Here I am again–01.01.2021–writing on New Year’s Day morning. The other time I still remember was 01, 01, 1947. Recall first hour of that ’47 new year. Car horns were honking all over Abilene, but this university sophomore was pecking away at the typewriter in his bedroom.
Due in two days, when I returned to Austin, was my assigned ‘original sources’ term paper for my comparative literature class. Read only the original literature, no outside commentary, the professor said. I complied.
He was a short but ‘full’ professor PhD, always immaculately dressed. Most of the time his teaching assistant met our Tuesday, Thursday classes. Maybe because he later appeared with two Band-Aids crossed on his baldhead. Student talk was that an angry friend hit him on the head with a wine bottle.
I read. Then compared George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan play to Maxwell Anderson’s 1946 Joan of Lorraine Broadway play. Ingrid Bergman won an award for her performance.
Also read Mark Twain’s many tributes to Joan of Arc. Sam Clements was deeply in love with the young lady. George Bernard Shaw was not as fond. His play dripped sarcasm. Shaw’s Forward employed many words to rip the Catholic Church for making Joan of Arc a ‘saint.’
Submitted my paper on time. But instead of a semester grade, the teaching assistant shook her head and handed me a written summons from the professor. Summons said come to his office in the upper floor of the University Tower, at a precise time.
When I knocked on his office door, he opened and handed me my paper.
Mister Elam, I know you didn’t write this paper. But we have not found the article you must have plagiarized. I have given you a B plus grade, but when we find the original publication, I will flunk you for plagiarism.
Before I could argue that my paper was original, he slammed the door in my face. As I rode the elevator down some forty floors of the Texas Tower of Babel, I thought of several fates for the Little Old….
This New Year’s morning I have a different thought. “Hey Joan, we must have written a pretty good paper.”
Photo by Nancy Bauer at Shutterstock; Stained glass window located in chapel of St. Benedict Monastery
