Maybe it’s the vibes. In early May, the winds swirled, the sky darkened and the weatherman threatened. Then, the day dawned for the Subterranean Circus Grand Reunion and the clouds parted, the Sun showed up, trumpets rang out and a slew of Seraphim personally delivered a perfect day.
The pendulum seemed to be swinging toward Oblivion several days ago with an ill-tempered hurricane heading for Tampa or perhaps even Cedar Key, bringing with it woe and despair and cancellations aplenty, this time menacing the long-awaited movie premiere of the Last Tango In Gainesville, a film celebrating the Grand Reunion. At the last minute, the scepter of Diana Ross appeared floating near the storm, her hand stretched out in the manner of an angry traffic cop, her lips forming the demand “Stop! In The Name Of Love.” The motor cooled down, the heat went down and that’s when we heard that whimpering sound; “Alright, alright---I’ll take it to another level.” Movie day arrived here with temperatures starting in the low sixties, an azure sky and low humidity.
Then again, maybe it’s more than just Diana. Could be those kharmic vibes emanating from a special community, a rare bastion of civility, fraternity, positivity and defiance. Gainesville is more than a town, it’s one of the last roaming hippie dinosaurs in disguise, a place where the denizens remember well the days of yore when pterodactyls swept through the skies singing songs of Love, where Peace was a demand, not a wish and where Freedom was not just another name for Nothing Left to Lose.
Take a page from a wise man’s book, you future storms of infamy and consider who you’re dealing with. The advice is as applicable now as it was then; “Run, run, as fast as you can---you can’t catch us, we’re The Gingerbread Man.”
And we’re lucky.
It Can Happen Here
When I was young and foolish and unaware of The Possibilities, I assumed that who you were was much more important than where you lived. I still believe that, but Where You Live is coming up fast on the outside. Where You Live is attached at the hip to Who You Might Be.
I grew up in Lawrence, Massachusetts, a textile town with a mill on every corner. It was not a place for the weak of heart or the slow of foot. Nobody was writing sonatas there, nor molding urns in their studios. Who You Might Be was a weaver in the Wood Mill or a grunt at Western Electric.
I progressed to Stillwater, Oklahoma, a homey little enclave where animal husbandry was a hot topic and rodeo was the state sport. They weren’t adverse to literature in Stillwater as long as it kept a proper distance, and the only dancing anyone knew about was the two-step. Who You Might Be was a rookie tractor detailer at International Harvester.
Around age 20, I got a short-term job in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, home of the University thereof. Homecoming was a very big deal there, the fine arts not so much. The most popular activity by far was looking for a husband (or a wife) and everyone’s greatest goal was Living in Chicago. The only guitar players I ever noticed were standing on a corner next to an open cigar box.
But then, in 1962, I wound up in Austin, Texas on my way to Albuquerque. This Austin was different. People wrote, played musical instruments at parties, went to Ingmar Bergman movies, discussed Bob Dylan. There was a large folksing on the University of Texas campus every Wednesday night. Music wasn’t limited to country….there was plenty of jazz, folk stuff, blues, old Protestant church songs, you name it. An enterprising fellow named John Clay created musical masterpieces out of catastrophes he read about in the newspapers. Austin was…well…inventive. Who you might be was anybody you damn wanted to be.
I started thinking college towns were the answer to the question of Where To Be, Stillwater and Champagne-Urbana to the contrary. Then I wound up in Tallahassee for a couple of years. The home of Florida State University is pretty and hilly and makes a good first impression if you’re white, conservative and interested in Criminology. FSU also had its own circus, where you could learn to be a trapeze artist, a clown or a cannonball. Alas, the circus business fell on hard times and now there are unemployed clowns everywhere, a surfeit of them in Tallahassee. While there, I noticed a definite dearth of artists’ lofts, sculpture studios and philharmonic orchestras. If you were Black, however, you might like to check out the surrounding plantations where your ancestors plied their trade.
In 1965, I moved to the Gainesville area for a look. It reminded me of Austin, another isle of sanity surrounded by the mumbling masses. Music was in the air, a fellow name Jerry Uelsmann was teaching a new kind of photography at the University, Jewish kids from South Florida were delivering sophistication, the arts and social responsibility to the hinterlands. The locals marched for more civil rights and less war, the decrease of university power over students’ lives and whatever seemed a good idea on any given week. There was even a music club for homosexuals, who for some reason now preferred to be called “gay.” Oh, and there were streakers darting through the streets at night. STREAKERS! What kind of a great place was this?
