On The Redlands Campus

     Yesterday Nyel and I visited Redlands – the City of Redlands and the University of Redlands, as well.  We went to make our acquaintance with the Directors of the libraries connected with each – the Smiley Library in the city and the Armacost Library on the campus.  It is the Smiley Library that has been the recipient of my Uncle Willard’s books from the Espy Foundation.  They will be coordinating access to the collection with the University.
     It was a lovely day.  We were treated like visiting celebrities, given a tour of the Smiley which is a MOST impressive facility – part museum, part library, part archival repository – wandered the Redlands campus and had lunch at the University Club.  It was sunny, the temperature in the high 70s, and the oranges hung ripe and ready for picking on the trees of the remaining groves about town.  I was enchanted.
     I grew up with Redlands always in the background.  Both my parents, my mother’s two brothers, and one of their uncles were all graduates.  I thought that the Redlands chant, the Och Tamale, was one of the Mother Goose rhymes.  I learned it in my cradle days:
Och Tamale gazolly gazump
Dayump dayadee yahoo
Ink damink dayadee gazink
Dayump, deray, yahoo
Wing wang trickey trackey poo foo
Joozy woozy skizzle wazzle
Wang tang orkey porkey dominorky
Redlands! — Rah, Rah, Redlands
      The day was as close to a déjà vu experience as one could get without having really done it all before.  I recognized the original campus buildings from the photographs and artwork that Willard kept from his years as editor of the Redlands yearbook.  I saw the dorm where my father lived and the courts where he played serious tennis.  I thought of my mother’s stories of working long hours in the student union.
     One of my fondest “memories” of Redlands was mom’s story of losing her underpants as she was going up the steps to the chapel one Sunday.  The elastic waistband gave way and her panties dropped round her ankles.  “What did you do?” I asked, wondering what one could do in such a situation.
     “Oh, I just stepped out of them and put them in my pocket,” she laughed.
     In retrospect, I wondered if I should have gone to Redlands instead of to Stanford.  Maybe.  But I stopped wondering if Willard’s books belonged there instead of at the Smiley Library a few miles distant.  They are where they belong and they will be well used by students and townies, alike.  Willard would be pleased.