Jaundiced eye

While I was at Houghton (“HO-tin;” as in “hoe,” not “how” or “who”) in the middle ‘60s, my college about 70-75 miles south of Rochester (NY), the yearbook was done by the junior class, that is, the yearbook-editor was a junior.
And the editor of the student newspaper was a senior.
I don’t recall how the yearbook-editor was named, but it seems to me the newspaper-editor was elected.
That is, during the year previous, proposed newspaper-editors were nominated, and an editor was elected for the following year.
For some strange reason, seniors above me wanted to nominate me. I had no interest at all, mainly because I had no management experience.
I suppose those guys liked the way I thought, that I had a habit for skewering the high-and-mighty pronouncements of others.
That was good for my fragile ego, but not enough to run a newspaper.
If I had been elected — highly unlikely, since I was a sinner, and the college evangelical — I would have been replaced after the newspaper crashed in flames.
Named was a guy named “Harold Baxter,” who despite being in our class, was I think three or four years older.
It was a good choice; at least the newspaper wouldn’t crash in flames.
That newspaper had to reflect the evangelical values of Houghton, and under “Bax” it would.
Bax called me in one day and asked if I could do a report on renovations in the Administration Building.
I went and interviewed various secretaries, wives of heavy-hitters at the college.
I asked one if she liked the profusion of tiny multicolored telephone-wires emanating from her walls.
She said she did (really), so off-I-went writing it up.
Bax was impressed. He was smitten with my deadpan reporting of silliness.
My reporting was laughable.
Bax then asked me to do a humor-column similar to my report.
At that time the newspaper had a humor-column that anchored the edit-page.
It was a tradition started by a guy named Dan Willett, son of a Houghton professor, and second-in-command at the newspaper.
Willett and someone else pointed out some of the silliness that went on around the college.
A similar humor-column ran the next year, and again under Bax.
But by then that humor-column was crashing. The guys doing it weren’t Dan Willett.
I decided to lead my column with “Of Men and Things,” which I think is Biblical.
I wrote up retirement of “Sam the Soda-Machine,” long a fixture on campus outside the old Fine Arts Building.
I was the only one that did; the other guys missed it.
“Of Men and Things” became a biweekly column, running on the back page, even though the official humor-column also ran.
Willett, who had graduated, returned to the newspaper office to weigh in.
“This guy Hughzey is writing the kind of stuff we wrote; the official humor-column falls flat.”
And so it’s been ever since. I call it observing with a “jaundiced eye.”
There’s madness and silliness everywhere. All you hafta do is observe and report it.
And do so in a deadpan fashion, as if it’s normal.

• “Houghton College” in western New York, is from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. I’ve never regretted it, although I graduated a Ne’er-do-Well, without their blessing. Houghton is an evangelical liberal-arts college.
• RE: “Marcy, it’s everywhere!” —“Marcy” is my number-one Ne’er-do-Well — she was the first I was e-mailing stuff to. Marcy and I worked in adjacent cubicles at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired. —At one time she asked how I managed to dredge up so much insane material to blog, and I responded “Marcy, it’s everywhere!”