In Spring, 1970, I left Columbus, wearing a suit and an overcoat, to fly into Texas, to be interviewed for a teaching position at a University. I tell the story as I remember it; but I have changed some names.
In Ohio, the new leaves were nearly as wide as dimes: in Texas the leaves were nearly as wide as pancakes. I had traveled to the subtropics, with winter clothing. But no matter, for when I went to claim my luggage, the airline had lost my luggage.
So I rented a car, checked into a motel, parked my overcoat in my room, watched some local TV, then drove to campus. There, I found the Radio-TV-Film Department, located in a building of ten stories, the highest spire I had ever seen in a campus building.
On the way back I got a burger and some cakes of french fries at a diner, then drove back to the motel, to consider some questions Dr. Davies might ask me.
“Why do you want to teach? “ he might ask. “Why do you want to teach, here? Who is your favorite TV producer? Would you be happy living west of the Mississippi?” I rehearsed answers out loud, then watched some TV and fell asleep.
Next morning, I woke up thirty minutes before the clock went off, got a shower, then looked out the sixth-story window to view the city waking up. I found another diner, took a seat at the counter, and ordered two eggs over-light with toast, juice and bacon. If memory serves, I also gained a breakfast companion.
“Where’d you come from, Buddy?” asked a man in a J.B. Stetson hat, who listened to my conversation with the waitress, then divided his attention between quizzing me and slurping coffee from a saucer.
“I’m finishing up school in Ohio, now,” I said, between bites.
“You don’t sound like you’re from Ohio.”
“Really?”
“No,” he said, then paused before his next question. “Where you from anyhow…Oklahoma?”
“No.”
“Well you sure ain’t from around here, buddy,” he laughed, as he nudged the sleeve of my suit coat, then took a final slurp. “You sure ain’t from round here, at all.”
“Don’t pay any attention to him,” the waitress said as the Stetson strode away. Then she then circled her index finger around her ear.
“You know, that cowboy might drive me crazy,” I said to myself, “but he may be right. My only connection to this place is a sorry grandpa who deserted his family in North Carolina.”
I finished my breakfast, left a tip for the waitress, paid my bill, then drove to campus, and caught the elevator to the Chairman’s office.
“Hi,” I said to the receptionist. “My name’s Leon Smith. I’m here to see Dr. Davies. “
“Let me tell him you’re here,” she smiled.
As she walked away, I read my name upside-down on a file folder, then watched her disappear behind the door marked “Davies Davies, Ph.D., Chair.”
“I wonder what he’ll be like.” I said to myself.
“Dr. Davies will see you now,” the receptionist smiled, as she picked up my folder, then led me to the corner office.
When I stepped inside, the first thing I saw was a longhorn skull mounted on the wall, a hat rack bearing a John B. Stetson forty-quart, then the white hair and neck of a small man, seated with his back to me, in a red upholstered chair.
When he rotated himself into view, Dr. Davies revealed a moustache, the color of his hair, a string tie with turquoise on its clasp, and turquoise jewelry on four or five fingers.
“Howdy,” the doctor said, with a warm voice. He did not stand up.
“Thank you for seeing me,” I replied.
“Have a seat,” he said, pointing to a mahogany chair on my side of the desk .
“Do you like my desk?
“It may be the biggest one I’ve ever seen,” I said.
“Solid mahogany,too,” he said, “made it myself.” He looked at my folder. “You must have flown out of Columbus?”
“Yes sir.”
“How was your flight?”
“Lone Star knows its business,” I replied, without saying that the airline had lost all my luggage.
“I guess you heard about Dr.Simpkins?” he said.
“A little.”
“Best scholar in Audience Analysis…ever,” he continued. “Just finished his new book, when his wife walked out on him,” he said. “Left him a ‘Dear John’ letter.”
I nodded.
Davies Davies twirled his handlebar. “An absolute genius… in the intellectual domain, “ he said.
I nodded.
“But when his wife left him, he jumped to his death from his the twelfth floor apartment.” He paused. “Why do you think he did that?”
“He wasn’t a genius in the emotional domain?”
“Exactly,” Davies Davies smiled. “Now tell me exactly why you would like to join us here at the University.”
“You have one of the best programs in the business…”
I stopped mid-sentence as Dr. Davies began pumping a lever on the side of his chair, propelling himself toward the ceiling. He paused when he was able to look down on the top of my head.
Only then did I see that Dr. Davies was riding a barber chair.
“This is a powerful communication device ,” Dr. Davies said, patting the chair’s pump-handle. “It’s a Koken barber chair. They invented the control lever.“
“When you sat down we looked one another in the eye,” he continued. “So neither of us had control.” He paused. “But from up here, I have total control.”
“I didn’t notice the barber chair when I came in, “I said.
He chuckled again. “I know,” he replied, smiling broadly. “No one does, the first time.”
After that, I don’t remember anything, for Dr. Davies Davies’ barber-chair maneuver must have rendered me senseless.
But after I escaped his office, I regained my senses, long enough to remember the words of the cowpoke in the diner:
“You ain’t from around here, at all.”
I agreed, and got out of town for good the next day; my baggage followed me two weeks later.