Chapter 45

Was ... operative word ... was. The ‘63 is in my garage ... oops ... hangar. There she sits ... with my SPAD, my pair of Fokker’s, my 544 and my 1934 Ford Tudor.

And my tools.

Sometimes ... when I’m not teaching ... I want to get sweaty, greasy and bloody my knuckles. The Townwagon is now a powerwagon thanks to a junkyard 1967 D-200 4x4 frame and a 1977 Dodge 340 that started out life in the ‘77 but went through a thorough Crate rebuild from Traverse City Rebuilds.

In case you hadn’t noticed, Tolkien was right. Days with no drama are pretty boring and no fun to read about ... and harder to write. By the time I was 20 I had been teaching undergrad advanced classes for two years. Before I was 17 daddy had me tutoring and teaching the 100 and 101 classes.

The looks I got when I walked up to the whiteboards.

“Good Morning, Welcome to Basic College Algebra.” I turned to the board and wrote ... in cursive ... Selene Dent Algebra 101 University of Texas Austin. “If you can’t read that, we are going to have a problem. There WILL be homework...” that got a big groan... “assigned on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. This is a ‘must pass’ class for a University degree. I am no pushover ... you WILL do the work ... if not for me then for one of a rotating group of new instructors.

“Most of us do not speak English as a first language ... some if us don’t speak English at all. We write it well enough to pass written entrance tests.

“That said ... I will do my best.” Here, I had to consult with a list. “If you are more comfortable with American Sign Language, Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Chinese—Mandarin only, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Haitian Creole, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Tibetan, Urdu, Wolof or Zulu ... we have tutors or native speaking instructors ... transfer is available to a class with one of those instructors.

“I hope you do. This class room seats one thousand. If you all stay, my life is going to suck.”

I grinned.

They giggled or chuckled or outright laughed.

“Now for the good parts ... I am 16 ... Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies Dent is my father ... You men out there ... looking at me like you look at your female peers will put you in an invidious situation.”

“Any questions?”

Half the group raised a hand.

I pointed.

He pointed to the white board, “What’s that?”

“Cursive.”

“Never heard of it,” he said.

Three quarters of the half with raised hands agreed.