An Overview of the Idea Behind the Title: “The Ghosts of Joe Shea’s Farm.”

 

My father was among a dying breed of Hudson Valley dairymen clinging to old ways in the suburbs of New York City. He represented the 4th generation to occupy the family farm purchased by our Irish ancestor Joseph Shea in 1866. Some 27 years ago I began writing down my father’s stories with the intent to assemble a chronicle. I wanted to see if I could account for the full history of this enchanted place that had somehow survived that I was committed to preserving. I began to see myself connected to an oral tradition linked back to ancient times.

One of the most intriguing stories my father carried forward from the past—the one that has caused me to spend the last decade with my head buried in the Revolutionary War archives—is a legend said to have been told to Joseph Shea upon his purchase of the property by the farm’s previous owner. It was said a spy was hanged from a tree in the Back Lot of the farm during the Revolutionary War and buried somewhere along a stone wall. My investigation of this has been analogous to opening Pandora’s Box. Let’s just say Joe’s Shea’s Farm is a place where big secrets (aside from the question of a summary hanging) have long been kept. Let’s also say my discoveries have made certain people a little uncomfortable. Whether you believe the legend has been verified or not, its investigation has acted as a portal to a lost chapter of American history, a rather sinister and problematic one I will say.

Where Morton Pennypacker rewrote the Revolutionary War story on Long Island, and where Adrian Leiby reframed the story in the Hackensack Valley of New Jersey, I’d like to think this project will bring into closer focus the complicated political story of the Revolutionary War in the Mid-Hudson Valley in a similar way as those works. At the center of it all is the untold story of the loyalist spy network operated by New York City Mayor David Mathews, an Orange County native, in coordination with his brother Fletcher, then living upon a massive estate here, a portion of which became Joe Shea’s Farm.

—James Robert Flannery Copyright 2024. All rights reserved.

Rural Youth Development: Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don't?

     

                                               

                                             Chad and the Flannery Wingmen, 1984

Rural Youth Development: Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don’t?

A case study of Cornell University’s varied influences on the educational outcome of a hillbilly child in the late 20th Century - for which the institution must now pay.

I went to Cornell University at age 14. It was to purchase a Rambouillet ram at the livestock pavilion. Yes, I’m talking about a real McCoy livestock auction held at the center of that venerable Ivy League campus. My parents helped me load the fearsome beast into the back of our beat up Plymouth Fury station wagon. There the ram stirred in a constant state of agitation due to the noise level from the car’s decrepit muffler system. For four hours on the road I clung to the ram's horns, wrestling it when I had to to prevent it from lunging over the seat and causing disaster on the highway. We got home without damage. At least not with any that would outwardly show.

Why does Cornell University have a livestock pavilion at the center of its campus? Why does this Ivy League school run the 4-H rural youth development programs in New York State as part of its “Cooperative Extension” program? It goes back to the Morrill Act of 1862. This financed the creation of Cornell as New York’s designated “Land-Grant University” in 1865 through the sale of Federal lands. 

We’ve grown accustomed to hearing about the sins of our colonial founders, but a sin associated with Lincoln? Are we ready for that discussion? The Morrill Act was full of good intentions for sure. But I’m thinking the western tribes who saw land they once held sold under the provision for Cornell’s benefit may think otherwise.

It seems every origin story has a serpent in the garden no matter the thing. Subject for another essay perhaps. 

Cornell has been duty-bound since to serve the public. It’s charged with helping emerging generations adapt to changes brought upon by industrialization. The Morrill Act reimagined how higher education would operate. Unlike the traditional university model that existed before that time focusing  on liberal arts, a Land-Grant school was designed for keeping pace with the times agriculturally and technologically. It was focused on research and anticipation of future societal needs… practical knowledge… engineering… agricultural extension… youth development.

Robert O. Thompson, an eccentric farmboy of yore from my hometown, was among the earliest students at Cornell. He’s found in records enrolled there in 1869. My grandfather carried out his dying wish in 1937, encasing his corpse in a rock crevasse with concrete so woodchucks would never have a chance to gnaw away his bones. Thompson’s Cornell education distinguished him. It attained for him a certain level of prestige I’m sure. But I wonder if maybe it warped him a bit as well. We know the sun’s radiance melts shit by accident on occasion. Just saying. I think of Cornell alumni Bill Maher, Ann Coulter and Keith Olbermann and wonder if they also obsess over elaborate provisions to keep woodchucks from gnawing on their remains after death. Given that sample, I’m thinking maybe.

Everyone assumes Kurt Vonnegut’s mind was warped when he endured the allied bombing of Dresden from his prison cell in a slaughterhouse, forgetting he studied at Cornell before the war.

Cornell is one of only a few Land-Grant schools that is private (although branches within it are part of the vast public SUNY system). It is the only school of Land-Grant designation existing within the Ivy League. 

Yale was Connecticut’s Land-Grant school for the duration of the 19th Century. This means your venerable ancestor who graduated there may have been a poor farmer who needed to be trained in a better way to treat hoof rot. Better double-check. This was before the Land-Grant designation was transferred to Connecticut’s main public university, UConn. Imagine Yale’s Land Grant status was never rescinded, J.D. Vance is disrupted from studying one day. He shakes his fist at a bunch of 4-H youth running amok past the Sterling Library with a herd of livestock, like it’s Cornell or something. “Who let these damn hillbillies onto this august campus?”

