For many Chapel Hillians, Nyle Frank is a symbol of the post-sixties campus atmosphere in the South. A graduate student in the political science department of the University of North Carolina in 1970, Nyle called himself “King of the Invisible Kingdom of America” (he was coronated that year in a public ceremony). He was a court jester who took the world seriously but always remembered how to laugh, to thumb his nose at the visible kingdom of the University and the town.
He published The Centipede, a newsletter which kept everyone up to date about the King’s ruminations. Nyle dodged in and out of the public eye for four years, with a faithful following who found him easy to identify with, a familiar and loveable figure, loping across campus at odd hours in a tattered t-shirt and jeans.
Nyle left the area to travel for a few years, writing long letters back to the student body through the campus newspaper.
Now 32, he is again a Chapel Hillian, and plays the piano once a week at the Irregardless Cafe in Raleigh.
A Conversion In The Desert
(Last Christmas, boarding the bus in Arizona, I sat next to a casually dressed young man with a red beard. He was travelling to visit a friend on a Navaho reservation. He said he was a minister, and spoke of his conversion.)
“When I was a child I traveled the country. My father was a construction supervisor. I studied military science at the University of Texas but went into business after graduation. I was soon married and earning a large income selling office equipment.”
“About six years ago, while on my way to Las Vegas, I heard a strange voice on the car radio. ‘Stop right here and follow me,’ it said. I noticed my dial was set to no particular station. The voice declared itself the Lord, and commanded me to drive eight miles into the desert to a certain Joshua tree. Not wanting to ruin my shiny Cadillac, I was reluctant. ‘I hate to doubt,’ I said, ‘but if you ARE God, can I have a sign? Could you make that cloud disappear?’ A second later it was gone. I concentrated upon another and it, too, was gone.”
“So I drove the eight miles, recognizing the Joshua tree immediately. In unbearable heat, without food or drink, I spoke with Him for two days. I was commanded to do His will and spread his Word — or be destroyed. I would lose my money, He said, but my needs would be met.”
“I soon had difficulty with bank notes and accounts — and was destitute. My wife angry, I left for California. But sitting in a Los Angeles cafe, I was approached by a stranger who gave me the keys to an apartment, car, and money from his wallet. I was soon living in a mansion above the Sunset Strip — next door to Liberace!”
“Since then I’ve traveled constantly — speaking to people and healing them. Sometimes a congregation will pass the hat. I’ve collected everything from thirteen cents to thirty-two thousand dollars. I used to wear a suit, but the Lord told me to buy these boots, levis, and workshirt — and send my dress clothes to an Albuquerque address. When I visited New Mexico, the man living there said he’d been praying to enter the ministry but lacked proper clothing.”
“I’ll be getting off here in Holbrook, but I have three post office boxes — southern and northern California and Tennessee. Sometimes I don’t check them for six months — but if you ever need me, I’ll be there.”
The Lady From Norfolk
(On a bus trip home from Raleigh, I sat next to a woman on her way from Norfolk to Greensboro. She told me of a curious love affair.)
“I was born in Norfolk in 1912, and went to work in Newport News at sixteen. During this time I dated a boy named Jimmy, but didn’t think much of it. I liked him, but that was about it. Several years later I met my husband, George, my one true love. We raised a large family, and had the best life anyone could hope for.”
“My husband passed away two years ago. I soon received a call from Jimmy, whom I hadn’t seen in thirty-five years. He said he’d been in love with me all this time, but refused to see me as long as I was married. He’s visited a few times and wants to marry me. He’s a good companion, but I could never love him like I did George. I don’t know what to do. I decided to ride the bus to my cousin’s. I need time to think things over.”
Milton Bernstein
(This story, told by my grandmother, is about her cousin Milton Bernstein.)
Milton was born in Russia. His father was a great rabbi, but when he came to the United States he found the synagogues too materialistic and would have nothing to do with them. He remained a scholar, however, sending Milton to the best schools. One day, shortly before Milton was to graduate college, the father came home and found him on the doorstep. Milton had dropped out.
So father and son went into business together. The father fell in love with a woman in the office. They became engaged, but he had to leave for California.
