More Undergraduate and Early Marriage Experiences (Part 12)
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After the wedding and a brief honeymoon, Laquita and I returned to the A.C.C. campus to continue our undergraduate work, the middle of her junior year and my sophomore year. Our first residence was the “married barracks,” old military buildings divided into apartments for married people. Its advantages were that it was cheap and right on campus, so we didn’t need transportation. It was, as you might imagine, very Spartan accommodations, with male and female bathrooms in each hallway and rough wooden floors. There were basic kitchen appliances so we could cook, after a fashion, but we continued to take our regular meals in the cafeteria.
Happily, we were able to move at the end of the spring term to a tiny house across the street from the campus. It had perhaps 600 square feet, divided into a bedroom/sitting area, a kitchenette, and a bathroom. But it was still reasonable rent, and it was private! We have fond memories of that little house. Even though it backed on to an alley, it had grass and flowers in the front, being the back yard of a larger house on the front of the lot. The flowers were daylilies, and they bloomed profusely. We had a pleasant neighbor in another little house across from us, a widow lady named Mrs. McClintock. And down the alley a few blocks lived Laquita’s sister, Grace, and her husband Farrell Hogg. That supplied us with a place to do our laundry and have a meal from time to time.
Laquita continued to work in the cafeteria, even working extra hours serving at banquets there. I continued my work on the maintenance crew, graduating to operating the big mowers during the spring and summer. She continued in the elementary education major, and I definitely settled into the English program, taking the sophomore surveys of English literature under various teachers and having more contact with Dr. James Culp, who took over as head of the English department during that year. He became my mentor and close friend during the last two years of my baccalaureate program. I had no more classes from the elderly Mrs. Retta Scott Garrett, but Dr. Culp recommended me to her as someone who could do gardening work for her. Particularly when she was away during the summer, I would make sure that the house was all right and that her garden was watered, her grass cut, and her hedges trimmed. The skill I gained in hedge trimming has been very useful in taking care of the yards of houses Laquita and I owned later. Strangely enough, learning to trim hedges has been helpful in trimming my beard when it gets bushy; start boldly with big swaths and then fine tune the straggly spots.
I took time to engage in a few extra-curricular activities, such as assisting with a night-time talk show on the campus radio station and joining the Pickwickian Club, a group of people who liked to do creative writing. I also participated in a group of men who sponsored talks on biblical subjects and then discussed them. Both Laquita and I would very much have liked to sing in the Acapella Chorus, but neither of us had the time for regular rehearsals and frequent performances.
I enjoyed my class work, especially as I got into my junior year and took advanced literature courses, along with electives in philosophy of religion and second-and third-year courses in New Testament Greek. I took several advanced courses with Dr. Culp, and in my senior year he asked me to be his office assistant. It was the best job I had on campus, since it allowed me to study when office duties were slow and to strengthen what turned out to be a lifelong relationship with Dr. Culp and his wife. They often had some of his students over for dinner, and we were several times on that guest list. Such occasions also provided the opportunity for some of the English majors to get to know each other.
In Laquita’s senior year she had to do her practice teaching, and that meant we needed a car. My uncle Lester was aware we were looking, and he gave us the best car-buying tip we ever had, resulting in our buying our first car, a black 1950 Plymouth sedan, 10 years old but with low mileage and in perfect shape. It was the archtypical old lady who had had it in her garage and rarely used it. That car served us through graduate school and into the first year of my job at UM-Dearborn, a period of six years with trips to Seattle and Pittsburgh.
My senior year was a very successful one. I graduated (barely) summa cum laude and received the Dean’s Award for the person judged to have taken the best advantage of his opportunities at A. C. C. I also won a Woodrow Wilson Graduate Fellowship to receive full tuition and living expenses at a graduate school of my choice for a year. Back then, colleges were growing and there was a market for Ph.D.s in English. I chose to attend the University of Washington in Seattle (which happened to be where Laquita’s brother and his family lived), and we moved up there in the summer of 1961. Thus began my four years of graduate study, one at the University of Washington and three at the University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife and adult daughter in Jackson, MI.. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton. His self-published Collected Poems is online at Lulu.com. He also published a couple dozen short articles in religious journals. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable; it's thrilling to welcome this dear friend onboard.)
