Lake honor, p.4
Lake Honor, page 4
He was friends with my ex-wife through Facebook. I never realized that until we started talking again. He was the same guy I remembered: happy, never complaining, funny and always optimistic.
His life had not gone as well as I had hoped. Life had been tough for him, but I don’t think he would ever admit it. His health had deteriorated. He rarely left the house now. He was divorced, alone. He had two grown daughters, but I sensed they had moved away and rarely contacted him anymore. He hadn’t changed, but things weren’t easy for him.
As I mentioned, we connected through Facebook. Over time, by reading his posts and comments from his friends, I realized that he had lived a full life and was quite popular. That didn’t surprise me. Charlie had a heart of gold. He was the type of person who always made you feel good. He was the type of person everyone wanted to be around. And I was encouraged to know it.
As a freshman away from home for the first time, I didn’t immediately connect with Charlie. He was a likable guy, but we didn’t seem to have anything in common. He had grown up in a small town in the hills of the Ozarks. He enjoyed hunting, fishing, drinking, and partying in general. I was a jock who grew up in the city. Before I met him, I hadn’t even had a beer before. I was the city boy, but I was the conservative one. I only cared about two things then: running and studying. I missed my mother’s cooking. I missed the smell of his father’s pipe in the family room. I missed the laughter of my home in Kansas City. I was even beginning to miss my little brother, Dennis. He was six years younger than me and constantly getting into my stuff.
I had looked forward to going away to college for so long. I thought that I was ready for my freedom, my independence. I never realized how much I would miss those times when I was so anxious to leave. Most of all, I missed Nancy.
I dated Nancy during my senior year. She was a junior. We met while working together at Taco Bell. We both worked evenings and weekends to put gas in our cars and save money for college. We became friends first and then began dating. She was smart, funny and attractive. She was my first real love. Looking back, she represented home for me. And now I was in this foreign place. The Ozarks were completely alien to me. It was a place where people were kind yet secretive; humble, determined; wise, and liked to play dumb. The people of the Ozarks would spell words on billboards backward and talk in Hillbilly wearing overalls for city folk like me who visit and call it country charm, all while raking in their money at Pressley’s or Silver Dollar City. It was a place of contradictions, and I wasn’t sure if I belonged.
I had left my family, friends and girlfriend for a place that seemed so isolated, that felt so lonely. I remember the days were tolerable. Classes, studying and training kept me plenty busy. And being busy was good. I was surrounded by people. But nights were agonizing. I was in a tiny, cold, dark dormitory room with a roommate I didn’t know, nor did I particularly like at first. I didn’t understand Charlie.
School seemed like a vacation to him. He partied late almost every night. He skirted the rules. Charlie had so many friends, and our room was the gathering point for them. Their routine was nearly the same every night. After school, they would congregate in our room to make plans for the evening. There were always parties going on around the lakes during the early days of Fall.
They would decide which ones to go to. Or maybe, they just grab a six-pack or two and go down to the lake. No one in his group of friends was of legal age to drink, but Charlie had a believable fake ID. And that, combined with his looks, a man several years older than nineteen normally was enough to get him what he wanted at the area liquor stores.
Track and cross-country practice would normally last until 6 p.m. or so. Then I’d eat in the cafeteria, and afterward, I’d go to the library to study. By 8 p.m., the group in my room was usually cleared out, and I’d return to the dorm. There were times that I would get upset with Charlie, mainly when he’d come back to the room late and wake me from a sound sleep. But I could never stay mad very long. There was something about his personality that made it impossible to stay mad with him. I never saw him angry. I never heard him say a bad word about anyone. He was happy-go-lucky all the time.
I had very little in common with most of the students. Looking back on it now, I was a bit of a snob. It wasn’t that I thought that I was better than anyone else. I just felt that I was different. I was a city boy, living his entire life in the suburbs of Kansas City.
Most of the other students grew up in rural Missouri or Arkansas and enjoyed the simple pleasures of life: fishing, hunting, and drinking. I grew up in a middle-class family. I had only fished once in my life and had never gone hunting. I enjoyed what the city had to offer, malls, fast food restaurants, baseball and football and plenty of movie theatres. The Ozarks offered none of those things. I felt I was their fish out of water.
S of O was deep in the Ozarks, just 10 miles from the Arkansas border. All the students who attended the school worked for it. Students worked a minimum of twenty hours per week to pay for their tuition, room and board. Most students worked additional hours to pay for incidentals.
The student body consisted predominantly of young men and women who had struggled in life. Most were first-generation college students. Their parents couldn’t afford a traditional education for their children. S of O was a blessing. Only about one in eight students who applied for admission was accepted. Church, work and education, very much in that order, were the focal points of campus life.
Freedoms were limited. Students could not have cars on campus. There was a student lot off-campus. It was locked from 9:30 p.m. to 8 a.m. every night. Dormitories were locked up at 10 p.m. on weekdays and 11p.m. on weekends. Students had to be in their rooms when the dormitory was locked down. There were dress codes that required women to wear dresses and men to wear slacks or khakis with button-down shirts.
