And that was when Joe States said, Hey yeah, man, but let me tell you something else. About what I’m talking about when I say what I say about being down-home people. I’m talking about somebody got all them knockout cover girl good looks and all that college girl class about her, who I bet you a hundred to one can also step into the kitchen and stir up a batch of some of them old-time Mobile tea cakes. Just like the ones that come from the old Rumford Baking Powder recipe, the ones your mama used to roll out like biscuit dough and cut out with a top of a baking powder can. Man, what I’m talking about is somebody that can do what your mama or your favorite aunt or even your grandma can do, because she’s them kind of people along with everything else. Hey, and with them same honey brown fingers that make you realize what all that diamond and gold stuff in Tiffany’s is really made for. One hundred to one, first come, first served, and I know my bet is safe because I know my main man here.
On the bus rolling uptown from Fourth Street along Sixth Avenue I began thinking about how Miss Lexine Metcalf would be most likely to feel when she found out that I was back in school again; and I was pretty certain that I knew what she would tell her present group of students at Mobile County Training School about me and I hoped that they felt the way I always felt about her because she was the one who made me realize that the also and also of school bell time was not as different from the also and also of Miss Tee’s storybook times in Mama’s rocking chair and yarn-spinning time in Papa Gumbo Willie McWorthy’s barbershop as I and perhaps the majority of people had taken for granted because of the stern sound of period bells and harsh actuality of passing and failing grades.
As the bus rolled on toward Herald Square I was thinking about how Miss Lexine Metcalf was also the one who made it a point to keep reminding me every now and then even when I was still in junior high school that I should never forget that I just might be one of the very special ones who would have to travel far and wide to find out what it is that I may have been put here on earth to make of myself.
Which is why as we came on through the intersection of Broadway and Sixth Avenue at Thirty-fourth Street, I was also thinking about my old roguish-eyed freshman and sophomore roommate again who, when I told him about what Miss Lexine Metcalf used to say about faring forth, said, hithering, thithering, and yondering, picaresquely but not quixotically, one hopes. Because in quest and maybe even conquest rather than serendipity. Because such a quest is for clues, my good man. That Miss Lexine Metcalf of yours is right on target.
And so was my Miss Jewel Templeton of Hollywood, when she said what she said in the south of France about magic keys (some sharp, some flat, some natural; some solid gold, some sterling silver, some perhaps even platinum, or in fact of any other alloy, whether already in existence or yet to come).
And so also was my good old roommate himself with his yea, verily as he scribbled each entry in the notebook in which he recorded evidence that he called the goods that added up to his personal estimate of the situation for the time being. So was he on target, who was the one who said what he said about necessity being the mother of the invention of fathers and who was also to say what he said about the function of father figures as symbols of direction and thus also of detours.
At the Forty-second Street stop I used the rear exit, and as I came along the sidewalk past Bryant Park and up the steps to the side entrance to the library I was still thinking of my old roommate and I wondered how long it would take his next letter from wherever he was to get to me from the last forwarding address that I had sent to his last forwarding address, and I couldn’t help guessing what he would say about my being back in school and about my new roommate.
I took the elevator up to the third floor and came around the corner and along the hall and turned into the old card index area. Then from the checkpoint for the south wing of the main reading room I could see that I had arrived in time to get the table and seat that I had already become used to settling into as if into my own private cubicle.
II
By the first week in October I began to feel that I was getting used to being back on an academic schedule once again without really missing a beat and that I was also beginning to be used to staying on in New York City longer than the three- to fourteen-day periods that I had spent working there from time to time when I was with the band. Because back then sometimes it would be on a three-day stopover for a dance and maybe a two-day recording session, or maybe one or