Yale existed long before the Morrill Act and was only augmented by it. Cornell owes its very existence to the law. That’s the distinction, if that’s the right word.

You hear plenty of people in recent times complain that Cornell (and the Ivy League in general, for that matter) should get out of the business of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs, but that’s exactly what the Morrill Act that created it was. It was the Morrill Act that led to the foundation of America’s historically black colleges, for example. Probably nothing more DEI than that. 

Human Ecology has been added to the Land-Grant agenda in recent generations in keeping with Cornell’s mission with a new emphasis on urban areas to broaden Cornell’s reach beyond its traditional rural poverty focus. It was Cornell’s Family Life Development Center that provided some of the initial training I needed for the career in which I have been engaged for the last quarter century. 

Cornell, I will argue, offers a challenge to what I call the Prestige Principle, which holds that - despite any cute gestures of help arising from the convention of noblesse oblige - “prestige cannot survive being shared”. I came up with this line because I thought as mock philosophy it would vibe satirically with a vignette I planned to share where I puked several dozen times in 1988 in a toilet belonging to Werner Dannhauser, a legendary Cornell philosophy professor when his daughter hosted a party at his Ithaca apartment while he was away - but it turns out the principle may actually be a novel concept with merit. Well, scratch that - perhaps the jury is still out on the merit part maybe. Not the mock philosophy I had intended at least. The important part of the Prestige Principle to remember is that you eventually have to share your prestige lest you face the fate of Marie Antoinette on the guillotine. Here’s the basic nuts and bolts of the thing before we gallivant blissfully on:

In most all cases the statement “prestige cannot survive being shared” appears true. However, at the extreme, the opposite appears true - “prestige must be shared to ensure survival”. This is observed in the case of Marie Antoinette. She had aggregated every advantage of society at the expense of society and was executed via guillotine essentially for her selfishness. She failed to honor the conventions of noblesse oblige to avoid disaster. 

Here is an additional piece to the principle I thought was needed, boiled down as far as it would go.

Prestige cannot survive being shared but the balance required to sustain prestige cannot survive prestige not being shared - a seeming paradox. Another way to look at it perhaps - You compete until success compels a shift toward openness with others, usually of similar or identical status achievement, for preservation’s sake.

I then added some thoughts on how prestige might appear as a structure - as something that is lopsided and unevenly weighted - like a misshapen log in a creek at a lumberjack log roll contest - posing a dangerous challenge to human judgment in striking the all important balance needed to sustain it:

If balance is shown necessary here and if prestige can be seen as a highly asymmetrical “item” - having one end that is light, one end very heavy - how can one reasonably judge where balance is struck on the continuum? I would argue we as humans lack that judgment capacity. Perhaps this is why so many in pursuit of fame are destroyed— they cannot recognize a proper balance point on a heavily lopsided continuum of prestige. Maybe success thrusts them too far ahead of equilibrium. They are surprised to experience what is a tipping point.

The Rambouillet sheep breed represents to me a great metaphor for prestige and what happens when it’s shared. I can’t help but draw upon it since the example has already been broached at the intro with the ram being hauled away from Cornell in the back of my parents’ beat up station wagon. The breed derives directly from one of the finest breeds for wool ever developed, the Merino. Merino sheep were basically kept under lock and key for generations by the Spanish monarchy. They were essentially a trade secret. No exports allowed. At some point, however, King Louis the 16th persuaded Spain to let him have a few. They were kept securely at the rural estate of Rambouillet (which became the French name for what were essentially Merino sheep). Somehow the breed survived the French Revolution. In fact the breed flourished as mass numbers were imported to the New World. 

By the time I bought my Rambouillet ram,  the American wool market had collapsed and shearing was considered a colossal waste of time. Probably a good example of prestige not surviving being shared.  So yeah. When a hillbilly teenager is hauling away a specimen in the back of his parent’s beat-up station wagon you can probably call the party over.

Noblesse Oblige is certainly a means of managing prestige, but whether the Cooperative Extension programs at Cornell constitute a form of it or something else I’m still pondering. I still ask whether the intention behind Noblesse Oblige is to truly share prestige. I’m inclined to think it never is in the usual way the concept is considered. Does something framed as charity ever raise the social position of the recipient? No. It reinforces social position it seems. But can Noblesse Oblige help provide a fair opportunity to achieve status within a construct for prestige? Can you provide skills and opportunity that eventually lead to attainment of prestige without being faulted by the gods for disturbing the club? This is what I think I’m interested  here in establishing. I think this is what may describe what Cornell represents in this equation – a sort of Prometheus gifting fire to bedraggled mortals and getting away with it.

I just have to ask here - what if Marie Antoinette’s offer of cake was a sincere gesture arising from last minute contrition? How would anyone know? She had reached a point of aggregated prestige where no gesture could be interpreted outside arrogance. I call this Cake Offer Motive Ambiguity, or COMA for short. Perhaps we can go into COMA together another time.

