A Saluki Story

Enrolled in 1952.  Part of the class that pushed SIU over a total attendance of 3,000 students.  My qualifications?  Really?  None.  I got too close to a college that had a dream and got sucked in.  Effect?  Every good thing that has happened to me in my life is a result of my attending SIU.  

I was right out of the sticks.  Graduated from a high school with about 20 students.  When confronted with initial registration I didn’t know which line to get into.  There were signs reading “Last name beginning with an A and ending in an F”, next one read “Last name beginning in a G  and ending in an L”.  I was amazed.  My last name began with a W and ended in a K; where was my line?  The most appropriate answer would probably have been “back home!”  But a beautiful lady with a “Can I Help You?” button on her blouse smilingly showed me the line I should get into, and she insisted I stay in it even though it ended in the wrong letter. 

Vera Peacock was my French teacher.  First year, first class, 8 a.m.  She was totally unreasonable.  Her homework assignments were unbelievable.  We students banded together and decided we would confront her.  And we did.  We told her she was demanding too much work.  She went to the door of the classroom – which lead to the outside street – and flung it open. She turned and looked at us and said “Get out!”  She glowered at us, “This place is reserved for COLLEGE students!”  I remember looking through that door and seeing Korea.  I saw rifle flashes and felt concussions. It was a relief when she finally closed the thing.  It was tough after that.  Mais une pâle ampoule a commencé à briller.

Well, it wasn’t all that serious.  I did get to work with the only Saluki we had then.  He was in the back of the Men’s Residence Hall, which was named after Susan B. Anthony.  The yard had a sundial inscribed “Count None But the Sunny Hours”.  And I did get to know Dick Gregory, in fact fenced with him as part of a fencing “team”.  Having recently arrived in Illinois from MIssissippi, I wondered how my uncle would react seeing me jabbing at a black guy, who was jabbing back at me.  He would have wondered what the world was coming to.  Well, we were building a new one.

Worked on the University Farm for much of the first year, since driving tractors and feeding stock was the only thing I knew how to do besides drive steam locomotives which were in short supply at SIU.  Then spent my sophomore and junior years under shelter from the elements as a janitor at the University School, working from 5 p.m. until 10 every night and from 10 a.m until 10 pm on Saturdays.  One of the residences called “The Coterie” let some of us working guys eat in their  cafeteria before 5 p.m. which was when they officially opened.  I still remember them and still appreciate that.  Sundays were for study.  Last year at SIU I ran mail to the MRH.  I wanted to be a lawyer.  But between my junior and senior years, the military cancelled draft deferment for lawyers.  So my senior year I had to switch majors.  Had to choose Political Science since it required French, which I had “mastered”.  Left in 1956, with a B. A. in Liberal Arts and a commission as a second lieutenant in the United States Air Force, a result of the ROTC at SIU, required of all men since it was a “Land Grant” school.  And I went off from Carbondale to meet the world.  

Six Gun Women

Well, it was different.  This movie plummeted through the realm of “Camp” like a star falling from the heavens (no pun intended – well . . .).   And this great fall was accompanied for the most part by the same silence one finds outside on a dark night.  Let’s just say it resembled a lost tongue unable to find a suitable cheek.  It strained our incredulity and in the spirit of the evening, we cheerfully gave into that.  But that turned out not to be enough.

There seemed to be stories presented during the course of the movie but they kept changing and then disappearing.  Reasons were given for the unusual collection of “workers” at this “mine” but those reasons only made probabilities less likely.  The women with six-guns were supposed to be a farce based on the cowboy movies of the 1950s but somehow the talent seemed to have not been familiar with those things.  

Best part of the evening was the discussion afterward.  Here we found details of the movie which apparently took somewhere around 15 to 20 years to complete.  The lead actor, Tony Clay, who was also the writer, and the director, spoke to us after the showing.  He pointed out how the “first photographer” had used up a lot of money and did poor work, so he had to get another photographer and re-shoot a lot of the movie.  He talked about some of the structural work of photographing any movie, and I think most of us had our horizons broadened somewhat by all this.  He referred to a constant problem with money and he attributed that to the distributors-to-be.  Apparently distributors are just no good, and  I’m sure everybody in the business would agree with that. 

And there were boobs.  Bare boobs.  Nice.  Big deal.  But without good writing and good photography and good acting, boobs are just things that deserve better than what they got here.  A boob is one of God’s greatest creations, and should be handled with care.  It deserves proper framing and suitable presentation.  If these things start jumping out at you when you least expect to see one . . . well, people will begin to regard them as ordinary  and unimportant things and quit staring at them all the time.  You could probably summarize this movie by saying that there were a lot of boobs in “Six Gun Women”.   And that’s true.  They were all over the screen and the audience was full of them too. Including me.