English 101: Summer 1962

my textbook that summer

In the summer of 1962, my parents thought it would be a good idea if I got kind of a "head start" on Hiram College. I had just graduated from Hiram High School, and they urged (forced?) me to enroll in English 101, Freshman English, that summer.

Why not? I didn't have a job--didn't want a job.

I was living at home--as I would throughout my freshman year--and every day walked up Hiram's north hill to class--a half a mile?

The first day the room was fairly full in that classroom in old Hinsdale Hall (razed long ago by fools). I already knew the teacher: We lived in Hiram; my dad was head of the Division of Education; my older brother (by three years) had been in this prof's class, too. Dr. Charles F. McKinley, a small, dapper man with a resonant voice, a wee mustache, an ironic sense of humor, a deep affection for literature.

The class was formal. I was still seventeen years old (would not turn eighteen until November), and so it was very odd to me when Dr. McKinley called all of us "Mr." or "Miss." Mr. Dyer was my dad!

We read stories and poems in Interpreting Literature--and, sadly for me, Macbeth, which I had not been able to manage in high school (what is it with this Shakespeare?!?), and now here it was again--Thanes and ghosts and the murder of a child and witches and words I didn't understand--lots of words I didn't understand.

We wrote some essays. The subject of the only one I remember was this: "The Artist's Concern for Human Values."

I had no idea what that meant--but asked my mom (an English teacher at nearby James A. Garfield High School in Garrettsville). She explained it in words I could understand (i.e., one-syllable words), and I wrote the thing but had no idea what I was writing about.

But what I want to talk briefly about here is one poem we read in that book--a short one by Emily Dickinson--"A Bird Came Down the Walk." Here's the whole thing the way it appears on p. 321 in that book (not the way Miss Emily had originally capitalized and punctuated, by the way):

A bird came down the walk:

He did not know I saw:

He bit an angle worm in halves

And ate the fellow, raw,

And then, he drank a dew

From a convenient grass,

And then hopped sidewise to the wall

To let a beetle pass.

He glanced with rapid eyes,

That hurried all abroad,--

They looked like frightened beads, I thought,

He stirred his velvet head.

Like one in danger, cautious,

I offered him a crumb,

And he unrolled his feathers,

And rowed him softer home

Than oars divide the ocean,

Too silver for a seam,

Or butterflies, off banks of noon,

Leap, plashless, as they swim.

I couldn't believe that Dr. McKinley could spend a half an hour on this little poem, which, in some ways, I saw as amazingly simple: a bird's walking around, gets startled, flies off.

I didn't get the unrolling of feathers and rowing; and plashless--could that even be a real word? (It is.) Too silver for a seam? What ...?!?

I got a B in that class (probably something of a gift--though I learned later that Dr. McKinley did not give a lot of A's). And I would later take a few other courses from him--courses which I loved--courses in which, invariably, I got a B.

(I learned partway through the course, by the way, that quite a few of my classmates were repeating English 101!)

Even later, we became friends. He lived in Hudson (he died in his 90s), and we saw him now and then--especially at the library. Went to dinner with him. Went to his home, where, on the wall, he had a signed note from Yeats that he'd acquired in Ireland.

And that poem has stayed with me. I memorized it some years ago and mumble it several mornings a week so that I don't forget it.

And, oh, do I love those last six lines now. I see a butterfly, not on the bank of a stream, but of noon, leaping--making no splash (no water!)--and swimming off into the summer air.

Oh my.

And I cannot read that poem--cannot recite that poem--without seeing the eyes of Dr. McKinley on me, hearing his lovely voice ask me. "Well, Mr. Dyer, what do you see here?"

Then, I saw nothing. Now ... a magical moment in a classroom in 1962.