How I Got Here – Episode 1

It was May of 1989.

I was working at a bank in York, PA.  I had recently quit the band I’d been playing keyboards for and was planning to take a few days off of work and go to Ohio with my mother to attend the wedding of her best friend’s daughter. My mother’s friend was a lot like an aunt to me, and I had known her and her daughters since I was born, so it was very much like going to a cousin’s wedding.  It was nice for me to go but I wasn’t really obligated to. Though we were going to stay with my grandmother while we were there, and it was going to be nice to see her and my two uncles.

About a week before leaving for the wedding, I got a call from a member of the band asking me if I could play one more gig with them, just until the new keyboardist was ready with all of the material.  The gig in question was scheduled for the same weekend I was to go to Ohio.  I thought about it, because I did like playing with those guys, but finally declined the gig.  I wanted to get away for a few days, go to Ohio, see my grandmother.

That was decision #1.

What you need to know before I continue is that in March or April, I was at work and hollering to one of our mortgage guys across the room because I had to ask him something. His name was Dave, and as I said his name, I was…I’m not sure how to describe it except as “struck” by a very sudden and very odd understanding of a “fact.”  I even said to Dave as I went to talk to him, “I’m going to marry someone named David.” But as I said that, it didn’t sound quite right. So I said it again as “I’m going to meet someone named David.”

So I wasn’t sure what to do about having had this premonition, but I went on about my day. I did, however, write the name “David” on my desk calendar and put it in a heart.  I don’t think I can prove this as I don’t think I still have the calendar (I did keep it for a while). And even if I did keep it, there’s no proof that I didn’t write it in after the fact.  But it really did happen. It’s too outrageous a story for me to have made it up and expect people to believe it. I’m better off with a sighting of Bigfoot and a Photoshopped picture.  But the Weekly World News went out of business…

And not long after I’d had this moment, I’d forgotten all about it.  The only recollection that it had happened coming when I saw the note, MUCH later, on my calendar.

What you also need to know is that not only did I work in the mortgage department of the bank, I also worked for a few months in the student loan department of the bank.  This comes up later.

So it is late May 1989 and I am near Columbus, Ohio attending the wedding of a close family friend. Sitting in front of me in the church was an attractive young man wearing a white uniform, along with an older woman who turned out to be his mother.  And his mother and my mother began to chat amiably before the service (my mother could talk to anyone about anything, for as long as you could imagine it possible).  I am introduced to the woman and her son.  His name is David. He is wearing a uniform because he is a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

At the reception, we shared a table with them. David and I danced. We took a walk. We talked. We decided to keep in touch.  He came to visit me over the 4th of July weekend.  We spoke by phone, we wrote letters, and we fell in love.

By September, we were discussing the possibility of my moving to Highland Falls, NY, the town that sits just outside of West Point.  Around the same time I was offered a promotion at the bank, which would have been a really well-paying job.  I had also received acceptance at Berklee School of Music in Boston. While I wanted to go back to college and Berklee seemed like a great opportunity, I didn’t have the money to pay for it.  Though the new position at the bank would have helped make a good bit of the money I would have needed to go.

I declined both the promotion and Berklee.  By the end of October I was living in a small, VERY badly decorated apartment.  I’m pretty sure the 70’s had a lot to do with both the orange shag carpet and the…well…frankly indescribable wallpaper. But it was otherwise not a bad place to live and I could be close to David.

I promptly went out and looked for work. I tried the bank in town, and of course, went to the obvious place, the post at West Point.  I had a brain in my head and could type about 60wpm so I figured I could be reasonably useful at something.  After submitting an application on post, I was offered a position as a hospital administration secretary at the post hospital. But then they decided to eliminate the position, so the personnel woman I talked to said they would try to find me another position quickly.  They did.

