Recalling Some College Capers,” by Alejandro Grattan-Dominguez

By Alejandro Grattan-Dominguez

There comes a time in our lives when we have a great deal more to remember than to anticipate, and in just such a mood I find myself

dwelling on my college years, not that they were anything so special but still several notches above my high school years, wherein I managed to excel only in mechanical drawing, physical education and English. All else fell into the category “Distinctly Without Distinction.”

That category would stalk me into the local college, where because I had an uncle who owned one of the largest testing labs in Texas and because he had promised me a job upon graduation, I disastrously chose to major in geology, a field so foreign to my interests it might as well have been taught in Japanese. Luckily, the class was in a small amphitheater and I had a seat right next to a window; even luckier, the room was on a small incline and I had but to roll out the window and land on an expanse of grass only some five feet below. I would always wait until I had answered the roll call, and then quietly “bail out” as some of the others in the class would softly mutter “Geronimo,” which is the word parachutists traditionally yell as they “hit the silk.”

Needless to say, I flunked out my first fall semester and then performed a flawless encore the following spring. A few months later, however, another relative came to my rescue, offering to finance yet another try at college, but only if I would enroll in an out-of-town college of her choice. I readily agreed, thinking a change would do me good. Little did I know what a mega-change was awaiting me.

Texas A&M was then known as the largest military school in the world, as famous for its brutal hazing practices as for the vast number of officers it yearly provided to the armed forces of the United States. While West Point and the Naval Academy had graduating classes in the mid-hundreds, A&M classes were in the thousands. (It was once estimated that the majority of American officers on the beaches at Normandy in World War II had been A&M graduates.)

Given such an environment, I turned to study in self-defense. But I was bored with the military exercises and often feigned one excuse after another to avoid such activities, including various medical maladies that had no mention in books on the general subject. One subject was very much on the minds of most cadets: girls. There were a few towns nearby with an above average amount of attractive young women, but still the demand far exceeded the supply. Some of these ladies were often booked for many weekends in advance.

It was in such dire circumstances that I had a major stroke of luck. A fellow cadet had been restricted to quarters on weekends because of failing grades, and he most generously “gave” me (after several dollar bills had passed between us) his date the upcoming weekend. I had met her before, blonde, perky, pretty, and possessed with what some cadets called a “promising personality.”

Sadly, on the “D-Day” in question, I was showing off my “short-order rifle drill” skill to a couple of cadets when I lost momentary control of my M-1 rifle and the rifle’s stock struck the bone above my left eye. Almost instantly a large glob formed over my eye, and in acute pain I hobbled over to the nearest medical center. I must have looked even scarier than usual, with blood all over my face mixing with the purple of the bruise. In a voice I hoped sounded better than I knew that I looked, I politely muttered that I would like to see a doctor.

Looking vastly amused, the middleaged nurse picked up a phone and said, “Doctor Wiseman, you’ll never guess who is here. AGAIN. It’s Cadet Grattan—and this time he’s even using makeup!”

I still occasionally wonder what might have happened if I had managed to keep that date.

Another lovely lady figured in my next memory. On a Corps trip to Dallas to attend an A&M football game against Southern Methodist University, I met a young lady who would years later become my wife. Thus swept away, I asked my aunt if I could transfer to SMU. The difference in tuition costs between a state university and a private one was staggering but because I had made very good grades at A&M, my wish was granted.

SMU and Notre Dame football teams had met before, and though SMU had never won, the games had always been close. That year, both teams were in the Top Ten and headed for bowl games. Very late in the game, Notre Dame led by a small margin when the SMU quarterback, Don Meredith, who was to go on to a successful career in show business, had brought his team deep into Notre Dame territory when he pulled one of football’s oldest plays, the Statue of Liberty, in which the quarterback fades back to pass and a running back comes along behind to take the ball from him. Amazingly, this tired old play works and, with only seconds left to play, SMU had gone ahead of Notre Dame.

