The Magic Show

My name is Dan Kristich, and you haven’t heard from me since 1962 when I was seventeen. Well, I’m twenty-eight years old now and stuck in Spokane, Washington. I guess I’ve lived in worse places, but it’s hard to imagine where. I suppose Long Island was worse or at least just as bad. After one year at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, I couldn’t believe what had happened to Nick Carraway’s, or F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, “fresh green breast of the New World.” Even more trees had vanished by 1970, but that was understandable. I gladly would have traded the porno houses of Lake Ronkonkoma and the demolition derby track at Central Islip for the decadent, opulent vitality of Gatsby’s parties. At least Gatsby believed in something that transcended the decadent opulence his dream attracted. The people of Long Island left behind the teeming streets of New York City, and I guess that had to happen as well. But did they have to trade Yankee Stadium, Ebbetts Field, and the Polo Grounds for the demolition derby track at Central Islip? Is an island paradise really the demolition derby capital of the world?

New York City, just as I saw it, inspired me. The city was ugly, dirty, and scary but grand, majestic, and alive at the same time. I thought I could learn the secret of life from the city if I wanted to and if I studied it long enough. If I didn’t want to, or couldn’t, live there, at least I could learn how to live wherever I might choose. But Long Island only awakened the desire to leave as soon as possible. The people had dignity and deserved better. Somehow the rows of fake rich, suburban houses didn’t do as much for them as did the tenements of the city neighborhoods they left behind in search of the good life. I found it awfully depressing to watch dignified, courageous individuals chase a dream that wasn’t worth the dignity of the pursuit.

But that’s not all. You should have seen the university the state had carved out of this island paradise that “once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams.” By 1970 I knew the era of university education -- and of life -- that I had enjoyed had ended, but I’d never seen anything like this. Utilitarian and unimaginative buildings dominated a desolate campus, enhanced by the ongoing construction, as sand and cement pock-marked the landscape that, I believed, would hardly change once the heavy equipment left the scene. No one seemed to care, and somehow a university devoid of any antiquity always would be missing something. At the same time, a modern university always would seem out of place standing near a sleepy Long Island village with the quaint name of Stony Brook. I smiled as I imagined Walt Whitman cringing at such juxtaposition.

The modern university buildings displayed no character when compared to the ivy-covered walls of the celebrated groves of academe of the more established, and prestigious, universities of the East or when compared to the whitewashed, steepled churches that housed Long Island and New England pulpits. Maybe our Western citadels of learning couldn’t match those of the East in antiquity, but at least they could match them in taste and design. At least the Corinthian columns and Gothic arches, that decorated administration and academic buildings on our Western campuses, powerfully evoked the illusion of respect for learning and wisdom. I couldn’t see the sharp lines and straight angles of modern, rational architecture creating the same effect for the contemporary generation of Stony Brook students. It all seemed like an expression of a wanton disdain for the past, and I couldn’t help thinking that if Rip Van Winkle were to awaken here, on Long Island in 1970, he would quickly resume his slumber.

I think two simple words -- loud and obnoxious -- accurately describe Stony Brook’s students. If they weren’t inherently obnoxious, they certainly worked hard at affecting such behavior, managing to obliterate any natural dignity that may grace our species. Faded jeans, sloppy, flannel shirts, and unkempt, stringy hair marked male and female, Jew and Gentile without distinction or discrimination. In contrast, during my college years I can remember having to wear a coat and tie every Sunday to dinner without ever questioning the imposed rule. And I can remember the females of the species just as smartly attired in their appropriate Sunday dresses and skirts. I can understand liberation from oppressive rules, and I can understand the lack of freedom that results from obedience to coercive authority, and I have no use for those who would self-righteously groom themselves and dress in their tailored Ivy League costumes, claiming superiority over those who choose otherwise. But this was too much.

Maybe we finally were liberated from the coercive authority of churches, schools, and governments. But were we really this ignorant? Couldn’t some of the order, structure, and form -- once imposed on us to make life at least look pleasant -- emerge from within us in this liberated era? For the first time I found myself honestly thinking about William Wordsworth’s romantic anguish. Didn’t I, too, “have reason to lament what man has made of man?”

I come from the quiet grandeur that is Montana, the Big Sky Country, and I was totally unprepared for the loud decadence that characterized Stony Brook. I had learned to associate quiet demeanor with dignity and courage. My mother and father, as well as my uncles and aunts, worked hard in Butte, and they were quiet. My uncles, as honest reflections of Butte’s male citizenry, could be loud when they sampled their whiskey as part of the celebration of life, but Butte remained -- primarily – a temperate city alive with vitality. I couldn’t wait to grow up to be an active part of it all.

Stony Brook, however, was different. The loud behavior I encountered --undignified, depressing, and constant -- didn’t stem from any sense of celebration that I could recognize. As the manager of a complex of four dormitory buildings, a Quad, I had to call an introductory meeting with all my managerial assistants shortly after I had arrived on campus following my cross country journey that began in Oregon, where I had been teaching English in high school, and included a short stay in Butte where my mother and some of my aunts and uncles still lived. New York to them, and to me -- even though I had spent five days in the city in September of 1964 en route to school in Florence, Italy, along with eightynine other Gonzaga University undergraduates -- meant Times Square, the Empire State Building, Radio City Music Hall, Central Park, and Yankee Stadium. Now I was going to live close to all those sights, only fifty miles further east on Long Island. Still, the reality I had chosen never actually sank in until I arrived on campus, got acquainted with my job, and read the names of the MA’s -- the managerial assistants -- who would be working with me.