BoomerZoo Almanac for November 4-10, 2007: So maybe it wasn't such a Waste...
One November day early in the Boomer years, the poet T. S. Eliot won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Although it would be several years before I made my appearance, I’m sure I never did realize that Mr. Eliot actually lived right up until 1965—only a few years before his name made its appearance in one of my classes.
Oh, do not ask "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.
I wasted a lot of time in high school, much of it in my lit classes, but the name T.S. Eliot stuck with me for a couple of reasons. First off, though I have no memory of what it was about, I have always adored the title of his famous first poem: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I mean, really. Doesn’t that just roll off the tongue like the chorus of a good dance tune? There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet The second reason was Mr. Patterson, the teacher in that lit class. Along with almost all of his other students, I adored Mr. Patterson. And why did we adore him? Was it his ability to evoke a scene from Our Town? Was it the mellifluous tones of his elegant voice as he recited his own inimitable poetry? Was it his handsome visage? None, as they say on so many high school quizzes, of the above. He was simply, amazingly, invariably unflappable. The goal of nearly every one of his classes was to get him to flap. But, alas! We all failed! And indeed there will be time To wonder "Do I dare?" and "Do I dare?" Once I remember that the clock fell off the wall in the midst of our class. (Was this an accident? Who knows?) He didn’t even flinch! He just turned around and looked at it, then returned to the lesson at hand. My own sister, who sat in his class a couple years before I did, told me of turning a waste basket upside down on desk prior to his entering the room. He came in, turned the can back over, refilled it, and began teaching. Nary a word, a glance, a scowl! But perhaps they were studying The Waste Land. Perhaps that’s why, two years later, he chose to focus on The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock instead! And would it have been worth it, after all, Ah, Mr. Patterson, I grow old… I grow old… I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled…
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question
But in my old age, maybe I’ll pull old J Alfred out again, read it with care, and think of those tumultuous years and that classroom filled with squeaking chairs, youthful restlessness and one unflappable teacher.
