I promised you a recap of the 2016 U of A Homecoming events, and here it is.

The fifty years between 1966 and now seem to have passed in a blink, and things have changed remarkably.

I have a clear remembrance of my first day of class as a junior, venturing into the History of Western Civ lecture and having the professor tell the four hundred or so of us gathered in an auditorium that “the only thing more contemptible than an undergraduate male was an undergraduate female.”  My thoughts on the subject now, the ones that can be printed anyway, were …  Well, let’s not go there.  But are we to assume that he arrived on this planet as a fully vested history professor?  And, if he didn’t like students, what on God’s green earth was he doing teaching?

But all of that is fodder for another day.  What I learned from visiting with classmates—something I already knew from my own history—is that I was not the only one who had doors slammed in my face on account of being a girl.  The female drama student who wanted to be a director?  She is one now, but she was told no in no uncertain terms back in the day.  The girl who wanted to be an anthropologist when she grew up?  Good luck with that one, but it turns out she made the grade, too.

At the Saturday tailgate party, I was introduced to a recent U of A Creative Writing graduate—a female, no less.  So they let her in, and they gave her a degree, but guess what?  She’s interested in writing “thrillers.”  They wanted her to write “literary fiction.”  I believe, I have previously quoted the late Tony Hillerman on that score.  He used to say, “Literary fiction is where not much happens to people you don’t like very much.”  Thank you, Tony.  My sentiments exactly.

Being an honored guest at the homecoming festivities is, I suspect, a whole lot like being a homecoming queen only better.

People who know me as a public speaker probably think I’m ten feet tall and bullet proof.  Give me a mic and a stage and I’m fine.  Put me in a cocktail party style reception, and I’m filled with dread.  And I’m not the only member of the family who is affected in a similar fashion.  On Thursday, when we went to the opening reception Bill and I made a bee-line to the furthest corner of the room, thinking we’d be out of harm’s way.  What we didn’t expect was that one group of people after another would track us down in that quiet corner to visit.  There was one gentleman, someone who doesn’t read my books but who had been compelled by his wife to read the blog, who did a five minute stand-up comedy riff on things plucked from the weekly postings—including mentioning that he’d be coming to the brunch at our house on Sunday as long as the gas gauge in his car didn’t quit working.

I had been asked to say a few words at the reception, and I was honored to do so.  I would say that the majority of the people in the room had never read any of my books, and they were astonished that I would be  “funny.”  They probably have me confused with someone who writes … well … literary fiction.  They were surprised that, in my talk, I had never enough to pay homage to that wonderful literary light of our era—Rusty Warren!  Knockers up, anybody? I was also able to mention a guy from Bisbee, Arizona, Button Salmon who, as he lay dying in a Tucson hospital bed as the result of an automobile wreck, gave fellow members of a long-ago U of A football team his heartfelt admonition—“Bear Down.”  I’m glad that a Bisbee High School Puma is the guy who gave the Arizona Wildcats their motto!

On Friday, we ventured out for the noon-time barbecue but stayed home for the bonfire.  Saturday, we were part of the homecoming parade.  The organizer of the events, a lady from the Alumni Association, was the one issuing marching orders, and she told Bill and me that we were expected to ride in a cart.  When I try to run shows that are other people’s shows, Bill sometimes reminds me that I shouldn’t be “Evieing it,”—a reference to my late mother who ran everybody’s show regardless.  On Saturday, when I was told to get in a cart, I got in a cart.  At the end of the parade, one of my classmates, someone who is a blog reader and who knows about the 10,000 steps, took me to task for riding rather than walking and asked me straight out how many steps I had that day.  Right then—getting on toward evening—I was only at 4,100.  I hope she’s reading this, because by the time we got home from the football game (The game may have been disappointing, but viewing it from the President’s Skybox was amazing!) I did have my full compliment of 10,000 steps for that day.

Before the game, at the president’s tailgate party, a man sat down next to me and, upon realizing that I was from the class of 1966, asked me if I would be attending the reception at that “lady’s author’s house on Sunday.” I allowed as how, since I was the lady author in question, I would indeed be there.  I believe he would have welcomed a sink hole opening up in the floor and swallowing him whole about then, but no harm; no foul. (I did invite him. He didn’t show!)

The brunch.  We told the Alumni Association lady early on that we would host a brunch at our home in Tucson on Sunday morning after Homecoming.  She said it would probably be twenty-five to thirty people tops.  We ended up with close to eighty.  The food, catered by Feast, was wonderful.  The weather cooperated.  It wasn’t too hot. No visiting coyotes came ambling through the festivities.

People who had never read my books kept asking where they could buy my books.  It hadn’t occurred to me that people would want to have books available for sale at the brunch, and the idea of having them there seemed … well … tacky.  But finally, I ran up the flag to Mostly Books.  I was doing a speaking event with them the next day anyway, and they already had a load of my books packed into a vehicle.  So they showed up at beyond the last minute hand handled book sales. Thank you, Mostly Books for being my emergency bookseller-on-call!

We timed our departure this time so we could participate in Homecoming, and I’m glad we did. I am who I am and what I am because of those years I spent at the University of Arizona, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’m writing this on the patio in Tucson.  It’s sunny and pleasant.  By Friday, when this is posted, we’ll be back home in Seattle in the rain and cold.  We have jackets laid out to take with us tomorrow.  We won’t need them to get ON the plane, but we will need them to get OFF.

Bear down!