Guest column

An annual rite of passage

In his 1890 oil canvas Breaking Home Ties, artist Thomas Hovenden depicts a young man in the center of a late 19th-Century rural American room. He is being embraced by his apron-clad mother. To the far left is a fireplace, above which is a large mantelpiece with period ornaments. A young woman is sitting disconsolately with her back to the fireplace. Her left hand is on her lap, her right hand is positioned lovingly at the base of the attentively poised family dog's head.

In the background is a cupboard with one door ajar. To the right, sitting at the table, is a frail old woman whose stooping frame is an emphatic juxtaposition to the young lad's pulsating vibrancy. Behind the old woman is an adolescent girl. Looking in from outside this cozy embryonic setting is a gentleman who appears to be holding a horse whip. Even though his back is to the viewer, the father, carrying his son's valise, is perhaps the most important affirmation that this young man is cutting his apron strings and will soon be catapulted into the adult world.

While it is likely that Hovenden's composition is a statement on the dissolution of small family farms due to the proliferation of the Industrial Revolution in America and the burgeoning urbanization which began in 1820, Norman Rockwell's painting under the same title and with similar overtones depicts a young farm boy heading off to college.

In a 1960 statement, Rockwell is quoted as having said that his three sons' attending college or joining the military had inspired him to paint Breaking Home Ties in 1953-54, an oil canvas of a man, his son, and their dog as they await a train that will take the boy to college, that became the illustration for the September 25, 1954, cover of the Saturday Evening Post.

"My three boys had gone away and I had an empty feeling. It took me a while to adjust without them. This poignancy was what I wanted to get across in the picture," he said. Commenting about the father, Rockwell said "... the father couldn't show how he felt about the boy's leaving. The dog did."

For years now I have utilized Breaking Home Ties during the first week of my freshman English composition and art appreciation classes. The discussions have focused on the role of and interplay between the animate and inanimate elements in the composition's techniques. Not only do the discussions serve as icebreakers, but they also contribute to animated discussions that set the stage for the first writing assignment: to compare personal leaving-for-college-experiences to Rockwell's young chap.

While a comparative analysis of these paintings' tonal, emotional and historic perspectives is worthwhile, my intent is to fast-forward to my 1965 departure from Beirut, Lebanon, to attend college in far-off Arkansas. With $300 in my pocket and all my worldly possessions packed into two suitcases and a carry-on, 49 years ago this month I landed in New York City, spent a couple of days with a cousin and a week with my twin brother in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, then proceeded to Arkansas for the longest bus trip in my life. After purchasing a $35 one-way bus ticket, I had $265 left for books and spending money to last the entire year.

A tuition scholarship and campus and off-campus employment paid my expenses. The dorm into which I moved, three to a room with bunk beds, meant that learning to share tight quarters turned into learning the art of portioning and accommodation. Privacy in the small rooms and the communal bathroom (showers and toilets) was a rare commodity, for the latter had to be shared with scholars and non-scholars as well as baseball jocks. A pay phone, bolted to the wall, served as the link to family and loved ones, an expensive luxury exercised only on rare occasions. It was frequently appropriated by a star pitcher who'd spend hours sweet-talking a prospective paramour.

The dorm's front lobby was the communal living room in which scores of students congregated to watch news and sports events on a small black-and-white screen. It was also the ideal venue to socialize and cement lifelong friendships. With a deepening involvement in Vietnam and annulled student deferments, students paid careful attention to Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Roger Mudd, and Walter Cronkite as they reported on the unfolding carnage in Vietnam, the place where, we were repeatedly told, "was the place to stop Communism before it came to our shores."

For supplemental income there were glass Coke bottles redeemed for cash, lawns to be mowed, hamburgers to be flipped, and pizza and chicken to be rolled and fried and served at local fast-food stores. There was a summer job at a Fort Worth boys' summer camp. Another job was selling a three-volume set of Bible commentaries in Charlotte, North Carolina (I quit in a couple of weeks because I could not live with the thought that I was peddling spiritual promises for material gain). Working at a Charlotte tire recapping company taught me perseverance and patience and tested my physical endurance.

The worst job was treating electric poles with creosote on back roads and bogs infested with ticks, mosquitoes, copperheads and water moccasins. The best job was a three-week stint as a model for a boat factory promo brochure.

And in my senior year I would buy my first car, a high-mileage 1961 two-tone white and green Chevrolet Impala whose front seat rocked back and forth because of a malfunctioning spring. At 18 and 20 cents per gallon of gasoline, the $150 invested in this jalopy, plus hard work and perseverance, helped set me up for the next phase of my life: marriage and graduate school.

A kaleidoscope of historic social and political changes and upheavals served as the backdrop for an education beyond the secure and serene confines of our college campus. A deeper and wider involvement in Vietnam, six days of rioting and carnage in Watts, the Kent State shootings, anti-war demonstrations, the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the Civil Rights protests, the women's movement, the Beatles, the counter-culture with its draft-card burnings powered by peace signs and flower decals, Woodstock, and, with the landmark publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, a new awareness about the delicate balance between man and his environment emerged.

Today's college students arrive on campus in a caravan of parent-driven SUVs and extended-cabin pickups loaded with stuff. They move into condominium-style wall-to-wall carpeted bedrooms that flank spacious kitchenetted living areas. A whole morning or afternoon might be spent hauling refrigerators, super-sized flat-screen tellies, an arsenal of electronic gadgetry, reclining chairs, bed coverings with matching drapes, suitcases full of attire, and other worldly goods befitting a luxurious lifestyle such as no generation had previously fancied.

Parents seem to always want their children to have more than they did, such as new cars, credit and debit cards, plenty of cash on demand, and 24/7 phone, text, and Facebook communication detailing every moment of every hour of every day of every month of the year.

These young people live for the most part in an insular world removed from serious issues. These include a stalemated impasse on resolving illegal immigration, an anemic economy, climate change, political corruption, social unrest, and wars raging in Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe.

Each generation has met the challenges thrown at them by the inevitable and unforeseen forces. While I have faith this new generation will discover new and hopefully better paradigms, I am certainly glad that my send-off into the real world occurred in August of 1965.

Raouf J. Halaby is a professor of English and art at Ouachita Baptist University. A version of this column recently appeared in a weekend edition of CounterPunch.

Editorial on 09/14/2014

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