I know you’re on the verge of slitting your wrists and gouging your own eyes out at this point, but let’s briefly discuss another woman occupying the Rambouillet estate, however at a time well before the infamous last French queen. Catherine de Vivonne, also known as Madam de Rambouillet, stands perhaps as the exact counterpoint to Marie Antoinette. She opened doors for writers from humble origins throughout France, sharing a prestigious platform much unlike the queen. She is credited by researcher Jesse Browner as being the inventor of the literary salon, which I’m thinking is where writers may have gotten their hair cut, or maybe their nails done. I’m not really sure. I bring up Catherine de Vivonne because I want to make the point people like her still exist with their charitable attitudes towards artistic development, diabolically luring poor men onto the boulders of the harbor with encouragement. When will this cruelty end?

My parents had nine children in ten years so they had to take an efficient course to attend to the social needs of their bedraggled horde. That came down basically to the 4-H club. In the 1970’s, 4-H was the ultimate one size fits all farm family social solution. 4-H stood for Head, Heart, Hands  and Health. It also meant you were probably a dork who lived on a junky old farm. Our club was supposed to be called the “Campbell Hall Jaws” after a blockbuster movie from that time. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Had a big shark in it. I assure you it was a big enough deal you’d want your 4-H club named for it. Not silly at all. But democratic principles were rudely shunted aside. One of the parents complained the club name ought not conjure deathly nautical imagery. So the club was renamed the “Campbell Hall Tidal Waves” instead. Because that made sense. 

                                   

                                                                 October, 1976

One of the biggest boosts to my self-esteem those years came from recognition from the late Cornell professor Edward Schano from the poultry science department. He often visited our county as part of the local 4-H program. Here is what Cornell posts about him on their website:

“Professor Ed Schano was the epitome of what land grant based extension education has been and continues to be in the service of public education. He was a master teacher who brought a passion, dedication and enthusiasm to his youth and adult education projects that was literally infectious.”

It was also noted in the bio this insidious conspiracy to conceal ulterior motives: 

“Ed Schano’s charge was to develop an extension program focusing on youth. He developed a marvelous program that used poultry as the ‘hook’ to attract youngsters. He always emphasized that the program was not designed to teach ‘Poultry’ but to use poultry science to help kids develop strengths that would serve them well in their adult lives.”

I remember Professor Schano lavishing praise on me for my chicken acumen. For example, I demonstrated knowledge that a hen’s lobe color near her ear will dictate the color of her eggs in most cases. (Egg color is not correlated to feather color.) I also demonstrated that I knew the few breeds that were the exception to the rule. Not quite a mastery of quantum mechanics, but still. It was enough for me to be invited by the professor to give a presentation at a Cornell poultry education youth gathering in Westchester County.  I realize now this was part of his indoctrination camp program.

“If a child loves something, let them learn everything there is to know about it. Through the experience , they will learn to learn, and that skill of learning will always be there for them throughout life.”

That was a quote from memory from Professor Schano. He was speaking to my mother regarding me well over 40 years ago. It seems to square with this quote I recently found from him,  again from Cornell’s website: 

“In New York State, we use poultry as an educational tool to help us develop in our youngsters all the wonderful ideals of initiative, resourcefulness, competence and integrity that we as parents, leaders and teachers feel are so important.” 

Buoyed by this brief acknowledgment of my cerebral aptitude (buoyed also by the enthralling entertainment of the TV show Dukes of Hazzard, so very popular at that time ) my spirit was somewhat adequately sustained during those lean years. It was a rare time of joblessness combined with high inflation, dubbed “stagflation”. Indeed the reason I was so invested in chickens was I knew my family needed to have them to eat. I would literally be sent outside by my mother after church with a cleaver.  (One of the things I had to prove as part of my Peace Corps training in Africa years later was whether I could buy a live chicken at the market and prepare it for dinner for myself without help. I’ve never been more insulted in my life!)

    

                             

The biggest thing I witnessed working as a kid at the 4-H poultry barn at the Orange County Fair was a visit from New York City Mayor Ed Koch. This was in 1982 when he was running for governor. He was making a super big fuss over the chickens. I did some research recently and I think I better understand what was going on.

Koch had gotten in big trouble with rural voters earlier in the year when he was interviewed by Playboy magazine. He completely trashed upstate New York as being sterile and devoid of culture. Tired of visits to rotary clubs in rural locales Koch was quoted elsewhere saying the only rotary he cared to see was the one on his helicopter flying him back to New York City. As a result Koch saw a tremendous slip in the polls. 

By the time the fair season rolled around it appeared likely Koch would face defeat in the primary if he didn’t turn things around. 

Koch went on and on as I stood feet away describing to reporters his childhood experiences going to the market with his mother to “pick out a chicken”.  

“And she always picked out a chicken like this one here! Just like this one! Just like this! This is exactly the kind! This one, right here!” 

I don’t remember the reporters questioning Koch why his mother was buying live chickens. The answer appears to be this was common practice in butcher shops up until the mid 20th century. It was likely not that she was buying him pets. 

I remember volunteering at the 4-H poultry barn at the State Fair in Syracuse a number of times. One year chickens were banned there because of an Avian Influenza outbreak. I had to stand in front of a poster board and discuss aspects of poultry farming in the abstract. It was exhausting. It was much easier when the public had actual fowl on premises to gawk at. That’s what the people really wanted – strange birds that were actually birds.