Attendance at all classes and school-sponsored events was mandatory unless there was an excused absence. Rules were strict and inflexible. Expulsions were a common punishment. S of O was a no-nonsense college. It was a privilege to be accepted, and to get a quality, free education. Graduates had little trouble getting jobs, although most job offers tended to come from businesses in or near the Ozarks. In recent years, the College of the Ozarks had become known as a cultural and political hub for Christian conservatism. Nicknamed Hard Work U., the Keeter Center at Point Lookout had hosted speakers including Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, President George W. Bush, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and General Colin Powell, among others. It was, in many ways, always aiming to be a shining light on a hill.
In my time, most students conformed to the rules and standards the school required. They realized what a wonderful opportunity the school had given them. Some, a small minority of the student body, resisted conformity. Usually, they were weeded out in a quick fashion.
Every student, during their first day of orientation, was assigned a job on campus. Many worked in jobs for which they had experience or had demonstrated an aptitude. But faith came first. The student body was hand-picked for their Christian values, and job skills were secondary. Students just needed to be prepared to learn and work.
S of O was unique from any other college in that the campus was completely self-sufficient. It didn’t rely on outside services. Everything needed to operate the school was done on campus. Further, the school sold products they developed to outside stores and businesses. And it generated considerable revenue from those sales. This was its dirty secret. This was how the school made its money. A free education meant you hustled. And like so much else in these hills and valleys, the secret was no secret. No one hid from the truth. The truth lay bare in the open.
Being where it was, even in the 70s, it was a tourist attraction. Nestled just south of Branson and the Silver Dollar City resort areas, S of O had a very popular restaurant on campus, a large general store that sold items students made, as well as a bakery and ice cream shop the students ran. It had a Christian bookstore and a small bed and breakfast that was booked months in advance. The tourist area was contained on the northern edge of campus, away from the dormitories and classrooms. But separated or not, it was always more than a center for learning or a fountain of faith. It was big business, too.
On Sundays, visitors flocked to campus for a church service dedicated just to them. Students attended church at 7 a.m. on Sundays. At 11 a.m., a special service took place at the stone chapel. That service was for visitors and alumni only. Colorful flowers were brought in to ordain every corner of the church. The student choir, in full gowns, were present. The service took on a spirit reminiscent of a fine tele-evangelist service. The entire service was a production designed to impress the visitors into giving large donations and departing with some of their disposable income. It worked very effectively. The campus restaurant and stores were packed for the remainder of Sunday afternoons.
The school’s administrators were geniuses at marketing. Sure, they gave their students and the parents exactly what they promised, a quality, Christian-based education centered around a strong work ethic. But, first and foremost, they sold a utopian view of life on campus. The school’s reputation was impeccable, and they did whatever was necessary to keep it that way.
From an outsider’s point of view, S of O appeared remarkable. They had their own police and fire departments, an electrical plant on campus provided all the needed electricity and even sold the excess back to local communities. They had a sprawling farm that raised cattle, hogs, chickens and turkeys that were slaughtered to provide food for the students while excess meat was sold to local restaurants and grocery stores. They raised vegetables and fruit trees and had the largest dairy farm in the area. The campus had its own canning facility and a large pond where catfish were harvested and appeared on the menu at the campus restaurant. It was farm-to-table long before that was a trend. There was a tailor shop that made clothes that were sold in their gift shop. Every job on campus was done by students. It was like no other college in America. The school accumulated great wealth over the years, but it was a quiet wealth. It was a wealth few people knew about. The image they portrayed was that of a struggling college in desperate need of donations and support. While it was a beautiful place, the campus always had things in need of repair. That was exactly the image they wanted outsiders to have of S of O.
Donations came into the school from all over the country. It was a college that people wanted to believe in. It provided free education to students that desperately needed it. But, more than that, S of O provided education to the right students, the cream of the crop, the students that were most deserving, the students that would make good citizens and good Christians.
S of O was a success story like no other. They had worked hard to groom their reputation, and they worked equally hard to maintain it. There was always a darkness behind the façade that the administration tried so hard to maintain. It was a darkness that crept through the underbelly of campus life. It was a darkness that few knew anything about. It was a darkness that I would soon discover.
I came to S of O because I had nowhere else to go. My parents couldn’t afford to send me to college.
A few months earlier, I hoped I’d get an athletic scholarship that would pay for all or most of my college education. Several college coaches were talking to me. I had a successful cross-country season in the fall and had done well during the indoor track season earlier in the year. Everything looked bright. I had talked to several college coaches. I felt that an athletic scholarship was in my grasp. Then, I got sick. Doctors found inflammation around my heart. And my unexpected setback would take months to fully heal. My scholarship hopes disappeared. After my older brother Ron told me about S of O, I talked to their cross-country coach, Trey Marks, who had led the team to the NAIA Nationals or sent at least one runner for six consecutive years.