Over the course of time, I have learned there are few and far between oases like Austin and Gainesville. Berkeley qualifies, as does Eugene, Madison, Bloomington, Charlottesville, both Athens’ (Ohio and Georgia) and perhaps as many as a dozen others. You might want to avoid College Station, Starkville, Auburn, Spokane and any place with too many fraternities.
Creative people of all stripes….writers, painters, musicians, film savants, dancers….are drawn to nurturing cities where they feel free to work unimpeded by fools and dullards. Gainesville, whatever its warts, is one of these. The town will give you a chance, shout encouragement, purchase your wares, appreciate your gifts, give you a pat on the back. We who habituate these places should prize our little baubles, appreciate them, do what we can to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative and keep the walls from closing in, to challenge the moneyed interests from sliding the rug out from under us and leaving us with a smaller version of Detroit. There are only so many Gainesvilles and we’re privileged to live in one of them. Long live its Fame and long live its Glory and long may its story be told.
Contact
I arrived in Gainesville in the Spring of 1963, having traveled the 1233.8 miles from my old home in Lawrence, Massachusetts in leisurely fashion, which is the only fashion my 1950 Cadillac Superior Model hearse would agree to. Beside me in the large front seat was the lovely Marilyn Todd, daughter of William B. Todd, hotshot Professor of English and grand poobah of the University of Texas Library’s rare book division. Prof. Todd had been testily challenging our situation at every port of call since his oldest child had climbed out her Austin bedroom window at 3 a.m. the day after Christmas, 1962, a practice he would continue into this new episode. Wouldn’t you if some crazy fool latched onto your child and drove off into the hinterlands?
My objective was to continue my off and on publication of the Charlatan magazine which had carried me through almost three years of book-learnin’ at Oklahoma State University and a short spell in Lawrence. While working on the UT Ranger humor magazine in the Fall of 1962, I had noticed that advertisers were plentiful enough in Gainesville, Florida to support two similar publications---the University of Florida Orange Peel edited by famed cartoonist Don Addis and its off-campus rival, The Old Orange Peel, headed up by a malcontent named Jack Horan. Maybe there was room for one more.
I drove the age-old route to Gainesville, U.S. 1 to Jacksonville, then onto Route 301 through speed-trap country, took the right fork in Waldo and finally arrived on East University Avenue. Despite a UF enrollment closing in on 20,000, Gainesville was a small town centered by two main streets (University and 13th) and a very modest collection of businesses. There was not a single pizza place to be found and only Alan’s Cubana, next to the toothpick-in-the-pie Seagle Building, delivered any food to the hungry legions of students. The UF kids congregated across West University Avenue at a cafeteria-like entity called the College Inn and drank their beer in small bars around the periphery of campus. Downtown featured the respectable collection of shops you’d find in Anywhere, USA, as well as the go-to restaurant in town, a place across from the Florida Theater called The Primrose Inn. Nearby, was the city’s other moviehouse, the State Theater, where proprietor Bill Henderson was busy “rotting our children’s brains” by showing foreign movies like “La Dolce Vita.” The corridor from downtown to campus, a beehive of small storefronts and eateries, was where much of the city’s business was done.
Poor as churchmice, we got a cheap apartment near the Duck Pond area of town, a couple of blocks from the Thomas Hotel. We ate a lot of pancakes with the cheapest syrup we could find. Some form of potatoes, rice and ground beef made up the nightly dinner. Fortunately, Marilyn was a whiz at making the same ingredients taste different every night. We went to work for Jack Horan, who was busily trying to figure out how to haul ten thousand Old Orange Peels to Daytona Beach for Spring break. Here, Jack, try this hearse. We made it to Daytona, but just as we rolled over a bridge the brakes on the hearse went out and we had to circle a used-car lot seventeen times before the thing stopped. Jack got us a wonderful hotel room, though, a nice reprieve from our penurious day-to-day lives. During our stay, we decided that three college humor magazines in one small town was too many. We decided to try our luck in Tallahassee. The Tally Chamber of Commerce literature promised a wonderful experience and told us “Tallahassee, like Rome, is built on seven hills.” They didn’t mention that’s where the similarities came to a crashing halt.
Next Week: the tale continues, Panhandle Penance is paid and our heroes return to G’ville for good. Plus comments on Our Town from willing contributors. You could be one of them.
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| The first three photos are by Sharon Byrne, seen here with her husband Gary at the Tango swag table. The following two are from Judi Cain, artist, photographer, philosopher. |
That’s all, folks….
