bob and the beatniks

Jerry Vis

spent the earliest years of his life in Paterson, New Jersey, where he was born in 1939 into a blue-collar family struggling to overcome the lingering effects of the Great Depression. He has an M.F.A. in fine art and taught for many years in public school and college. He is the author of Paterson Boy: My Family and Other Strangers: A Memoir in Twenty-Eight Stories.

I’m Not Here: A Misfit’s Memoir in 21 Vignettes is a new story collection to be published June 2021 by Rivercliff Books & Media.

Memoir

Bob and the Beatniks

written by Jerry Vis

In the mid-1950s, author Jerry Vis was the first in his family to attend college. It wasn’t the college of his choice, but the only possibility presented to him — Washington Missionary College, a strict Adventist school just north of Washington, D.C.

As he departed for W.M.C., Jerry’s Uncle, on the sly, gave him this insightful advice: “To become your own person, you need to learn how to think for yourself, not what others want you to think.” In this memoir, Jerry intuitively follows his Uncle’s advice and makes friends with some… unusual characters.

 

Read by Terry Rey

“I should have had a job, but that would have eaten up the depressing afternoon hours. Instead, I made the creative decision to leave my door open, on the off chance that a unique and interesting person wandering down the hall would stop in and distract me from my self-inflicted boredom.”

“My own sojourn in Virginia, where I attended the Adventist high school, had left me somewhat scarred. I was known as a rude Yankee from irredeemably sinful New York City, even though I repeatedly pointed out that I was from New Jersey.”

“Morf would interrupt the events of the moment with pithy, oblique statements that tangentially derailed anything we were doing. His intent was to expose the falseness of everyone’s assumed reality.”

Q&A with Jerry

Tell us about your story...

In the 1950s, with little understanding about what I was in for, I found myself at very conservative religious Washington Missionary College, on the outskirts of Washington, DC. Sent there against my will, I found a way to survive by skipping most classes, all religious services, and most social interactions — except those with a small group of like-minded misfits. This turned out to be a most agreeable strategy, which strangely has served me well all of my life.

This story is like a one-act play, with a cast of insecure misfits meeting in a dormitory room trying to form an alternate reality to the conformist religious environment swirling just outside the door.

What was the inspiration for this story?

The inspiration for this story was that I eventually realized, with great amusement, that I had escaped that moment in my life unscathed.

What have you recently read that you loved?

A Gentleman In Moscow, by Amor Towles. It is a story built from small events, of day to day life that gives depth and insight to the true nature of our human condition.

And I also recently read The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy – What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny, by W. Strauss & N. Howe. This book traces the repeating cycles of America’s existence concluding with the potentially catastrophic outcome for the current cycle of events.

Someday I want to...

Live in an America that doesn’t see a benefit in fighting endless, meaningless wars that we lose, while ruining other people’s lives.

Do you have any hidden talents?

Maybe not so hidden… I am, first and foremost, an active visual artist. I have a Master’s Degree in Fine Art. I taught art and spend as much time making art (painting and sculpture) as I spend writing.

I’m still active at the age of 81 as an architectural designer and finish carpenter. I do all of this on Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine, for six months out of the year. I spend the rest of the year in the central Hudson Valley of New York.

I like to cook too, but of all the things I do, that activity might best remain hidden.

If You Enjoyed This Episode…

give these a listen!

Lightning Flowers

Lightning Flowers

Sarah K. Lenz Sarah K. Lenz’s nonfiction has appeared in numerous liteary journals. Three of her essays have been named Notable in Best American Essays, and she received the New Letters Readers’ award in nonfiction. Sarah holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Georgia College in Milledgeville, where her claim to fame is that she once held Flannery O’ Connor’s bra while working as a...

Handling Shit and Finding Love

Handling Shit and Finding Love

Betina Entzminger is a Southern-born writer and English professor currently living and working in Pennsylvania. A quadruple divorcee and mother of two teenagers, Entzminger holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of the recent memoir, The Beak in the Heart: True Tales of Misfit Southern Women, published by Rivercliff Books & Media. Her...

The Darker Side of a Night with Hunter Thompson

The Darker Side of a Night with Hunter Thompson

Roberto LoiedermanDuring the Vietnam War I worked as a deckhand on ships that delivered napalm and other ammo to Southeast Asia. On my first vessel, as we approached Vietnam, my shipmates looked longingly toward the green coastline, rotten ready to get ashore after three tough weeks at sea. Thinking I was being clever, I grabbed a piece of chalk and wrote something on the messroom blackboard. It...

Share This