I ended up working in the Support office in the Office of the Director of Intercollegiate Athletics at West Point.  ODIA at Army. My job was to arrange for practice fields and meals and water or other items the Army teams needed for practice and/or games.  Obviously I got to meet a lot of the Army coaches and staff, and some coaches from other teams. Some team staff I got to know better than others.  One coach I got to know very well but that’s another story for another time.

All in all, it was a pretty good job.  I really enjoyed it there. But technically it was a temporary job – I was brought in to replace a woman who went out on maternity leave.  She came back, but took another position in ODIA, so I got to stay longer than my original stint had planned for, and in fact I was offered the position permanently.

But David and I had gotten engaged, and he was graduating West Point in the spring. So on one hand, I expected that I too would be leaving Highland Park to go wherever he was going. On the other hand, I was not too sure about the relationship – we had moved into it very quickly – and I rather expected it was going to come to an end pretty soon.

So I turned down the offer to stay permanently in the position but said that I’d stick around until June. That was decision #2.

Summertime at West Point is a pretty quiet time for the post. The cadets go away, at least for a while, so there aren’t any teams around to deal with.  But the athletic office is a very busy place, ramping up for the coming Football season, along with the other fall sports.  They also have baseball camps held there, where other college coaches come in and along with the baseball and other Army sports’ coaches, provide a week or two of intensive instruction to kids.

One of the Army coaches I’d gotten to know, Dan, helped out with the camps and knew that I was a baseball fanatic. He said that I should come down to the camp one day before I left town.  So I did. I wandered up to one of the backstops on the field where they were playing an afternoon camp scrimmage, and there was Dan as well as two other men who were in town helping with camp.  We stood there and watched the kids and talked baseball for a while.

The guys told me they were going to meet up at the South Gate Tavern later that night – after the kids were in bed – and invited me to join them. I heartily agreed. I was leaving town in the next day or two, my now-ex-fiancee had already left and just about all of my stuff was packed into my VW Rabbit.  I was preparing to move back into my parents house (in essentially what I thought of as “relationship defeat”) and a few drinks before leaving sounded like a grand idea.

I walked into the Tavern around 9pm. My friend Dan was there, chatting with a man I recognized as being one of the other two men who had been at the backstop earlier.  The man was introduced to me as Harry Hillson.  Harry and I began chatting and Dan excused himself for a moment. He then went over to the bar and had two shots of tequila sent to the table.  It is at this point that I realize I have been set up.

So Harry and I went about the ridiculous effort of making small talk.  I asked him what he did and he tells me he’s in charge of fruits and vegetables at the A&P.  Cute.  What is it you REALLY do?  He tells me he’s the baseball coach of Mansfield University.  Mansfield Ohio, I ask because that’s the only Mansfield I’ve ever heard of.  No, Mansfield Pennsylvania. Do you know where that is?

Nope, never heard of it.

Well shot #1 of tequila is gone and shot #2 arrives.  And that gets gone too.  Along with a couple of beers for good measure.  Harry asks me what I do and I tell him I was working in the Army athletic office but I’m leaving now and going to move back home with my parents and look for a job.  He tells me that he needs some administrative assistance with his own camps coming up and would I be interested?  Sure, I said.  I could use the money and it sounds like fun. He gave me his number (which I was apparently not TOO drunk to lose) and I contacted him the next week. We arranged for me to come up and work three weeks of baseball camp in July/August for a couple hundred bucks.

At some point while working camp, I was talking to Harry about going back to college – to IUP (Indiana University of Pennsylvania) as a re-admit. I’d done my freshman year at IUP before realizing I had no idea what I was doing and had no money.  Anyway I was thinking that I should go back to college.  He tells me that he has three team recruiting spots left but only needs two of them. Um…I don’t know what that means.  He says it means that if I would want to apply to Mansfield, I could, and he could get my application to go through.  Keep in mind it is now late July.

Well, what the hell, I thought.  The guys who worked camp at Mansfield were primarily made up of members of the MU baseball team, so I figured at least I would know some people.  And I already knew the campus and a few of the athletic faculty who had also been around for camp.  So, okay – one PA state university is probably as good as the next.

