More Jesuit training in the 1950s, picking up from my Company Man book, from months ago: the coming of the philosophical mind . . .

. . . In the once great distillery of knowledge, West Baden College, in the great state of Indiana.

What I said last, feeling the loss of literature in our “juniorate,” in Milford, Ohio:

I missed those subjects and predicates all in a row, those Latin and Greek word endings that made all the difference, those linguistic puzzles that had answers I could figure out.  I missed the drama, the characterization, the dialogue, the good, true, and beautiful in glorious, deathless classical and Shakespearean packages. 

Where was truth . . . the supposed payoff for those who no longer had time for beauty?  It was hidden deep within those damn syllogisms.  It was Doctor Dryasdust time.

First-year philosophers, coming off their senior status in a four-tier community, found themselves lowest on a seven-tier totem pole, beneath two classes of philosophy and four of theology, six tiers down from recently vacated top-drawer position at Milford.  This was a new kind of community life with twice as many people from all over the world. Milford was a tight little island with little exposure to what happened beyond our 99 acres and the sleepy town and the hills and woods where we hiked and picnicked, where a trip to the local dentist was a big deal.  There were also new notions about rule observance.  We had been told it separated the wannabes from the real Jesuit thing.  At Milford there was an understanding about when to talk and when to talk in Latin, for instance.  You knew where you stood in the matter and didn’t have to think about it.  At Baden there was no such understanding.  You could get looked at funny if you followed rules too closely, which was annoying and something of a shock, enough to throw you off your feed. Moreover, there were many non-Midwesterners in the mix.  Take the New Yorkers.  It was bad enough you couldn’t always make out what they were saying, for instance.  “Solt” with a long “o” meant “salt.”  The one asking for it might have to point.  And habits might be different.  The mid-town Manhattanite confessed that in his family, wine was the usual dinner drink, not beer.  In ours, wine was for Christmas and Thanksgiving.

New Yorkers were bolder and more prepared to stand up for their rights.  One waxed indignant at a dean’s deciding what degree, Litt.B. or A.B., a philosopher should seek or an English teacher’s supposed force-feeding us English majors with New Criticism, something we had no opinion about. Marylanders were more relaxed.  One of them took relaxation to new levels, giving a speech in which he praised some outlandish New York character, a social lion of sorts—no one to praise, ironically or not, in our setting.  Various faculty were angered at his effrontery. This was Tim O., a cool character, two years ahead of us, whose droll manner and easy ways put him above piddling concerns of house discipline.  He was easy-going, not Eastern so much as Southern, or that peculiar Maryland Province combination of the two.  He appealed to the what-the-hell part of me.  Even when I was 101% for observance, I was always a sucker for the clever fellow with his own way of doing things who did not take himself too seriously. Marylanders in general, who included Pennyslvanians, were easier to know, though one New Yorker comes to mind as a friendly, open fellow, a graduate of a Jesuit high school in New York City, Paul (Pole) B.  Two Marylanders in our year, Jack B. and John K., were old shoes.

K. was an athletic little guy who became part of a small-man basketball team (with one big guy) we called Liliputians.  B. was a roly-poly fellow who did something athletic once when he was very small and decided it was a bad idea.  Both were English majors in our master’s degree classes, which we took at the rate of one a semester as tagalong with our philosophy classes.  “You mean you like this stuff?” K. once asked when I confessed a love for Chaucer.  I could laugh that off coming from him.  B. was more dry, self-possessed, and academic in interests. Another Marylander, Jim S., took me to task a few years later, when I expressed dissatisfaction with Hemingway’s style.  We were taking summer courses at Loyola U.  He couldn’t abide my comment and set me straight on a number of points.  I appreciated it, as much for his straightforward professional enthusiasm as for what he said.  Years later, when I was on my way out of the Jesuits, a nun friend asked what I would do for conversation.  She had a point there.  I have never quite matched it, though newspaper people came close.

A BIGGER COCOON

In any case, at Baden we were out of the Milford cocoon into a passable version of the wide, wide world.  The local surroundings were a shock.  Milford was pleasant and cozy.  There was nothing cozy about West Baden Springs, a rough old spot on the highway with a gaudy, even tawdry past.  The college, the former West Baden Springs Hotel, had been a resort and gambling mecca frequented by mobster Al Capone and other high rollers.  It closed in 1932, done in by the Depression but also by the newly emerging Florida-vacation option.  The Jesuits came two years later with their “college,” and the locals thought the brothels would have a rebirth.  Disappointed, some decided it was the saltpeter—potassium nitrate, for centuries suspected of cooling sexual ardor—slipped into our soup that explained our continence.  On this point, Cecil Adams of “Straight Dope” fame at the Chicago Reader, debunking the notion, has wisdom to offer: “All in all, there’s still no substitute for the cold shower.”  That and meditation, the Jesuits would say. The building itself was grand and cold.  Lee Wiley Sinclair had built it in 1901, installing a huge dome supported by the walls, 100 feet high at its apex (world’s highest until the Houston Astrodome in 1965, with its 208 feet), over a gorgeous terrazzo-tiled “atrium” floor, a sort of promenade and indoor plaza in the round.

— More to come, of Company Man: My Jesuit Life, 1950-1968 —