It was in Hoffman's Art Appreciation class I first heard the NY accent of one George Olsen. It was a tiered classroom usually darkened for slideshows and I sat toward the front. One day the lights were up and Hoffman was fielding questions when a voice came from behind me and I turned around to see the sound coming from the head of what looked like the photos I had seen of Dwight L. Moody. I don't recall what he said but I am sure it got a laugh from the room, which was full of mostly people like me who spoke with no accent at all, that is to say, we talked like we were from Eastern Kentucky.
George, a singer, intramural football player/organizer, and novelty northerner; took the Baptist Student Union by storm in 1974, after transferring from Kentucky Christian College. He was exotic. Most of us who had not traveled much to the northeast were thrilled to think we could pal around with someone from the urbane north. It was not until years later we learned George was more similar to us than different. He had not grown up wealthy or privileged any more than most of us. He, like others of us at the Union, had simply been raised in a religious family and learned to find humor rather than despair in life struggles.
George moved to Louisville, Tupelo, Mississippi and then to his current home in Greenup., Kentucky, taking tours through seminary, church youth work, and finally to insurance sales. His head is stuffed with knowledge of most movies that have come out since the early 1970s. It's also full of forty years of popular music, TV programs, baseball trivia, and a bevy of facts and opinions on everything to have transpired in popular culture during our common lifetime.
One icy December night after the wedding of one of our friends, he started out on I-64 from Morehead to Greenup. He flipped his SUV into the median when it careened out of control after hitting black ice. He had called me for some reason just before he had taken off, so I was the one who took the call from a strange man who had found George's phone in the wreckage and decided to dial the most recent number. The guy explained he had found the phone and that George was being taken by ambulance to the hospital in Ashland, Kentucky.
For a while that night our group of friends had our eyes open to a stark reality. Every time you say goodbye to a friend, it could be the last time. A little stronger blow to the head and we could have gone straight from wedding celebration to memorial service. As I write this, though, George is still the liveliest spirit of us all and the world is still getting the benefit of that head full of cultural knowledge.
Ray Kurzweil (The Singularity Is Near) says if we baby boomers can hang on long enough, the day may be coming when science will make it possible for nano-technology to combine with our biology to keep us alive for centuries, not just decades. Not only will people live longer but our knowledges will be combined and redistributed to the advantage of us all in a fashion similar to how the internet works. I am hoping George and other friends of mine with heads full of knowledge can hang around long enough for me to be able to be hooked straight up to what they know and their compendium of facts. Once I am equipped with what they know, I will be more comfortable with them taking off on ice slick roads, or other forms of risky behavior.
But George, if you will agree to stop texting on your Blackberry while you drive I will stop it on my I-phone, deal? Deal. Happy 55th Birthday. As Sammy Hagar might say, you don't have to "drive 55", but do be careful out there at least a few more decades.
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