“Where the heck are all the chickens? I see cows. I see horses. I see sheep. I see pigs. But I don’t see chickens! Where the heck are all the chickens?”

“It’s funny you should ask that question, ma’am. I’m here to give you the answer. As you may note on my poster board here the poultry industry has been devastated this year by an outbreak of Avian Influenza-“

“Avian influenza? That shit won’t kill my cat, will it?”

Another time I stayed home during the State Fair but my prized rooster was sent up in the 4-H van to represent Orange County at Syracuse. If my memory is correct it won top prize in its category. State champion chicken! Then I learned the rooster was accidentally left off the van returning to Orange County when the fair was over. Some 4-H kid from Syracuse wrote me a letter saying he had been caring for the bird. With no way to retrieve it I wrote back he could keep him.

I need to point out before I move on from the chicken years that Cornell’s poultry science department has apparently been defunct for more than 30 years now. I guess the calculation in shutting the program down was the chicken industry was leaving the state for milder climates down South so why fight a losing battle in keeping a program for sustaining it in New York ? (The problem with this rationale if this was indeed the one used - you could almost make the same case for just about every other ag sector in the state.) It seems that small backyard chicken operations have come back with a vengeance though. Add up all those tiny operations you may find our state’s poultry prowess may have remained stronger than we realize - but from a non-commercial standpoint, of course. Can you make the case that the Morrill Act justifies a shift in focus on backyard agriculture? Probably not easily.

     

                                    Cornell poultry science history illustration from website.

For older youth, 4-H had a program called “Teen Council” which organized dances, recreational outings and opportunities for volunteer work. It operated out of a building at Orange County fairgrounds in Middletown. A lot of guys were motivated to attend to mingle with 4 beautiful sisters from Newburgh who regularly appeared there. Their link to agriculture was that their mother grew up in Minnesota. The oldest sister could make a  hash pipe out of a tampon in just minutes flat with just a bit of spare tinfoil. I’m pretty sure the other 3 could do the same.

What would have been really cool - if the 4 sisters had constituted a stand alone 4-H club and called themselves the ‘4 horse ladies of the apocalypse’ and had bomber jackets, but that window is probably closed.

The second oldest of the 4 beautiful sisters was super observant. I’d say she was the most cerebral. At a dance once she characterized me comically but not incorrectly as the wingman of a wingman. We always had great conversations. She was a reader. I remember she was big into The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. We went on a date once to her father’s cabin in Sullivan County near the original Woodstock site, located just outside the zone of debauchery apparently. But sweet memories nevertheless. I could apply this line to my entire teenage dating career by the way.

Perhaps the pinnacle of the teen council experience came in the Summer of 1985 when our group was put up in the Cornell dorms for close to a week to attend a series of workshops on campus. There we were joined by dozens and dozens of other 4-H teens from throughout New York State for the occasion. It was a big deal. I never thought about life on a college campus before. I loved every second of it.

My friend Chad was part of that trip. He had a brother Karl who graduated from Cornell only a few weeks earlier. Karl had shared stories of his sexual triumphs at the school that Chad had shared with me at some point beforehand that just utterly captured my imagination. I would call it classic “my older brother in college is getting laid let me tell you about it” material. The story that formed in my head was that Karl connected with a beautiful girl as the weather got nicer and the two went crazy on each other like animals all day long. For some reason the picture I had was that this all took place outside on a big rock. What I remember being said was Karl’s balls hurt afterward, he was hungry, exhausted and had trouble walking. I tried verifying the details of this recently, now some 39 years later, but Chad had to cut the text short to scrub up for surgery. Maybe I’ll hear from him again someday. It’s certain at least some alterations to the story took place in the telling. The big rock may have been a detail my imagination threw into the mix for some reason. I just know Ithaca is filled with big rocks. During that trip in 1985 I think I noticed every single one of them.

Chad had another brother named Jay. Unlike Karl, Jay did not attend Cornell. Jay has nothing to do with the subject of this essay really. He is legendary for his savage wit though. Once when their mother accidentally ran over a neighbor’s dog an irate teen known as a bully yelled at their mom: “you killed my dog Asshole!” Jay quickly countered, “why did you name him Asshole?” 

      

Jimmy Ford, in red, rolling his BMX off Chad's farmhouse in 1984. He committed suicide 9 years later at Fort Campbell.

At one of the presentations, in a large lecture hall somewhere on the Cornell Campus, we were given a picture of societal transformation soon to take place. We were advised our world would soon be completely transformed by. . .information. We were told we would be facing “An Information Age” that we needed to be prepared for. We were advised many jobs would disappear as a result of it including many agricultural careers. We would soon be facing an onslaught of new technology. I have to admit it all sounded a little crazy at the time but it all has since come to pass exactly as predicted. 

And from there we took a field trip off premises to an artificial insemination facility where we were taught how semen is extracted from bulls. It involves tricking the bull to mount an apparatus made to resemble a dairy cow’s ass where the bull then ejaculates into a sterile sleeve that is retrieved by a technician in goggles, rubber gloves and boots, and a lab coat.

