildings lacking any noteworthy architectural design, merely rectangular boxes. They had one function, to house female students coming to campus for an education that would most likely not be used. Their destiny was to attend school, get married and raise families, because that was the course charted for them by their heritage. But I thought maybe these buildings have a story to tell, a purpose deeper that just transient living before the life set out for girls in the South. As I sat on the bench under the trees, a tranquil feeling of being one with many came to mind; I realized that I was not alone but part of a bigger picture. I imagined that if the building, or at least former inhabitants, could speak to me, they could tell me about this new world that I was entering into as a student. I grew up on the University campus, but there had to be more than just that past that I could use for an essay on fond memories.

Then the world changed around me. In the beautiful late summer afternoon with a hint of fall in the air, I heard the most enchanting music coming from the Denny Chimes. It played for several minutes and then tolled the hour. I slowly counted along with the chimes: one, two, three, four, five. Five o’clock and my world was pleasant. I did not have a spiritual awakening as one might call it, but I did feel a sense of purpose and meaning, a feeling that I did not have to accept the ordinary road map that was handed to me. I was happy and did not want to move from that spot. Not wanting to miss the opportunity, I got out my notebook and pen and feverishly sought the words that would convey my contentment at being at that particular place at that time. I recounted the day filled with anticipation, the joys and fears that I experienced on the first day and in doing so I related one of my fondest memories, my first day on campus as a freshman at the University of Alabama. My crimson roots had planted me exactly where I needed to be. And I have been rolling with the Tide since then.