Gilliland, John (1969). Interview on the Pop Chronicles (Track 2). University of North Texas Digital Library:
Singer, songwriter, musician Roger Miller claimed that his song was based on the true story of a friend of his who could “drink a beer in three seconds.”
EIU Fall Quarter 1964
As part of the largest freshman class at EIU ever - that is, up until sixty five; the first year that Eastern’s total enrollment topped over four thousand students . . . we were the high school class of 64, ‘the best and the brightest’, at least that was what we heard a few years later - - we had the highest ACT scores ever. Temper that with eventually knowing that the ACT was first administered in the fall of 1959 (SATs are a much older academic measure). Later in 1972, David Halberstam used the phrase as the title of his best-selling book about the Vietnam War. For the record, ACT averages topped out much higher (And more seniors took the test) in 2009.
Thanks to Superintendent Alton Baker (Findlay IL Schools did not have a counselor, ‘Bake’ covered as best he could) for helping me get to EIU. Early in my Findlay High years, Bake called me into his office and asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I replied that I hoped to go to college, and he said that he would see if he could help me get there. My ACT score and a financial need form led to the award of an Illinois State Scholarship. It paid for all of my tuition and University fees for four years. With Bake’s help (He had done much the same for my two-yr. older brother, Bob), I had worked as a student custodian for three years at the high school. My last two summers were spent mowing the lawn and athletic fields, cleaning and refinishing floors, and other maintenance tasks. I had saved up a few hundred dollars to get started at EIU, but my work earnings had also been used for clothes and class supplies.
That fall quarter, my first underlying concern was whether I could handle the academic rigor, pass the courses . . . brother Bob, a straight A student throughout high school, was a student employee on campus (Student manager of the University Union Snack Bar) and was struggling to maintain grades in pre-engineering while working 30 plus hours a week. I just had to find a way to cover my room and board; that was the big chunk. I didn’t have enough money for even my first year.
Many EIU students came from small towns and rural farm communities throughout Illinois; my central Illinois home was near Findlay, and college classmates and friends were from Beecher City, Cisne, Dupo, Clinton, Hillsboro, Effingham, Sullivan, Blue Mound, Shelbyville, Fairbury, Buffalo. Others were from cities like Belleville, Decatur, Champaign, Peoria, Springfield. A few were from inner city and suburbs of St. Louis and Chicago. On campus, there were new dorm buildings being planned and under construction. The late Sixties and Seventies saw Eastern expanding to near ten thousand students. Later enrollment was capped and the student body size plateaued.
In the fall of ’64, I lived one block off campus (East of Old Main) in a private home, owned and occupied by a retired couple, the three-story Long residence on 9th street (Building is no longer there today, fifty years later the space has been taken up by University expansion). Upstairs rooms were occupied by the nice, clean cut guys whom we barely recognized and hardly knew. They entered by the front door and and climbed up the stairway (I never ventured there). Mr. and Mrs. Long resided on the main floor. Several of the upstairs residents went with the Longs to church and sometimes joined them for Sunday dinner.
There were four rooms in the basement. Five students there, we entered on the side door and took the dimly lit stairs to the right. Somehow we quickly became the ‘hooligans.’ We had cooking privileges with vintage appliances (fridge and stove) in an open kitchen. The two Larrys, Findlay classmate Larry and I, made a weekly visit to the IGA grocery store about five blocks away; a laundromat was closer. I remember bologna on sale at forty-nine cents a pound; combine that with a loaf of bread and some cheap cheese, a few cans of vegetables, and you had most of the meals covered for a week - - back then, we weren’t thinking about nutrition or preservatives. And we certainly were not thinking about variety.
Sometimes we of the basement crew played nickel and dime poker games into the evening (Everyone except the one upperclassman, who had a steady girlfriend and was gone most of the time). If we got a little raucous (Quiet hours after 10 p.m.), the Long’s pounded on the floor with what sounded like the handle of a broom. One night Larry (My classmate with the same first name) pounded back.
My bed was located off to the right side of the kitchen, bathroom john and shower room area. There was a curtain draw that could be used to slide and block the bed view. The john and shower were on the left, adjacent to the fridge and sink. In heavy rains, water flowed down the inside wall next to my bed and into a floor gutter that directed it to a drain. Basement rooms were only six or seven bucks a week, probably because they were not separate rooms with doors, locks, and that sort of thing; rather they were a bed and dresser located in different compartments. The one upperclassman, a junior was housed in a tiny area accessed by ducking under the large asbestos insulated furnace pipes, the furnace was near center. The other four of us were all freshman. Two guys, Glen and John from the Beecher City and Moccasin area, slept in the biggest room at the bottom of the stairs. Glenn had his ’57 Ford but the rest of us did not own a car. Larry Cross lived in a small middle room, on the north wall next to the furnace.