 So yeah, that, and the oncoming information revolution, those are the two biggies from that trip in ‘85 to the proverbial mountain top. Also I could add to the highlight reel the apartheid divestment protests, Buttermilk Falls, the dude researching ants with his head stuck down a hole all day, Carl Sagan’s house perched on the side of a cliff and those freaks from the Society for Creative Anachronism out on the lawn sparring with medieval weaponry. Oh, and maybe I could add the hot chick in the crowded lecture hall taking out her birth control pill from its dispenser in what seemed to me an incredibly erotic manner, always playing as a tight shot and in slow motion in the strange movie that is my memory from that time. The sexual revolution plowing itself into the emerging one of information oversharing.

I had no plans to attend college at that point. In fact I split my school days in junior and senior year in high school at a vocational program in Goshen known as Orange-Ulster Vo-Tech to learn carpentry. The learning was truly hands-on. We worked on actual construction sites. I was pretty good at the work. In fact I used my knowledge to build a three hundred square foot shack in our woods in my spare time with Chad and brother Mike after my father’s wooden silo collapsed in a storm. It was completed entirely with salvaged materials with hand tools exactly as I drew it up in  drafting class.

                                                                

                                                  Spring 1984

One fine Spring day I went in to Vo-Tech to learn one of the kids, Sherman, had hung himself at home. He was a small, odd-looking kid who was picked on cruelly by almost everyone in class as “Sperm-man Sherman” or “Sperm” for short. At his burial this kid, Tim from the class joked loudly about the rabbi’s yarmulke as prayers were said for Sherman’s soul. Tim was gunned down years later when he burst into city hall with a shotgun seeking to kill the mayor.

                                                 The Shack.

 I was in line to be awarded membership into the local carpenter’s union as a prize for being the top student in the class. This was the goal I set. Every day I worked hard to live up to it. Going into year two it was my prize to lose. I was the one most  entrusted to drive the class pickup truck in any case. In late winter the second year as I sat sidled up next to the wood stove at home to revive from the cold, I began imagining what life would be like after high school, working long hours everyday at construction sites, coming home exhausted and cold. How the hell would I meet girls? When would I ever have the opportunity to make love to a beautiful woman on a big rock all day long to the point of desperately needing a sandwich like Chad’s brother Karl at Cornell? It just hit me all at once with certainty- I needed to change course. 

                                  The relentless pursuit of particular knowledge.

The fact that I hadn’t taken the SATs wasn’t going to stop me. As late as it was to make such a change in direction I was determined to find a way to go away to school somehow. A solution was soon obtained. I got enrolled in the vocational drafting program at SUNY Delhi. The school didn’t require SAT scores to apply to their vocational programs. At some point I announced my plans. I’d say most were pretty surprised. My carpentry instructor pulled me aside at some point and advised me since I planned to go off to college the top student prize would have to go to another student so the union membership that went with it wouldn’t go to waste. I understand it all now, but at the time I was devastated. In fact I declined to attend graduation. This Howard Jones song was the big hit at the time:

You can build a mansion, but you just can't live in it

You're the fastest runner but you're not allowed to win

Some break the rules, and let you count the cost

The insecurity is the thing that won't get lost

My Uncle John, the Vo-Tech school board president, made arrangements to personally hand out the diplomas to my carpentry class at the graduation ceremony. When my name was called my poor uncle found I was no where to be found. At that very moment I was repairing a rotten floor in the bathroom in an old bungalow in Salisbury Mills making the money I needed for my next move. . . getting the fuck out of town.

I was moving on and not looking back. At some point that summer I sold my Rambouillet flock, my other business I ran, that one from the time of my early teens.

The thing that made Delhi so great as a social laboratory during my time there - you had these fallen angel types seeking academic redemption who may have otherwise competed at top liberal arts schools mixed in with hard driving blue collar guys. I have often referred to it endearingly over the years as an island of misfit toys. There was a story there of a guy in the auto mechanics program sneaking engine blocks into his dorm room at night on a dolly. I was never able to verify this with my own eyes but somehow it seemed to conform with everything I came to know about the place, so yeah. Probably real. It was so common for guys to work on their vehicles in the parking lot no one noticed the guy selling dime bags from underneath his car on a mechanic’s creeper. 

I met a lot of women at Delhi. I think now that was quite a remarkable thing. The ratio of guys to women there seemed very much on par with an oil rig in Alaska encroaching the bounds of the arctic circle.

A large percentage of guys in the vocational programs went home on the weekend to work. I sensed many had girlfriends back home. If they went drinking at Shenanigans, it was on Thursday night. They’d jump in their cars just as soon as classes were done on Friday and they’d make their way back to school again Sunday night or early Monday morning. It was a 2 year plan. They found a way to manage the grueling schedule for the duration. I can’t remember one wimp among them.

I soon met some dudes who engineered their dorm room with a loft. The design maximized seating capacity to the fullest. It wasn’t uncommon to find 10 people gathered in this ‘Loft Room’ on any given night hanging out in style and comfort. 

I remember this guy known as Momma from Staten Island stopping in a number of times there. He wasn’t really a regular but he was memorable. 

“You went to Washingtonville?” I remember him uttering in astonishment, “I delivered a fuckin’ car to my Boss’s mistress there!”

Momma was complaining one day he still wasn’t used to doing his own laundry. It drove him nuts to match his socks. I stuck my leg up in the air, pulled my pant leg down to show my plain white sock. “The solution is simple, Momma - don’t buy the ones with the fuckin’ stripes on them.” 

