Memory does not fail, but transmogrifies.

In 1972 I was an all too callow youth of 18.

Engaged in an undistinguished academic careen. I was much more interested in my girlfriend’s sexual acquiescence and various pharmaceuticals, natural and artificial, than in, say, studying, or even going to class. But I was playing the part when I found the time.

As an “English Major”, I was required to sign up for “Speech 212: Introduction to Speech”. Seemed easy enough; I’d been talking a blue streak for as long as I could remember.

And here I met H. Kenneth Walker III, our instructor.

How many times I actually attended the class is impossible to say. Let’s say I went every time and was a brilliant orator. Or….

I was plucked very quickly, why I know not, from the pack of earnest undergraduates, seduced by brilliant talk and some excellent herb into performing in Walker’s upcoming production of “The Scapegoat’s Agony”, to be produced on the university stage forthwith. Performing is perhaps too grandiose a term. My role was to be tethered by a thick rope to three others, dressed in a burlap sack and a papier-mache mask, while being addressed as “Slave” by one of the leads, who felt it his duty (scripted of course) to periodically crack me on the head with his papier-mache club. He was much the method actor, so it hurt every time and I believe that by performance time, my mask was as crazed as I was. We slaves tumbled over each other, were dragged by our shackled ankles, one by one “died” (which only increased the amount of rope burn we suffered), and were mere props by the time the final scenes arrived.

I believe that in the program, my role was designated as “Slave #4″. But it was a start. And it began a relationship that would enfold golf, rock’n'roll, and an education that the curricula masters at the university could not have imagined.

Like I said, it was a start.