Shortly afterwards, while staying with me here in Los Angeles, he received a letter from Milton. “Mrs. Bernstein and I will be . . . ,” he read. “Mrs. Bernstein!!!” Milton had married his father’s fiancee! The old man turned pale, his shock of white hair standing straight as that door. He got up, left the house, and paced the streets for several hours. He took ill, and died of a heart attack several months later.
Milton divorced his wife, moved to California, and took a job selling insurance. He lived alone for forty years, never telling anyone his whereabouts.
A year ago we received a call from his landlady. She hadn’t seen Milton in six weeks, and he had named us next of kin. We eventually found him in Century City Hospital, but he had terminal cancer.
After he died, we went by his place — a small, upstairs apartment. We found only a few papers. His landlady spoke of his kindness. Everyone in the neighborhood loved him, she said.
Joe Grimansky
In 1966, during my junior year of college, I enrolled in Joe Grimansky’s poetry course. Grimansky, around thirty, had long hair and dressed like a wino — with a long weather-beaten coat and baggy pants. The hip idol of hundreds of undergraduates, his classes were jammed — with many non-students sitting in.
My section met three times a week. Grimansky would spend the first two sessions discussing beat poetry, Zen, Vietnam, eastern art, or local happenings — often relating it to our reading (Whitman, Blake, and Rilke). Friday was “Haiku Day.” We kept journals, and spent the hour reading from them. (A “haiku,” however, might be shouting “Hi Larry!” to a boy across the room.)
All were impressed by Grimansky’s great wisdom, grand smile, and other-worldly bearing. But he could be unsparing to those he believed pretentious. I once asked him to recommend books on eastern philosophy. “Find ’em yourself,” he snapped. His favorite epigram was Gurdjieff’s “Remember Yourself!”
Grimansky never mentioned grading. Most of us needed high marks to get into graduate school or avoid the draft, and we became increasingly nervous as the semester progressed. Towards the end of the year he brought a large suitcase to class. “If you wish, you can hand in your journals,” he said. “If not, that’s fine, too. I know who you are.” The journals were our only written assignment and, in any literal sense, he certainly did not know who we were (there were more than 300 students). For many of us, campus radicals, the decision to turn in our notebooks was enlightening.
Grimansky returned the notebooks a week later. There were no remarks or grades. Only a napkin, placed in each, upon which was written a haiku in Japanese.
The final exam was scheduled for our last hour of class. Grimansky had instructed us to bring a bluebook and copy of the Los Angeles Times. (Perhaps we would relate our reading to current events?)
“Take out your papers and begin reading,” commanded Grimansky on the day of the exam. Ten minutes passed. Twenty, and thirty. We were still reading the L.A. Times! Forty, fifty, and the hour was up. “That was your final,” said Grimansky. “According to the I. Ching, the male is number 1, the female number 2. All males will receive A’s; all females B’s. Anyone dissatisfied can see me, and have their grade changed.”
That semester was Grimansky’s last. He was not seen on campus again. He was once spotted, bottle of wine in hand, on the streets of Modesto. Another claimed to have picked him up hitch-hiking in Oakland. “He was glad he was fired,” we were informed. “He said he was tired of performing like a trained seal.”
Letters From A Friend
Walter Paige was born in eastern North Carolina in 1952. His mother died of cancer when he was six, and he was raised by his grandparents. An outstanding athlete, he received a baseball scholarship to the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. During his sophomore year, the coach demanded he shave his beard. He refused, dropped out of school, and thumbed around the United States before returning home. While searching for a place to stay, I met Walter at his hometown library (where he spends much of his time). He told me of a room next to his, and we quickly became friends.
Walter has now hitch-hiked throughout the country, as well as parts of Latin America, Europe, and Asia. He financed the trips by selling chicken at horse races until a reading of the Bhagavad Gita, and subsequent vegetarianism, forced him to seek other employment. He has maintained an interest in sports, training to play semi-pro basketball in Harlem and run the New York City Marathon. He is currently employed as stock clerk in a warehouse.
These letters had better make the big time for it looks as if there will be no other “Paige-someone” letters — but just wait until a beautiful woman enters my life — strike that, forget that, all I need is basketball and a three-on-one fast break with me in the center dishing off behind my back or between my legs or thru my ears and the cheers of the crowd and a steal of the inbounds pass, a lay-up and . . .