It was then that a classmate of mine, Hugh Lampman, who later became a broadcasting legend in Dallas, rose to his feet and yelled out across the eerie silence, “I knew it, I knew it all along. God IS a Methodist!”

And with that, the place absolutely fell apart. But of course, Notre Dame scored again in the fading moment of the game. So the denomination question will have to be decided

another day. Alejandro Grattan-

Dominguez

By Moonyeen King

President of the Board for Tepehua moonie1935@yahoo.com

Ironing Out The Wrinkles In Tepehua’s 2021 Project

The purpose of the project is to bring sanitation and health to Tepehua.

Every barrio has the problem of disposing of human and animal waste. Those who live on the paved main streets with lights and City maintenance have plumbing access if they can afford to attach to it. Those living outside the main roads who are not on a City waste or water line or have utilities in their home, dump their sewage in the fields or anywhere they can expect nature to take care of the problem for them. Which it does after time with the help of cleanup crews like dung beetles who diligently roll up certain parts of the waste for food and parts for lining their home. Whatever is left behind is nature’s form of fertilizer and topsoil. This is recycling in nano-slow motion, and if we let nature take its course, we will be buried in our own waste and pollution.

The heavy rains take care of the final clean out: the remaining waste gets washed away and finds itself in surface water and eventually seeps into the unmaintained wells that service not only the barrio but the town as well.

Open defecation becomes everyone’s problem . . . and it is up to everyone to change it. The practical answer to the problem is portable toilets. Why portable toilets? The land which hugs the towns of Lakeside is fully taken, every lot has a title owner. Many people who have invested in barrio land on the outskirts of towns, like Chapala, have no intention of building; it is inheritance for their children. With no available lots to build communal toilets in the barrios, the task of cleaning up open defecation is impossible. If we “borrow” the land and in return pay their taxes, under a contract the owners can take back their land any time they need if they decide to build, and we take back our investment, namely, the portable unit, and place it somewhere else.

The tax for one lot is $100 pesos a year, so it is far less costly for the community center to “rent” the lot than to buy a leasehold. Units come in all prices, sizes, and designs. There are also those that turn the waste into recycled fertilizer much faster than the beetle can, providing topsoil mix or soil for box gardening. In fact, it turns an environmental and health risk into an opportunity. The cost is doable, as portable toilets range from $500 USD to $2,000 USD per unit or double (male and female).

The labor challenge would be just the same as for the 300 garafone a day reverse osmosis unit that sustains our Tepehua potable water plant. Some people said that there wouldn’t be people to run and maintain it. But they were wrong. The locals are waiting for a chance to change, learn and work, taking charge of providing for themselves. Everyone needs dignity, and defecating in public spaces is the most base act there is.

Sustainability is another aspect. This has to be worked in phases. The first is finding the interested parties to invest in waste management, and those who will lend their land to the project. The second phase will involve locating and installing the units. As it is all prefabricated, once set into motion, it should be accomplished fairly rapidly. Opportunity for business abounds. Like bagging the finished fertilizer and selling to the agricultural community as well as garden landscaping. Therein lies the sustainability.

This is also a call for help in this project. If any of the readers out there are proficient in the area of portable toilets, the Tepehua Community Center would appreciate your help to get this off the ground, so to speak. We especially would like to identify the sales outlets for the actual units available in Guadalajara, that would start the breakdown and the base for fertilizer soil. We have a few but would like the whole range of choice. Knowing the range of prices at this time is also of importance. We are also surveying the community to find the areas where people congregate and the availability of vacant land. It is a community-led initiative to help the community help itself; everybody gains.

In 3000 BC, the Romans built the first communal toilets for men. Pretty much like the steam houses, the men would sit and chat. It is unclear what the women did, it was probably the potty system: out the window into the moat. It is so incredible that in 2021 AD, we are still in need of toilets and waste control for the poor.

Meanwhile, we put another Band-Aid on the fight for equality. Until we figure that out, let’s save our planet and our dignity . . . one barrio at a time, one street at a time, until we get it right.

E-mail Moonie if you have experience you would like to share. You could make all the difference.