read James1 long, sinuous, serpentine, tortuous sentences of poetic density and moral passion the greatest in our language and in the middle parts, during a pit stop, I would think of Mr. Buss the most dedicated and energetic teacher among a faculty of dedicated and energetic teachers saying, igneous, escarpment, conglomerate, feldspar, Dead Horse Point, and I would suffer with him again as he must have suffered again and again at his failure to make me study geology. As Mr. Minor had failed to make me study botany. As Mr. Osmond had failed to make me study physics. I believed everything they told me. I dreamed it all and pronounced it Good. Until I went to Kenyon College in 1948 to finish my A.B., I never saw much connection between what a course gave me and if it didnt give it freely, I didnt reach out for it and what someone somewhere, possibly even the teacher, thought I should get from it. I was not stupid. I was feeding my dreams, my inchoate, obscure dreams. Weber let me dream at a time when learning to dream saved my life. I had a truly compassionate feeling for those teachers who were trying to inject me with stuff my organism rejected. Im glad that they had a lot of students who were wide awake and knew what they were doing, were going to do, and did it. Such students make teachers feel good. It simply is not in the long run a productive way to live. I did do very well got an A in one science course. Taught by Reed Swenson, the course was a biological science, since it had to do with public health and how to get it. Like Hygiene of the Classroom it avoided science and only flirted with biology. In my sophomore year, when things were getting serious indeed the armed forces and the science groups were breathing down my neck I saw this course and leaped at it. A few days into the beginning of the course it was clear that Reed was much in favor of public health. I admired Reed as a basketball coach and a laconic wit. To find him on the side of health in public places increased my veneration. The rigors of the course tightened when we were told late in the course that we had to give the oral report on a public health hazard that he had mentioned on the first day, during what we had thought was introductory levity. I rose to the occasion by putting Ock-hams razor to the spit stone. I made a three sentence report on How Plain City Deals With the Public Health Menace of Disposable Waste. If you live in the Eastern half of Plain City, I said, not even referring to my notes, you load up your gunk in the dumpboards and haul it through the East pastures and dump it in Farr West. If you live in the Western half, you load it up, haul it through the West Pastures, and dump it in Warren. It is common knowledge that Plain City is the cleanest town in Northwest Weber County and Warren and Farr West the dirtiest. When I went back to my seat, Reed was rolled up like a ball in his chair, inarticulate grunts spurting from him. The other students had strange looks on their faces, from an excess of admiration. So much for groups. We can learn anything when we are ripe for learning it or have to learn it, under the threat of hanging. Until then, forget it. That is the sum of the wisdom of my life. That and dont count on the Vikings. Ever. Phoenix in Ashes Rex McEntire wrote in my yearbook in the spring of 1942: Dont forget Phoenix. Youve got a lot to thank the boys for. I have not forgotten them, but this is not the occasion to express gratitude and avowals of friendship that are strictly between me and the members of Phoenix. With Rexs prodding, the Phoenix men looked on my bewilderment and found in it the lineaments of leadership. I was nominated for offices and I was elected. It was a charade, but I was honored to play it. Then I went into the service; another and more serious charade. The best men I have ever known were in Phoenix with me. Yet, except for winning the elections and keeping the rest of the student body amused at assemblies, my attempts to be useful to Phoenix were disasters. They probably have forgotten. I have not. Not long after we had all been accepted into the Club, we had one of those meetings where everyone levels with everyone else in the name of good fellowship and mutual self help. Attending this meeting was a member who had graduated the year before but was taking a few courses before going on to the university. He is one of those gentle servants of the race with a soft cushy sincerity the texture of wet peat moss, who gladly offers tips on how with just a few changes in personality, style of life, deeply ingrained habits, basic character traits, and a radical reformation of your genetic code you could be a lot less like you and a lot more like him. Nothing coercive, you know. Its just up to you. The trouble with me, he purled unctuously, was two fold: I wore my Phoenix sweater entirely too often, and I had fouled up the Phoenix float in the Homecoming parade. There was no doubt about the float. Purling Unction (not his real name) had me there; and if he had not brought the matter up, I was going to make a speech from the floor, offering to resign from the Club, drop out of school, leave the state, and join the British Commandoes on their next raid on the French Coast. I had become the CEO of the Phoenix pledges. Danny Drumiler proposed at the meeting when I was elected that the pledges be in charge of the float for the Homecoming parade, which was to be on November 11, 1942. The proposal was greeted with acclaim. The closest I had ever been to a float was to stand six feet from Harmon Penys horse when it was all decked out for the 24th of July parade. You couldnt see the horse so I figured it was a float. Of chicken wire, colored napkins, crepe paper, papier mache I knew nothing. I formed some committees, which I had heard was a good thing. The committees waited for instructions. I didnt even think of asking La Von Earl to ride on the float, wearing whatever she liked. I truly do not remember what happened after I formed the committees. Not much. I only remember that on Homecoming day, Phoenix was represented by a kind of weatherbeaten hay rack pulled somehow down Washington Avenue, a few Gold and Maroon crepe stringers (or were they Purple and White?) hanging limply from its corners, as if some soggy wind had slapped them down there, a few disconsolate Phoenix pledges standing about on it with nothing to do except to try to die before they were recognized, and a large white banner with large purple letters indicating the sponsor of this treat: P-H-E-O-N-I-X (sic). Soon after, a picture of this float and its banner appeared with-