Hattiesburg, Part 1

2003-09-05 - 10:36 p.m.

A ghost rose from the past last night; my wife and I had a serious discussion about moving back to Hattiesburg. It’s not the first time it’s been talked about, it just happens to be the first time I’ve really felt like it was an actual option. Hattiesburg represents an odd place for me. Apart from the attraction of being the place I met Amber, there’s a lot of Hattiesburg that I’m not sure I want back, but then again…

I was seventeen when I moved away to college. I’d met my roommate two months before my high school graduation at a band clinic. The first time I laid eyes on him he was in torn denim shorts, a black and white striped knit hat with matching Pippy Longstockings socks and combat boots. His shirt read “Get the Fuck out of my head!” The expletive was inverted so as to make everyone crane their necks sideways long enough to get offended and then straighten back out. The fun part about that was, of course, the looks of exasperation mixed with embarrassment they wore as they attempted to right themselves in a dignified fashion.

Joe proved, in the year we lived together, to be a wealth of stories, many of which don’t do to tell in polite company (not that I’m keeping much company, polite or otherwise, these days); he was also one of the most personally generous individuals I’d ever met. Joe was a rock when I needed one. He poured me a drink when I needed it and took away the bottle when he knew it was time. I’ve often credited him with keeping me from drowning in that bottle of Cheavis. He got me safely though my one and only frat party, nursed me through a nasty break-up, and kept me at least as sane as he was. Good man, that.

He wasn’t without his quirks, though. He was, most certainly, a kleptomaniac. He wasn’t prone to stealing from people he knew, but he’d often take strange things from corporations for the amusement of those around him. He had a special proclivity for signs as I recall. He even went so far as to lift a Cherry Icee sign from in-front of the local Mega-Mart and walked with it some two miles back to our dormitory. Understand that this was a considerable feat as the sign was a good two feet taller than him and easily weighed eighty pounds (and Joe not an ounce over 110).

He affixed the sign to our fifth floor window with duct tape and left the hollow steel frame leaning against the disused bicycle which, at the time, occupied the majority of our floor space. I found out later that he’d taken the sign (as he did most things) because his then girlfriend, Audrey, seemed to think the idea was funny. Strange girl, Audrey was; sweet as she could be, but definitely odd in her own way. The sign, as luck would have it, was one of the artifacts which would figure heavily into the story of my first and only frat party. Audrey was there in spirit that night as well, but though those details will not come tonight.

One of the more interesting affectations we southrons trot out in describing things like this is to say that Joe “didn’t mean nothing by it.” That is to say, he didn’t steal to hurt; he stole to make people laugh. There are those who believe that Robinhood was just a thief, end of story; I pity them. Some folks will never know that bad can be good; it’s a lesson I’m still learning myself.

Beyond any of this though, Joe was the person at Southern who most often reminded me to be me. I’m not sure how he figured out who exactly that was before I did, but more often than not he was right. He wasn’t always right (lord knows he was far from perfect), but at least his heart was in the right place. That’s more than I can say for a lot of people I’ve known.