No televisions. A few of us had a radio. John and Glen listened mainly to country music. I listened to all types of pop tunes. Larry Cross was an avid sports fan, he tuned into the Cardinal’s games (He still does today). The basement colors were gray and more gray; concrete floor painted gray, walls gray. No doors on the rooms. Mrs. Long came to empty wastebaskets daily and on her schedule - - with little checking to see if anyone was still sleeping or dressed, or sitting on the john (Next to the shower stall, another draw curtain could be used for privacy).
As freshmen, we had our priorities in place. A cliché comes to mind: “Don’t neglect your studies while getting a college education.” Some of us ‘hooligans’ quickly focused on booze and girls, or girls and booze. Around 9 p.m. on more than one evening, we headed to the ‘snack bar’ on campus in the University Union building. At that time of night, the place was hopping with students drinking a coke or coffee, claiming that they were taking a break from their studies. That served as an excuse for our scoping of the tables and booths, checking on members of the opposite sex. It might take a few nights, but eventually you would strike up a conversation with a girl, and if things progressed in the right direction, you might walk them home to her dorm building or her off-campus house (A few girls also lived off-campus but there too, their hours were restricted - in by ten-thirty, midnight on weekends). Fifteen minutes before the curfew, when all girls had to be checked in and sequestered, you and your girl of the evening stood crammed together into the lobby area, talked and made out along with the roomful of other couples, as the guys waited to be hustled out and away. A few years later, I dated a girl whose roommate had a car, and couples ‘signed up’ for fifteen minute make-out sessions in the Dodge sedan. In that situation, we got there well before the dorm’s closing hour and had access to the parked car for two or three sessions on the same night. No one drove it, except for the owner.
A hookup at the snack bar occasionally led to a full-fledge date 'down the road.’ And since I did not have a car (Except for those times that I could borrow my older brother’s junker), a weekend date usually meant walking half-a-dozen blocks downtown to the theatre or sticking to campus activities. Fall of ’64; the folk music revival led to a few hootenannies. Those did not last long. Dance bands took their place in the Union ballroom. Pick up your date from her dorm and walk a few blocks on campus.
Our first years away from the small town roots, we were also focused on booze. My limited experience with drinking led to an interest in illegal alcohol. Underage for most of my college years, I managed to still find ways to get booze. A friend looked older than his age and could get served at one drive-up liquor store. Another friend was a upperclassmen, veteran and over twenty-one. They might buy your booze, usually with directions or restrictions; i.e., drink with them, never in your room. You could be in trouble if you came home drunk. A big societal change over the last fifty years is that today, drinking and driving is not appropriate, never to be tolerated. But in those times, getting a six-pack or a cold quart of beer and driving south of town to the Embarrass River (Pronounced Am-braw) bottoms was often standard practice. I was never the driver - - remember I didn’t own a car, could not often borrow a car. I was one of the riders and a diligent student of drinking, the classroom was on lonely back roads for a few hours while the booze was consumed. Chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug.
As I gained experience with booze, I learned that I did not want to over-indulge. The few times I was with drinkers who hammered it down, got themselves ‘blotto’ and then sick was enough to cause me to limit my intake. Getting a nice buzz was the goal, but I also learned that ‘hangovers’ and throwing up were not fun. Along the way, I also learned that drinking was unlikely to be a personal problem for me. I adopted a practice of moderate drinking; a guideline that with few exceptions, I have followed in my adult life. A beer sometimes lasts me a long time; my wife is the ‘boozer’ in the family and she does not drink all that much either. But learning how to drink was part of the learning of my undergrad years.
So the fall months in ’64 sped along. I have a vivid memory of the smell of burning leaves as I walked to classes on a few cool and sometimes damp days. I remember playing football with high school classmates, Michael Cruit and Bob Younger, some of their dorm mates, and Larry Cross and I in the late afternoons outside their Douglas Hall rooms. By November, we had at least one significant snow. During that winter, a group of students went sledding one night on the hills south of town - drinking from small bottles of schnapps stuffed into snowdrifts. We slid down to the river bottoms on a rural road, six or more of us piled on to a junked car hood turned upside down.
Also by November, I noticed that my checking account was dwindling; I was going to have to get some kind of part-time job. My brother didn’t encourage me to apply where he worked, but I needed to find something. Perhaps I should look off-campus. I was getting down to my last few hundred bucks.
Years later in 1990, another drinking song came out. The first time that I heard ‘Friends in Low Places’, I was not very impressed. I didn’t know anything about Garth Brooks. I didn’t know of the family connection between his maternal grandmother and my former uncle, Joe Hedges, in my Reade-Johnson family. So much for my recognizing a soon-to-be pop hit too; much like back in ’64 when I first heard Roger Miller’s song. In a short time, I and a big section of America were singing along to the tune; it spent four weeks at the number one spot on the country music charts.
‘Cause I’ve got friends in low places
Where the whiskey drowns
And the beer chases my blues away
And I’ll be okay.
I’m not big on the social graces
Think I’ll slip on down to the oasis
Oh, I’ve got friends in low places.’
