Nathaniel Owen Wallace – 50th Reunion Essay

Nathaniel Owen Wallace

639 Wilson Street NE

Orangeburg, SC 29115

nathaniel240@hotmail.com

Spouse(s): Janet Lynne Kozachek (1979)

Education: College of Charleston, AB 1969; Rutgers University, MA 1975; Rutgers University, PhD 1979.

Career: Faculty member in English at South Carolina State University since 1991; promoted to Professor, 2003.

Avocations: Photography, music, travel, gardening.

College: Jonathan Edwards

I wandered more than wondered as I

crossed High Street, then headed

into the courtyard of J.E.

Sept. of ’66 it was, the time of my transfer

from a campus—small and obscure—in S.C.

It must be that I had reached

the utter apex of learning,

the mind’s rose window.

I was now within the incipit

of a precious text.

For me, though, the live script was

thin on illumination. But there was

some light, veritas as well

when messmates weren’t

talking jobs, grades, girls,

or who at J.E. was a dud.

Dassori and Monette were

upperclassmen whose conversation,

whose camaraderie were much of benefit.

The same applies to others whose names

are not remembered. Classmates have

flourished, failed, fled, died. I have contacted

some; some years ago, one contacted me,

then another, some years later.

The Harvard-Yale game was a high point.

Our group rented two cars to drive to Cambridge.

Afterward, there was a clam bake

on the Cape, accompanied by oysters,

to be consumed on the half-shell—

but someone had to open them first.

I was oddly the only adept

oyster-knife wielder in the group.

A dull ride back to New Haven,

where I learned of the other car’s

dents in a wreck. Unhappily,

I could not pay my share of the tab.

The J. E. dining hall was nice—clam chowder

every Friday. But that great food fight—

chicken bones and bread bombs hurled,

it seemed, in all directions—is a standout

reminisce that shades out, no doubt,

laudable culinary episodes.

In Harkness or another hall, I learned that

philosophy would never be my profession.

My essay on Bonhoeffer was all but a bummer.

But my study of a late-medieval painting

(Gentile da Fabriano’s Madonna & Child)

had scored a “B.” My paper on Le père Goriot

was a nosedive; that was soon in the past,

and my work on Proust was seemingly

shaping up at the start of March.

In Yale’s just-begun orchestra,

I held my own, playing the flute.

And now, it was Spring Break;

I boarded a flight to Charleston,

developed an earache on descent,

never used the other half of that round-trip ticket.