The school did not give out athletic scholarships, although they did reduce work requirements for student athletes. There was one big catch, though: I would need to go through the same process as all the other applicants for acceptance. I had to get a recommendation letter from my minister. I had to provide recommendations from my principal, employer, and five others. My parents would need to show tax returns and provide financial information to show that they could not afford to pay for college tuition.
I completed everything that was required, and then I waited. Two weeks went by. Finally, Coach Marks phoned me.
“You’ve been accepted, Alan,” he said. “You need to be here August 3 to get set up and begin training.”
The day I was scheduled to leave for school, my girlfriend Nancy showed up to say goodbye. I hoped she would, but I didn’t expect it. After all, we had agreed to part ways when I left for college. I packed my ‘69 cherry red Volkswagen Beetle, said goodbye to my parents, gave Nancy a final, tearful kiss and drove the nearly two hundred and fifty miles south to S of O. Hard work was waiting.
I received my work assignment the second day I was on campus. I was assigned to the Ozark Family Restaurant. It was the visitor and guest restaurant at the entrance to campus. I had a unique talent that was in need at the restaurant: I could drive a stick shift. The Volkswagen I drove was a three-speed. That talent came in handy at the restaurant. Supplies and deliveries for both the restaurant and the adjacent gift shop were made in a ten-year-old, beat-up Ford van that had a standard transmission and a challenging stick shift.
I soon discovered the delivery van was every bit as temperamental as my beetle had been when I first learned to drive it. But, in a short time, I was able to get around well without stalling out or jumping with every shift.
Making deliveries and picking up supplies was an easy job. Others loaded the van, and others emptied it. All I had to do was drive ten hours a week, most of that on weekends. My deliveries enabled me to see how vast the campus was. Most people had no idea how vast the school property was. S of O had quietly accumulated hundreds of acres of surrounding land over the years, stretching to the mountains on two sides and including most of the valley area nestled between three lakes.
The dairy was in the far northeast corner of campus, down a winding dirt road where there were fields of corn, wheat, barley and soy on either side. About a mile onto the dirt road was a large wire fence with a gate. It was locked. I had been given a key to unlock it. The wire fence ran the entire perimeter of the campus. Until my first delivery to the dairy farm, I had assumed the wire fence marked the end of S of O’s property line. I was wrong. The school’s property went well beyond the wire fences. The dairy farm was huge, extending another two miles or so beyond the fence line.
One oddity I noticed about the farm—its workers were older, local laborers. They weren’t students. I had been told all work positions on the campus were filled by students. To the north of the dairy farm were the transportation building and lot. S of O had its own fleet of school buses and vans that were used for school travel, mainly by the athletic department for transporting athletes to various events.
Cross Country training began the second day I was on campus. Coach Marks had arranged for my work assignments to be flexible so as not to interfere with practice or classes. S of O was accommodating in that regard. Every job on campus worked around classes, athletic schedules and church.
A strong Christian education was the promise of S of O to all prospective students and their parents, and the Stone Chapel was the centerpiece of that effort. The church was founded in 1905 by Rev. James Forsythe, a Presbyterian missionary focused on filling the need he saw in the area for a Christian education. From the beginning then, hard work and disciplined living were expected.
For me, no one person embodied the local work ethic like Coach Marks. His workouts were legendary and brutal.
The intensity of Coach Marks’s workouts far exceeded anything I experienced in high school. We worked out two and three times a day, running up hills, on backroads, climbing stairs, on the track, and in the gym. They left me exhausted and in terrible pain. My leg muscles tightened up at night, making it difficult to walk. After dinner, I went to the library, studied for a while, then returned to the dorm and went straight to bed. But the workouts were paying off. I was in the best shape I had ever been in. My heart was strong, and my legs were running harder and faster than any time before. And yet, it felt like I was on an island. Or a work camp for felons. My life had become work, run, sleep, repeat. Being on the team was a lonely existence.
There were plenty of attractive girls at S of O. They were different from the girls I had been used to in high school in that they didn’t seem to be pretentious. By that, I mean the girls around campus seemed to have a wholesomeness about them that I found refreshing. If a man was looking for a wife, a life partner, he could do a lot worse than the girls on the campus of S of O.
Mind you, I certainly wasn’t looking for a relationship. By the end of practice each day, I could barely get up enough energy to eat dinner, study and crawl into bed. Girls were the least of my interests, I thought.
That was until I met Erin. We had a chance meeting. I was on a work assignment picking up ice cream and bakery goods early one Saturday morning for the restaurant. The bakery was my first stop. I didn’t want the ice cream to sit too long in the van. It was an unusually warm day for late September, and I didn’t want to chance it starting to melt before I got back to the restaurant.
I backed into a small dock at the rear of the bakery. I knew I would only be a few minutes, so I left the engine running. That cranky old van could be challenging to start sometimes, so I didn’t want to chance it.
Ordinarily, I would never need to go into the bakery. Normally the order for the restaurant would be waiting for me just inside the back door, but not that day. It wasn’t there. So, I walked into the bakery. That’s when I saw her behind the counter. She was beautiful, with long flowing brown hair, crisp blue eyes and a smile that would have melted an ice cube.
