We revisit once again the grad school days in Denver and my buddy Eddie Valverde. Like I said in the previous post regarding these times, I had some really nice friends to spend time with when I wasn't studying. No snickers, because grad school did entail some intense study to ensure successful graduation.
As a side note, as I type this message on Thursday, June 25th, at 6:52 am, I just awoke from a sleep that included a dream/nightmare of a Logic paper due and unfinished. Funny, isn't it, that school tests and homework still invade my head decades after it all became irrelevant.
These Denver days were likely the least photographed of all. I'm not really sure why, except that study here was pretty important and took up a lot of time. Dr. Schmidt hardly ever thought my thesis was good enough so I'd go back and tinker, expand, and take it back a month later to seek approval. Dr. Wilbanks would have a "Whiplash" like, in-class meltdown telling all of us to step up our work and performance. But we tried to meet on weekends for fun or Jan and I would hop in the car and head out to Pike's Peak, Red Rocks, Golden, or cruise around town. We all went to Wyoming once and I thought it a desolate other-world vista that was unlike anything I'd ever seen.
Eddie and his little camera about to zero in on something.
Me and my little trusty electric typewriter that served me well for several years of reports and term papers. It's last assignment was to type my Master's Thesis, "Civil Theology in the American". Dr. Schmidt finally signed off on it and it is now bound and amongst all the other thesis' written at the school in the Ira J. Taylor Library. One of these days I'll travel back to campus and the library and ask for it at the reference desk.
See that ring on my hand? That's my high school class ring that I lost in a vat of meatloaf at the Mary Davis Home when I would start there a few months after this picture was taken.
Looks like Eddie is reading my report and finding it lacking in serious content. Hmph. Everyone's a critic.
Is this Eddie signaling my impending hanging by the school's academic standards? Fleas? An Hispanic sign about Midwestern hick gringo's? Nope, this was a hoi-paloi sign we used regarding other's pretentiousness.
Apparently someone wanted to take our pictures so we posed, it looks like, somewhat reluctantly. This was my phase of wearing bib overalls, and, oddly, as I remember, was somewhat popular. Eddie was a gentle kid who laughed as easily as anyone I ever knew. Not at all like the menacing figure he appears above.
Happily, once graduated, I headed back home. Sadly, however, I didn't keep up any correspondence with my compadres and they drifted into my history as "past tense". Eddie, the Calhoun boys, Jan and the others remain young in my mind's eye and photos, whilst my mirror reveals the real truth: time marches on, rapidly. Denver must have been like military service - tough character builder and not sure I'd do it over, but eternally grateful for the friends around me that made it all worthwhile.
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