(by Edward Zeusgany, copyright 2000, all rights reserved)

There are many things that reveal fundamental distinctions between the University of Massachusetts and Amherst College. Spending some time at the U. Mass. Student Union and then traveling directly to the Campus Center at Amherst, provides an opportunity to experience a few of these differences.

The University’s Student Union building, except for the uses to which it is put, looks like an oversized Chevrolet-Oldsmobile car dealership, built in the late forties. The top floor, instead of providing space for executives and accounting, is occupied by the offices of various student organizations; the student newspaper, The Collegian, The Asian Students Association, The Radical Student Union, The Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay Alliance, and others. Homemade signs, posters and flyers are stapled, thumb tacked and scotch taped in unorganized, colorful profusion. The offices themselves are full of run down, second hand furniture, strewn with used paper plates and coffee cups, the organization’s literature, and half full, brass colored, foil lined, cardboard ash trays.

The ground floor contains several lounges, depressing meeting rooms, and a poorly illuminated, great hall, that could have been the show room for the latest model cars, but that is used for dances by various student groups. In the foyer, traffic flows around and past a newsstand in a fury of activity. During the hours of classes, great crowds of students in sneakers, jeans, T-shirts and backpacks stream in myriad directions.

In the basement, there is a huge cafeteria, known as The Hatch. This space could have been the service area, where mechanics would make repairs, perform tune-ups, do oil changes and lube jobs. One wall is dominated by windows that give an impression of the sliding doors to car bays. The floor is mottled gray and black asphalt tile. Tables, suitable for eight or more, are covered with a wood grain plastic veneer, chipped in enough places to reveal the fiberboard beneath. These are accompanied by chairs of aluminum and black plastic. The walls and ceilings are an off-white color. Lighting comes from large square boxed fluorescent tubes, eight four-footers to a set. Comfortably similar to the McDonald’s the students frequented in their home towns, all this is the result of a recent renovation.

Five minutes away, the Campus Center building at Amherst College, is in the Art Deco style and painted pink. About one quarter the size of the U. Mass. facility, it could just as easily serve as the major structure for a modest, suburban country club.

The coffee shop is to the right of the main entrance. It has a parquet floor, each five inch square made of five random strips of various light colored woods. The two tone walls are maroon above a light red-brown separated by a chair rail in white. The window and door frames are also in white. The windows and sashes are a dark blue-green that matches the color of the table tops, while the translucent drapes are a light yellow-brown. From the light gray ceiling, hang milk glass light fixtures, like the bottoms of large bowls filled with a soft luminescence. Half bowls are mounted on the walls.

The flat black pedestals of the round tables, in sizes for two and four persons, are composed of a bottom piece of round wood, a little smaller than the tabletops, from these rise eight dowels arranged in two’s, the cylinders of each pair separated at the bottom and top by a two inch ball. The side chairs, upholstered in tones of maroon and green, are painted flat black to match the pedestals.

The coffee is poured into good quality stone wear. Brewed in small amounts, it is served by a friendly and courteous counter staff. For the tastefully dressed students, sitting mostly alone or with one other person, this and the décor, represent a come down from what they are used to, while for most U. Mass. undergraduates, this coffee shop would be more elegant than their parents’ dining room.

On the second floor, at the rear of the building, there is a cafeteria, and at the front, a hall with a dance floor and furnished like a small, quality night club. Between these are carpeted sitting rooms. One is provided with a sofa and coffee table, facing the working fireplace. At each side wall are a pair of matching wing chairs with round game tables between them. All are in the straight leg, Chippendale style. The walls are peach with oak trim.

It is to this place that Parmly went one morning around eleven on an early October day. The room is little used, and then by people engaged in quiet activity, usually reading. Although off by itself, one can still hear the footfalls and muted conversations of people entering the building on the floor below.

Someone is already there, a person Parmly notices because he looks out of place. The man seems to be in his forties, so can not likely be a student. His clothes are inexpensive, a blue and yellow plaid shirt and light blue slacks. The blue deck shoes he is wearing are worn, but not faded. There are discernible holes along the sides, near the toes. The College faculty has few eccentrics, it was improbable that this fellow was one of them. What he could be, was a mystery to Parmly. His first hypothesis was that the man was the father of a scholarship student.

The fellow was unusually short, slightly more than five feet in height and a little overweight. He needed a haircut, his straight, golden blonde hair was decidedly too long. His eyes were brown. He was wearing glasses and reading a paperback. After sitting for a while, Parmly decided to make an inquiry.

“May I ask what you are reading?” he asked.

“Funeral Rites, by Jean Genet.”

“Do you like it?”

“Yes and no. Some parts are very beautiful, while others approach being ugly.”

“You are offended by the topic?”

“No. I think that I don’t like Genet, the man, very much. I seem to feel a crudeness, almost a brutality, about him. Then, I wonder how such a person can write so handsomely, with such sensitivity and understanding. It challenges what I have thought about people. I have never known someone, who could behave as Genet writes that he behaves, who had such insight about himself and others.”

“Perhaps that is fictional behavior.”

“Possible, but I don’t think so. Details may be changed, but I think that Genet has done many of the things he attributes to himself.”

“He certainly has great intelligence.”

“Yes. You are familiar with his work?”

“I’ve read most of it. May I see the book for a minute?”

“Sure,” the man assented, handing it over.

Parmly quickly scanned the first three pages. “It is as good in English as in the French.”

“You seem very young to have read most of Genet and in the original. It must be very difficult French, if the translation is any indication.”

