Dramatic music music builds slowly in a crescendo throughout these scenes with a steady, thumping drum beat.
INT. DORM ROOM – DAY
ED STUTZ is talking to JT.
ED
I told you, Jim, I didn’t think we had a definite agreement.
CUT TO:
INT. A DIFFERENT DORM ROOM – NIGHT
Same two people.
ED
As Camus said, the unexamined life is not worth living.
CUT TO:
EXT. YET A DIFFERENT DORM – DAY
TIM TOWARD (Ed’s former roommate), DEBBIE (Ed’s current girlfriend), and JT are in the middle of a serious discussion.
TIM
What did Ed tell you the money was for?
JT
(looking at Debbie)He said it was to help pay your rent.
DEBBIE
That’s news to me.
CUT TO:
INT. HALLWAY OF A DORM – DAY? NIGHT?
JT is talking on the communal phone to his friend MIKE CARR.
MIKE (voice on the phone)
You can’t get your grades up, so I’m calling off our apartment agreement.
CUT TO:
INT. ED’S BOYHOOD HOME IN NEW PHILADELPHIA, PA
JT is talking to Ed’s mother.
ED’S MOTHER
Ed’ll be home for another two weeks, and then he’ll be sent overseas.
JT
Oh? Where’s he going?
ED’S MOTHER (glaring at JT like he’s demented)
Vietnam.
(She really didn’t want to say that word.)
The music reaches a fortissimo climax with a final thump. Blackout.
Meanwhile, in the early months of 1971 at 737 Southgate Drive, I was still looking for a job, when one day the phone rang.
It was Ed Stutz.
He was calling from his home in New Philadelphia, PA. He had recently been discharged from the Army, and he was planning to come to State College for the weekend. Could I round up the old gang so we could have a little reunion of sorts?
I was shocked and delighted to hear his voice. It was the first I had heard from him since he had been sent to Vietnam nearly two years earlier. I didn’t even have to ask how he got my number; the phone was in my name, so obviously he had called information for State College.
Of course I’d try to round up the old gang, I told him, but I wasn’t sure there were too many that I could find anymore.
Tim Toward, his old roommate, had graduated and was off to I-didn’t-know-where. I had completely lost track of Debbie. For some reason I didn’t think to try to locate my former roommate Dave DeTullio, even though he and Ed had been good friends; as I found out later Dave had left his fraternity and was living in an apartment not far from me. If I had only known.
That really only left Mike Carr. I had not heard from him, nor had I tried to reach out to him, since that final phone call.
Oh, well, now I had an excuse.
So that Saturday night Ed Stutz, Mike Carr, and I had a little reunion at the Southgate townhouse. As it happened, that weekend both Terry and Perry had gone home, so it was just Carl and me. Thus, Carl got to meet Ed and Mike for the first time.
Everything went well.
We had a few drinks. Ed did not talk about Vietnam or even barely mention his Army service. He was still the same Ed I had known before, but perhaps slightly hyper compared to the old Ed.
Mike was still Mike. I didn’t mention the rift that had come between us, but Mike referred to it rather obliquely as a misunderstanding or something like that.
We sang that old songs and had a great time—
—and then they left.
Carl enjoyed the evening, mostly just sitting on the sidelines and watching the three of us. He especially got a kick out of Ed, who kept repeating, like a mantra, “Get your shit together.”
And that was the last time I ever saw either Mike or Ed.
I wrote about trying to find out what became of Mike Carr here. I also located Ed, or at least I found an address for him on the web, the same house that he grew up in. I sent a letter to him a couple years ago and never received a reply. So perhaps the internet was wrong—or perhaps, well, who knows.