January of 1956, midway during my junior year, began very quietly. The holiday season, in fact, was the first time there had been no family arguments. I might attribute the tranquility to the absence of the fragrance of pine needles. We had not put up the usual tree and had not exchanged any gifts, so “he” had nothing to complain about, and lacking any negative stimulus, peace reigned. I returned to Kent on January 2 in a more pleasant mood than I ever had previously.
The only problem I had was: “where am I going to live?”
Since I was carrying 21 academic hours that quarter, I believed I should not return to the fraternity House, having found it challenging to allocate time for study during the day or evening. Since I had not applied for either of the two on-campus dorms for men, I could not return to them for the remainder of my junior year. Most of the available places were really dumps, or too far from the campus, since I did not have a car or other transportation at hand. However, there was a place across from the training school, the city highschool used primarily as the site for in-depth training of those seeking a degree in the College of Education.
The house had been a large, private home on the top of one of the hills at the edge of campus. Mrs. Ward, the owner, said she was not sure she had a vacancy. But Jerry Jencik, one of my friendly Bohemians, who was an art major, lived there and overheard me talking with her. Jerry said he was supposed to have a scheduled roommate, but he might not show up and I would be welcomed as his replacement. I moved in with Jerry a few days later.
Actually, we were a good “fit.” As an art major he spent the days and evenings in the studios in Verner Hall, the art building. Our joint room provided private space for my own reading most days and early evenings. Our late-night discussions, together or with his friends, were very enjoyable. There were evenings when I wondered if I should continue to seek a degree in chemistry; I enjoyed literature, history and philosophy as much as, if not more than, my hours studying chemical reactions.
There was, however, one interesting “discovery” I made when I first moved into this rental house on East Summit. While transferring into storage some of the stuff left by a guy who had lived there last year, I found a ping-pong trophy which had been stolen from the DU House last year! I returned it to our trophy-case.
There was one other great “find” about living with Jerry, the artist. At the end of the school year, he gave me one of his paintings – an abstract female nude in earth tones of brown and orange. It was one of my favorite possessions and moved with me for many years. I have no recollection of when or where she disappeared, ultimately, from my life; but it was long after I was married and had lived in a variety of places.
Throughout my early academic years, I lived in a lot of diverse rooms and apartments. In my senior year I moved back to an on-campus men’s dormitory. This time it was Johnson Hall, the companion for Stopher where I had lived previously. I held the paid position of a dorm counselor with a private room of expanded size.
My first room when I lived in Ithaca, NY for graduate school was a modest room in a house on Harvard Street in College Town, the area immediately adjacent to the campus of Cornell University. After Karen and I were engaged, I moved to a three-room apartment in Cayuga Heights. We lived there for several months before moving to another basement apartment on West Shore Drive (Taughannock Blvd). Our last location was on Floral Avenue where we lived in two different apartments, again in the basement and then on the second floor. The lady in earth tones hung on the wall in each of them.