Reason #43 Why I never finished my Masters Degree OR The Bear in Kent

Years ago, I found myself in Kent, Ohio studying music as a 30th birthday present to myself.  At first I was just studying voice aiming for a bachelor's degree, but after a while I was also studying ethnomusicology (basically anthropology for musicians) and choral conducting for a masters degree, because I heard everyone was looking for people with masters degrees in choral conducting and ethnomusicology (but I may have had a few drinks that evening).  

As is my way, I always found ways to get distracted from what I needed to be doing, and one was wandering around Kent with my friend Wendy and taking pictures of a large stuffed dog.  The dog appeared in my group house one day.  'Not exactly sure where it came from or who brought him in, but he was accepted into the house readily because he was not an annoying flute player like one of our previous housemates.

Wendy and I wandered town with Bear (not sure why he was christened "Bear") a couple days before he disappeared.  I recently found a set of photographs of our explorations of town. 

Here he is in Brady's Cafe.  It was the first place I walked into when I came to Kent to apply and audition for music school.  It was also the last place I walked out of before moving to DC.  It was slacker heaven.  It had so-so food, even more so-so live music, but it was a cozy place to spend an afternoon, an evening, a lifetime.

Brady's was an institution in Kent.  Serving students and townsfolk for decades, it was around at the time of the shootings in 1970.  In the photo above (the guy with the pony tail is not me but a professor who was always there.  Not sure if he ever showed up for class) you can see, in addition to the bear, mugs on pegs on the ceiling.  You could bring in your own cup and leave it there for refills whenever you came in.  Customers would pitch in for the medical bills of the owner's kid who was rather sickly.  Their Brady's Blend coffee is still one of my favorite flavors of coffee of all time.

A couple years after I left Kent, Brady's was bought out by an evil national coffee empire whose name starts with S.  Yes, that one.  I can't talk about it.

"So what are you doing after your shift is over?"

Bear was a regular at The Diner.  In the four years I was in town, The Diner had a couple incarnations and menus.  I recall a couple music students sometimes served at the counter.  I suppose Bear went there because he had a thing for the waitress.  Alas The Diner was torn down.

It was said that you couldn't swing a cat in Kent without hitting some dude with a guitar.  The town had a fair number of guitar players, and some were quite good, particularly Kerry Kean, a guy who helped me stay sane in Kent.   Here Bear is weighing the decision to plop down some cash on a new guitar and amp at Woodsy's Music or to use the money for rent.



I rented an apartment my last year in town from the owner of Woodsy's.  Some said it was the coolest apartment in Kent--not because of me, but because of its fireplaces, sun porch, and bare brick wall).

Before going out on the town, the bear liked to spruce up, usually hitting the tanning booth and the barber shop to make him irresistible in the bars.  I recall responses to the stuffed bear varied.

Why is there a bear waiting for a haircut, Bill?

After grueling sessions at the tanning booth and barber shop, Bear wanted some potato pancakes at the Zephyr restaurant.  It was a tasty restaurant, sorta vegetarian, and featured some live music from time to time.  I still remember one GUITAR NIGHT, featuring the half dozen best guitar players in town, each playing a set.

The guy sitting behind Bear got annoyed that we were taking pictures of a stuffed bear in a restaurant with him in the photo and dashed out (perhaps his wife had suspicions of his meeting a bear in the afternoon).

Being a bear of leisure, he blew off work and decided to read some more of the papers at Susan's Coffee and Tea.  An interloper on the coffee scene in Kent, Susan's was for people who dreamed of someday leaving Kent and not being drowned in caffeinated slackerdom at Brady's.  The bear thought the girls at Susan's were cuter here as well.  Here he pretends to read Kafka.  Wendy was interested in his reading choices.

He liked to drink and he liked the ladies, so we took him to the Town Tavern where some pals came up to hear his stories.  As he had himself a cold one, a woman who worked for the local beer liquor distributor took a liking to him.

The Bear and his friends adjourned to a table and hung out for the afternoon

Beer distributer hitting on Bear big-time

Bear rejected her advances.  His friends are shocked.

The bear thought folk would like to hear him play his new guitar from Woodsy's, but they were not interested.

On his way from one side of town to the other, he ran across a clothed sheep on the sidewalk.  His friends were confused by a sheep wearing clothes in town, but he said, go with it, it's Kent.

Bear observing sidewalk sheep

Bear and I taking in a clothed sheep
on the sidewalk

A roommate of mine then, now a public school band teacher
who would be mortified if his students saw this photo of him
with a sheep.

Like many in Kent after a few drinks, Bear decided he needed a piercing and a tatoo.  I lived upstairs from a tatoo/piercing parlor and they helped out with a bitchin' tatoo and a wicked tongue piercing.

Jerome preparing to ink his nose tatoo.

Bear heard that chicks dig tongue rings

He had the munchies, so he had some pizza at the Loft Pizza, their great $3 Medium Pepperoni special.  Evidently the The Loft is still there, but no longer has pizza.  A loss for humanity. His favorite spot to eat pizza was the gazebo down by the river.

Some 'ZA in the 'ZEBO

Medium Pepperoni Pizza for $3?
Hard to leave any town with a special like that.

He then joined some pals at the nice restaurant by the river for some dessert.  Students took their parents to this place when they visited, instead of the smelly beer joints the students usually went to.

Many a Kent State student's promising academic and intellectual future was drowned in drink at Ray's Place over the years.  Evidently Bear went in towards the end of the day.  I never saw him again, though rumor has it he hooked up with the waitress at the Diner and is living out by Brady Lake, making jewelry and pottery.

Abandon hope all who enter here...

To be honest, this is perhaps only part of the reason I don't have a Master's in Music.  These pictures were taken back when it cost money to buy film and have it developed.  One of my roommates (seen making friends with the the sheep above) worked developing film at Campus News and Photo (which he called News and Porno, as many people brought in interesting pictures to develop), so it was not as expensive as it could have been, but I was a starving grad student at the time.  Plus it is socially awkward to wander the streets of town with a large stuffed dog.  It doesn't mean folks didn't enjoy sitting around dreaming up more photos. Among the ideas that I can recall almost 20 years later:

• photo of him in the front of a lecture classroom with students inside, giving a lecture
• photo of him taking notes from the point of view of a professor, surrounded by other students
• seated in a professors' chair in an office, going over questions from a student
• sitting at the piano in the recital hall at the school of music
• sitting beside someone playing the piano in the recital hall, waiting to turn the pages of the music
• sitting at the piano in a practice room, as seen discretely through the practice room window
• riding in a canoe in the river
• blowing glass in the glass art studio (a former roommate was a glass artist, quite good too)
• playing saxophone with the Bluestones (a local blues band) in a bar
• checking out the book selection in Archer's Books, a used bookstore in town
• holding a candle at the May 4 Memorial (commemorating the May 1970 shootings)
• sitting back in a stupor surrounded by drug paraphernalia 
• at the driver's seat of one of the campus busses, wearing a bus driver's hat

Had free digital photos been available back then, I ASSURE YOU an exhaustive collection of photos would have been created.  If only the time machine worked.  I suppose there are some who would prefer I had written my paper on Performance Practice of the Tournai Mass to get my Masters in Music, but see what you would have missed had I been able to focus?

Ok, this isn't the Red Couch or the liberation of garden gnomes, but it is Kent back in the mid 90s.