Bastiaan M. Drees, Jan. 23, 2017
In junior high, I dated a lot and then went “steady” with Kathy Marcher, learning all about heavy petting. She wrote to me later in life after I was married, and she had gotten divorced, asking me to visit her in San Antonio, Texas to talk, catch up, and, as she put it, “…”. (That dot, dot, dot has been a special code between my wife, Carol, and me throughout our 36 years of marriage…).
I had sort of a rough time in high school. During those years, I was depressed for a long time, and I sort of withdrew socially, not able to follow the success in school enjoyed by my smarter, older brother and sister who preceded me through the grades. I was given the chance to take art lessons from Olin Travis, a locally well-known artist my parents found. With the Beatles still immensely popular and evolving through their music and cultural changes, I could not help but dive deeply into creative projects. I aspired to be a weird artist!
I did not actively participate in many of the social functions provided through my high school other than playing in the orchestra. I would stay up very late at night playing music, making works of art, and sneaking around smoking cigarettes. So, I spent a lot of time alone and pretty depressed. In my senior year of high school, I asked Jean Morgan on a date. Jean and I had chatted in class, and I was impressed by her wit and intelligence. She was one of the brightest and straightest girls in my class, and she agreed to go out with me!
Our date started out normally. I’m not sure what we did for the date exactly, but it may have involved dinner and a movie or something like that. I drove in our family’s blue Chevrolet Impala station wagon (1967 model, the second Chevy station wagon in the family while I grew up). We had a good time and had good conversation. I told her about my artistic ambitions and began to discuss some of my projects. I had recently sculpted a hand from clay and was interested in obtaining mannequin parts to use in works of my art.
We were killing time driving around the White Rock Lake area (dating couples used to go “parking” along the shore of White Rock Lake to “make out”, but this was not in the stars that night. We passed one of the early discount department stores, Medallion. The parking lot was empty and the store was closed. I asked Jean if she would mind me peeking into their trash canisters to see if perhaps they had recently thrown away any mannequin parts. “No problem,” she replied.
I parked in the back of the store with my headlights pointed at the trash receptacles. Leaving the engine running, I got out while Jean stayed in the car. I climbed up over the edge of the tall trash container looking for any artistic treasures I might find, when all of a sudden two cars pulled up next to mine. Men jumped out, guns drawn. “Hands in the air!” they shouted. They leaned me up against the police car, hands behind my back. They asked me what I was doing trespassing in the Medallion parking lot. I told them my story.
They did not seem to believe me, so they went and asked Jean what I was doing. She told the same tale! They let us go along. No shots were fired. I was pretty shaken up, but Jean did not seem too upset. I guess she thought that that was the price of dating a weirdo artist.
Although I did not know what I wanted to be when I “grew up”, my parents decided that I should become a medical doctor like my uncles, Joop and Henk. My brother was to become an aeronautical engineer like my dad, and my sister became a physical therapist like my mom. After doing so poorly in college chemistry that I did not even try to apply for medical school, I did manage to declare a double major in college, taking upper and then lower division art courses in my junior and senior years. My parents did not mind because I was primarily taking art courses as electives to complete my Bachelor of Arts degree in biology in West Virginia University’s pre-med program. When I was accepted into graduate school to pursue my master’s degree in entomology. So much for my career as an artist.
I wonder to this day what my life would have been like had I chosen to follow the path of an aspiring artist. My parents supported my college education 100% (and kept me out of the draft for the Vietnam war). However, there were three conditions for their continued support: 1) I would stay in school and not take any time off, 2) I would study to get a degree in a technical field like science or engineering, and 3) I would not get married until I completed my education. We’ll, when I got into graduate school in Entomology, the decision had been made. I stayed in school. Their support continued as needed through my studies (I began to make my own money in my graduate years). I got married the same summer (1980) that I graduated with my Ph. D. Fortunately, I was able to channel my artistic nature into my profession: making illustrations and taking photographs for my publications, even adding some recorded music to one of my educational narrated slide show programs.
Now that I have retired, I have resumed that part of the life I left behind. I’m writing and recording a lot of music, and have been creating ceramic objects, framed insects and other “cool shit”. The difference is: I’m no longer needing or driven to make money, so I will never be the starving artist that my parents feared I would be. Now that is a life of luxury. That, and…