[Oe List ...] Another Shinn Story

[Shelley Hahn via OE]

Great story, Gordon!!  Hilarious!  Thanks for sharing!

Shelley Hahn

On Thu, Dec 4, 2014 at 1:52 AM, Gordon Harper via OE <
oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:

> Ah, Ed --
>
> So many memories, pretty much all crammed into a very special two-year
> period in our lives.  I think I have to tell one story.
>
> The ICA contingent from Chicago that was assigned to help launch the
> replication phase of our human development projects (fourteen of us, as I
> recall) arrived in the rural village of Maliwada, India the first week of
> September, 1976.  Among this entourage were the Shinn and Harper families.
> We had a scant four weeks before we would open the first ever Human
> Development Training School, and despite all the plans and models we
> brought with us, no one had any real idea what we were getting into or what
> we were going to do.  We just knew that we’d work it out.
>
> Within a few months, medical evacuations had taken a toll on our group,
> and some of our team had been called back to Chicago for new assignments.
> I’m not sure anyone ever really assigned us to the role, but Ed and I soon
> found ourselves operating as co-deans for the international faculty of the
> training school.  With my academic background, I worked primarily on
> developing the school’s curriculum and training the faculty.  With his
> passion for ensuring that things actually worked, Ed designed and led hands
> on projects and work days for the school and took every opportunity to
> rigorously field test all our replication assumptions and approaches.  It
> was a great partnership and one that would last until the foreigners were
> all invited to leave India in June of 1978.
>
> But that’s another story, for another time.  The one I have to tell is
> about Ed and one of the pleasurable experiences we shared in that village.
>
> Ed and I were both dedicated pipe smokers--and in Maliwada, that was a
> problem.  Cigarettes could be procured for a price, pan and beatties were
> abundant, but pipe tobacco of any sort seemed not to exist anywhere in the
> vicinity.  Ed and I would scour the shops in Aurangabad, our closest city,
> on weekends, trying out anything in glass jars on shelves that  looked as
> if it might conceivably serve in our briars--only to be cruelly
> disappointed, time after time.  I did manage on one occasion to get Betty
> Pesek to procure some decent shag from one of my Chicago tobacconists and
> slip it, unbeknownst to him, into Joe’s luggage as he prepared for one of
> his visits to the village.  (Lee Early best tells that story.)
>
> I somewhat grudgingly shared with Ed pinches of what I was able to smuggle
> past customs or have, heavily taxed, sent to me legitimately by slow
> freighter.  Still, always we both seemed to be running out of this precious
> commodity and lamenting our plight to any who would listen.  Then, one day,
> Pandit Rao, one of our Maliwada community leaders, told us that he knew of
> tobacco that was grown on the Hindu temple grounds.  He invited us to come
> to his home that afternoon to try it.
>
> We took the stairs to the roof of Pandit’s modest home and sat down
> crosslegged on the roof.  We watched in high anticipation as he produced a
> bag of something that indeed looked far more smokeable than anything we’d
> ever seen in the area.  Ed and I dipped in, loaded our pipes, lighted up,
> tamped them down and lighted once again.  Pandit joined us with his own
> flat clay pipe.
>
> As the aroma from our three pipes filled the air and registered on my
> consciousness, I was transported a decade or so back in time, to the
> university campuses on which I had studied and taught.  Vivid memories from
> the 60s were reactivated, and I looked over at Ed to see if he was
> experiencing a similar deja vu.
>
> Not exactly.  What Ed was experiencing, however, was sheer delight.  He
> turned to me with a look of wonder and amazement, and said, with that great
> passion which he could muster, “Gordon, this is good stuff!  This is
> better than anything I've ever smoked!  It’s incredible!” as he took
> another deep drag on his pipe.  I may have failed to mention that Ed
> inhaled his pipe, a habit carried over, by some unfortunate pipe smokers,
> from their prior or concurrent practice of cigarette smoking.  I, of
> course, as a pipe purist (aka, snob) did not.
>
> Pandit was smiling and nodding, obviously pleased to have produced such a
> response in his guests.  I bowed my head in gratitude and smiled, wondering
> if it would be of any benefit to share my conclusions as to what it was we
> were so enjoying.  I decided not.  We continued our beatific afternoon
> smoke in the sun, with an increasingly enthusiastic and voluble Ed regaling
> our host with gratitude for coming upon such a treasure in so unexpected a
> place.
>
> The euphoria shared on that rooftop, however, was to be only a temporary
> interlude in our ongoing quest.  Ed soon learned that the Indian name for
> this delightful product--ganja--was better known to us by another name, and
> we both chose not to continue or make a habit of visiting Pandit’s roof.
>
> Memories of that afternoon in a rural Indian village came back to me this
> Thanksgiving.  After a fine dinner with friends here in Seattle and before
> dessert was served, our host invited those who would like to step out on
> his deck for a few moments, “to share a pipe and allow the meal to settle.”
>  Washington state is one of those places in the U.S. where what followed is
> perfectly legal.  It was dark and chilly and our friend’s deck not at all
> like Pandit’s home on the semi-arid desert of Maharashtra, but it was as if
> Ed and I were together once again.
>
>
> Gordon
>
>
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