I’m going to try to live here for six months or so and if I don’t meet some angel of a woman with a heart like — oh, I don’t know . . . I’m gonna go live in New York or LA and play basketball in the streets, drink with winos on benches, ride the subway all day, eat ice cream all night, read the Durant’s and never sleep — be a big city bohemian for awhile, instead of a small town (and time) freak . . . got a job moving furniture — the people were so ignorant — sex, dope, and cutting somebody’s heart out the only topics of conversation — and I was putting up with it (and they with me) for 50 (count ’em) hours a week — all for the almighty dollar — economic slavery.
Hitched to the University of the South at Sewannee, Tennessee. School was out and there were few people around — my last visit I stayed at Beta Phi fraternity — so checked it out again — no one around, but back door conveniently open, so I made myself at home. Spent four glorious days and planned to stay longer (each day running through the woods, reading at the library, eating at the little City Cafe, feeling great, great, great). BUT each night I had kept the lights off so as not to arouse suspicion and made my way around the neat little two-story frat in the dark — however, on the fourth night in search of a knife to spread peanut butter, I turned on the kitchen light — not two minutes passed before a policeman was flashing his light in my eyes asking, “Who are you?” and “Do you have permission to stay here?” — it was not a bad scene, but I didn’t have the right answers so I was told to leave — I just took it as a sign I was MEANT to leave (someone I mentioned this to said, “What else could you do?”, and I chuckled).
Most of my time has been spent in the playing of sports — I guess I have the feeling that while I’m still young I had better do my dance, or the dance of life while my body still responds; in old age it will not, and I would hate to look back with regret at missed opportunities — so I’m still like a little kid in the playing of games — hopefully with the detachment of a mature adult.
Training for the New York City Marathon on Oct. 23. I’ve been running eight or twelve miles a day, so there have been some changes in my body if nothing else. Have lost close to fifteen pounds. It’s become an obsession, at least for awhile. Something about confronting or searching for the TRUTH internally. Let me tell you, when the legs are heavy and you have only five behind you and three to go and a steep hill ahead the truth is PROFOUND — hmm. Heart surgeons say a runner should put in minimum 400 in 8-9 weeks before marathon.
Pine cones! That’s right — cones, cones, cones — pine cones! Needing money, I took a temporary job at state nursery picking cones out of trees before they open — $2.50 an hour — from now on I travel under the alias Needles Pine.
Training for the marathon — SHOT — many days worked 8 to 6 — would run to work and then home (getting in about 10 miles) but after a few days of this — exhaustion (run, work, run, collapse). So it will be a major miracle if I can complete 26 — will try to get a 60 year old man and 12 year old girl at rear of pack and float along.
Marathon! Incredible. 5000 was just a number until I saw them (us) massed at the starting line. The gun! Glorious sun at 10:30 in the morning. To the left, the skyscrapers of lower Manhattan — to the right, the Atlantic Ocean. Two miles into Brooklyn — Finnish, Polish, every kind of neighborhood imaginable — THE LONG BLUE LINE — ran the first 13 miles too fast, died at 16 crossing into Manhattan — passed by a ten year old girl — walk a way, run, walk, struggle last ten — then into Central Park with glorious burst of body and ego — I sprint the last 200 yards in a fashion that passes many runners and has crowd on feet screaming — GO OJ — anyhow 4:14 — 2 hours and 3 minutes behind the winner, 1:14 behind an 8 year old from Columbia, Mo., 3 minutes ahead of a 75 year old. THE FINISH!
Watched a movie entitled “Vanishing Point” — about a mad driver on a hell-bent-for-leather 100 mph chase from Denver to Frisco — anyway, in Nevada he meets an old timer who tells him the best way to escape is to “burrow in right where you are” — so I’ve been “burrowing in” here in my home town the past eight weeks, changing my routines, methods, acts, hopes — getting on the street and digging with bums, malcontents, regular guys, little boys — trying to “turn my camera on and look out there” (to paraphrase Neal Cassady) instead of worrying about what all the other “cameras” are saying, thinking, clicking on me . . . philosophically looking for Jesus in the raw . . . hope I can learn to bleed better and get more blood, too.