“I like languages. I seem to pick them up easily. But you seem somewhat old to be a student. Are you a professor?”

“A professor, but not here. Emeritus Professor, actually, at U. Mass.”

“You don’t look anywhere near sixty-five.”

“I took an early retirement. I wanted to spend my time differently.”

“What was your discipline?”

“Education. And are you a student here? I thought that you might be the son of one of the professors, waiting here for his father.”

Parmly laughed. “I thought that you were the father of some student, waiting your son or daughter. Yes, I’m a student. I got an early admission, but I’m older than I look.”

“Me too,” Prof. Heston said. “I’d like a cup of coffee. Would you care to join me?”

“Yes,” Parmly accepted. They went to the coffee shop. Parmly ordered a couple of cookies to go with his coffee. Prof. Heston paid for them both. “On me,” he said.

“Thank you,” Parmly replied, “I’ll treat you sometime.”

Prof. Heston asked Parmly about the courses he was taking. Parmly asked Prof. Heston about the courses that he used to teach. Prof. Heston noticed that the boy always asked about the subject that had been asked of him.

They got around to introducing themselves. Parmly had started addressing Prof. Heston as, “Professor.” “Just call me Bob,” Prof. Heston said. “We were always informal at the School of Education.”

“What is your whole name?”

“Robert Andrew Heston. And yours?”

“Parmly Anson Billings.”

“What do you like to be called?”

“Parmly.”

“That is an unusual first name. An old family name, I would suppose.”

“Yes. Are there lots of Roberts and Andrews in your family?”

“My mother’s family were Campbells and there were many Andrews.”

They went on to other subjects. Each was enjoying the conversation, not wanting it to end. Then Prof. Heston noticed the time, it was after one. “Don’t you have a class? I hope I haven’t made you late,” he worried.

Parmly checked his watch, “I do have to leave soon. It has been really nice talking to you. I hope I’ll see you again.”

Prof. Heston was struck by the sincerity in the boy’s voice. It was as though he meant it. “Well, I’ll probably be here tomorrow around the same time,” he suggested, making an instant decision.

“I’ll look for you,” Parmly proposed, as he rose to go.

Prof. Heston and Parmly spent a considerable amount of time together, during the next few weeks. At Prof. Heston’s suggestion, they visited the Mead Art Museum on campus. Student work formed the main exhibit, at the time. Most of it was quite poor, the best, approached good. There tended to be a lack of inspiration in the selection of subject matter for the paintings. The artists all seemed to have the same objective: to fill up as many canvasses as possible. There were three sculptured heads that were interesting.

Off in a side room, a display of Greek and Roman art was small, but excellent. Prof. Heston was careful not to linger over the vase paintings of men and boys. It was clear from Parmly’s comments that he understood the meaning of those scenes.

They spent an hour in the English, seventeenth century, banqueting room, that had been reconstructed in a wing of the Museum. There were two tall case clocks that Prof. Heston especially liked. He told Parmly of his interest in antiques, but that his own collection was modest, compared with the rare pieces to be seen in that beautifully paneled room. Parmly admired the examples of early German and Dutch stained glass set into the large south facing window.

One warm autumn day, Parmly proposed a long walk around the campus and the town to look at architecture. When they came upon a building that either of them liked, they would try to identify the period of the structure and note any changes that had been made, along with the approximate dates of the modifications. They noticed a regrettable tendency in landscaping.

Fir trees or bushes had been planted as hedges for many of the houses. These had grown very tall, so high that on small lots, the house is left in nearly perpetual gloom. This seemed to them to be too steep a price to pay for privacy. The remarkable thing was the number of homes that had this unfortunate fault. It could almost be taken for the Amherst look, perhaps copied from the Emily Dickinson house.

This was not an unremitting pattern. The parsonage on the common is a Federal style house, with only a single cluster planting of Katsura trees in the front. This house is of the same period as Prof. Heston’s home, where he also has a Katsura. Next to the parsonage is the Lord Jeffery Inn, a rambling brick structure that appears to have had several additions at various times. The attempt to have a consistent style being not quite successful. The look is eighteenth century, but neither Parmly nor Prof. Heston was certain that any of the building was really from that period.

Parmly talked about his time in Europe and how much he enjoyed walking about, to see the unique aspects of each place. Prof. Heston said that he hoped to travel some, now that he was retired. He had spent little time outside the country.

A few days after this excursion, Prof. Heston invited Parmly to attend a concert at the University on Sunday afternoon and then to dinner at Judy’s, a restaurant in town. Prof. Heston picked up Parmly at 3:30, and they drove to Bowker Auditorium. The Madrigal Singers performed first, followed by the Chamber Choir. The former group appeared in period costumes and presented a lovely series of pieces. They were mostly from the early seventeenth century, except for one modern selection by P.D.Q. Bach.

The Choir was dressed in black, fitting since most of their choices could have been sung at a funeral. The texts were good, but the music was boring. The last piece, however, was the world premier of two of Richard Wilbur’s poems, set to music by Robert Stern. This was a relief in comparison to those preceding. The former Poet Laureate and the composer were present for the performance.

Parmly and Prof. Heston drove to the restaurant, where they had to wait twenty minutes for a table. Parmly had scallops and pasta in a cream sauce, cappuccino, and chocolate mousse. Prof. Heston selected shrimp and artichoke heats and a half bottle of Entre Deux Mers, followed by cappuccino. Parmly gave him a taste of the mousse.