The common element of the people who regularly gathered at the Loft Room - they had a wide, eclectic interest in music and they had a ready ability to tell a joke or a funny story. No one was ever turned away that I can remember but not everyone was an everyday visitor is what I would say. Over time though it definitely became a clique. I felt privileged to be accepted as a core member. 

At the center of this core group was this vivacious girl Dannhauser from Ithaca whose distinctive laugh, exuberant and at times loud, rose above all other laughs. She arrived one day at the Loft Room out of the blue with her posse. When I greeted them one of the girls erupted in laughter. Someone shouted “I told you so!” It was soon explained the three had been people-watching me in the dining hall for weeks and one of them thought I seemed too much like David Bowie to not have a British accent. My simple American greeting had disabused the notion and settled a stupid bet. As payback I began to refer to the three derisively as ‘Charlie’s Angels’ as they were always together and always on the case. 

                                       The professor's daughter and her wing ladies.

The Bowie resemblance thing was something I heard a lot. It was either Bowie or the dork from Breakfast Club. One or the other. Nothing in between. Cool or dork? I guess I acted as a kind of Rorschach Test.

One day we learned in passing that Dannhauser's father was a professor at Cornell. At a later point, again in passing, we learned her mother died when she was little. We learned her father raised her basically on his own. 

One thing that really impressed my new friend Ms. Dannhauser, (although I think this was moving ahead to our second year) was that I knew who Allan Bloom was.  You hear him referred to nowadays as “the grandfather of the culture wars.” I worked on an organic vegetable farm during the summer of 1987 and that’s all the Hippie intellectuals there talked about for a time—Bloom’s famous book “The Closing of the American Mind” which came out that year and somehow ended up all over the news. 

The thing I remember the Hippies objecting to about Bloom was his opposition to rock music. Bloom thought it rotted minds. This all became perplexing because Bloom was Professor Dannhauser’s closest friend and no one loved to rot their mind with rock more than his daughter.

I remember riding with Dannhauser in her car flying down the winding road from her dorm with the Stones classic Jumping Jack Flash blaring. I said something funny and she squeezed my forearm and howled. I’d say if this is mind rot then give me more.

I was born in a cross-fire hurricane

And I howled at my ma' in the driving rain

But it's all right now, in fact, it's a gas

But it's all right, I'm jumpin' Jack Flash

It's a gas, gas, gas

Professors Dannhauser and Bloom were students of philosopher Leo Strauss and both for a time taught at Cornell before Bloom left Cornell for Strauss’s University of Chicago. (It should also be noted that Nobel prize winning novelist Saul Bellow went on to write a roman a clef based on Bloom called Ravelstein which contained a character based on Werner Dannhauser.) This discussion of her father’s friendship with Allan Bloom was the closest Dannhauser ever came to discussing philosophy that I can remember. It was clearly not her thing. I sensed she had an aversion to it. But then so did I. As Edie Brickell would tell you on the radio at that time:

Philosophy is a walk on the slippery rocks

Religion is a light in the fog

I'm not aware of too many things

I know what I know, if you know what I mean.

I became acquainted with Bovina Center (a town I would later use in my online Granny Lynch satire series as the setting for “Mount Delusion Lodge”) when we went horseback riding there for something to do one warm day in March.  Still remember this new INXS song blaring in Dannhauser’s car.

All you've got is this moment

Twenty-first century's yesterday

You can care all you want

Everybody does, yeah, that's okay

The song I associate with Dannhauser the most though is “Just Like Heaven”, the Cure’s big hit from the same year as Bloom’s book:

"Show me, show me, show me how you do that trick

The one that makes me scream", she said

"The one that makes me laugh", she said

And threw her arms around my neck

Show me how you do it

And I promise you, I promise that

I'll run away with you

I'll run away with you

Professor Dannhauser himself addressed this controversial position Bloom took regarding contemporary music in a tribute published in 1995 in the Washington Examiner following Bloom’s death titled, MY FRIEND, ALLAN BLOOM: “The thinkers he loved most loved music. He delved deeply into the discussions of musical education in Plato’s Republic, applying them brilliantly and with breathtaking, childlike directness to his dissection of rock in The Closing of the American Mind. . .When Shoshana and I had a serious quarrel in 1967, it was Allan who told me I was a fool; when we married later that year, it was Allan who signed the orthodox Jewish wedding document; when Shoshana died in 1973, it was Allan who gave the eulogy.”

The Closing of the American Mind was the last book of its kind to become super famous as far as my hillbilly mind is aware. It went from “oh no, higher education has doomed us as an intelligent species” to a long, tired string of pop culture mind rot titles, which maybe has stood to prove Bloom’s point, or maybe not. Material for a different essay I think.

Speaking of pop culture mind rot, I have to comment that the writing on “Friends” resonated with me a great deal when the series came out years later because it seemed ripped straight out of the pages of my experiences in those 2 years at Delhi. Like Friends the Loft Room Clique, as I will call it, became evened out by gender and gathered regularly to engage in witty banter. Like Friends, the platonic nature became strained. 

At some point during the last semester at the school I confessed to Ms. Dannhauser I had a crush on her. This was after I saw her together with a guy visiting her one weekend and I grew intensely jealous. I don’t remember being rebuffed for this confession. The problem then became what to do next. In the end it was to pretend I never said anything and try to go back to behaving as we always did. 

