I loved the design part of my
Architectural Drawing class. I think I was doing OK, as the instructor
complimented my work from time to time. Of course, he may have done that to
everyone. He did want clear math calculations with all work and I was hard
pressed to give them to him. Somehow I was able to figure out the measurements
correctly using addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, but he
didn’t know how I did it. I wasn’t sure either, but it worked for me. I would
sometimes go to sleep thinking about a problem and know how to fix it the next
morning. Strange, eh! He wanted the correct algebraic figures. I was never able
to do that. I just didn’t know how. By the second semester I was taking
calculus and I washed out. It never made sense because I barely had a grasp of
algebra.
He took the class on a tour of a
unique five-bedroom five-car garage newly constructed mansion. The door and the
covered entrance gave the house a church like appearance. It was wide and low,
except for the entrance with a tall with a steeple like feature at the top of
the vaulting roof-line. The entrance inside had a marble floor that lead to the
right through the kitchen, laundry room and out to the paved and painted garage
floor. The hall to the left lead to the bedrooms and the carpeted floor directly
across from the entrance and five steps down was the living room and its hard
wood floor and a river stone fireplace big enough to stand in. There was a
tiered fountain that dripped to from the entrance, to the living room and all
the way down to the basement. Next to the living room and back up five steps
was the formal dining room and on toward the back of the house was a screened dining
room. They considered the summer bugs of the Midwest.
Each of the four smaller bedrooms
had its own bath and looked out on the expansive back yard and the large near
Olympic sized swimming pool. The master bedroom was larger than most houses
with separate his and hers dressing closets and a bathroom the size of a small
apartment.
The basement featured a wet bar and
TV viewing area. Through a door to the right was small lap swimming pool. A
door to the right opened on a two-lane bowling alley. There were no pins or
balls. The space looked lonely.
The house was spectacular, a
vision of things to come. The man designed it for his wife, but she divorced
him as the house neared completion. The children went with her. He no longer
wanted to move into the house, but there it was: finished and empty, a tribute
to opulence. We never heard the price, but it had to be outrageous.
This tour and some smaller ones
only drove the desire deeper to succeed. We toured an architect’s office where
the top dog told us what it took to become an architect. It was a crowded field
at the time and one would most likely have to be willing to swept floors to get
started. I could do that. I continued to love the class and the instructor
continued to press me for mathematical details. I managed to put him off by
getting it right occasionally. Neither of us knew how I did that.
One day during second semester he
invited me to coffee in the student union. He was friendly and complimentary,
but did not avoid the hard confrontation. He explained that architects were a
dime a dozen. The field was over loaded. Then he said straight out that I would
never make it. My math skills were too weak and I did not understand how to
calculate stress. That would keep me doing house plans my whole life and the
money was in the tall buildings. He told me I drew interesting house plans with
exceptional work in kitchen design, but laying all schematics out so a builder
could follow was not going well. He was very nice about the whole thing, but none-the-less
my dream was shattered and the school year was soon to come to an end. What was
I going to do now? I liked commercial art, but didn’t think I was creative
enough to make it there. Besides, that felt like settling for second best. The
manager of Kinney shoes was urging me to quit college and come to work fulltime.
He felt like I could make a lot of money. There were weeks I did.
No goals, no dreams, no
girlfriend, and no life I thought. I knew I could succeed at Kinney’s, but that
would be the path of least resistance.
I felt like I had taken that road most of my life. I tended to do what
fell into my lap. The architect dream was a challenge and one I lost. I just wasn’t
up to it. Now what?
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