Wearing the Mortar Boards

Taite Pando, Albemarle High, 2011

 We’re home from an excellent weekend, but one that also evoked lots of memories of Lewis. Yes, he wore a motar board and proudly marched--only he was over twenty-one and grown man. Now how did that happen. I tell the tale a little further on.
 First, here's what evoke that bittersweet memory. We, along with our 10 year-old-grandson, hopped on a plane last Thursday morning headed for Charlottesville, Virginia and grandson Taite’s graduation from Albemarle High. It’s the third Albemarle graduation we’ve hit in the last four years, so we’re getting good at it! And it’s the last one until Hunter marches in about seven years.

Chef Forrest Pando and
some really fresh eggs.
What a breakfast!

Happy chickens and happy rooster of
Rooster Hill Inn near
Crozet, Virginia

            Great fun. The 3 Virginia guys' dad (son Patrick) was in from London; their Aunt Katy came from Atlanta. We took over the Rooster Inn B&B and had a real reunion.

(Rooster Inn is great. We could gather our own eggs, and if we didn’t, the owners delivered some every evening. I could get used to this.)

The Pandos in Virginia
Patrick, Trilla, Hunter, Bob, Forrest--in front
Taite, Katy, Jack--in back

            In the midst of all of the fun, I had some serious and wishful thoughts. I wished Lewis were there to see all the pomp and circumstance.  ‘Course he’d be proud. What great grandpa wouldn’t? But there’s more.

What was Lewis doing being 28 or 29 and newly out of college? (His age always was a sore point.) Soon, I’m going to offer some background on Lewis and his family, but here’s a nutshell on high school in honor of Taite and in honor of Lewis.

            From his earliest memory, Lewis used to tell me, he dreamed of being a writer. But it didn’t happen. He finished eighth grade at the little Turkey Creek one-room school, and that was that. No more school for two reasons. First, the high school in the county seat Baird might as well have been on the other side of the world. It was too far for a daily horseback commute. A student had to board or have relatives in town. The family had no money for boarding and no kinfolks in town. Second, the family needed money. The family needed Lewis to work and bring in some cash while they waited for the crop. So the fourteen-year-old lad saddled up his best friend, Peggy Joyce (more about her later) and went to work as a cowboy at the Cross Bar Ranch.

            Lewis may have roped and galloped rounding up dogies all day, but while he was doing it he dreamed about writing and he dreamed about owning a car. He got to keep some of his wages and he tucked those dollars back until he could buy two things: a Model A Ford and a suit of dress clothes. Cowboy by day, dude in the evening, and at night, he wrote. And wrote. And wrote.

            As he gained confidence, he even began to send some of his pieces off. One day, the mailman brought a letter—not a returned manuscript—a letter. He’d written a story about a truck driver named ‘Lew’ and his adventures on the road, and then he’d waited, and waited and waited. He didn’t open the letter in front of the family; instead, he took it up to the top of ‘Big Hill’ to his favorite tree and sat down and ripped it open. A check for $10 slid out. $10! But there was a letter telling him that while they liked his story very much, for them to publish more he would need to improve his grammar and, by the way, they preferred submissions to be typewritten.

            The cold facts washed over him. He might be twenty-one, way too old, but he was going to have to finish high school and go to college. No option because there was no choice in his life: he was going to be a writer.

            In short order (Ouch!) he sold the car, put Peggy Joyce in his father’s care and headed to Stephenville where John Tarleton (now Tarleton A&M) served as a four-year school. For rural youth like Lewis, two years of high school, and then the first two years of college. Were the students mostly fresh off the farm? You decide. The football team was the ‘Plowboys.’ Today, they are the Texans.

            Good student Lewis knocked off the high school classes in a year. He enrolled in the college classes, wrote a column for the student newspaper and began to follow his star.

No wonder our family loves the strains of “Pomp and Circumstance"!