I do remember asking her out to see a school play. Technically it was a date - but we were already accustomed to spending time together. Somehow it was hard to get past the friendship thing. We conspired next to meet at Shenanigans to introduce alcohol into the equation. But for reasons I still cannot understand I never showed up in accordance with the conspiracy. I essentially stood her up. The next day I caught a pained look from her as we passed at a distance from one another on campus. It was the one and only time I received such a look, which is good because I would have probably died with another. The last thing I ever wanted to do was add to the pain I sensed she had been carrying for a long, long time. There may have been a day or two that we avoided each other. Then it was back to the way it was before. At least on the surface. Graduation would soon arrive. Time was getting short. In the end the connection I desired to have with her never happened. 

A lot of academic transformation took place over this time of course. I went to my advisor the first semester and said that I didn’t believe Vocational Drafting suited me anymore, even though I was doing very well in the program (it truly was a program - all enrolled had the exact same schedule). He said that’s OK. I can tell you’re special. You can be a shop teacher, I’ll add algebra to your Spring schedule, finish the year and next year we’ll shift you to Individual Studies, and you’ll get an A.A.S. Degree. 

This was an “Associate of Applied Science” degree that was created especially for those leaving a vocational program mid-way for Individual Studies. 

It was awkward. I was the only guy in the drafting program taking an extra class. I was the only guy talking about bailing out on the program after the year was over. I remember sitting in algebra class thinking to myself “why am I in an algebra class? I hate algebra! What did I let that guy do to me?”

                                1987: It's obvious Vocational Drafting is not for me.

                               1988: The signs are pointing to me becoming an English Major.

That second year Fall Semester he had me signed up for a boatload of classes I can’t believe now I agreed to. They were all geared to making me attractive to a 4 year college with a program for teaching industrial arts. Somehow I let the advisor override me in my meetings with him. He never tried to listen or elicit what I wanted. He seemed intent on deciding what was best for me. Going into 1988 I had an A in psychology, an A in Physics, an A in Production Management, an A in Trigonometry, an A in First Aid but only a C in English I, the course I most valued. Imagine my advisor’s surprise when he followed up with me at that time and I insisted I had no interest in being a shop teacher whatsoever. I only wanted to become an English major.

“I want to learn to write. I can always build houses, or farm if I need to. I have nothing to lose.”

Notions that I might transfer to NYU quickly evaporated when I reviewed the tuition and board expense estimates in a catalog I found at the library. It was pretty clear my only choices were within the SUNY public system. I chose Oneonta over New Paltz figuring New Paltz was too close to home. I knew Oneonta was too far away for my father to come get me when his cows got out. It was the same drive through the mountains I had gotten used to, a half-hour farther down the road from Delhi. A little more north in northernmost Appalachia.

                                              

 

                         Why would anyone think I had Lymphoma? Graduation cake, 1988. 

                   Cake reads: “Happy are those who seek wisdom and understanding in the Lord.”

This educational pathway transferring from Delhi to Oneonta, I later learned, matched the route taken by Hollywood actor Bill Pullman, who not only portrayed a US president but also starred in “Spaceballs”.

I don’t remember any of this now but apparently I wrote Dannhauser a letter that summer bragging I won the lottery, bought a Chevy, developed superhuman strength, and drank Jon bon Jovi under the table.

I just received your letter and I’m so excited to hear about you winning the lottery. Can I please get a ride in your Chevy? I’ll be your best friend. Oooh and you sound so powerful and strong. I’m awed. Hearing that you drank Jon Bon Jovi under the table I thought, “I have to have this guy at my party or I’ll die.”

I immediately thought, “there’s no way I can miss this party.” But at some point it became apparent my schedule was in conflict. The party fell on the day after I was scheduled for surgery. This was for a biopsy - the removal of the badly swollen lymph node within my left armpit which had caused my doctor to become fearful for the worst. No, I was going to that party regardless of the procedure. The doctor didn’t need to know my plans. I sort of knew already the trip went against everything he advised  regarding recovery. I knew the procedure would leave my arm immobilized and in pain for days. What did I care? I was technically still a teenager - at least for a few remaining months. Why would I listen to someone who knew better? I made arrangements to borrow my brother Mike’s Yugo to make the trip. Not even 24 hours after I woke up from surgery I was on the road steering with a throbbing arm in a sling as I shifted gears with my good arm.

The party started out a fun time for sure but as the night wore on I found myself increasingly in pain. Each time I squeezed into Dannhauser’s car to be taken to the next Ithaca hot spot, each time my shoulder bumped into the shoulder of another packed into the vehicle  - the pain from the surgery incision intensified. I do remember drinking some. I thought if I kept it light I’d be OK. This proved to be a very bad idea. I remember we went to a diner to eat. I think there we also had a birthday cake. I found it difficult to put away my order. At some point I began to withdraw into a zone. I was not feeling so well. When we got back to professor Dannhauser’s apartment I was desperate to find the toilet, and there I remained for a long, long time, hovering over the bowl, vomiting repeatedly, I want to say dozens of times. There was no pretending I outdid Jon Bon Jovi at the bar that night or that I had acquired superhuman strength as I had bragged in my recent letter. I was a damn mess.