Okay, that last statement isn’t really accurate.  Mansfield is well known for its music program and I knew someone who had come to Mansfield to study music and I thought might still be there.  And as we established earlier, I’m a musician, so I figured I’d go ahead and apply and become a music major.  Pretty decent coincidence, no?

That’s decision #3 – the decision to apply to Mansfield.  Being a music major was not the right answer though…

Because my application was in so late, I could not be a music major; there was no time for an audition to their program. Harry let me know that, so I changed it to English. I could read and write a little so it wasn’t a completely random decision. And anyway, I figured I could do a semester or two, take the core classes I’d need regardless of my major, and change to Music if I wanted to.

I got information as to when school orientations were being held.  The last one happened on the week before school started, so again, I packed up my VW Rabbit, drove to Mansfield and went to orientation. Now the thing is that at this point I have not yet recieved any sort of notification of acceptance from Mansfield.  Harry told me it was all good but I had nothing official from the University that said so.

I had, however, gone ahead and applied for a student loan to pay for it. This is where my experience in the student loan department of the bank comes in handy.  Remember that I am basically broke. I had a job at West Point but all that money went to my apartment up there.  I earned a couple hundred bucks for summer work but that’s not going to pay for college.  What I’d learned in the student loan office is that when you get a student loan, you can get X amount of money for your freshman and sophomore years, and then Y amount for your junior and senior years.  But that you can apply for a loan for one additional year (at whatever level your credits apply).  I’d done one year of college already but I knew the credits that would transfer over would still make me a freshman at Mansfield.  So I figured if I worked it right, I am a freshman for the first semester, a sophomore for the second semester, then in the second year, I’m a junior.  So I can get another freshman full year’s loan for the first semester, a sophomore full year’s loan for the second semester, then I can maybe find scholarship money or jobs to pay for whatever the junior-year level loan won’t cover.  Pretty clever eh?

Okay so after the orientation class, I wandered over to the student housing office to talk to them about dorm housing and whether or not I could get assigned to a room.  Happily enough, the guy in the office had a list of new students and lo and behold my name was on it.  There – I guess I’d been accepted.  He asked me if I had a dorm preference, and since at IUP I’d lived in a dorm at the BOTTOM of the campus hill, I decided that I wanted to live in the dorm at the TOP of campus, which was Pinecrest.  There was a room opening and so I was assigned.

Don’t worry – we’re almost done…hold on for just another moment.

I then went over to the cafeteria where they were holding class registration for the newest students – those who had not been able to register for classes yet.  Hey look, my name is on those lists too. I guess I’m now a student.

I sit down with one of the English profs.  She and I looked at what stuff had transferred over from IUP, some of which included the Comp I class credits.  So good, I didn’t have to take Comp I.  We figured out what general education classes I was going to need and which would be good to take now.  And we looked at the English department offerings to see what would be good there for the fall. One class she was pushing pretty hard was a Polish and Czecheslovakian Literature course, being taught by Dr. Bernard Koloski.  The impression I got was that if there weren’t enough students signed up for the class, it would have to be cancelled, so she was trying to get people signed up for it.

Not wanting to disappoint either her or the prof teaching the class I said eh, okay. I know nothing about Eastern Europe much less any of its literature, but she says that Dr. Koloski is really very good and I’ll like the class.  Whatever.  I’m just happy to be here.

That class, as well as Dr. Koloski, changed my life.  That was decision #4.

That, boys and girls, is how I ended up at Mansfield, and how I ended up as an English major and consequently a professional writer, and not a Music major or professional musician.  I stop here because the first time I wrote this story down was at Mansfield, describing how I ended up there.  Given that 4 months before that August moment in the cafeteria I’d never even heard of the place, the whole thing seems kind of improbable.

Thanks for staying so long. Episode 2 coming soon.