A Life in Light by Mary Pipher

Author:Mary Pipher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Campfire Lights

By my second year at KU, many things had changed. Early mornings, I walked downtown to wait tables on the breakfast shift at Keim’s Café. I had moved out of the dorm and into a room in the home of an older lady who rented to female students. Jake had left high school and joined my friends and me in Lawrence. And I had met my first serious boyfriend, Larry Ben Franklin. He was a tall, dark-eyed man who dressed in workingmen’s clothes and boots and reminded me of a young Marlon Brando. Larry had dropped out of college to work as a union organizer at the local box factory.

I had settled in with a group of adventurous outsiders committed to art and freedom. Jeanine was a beautiful, sensual woman from Wichita who aspired to be an opera singer. Her best friend Dixie, also from Wichita, was a poet and artist who excelled at salty language and ribald wit. Jane from Kansas City was a sophisticated woman who seemed both deeply cynical and highly amused by the comedy of life that unfurled before her. She chain-smoked and, in her husky voice, made frequent droll remarks. Even at eighteen, she seemed world-weary.

How we could talk! Our conversations ranged from Marxism to Sufism, Taoism, phenomenology, and politics. We discussed civil rights, human rights, Kabuki theater, the beat poets, and music and art. We lent each other paperback copies of Alan Watts, Malcolm X, and Simone de Beauvoir, and we talked endlessly about the ideas of our times. We stayed up late discussing things as if when we finally figured out our positions, we would be ready to change the world.

Meanwhile, we had studies or jobs or both. Jake worked construction. Jane dropped out of school and worked as a secretary. Dixie and Jeanine dropped out too. I stayed in and ploughed diligently through my premed courses. I luxuriated in the elective courses that I was free to choose—Russian history, art history, music history, Spanish, and French.

Sometimes Larry and I visited the Nelson Art Gallery in Kansas City. Then he would drive us to a juke joint along the Missouri River where we could eat barbecue and listen to James Brown and Aretha Franklin. Once, when he had had several beers, Larry jumped on top of our table and declared Aretha Franklin “Queen of the World.”

Other nights we would hit the late-night clubs around 18th and Vine. This area was the birthplace of the Kansas City style of jazz. Count Basie, Charlie Parker, and Coleman Hawkins were from Kansas City. Larry and I followed Jay McShann, Claude Williams, and the Scamps with Earl Robinson. Before these experiences with music and the marches, my world had been almost exclusively white.

Our group held parties lit by candles and fueled by red wine. Usually these parties were in big old houses that many students shared. The living room would be for dancing, the kitchen would have the wine and a big pot of chili or lentil soup, and all the other rooms would be for talking, the most popular activity.

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