For the Golden Years: Antioch Acres

More on the closing of Antioch College, my sorta alma mater, this from Underbelly’s Dayton bureau:

If you ever find yourself in the area, Yellow Springs, which is the town containing Antioch, can still be like stepping into a time wrap, with a Birkenstock store, several tie-died T-shirt vendors, street musicians and frequent street festivals where the air is filled with various scents of incense and other sweet fragrances. Antoich, however, has long lost its luster and, absent phoenix properties, does not seem destined to rise again.

I was in Yellow Springs a couple of years back, first time since, oh, I think 1969. It was indeed a time warp, and I loved it: made me feel like I was 18 again, and what’s not to like about that?

All of which dovetails with another question that’s been biting at me. As a sometimes Chapter 11 bankruptcy lawyer, I have to ask: what next for the physical plant? What to do with the towers, the dorms, and the other splendid old facilities that still—if you can ignore the deferred maintenance—make it look like the kind of college Ronald Coleman would be president of (link)?

I have a suggestion: retirement community. The survivors of the Antioch golden age are (I am one) deep into Medicare by now. A lot of them are former academics, with a few bucks tucked away in their TIAA-Cref accounts, solvent but hardly opulent (indeed, I suspect some of them are already there: behind that beard and the comfortable paunch under the tie-dye tee shirt, I think I recognize the guy who sat across from me in a chem lab a half century ago). Anyway, a lot of them live in expensive places and might profit from a chance to move back to a place where living is cheaper and the home nursing care is probably pretty good.

They could have concerts and book groups, picking up where they left off half a century ago. And they could talk. Oh, my, could they talk—the Suez crisis, the Army-McCarthy hearings, the Ohio State Un-American Activities Committee, the Hiss-Chambers encounter, Eisenhower’s golf score, the Sam Sheppard trial, all the stuff that animated them the first time around. The mere flow of verbiage ought to be able to keep the Dayton Power & Light Company in surplus for the rest of the summer.

Didn’t I read somewhere that a great augury for romance is to rediscover the lost love of your teen-aged years? They’d have to install elevators and guard rails, but there would be no end of opportunities to rekindle an old flame (properly tucked into a wicker chianti bottle, no doubt). Hey, I get a chance to make my moves on Mabel Feepwiler again.

You say I did, and she turned me down? Hm. Maybe she will have forgotten. Yo, Mabel! Good to see you again! Uh, Mabel…? Mable? Yo Mabel, it’s me, Buce!