History of the Institute, Part One

It all began with facebook.  Old Dog would know nothing of this, eschewing sunny, perhaps too sunny, decidedly unhip, often downright stupid, Facebook.  But once you get on it fb spreads the word and tries to connect you with everybody it thinks you might know, and once you friend them you can look on their pages and of course you will know some of their friends, and the whole thing just cascades.  It's like This Is Your Life, only more comfortable, without a raucous audience and some jerk sticking some book in your face.  It is comely, takes place in the comfort of your living room, and you can take it or leave it as your day progresses.

My biggest crowd of Buddies is my Champaign buddies, and one night Suzie showed up.  She used to waitress at the House of Chin, and though not really one of my beer-drinking buddies, she did hang with the crowd for a number of years.  But there was something more about her, when she started working at Chin's, I discovered her last name, and I asked if she was Beagles's sister, and sure enough she was.  Beagles had been my classmate at Gage Park High, and even before that we had sat in the same pews lustily singing out Hymn Number 504 (My, the stuff Old Man Google knows), The Old Rugged Cross at Elsdon Church on the corner of 53rd and Christiana.

I had left the faith around the age of twelve, but when I walked the halls of Gage Park, there was Beagles again.  We weren't bosom pals, we moved in different circle, but we saw each other frequently. 

If I remember correctly he was an avid  hunter, a peculiar thing to be in the big city, I believe I made some fun of him for that, which I don't think bothered him at all,  But the main thing I remembered about him is that he didn't go to college.  We were in this cohort of pretty smart kids and all through our high school years we were groomed for college, there were scholarship clubs and rooms with college brochures and whatnot, we all marched off to take our college exams and the results were sent to the colleges and all, and then it turned out that Beagles had no intention of going to college.

What?  His grades were great, he was on the Honor Roll.  It was like a shockwave through the school, a repudiation of everything getting ahead in America stood for.  But he stood by it.

I believe he went to Alaska, I went to college.  I didn't get ahead very much, but I guess I had a good time, and then one day, shortly after being reacquainted with Suzie, I got to thinking about her brother, and you know, even though I didn't agree with the path he had taken, I did admire him for repudiating the whole establishment of Gage Park.

I asked Suzie whatever happened to her brother.  Well there he was right there on fb, but he wasn't very active about it, and maybe it would be easier if I just emailed him.  So I did.  We exchanged this and that, and it came out that he was pretty Goddamned conservative.

Well I've been a liberal democrat ever since Golden Barry scared the shit out of me as a young man, but I love talking politics, and I'm rather bored with talking politics to other liberal democrats because most stuff we agree on so what is there to say?

So the idea was that we would exchange emails mostly I was thinking about politics because that is what gets my motor humming.

The newspaper has just thunked against my door, so I will take this up again Thanksgiving morning.