I managed to rebound well the next day. It was a bright sunny day. We spent a lot of time outdoors driving to yard sales along the beautiful landscape within view of Cayuga Lake. Maybe I wasn’t back to my normal mode then, but at least I wasn’t convulsing. 

By the way, in case the Ithaca police are still investigating. it was another guy who threw the piece of birthday cake from the car at the late night pedestrian, not me. The evidence would show I was in no shape at the time to do that. Perhaps Cake Offer Motive Ambiguity could be used as a defense.

What was my impression of how the legendary professor lived? Spartan existence. The apartment was very ordinary and modest. The toilet I can say with authority, very tidy. He had lots and lots of important books displayed on less impressive shelves made from cinder blocks capped by common boards. . .

Not long after that party, Jerry, my lab partner at Washingtonville High School was found dead on Orrs Mill Road beneath the Moodna Viaduct Bridge. The last time I saw him was the year before when he visited his neighbor, Denise, at Delhi before she dropped out. I remember the story was eclipsed in the newspaper by a mass shooting at a bar in Middletown called “Smiles”. ‘A jealous lover arrived to the premises and opened fire’. I met a witness to the shooting later that summer. He recounted every detail of the horrible violence in painstaking detail a multitude of times.

Yeah, Oneonta wasn’t a proverbial oil rig in Alaska like Delhi was. The male to female ratio was actually inverted from that of an oil rig in the Arctic Circle. It was teeming with women. It wasn’t long before my principal goal in going away to college - to score with them - was fulfilled. More than satisfactorily.

With those needs finally met I still had another big challenge in front of me - learning to spell and use proper grammar. I was now an English Major after all. I needed to become better acquainted with that shit. 

                                          

Luckily I found another daughter of a Cornell professor at Oneonta to help. Kathleen was an English major  and proofread most everything I wrote for a time. (I got together with her after college for awhile but it didn’t work out. Topic for another essay I believe.)

I remember taking a couple of trips  to visit Dannhauser at her new school. They were basically reunions of the Delhi clique. It was hard without a car. The ride took forever with the bus stopping at every small town from Oneonta to Albany to pick up old, poor farm people with worn clothing and makeshift baggage.

Dannhauser wasn’t big on letter writing. She insisted on phone calls but I was too poor to pay for my own phone line in my dorm so this created a barrier. I know I stayed in touch with her for the remainder of the decade but by the start of the 1990’s I lost touch. This is what she wrote me in the Fall of 1989 after I was struggling following a break up and a bunch of other miserable things:

Hi! Long time no hear or see. I keep thinking of you but I’ve been too busy and too lazy to write. I keep wanting to pick up the phone and call you (my way of communication) but  I can’t so I’m forcing myself to at least jot this note and mail it. I miss you. What’s new? How are you? I’m sorry to hear about your “broken heart” but sometimes I think I’d take all the pain to be w/ someone I really liked for a while. All these hot studs (& even the not so hot) are dickfaces! So consider yourself lucky (if you can appreciate the good times). I’m getting really queer so I’m going to end the subject but I hope when we finally talk you’ll tell me all about it. Okay?

There was a lot more going wrong in my life at that time besides being dumped. For one thing my financial aid was rejected. Farm exemption paperwork got screwed up and left me entirely on the hook for my bills. I was getting threatening letters. I was beginning to fear I might have to drop out. I can’t tell you how important this letter was to boost my morale at that moment (it goes on for pages and it’s hilarious). Things thankfully got straightened out financially. I got back on track and went on to earn my degree in English literature as I had my heart set on. And yes, maybe I  learned to write a little bit.

I’m pretty sure Allan Bloom wasn’t focused on a bedraggled specimen like me when he was writing The Closing of the American Mind, but what if he did examine my case? Would he conclude I was part of the problematic trend he saw plaguing my generation? Or would I be absolved? Yeah, I rotted my mind with rock music, and avoided the teachings of Socrates (but not the plays of Aristophanes). Does this mean my education was defective? Was it not open-minded to take the chances I did educationally? What makes it open-minded anyway for Bloom to prescribe a staid traditional education program that’s been tried thousands and thousands of  times that no one is enthusiastic about anymore? Are we going back to speaking Latin too? Was the topic of concern truly the closing of American minds or elitist fear of a further shifting away from educational orthodoxy? A fear of further shifting away from concepts of prestige? Yeah the title “The Closing of the American Mind” grabbed attention. Great marketing. But was it mislabeling? Was it hypocritical? How does one determine if the classical approach can continue to produce the best outcomes unless you’re open to allowing alternative approaches (like the Morrill Act did way back in 1862)  to compare and measure educational outcomes against?  Tolerance of choice is a hallmark of an open mind, is it not?

But perhaps Bloom would be delighted that I turned away from technology programs and gravitated towards liberal arts, that I took the ancient - dare I say prestigious - classical pathway. Becoming an English major to learn to write was the right choice for me, but I’m quite certain it would not work for most others I knew growing up. I imagine Professor Schano offering a rebuttal to Bloom from his high place in the great chicken barn in the sky: “does it really matter where you learn the things you need to know in life as long as you do learn them from someone somewhere?”

—-James Robert Flannery. Copyright 2024. All rights reserved.