Happy Thursday, Folks!
Last week I drove back to Carbondale, Illinois: home of the Salukis at Southern Illinois University, the school that made me a broadcaster, almost didn't let me graduate, and inspired me to write a novel that I made sure everyone across the world knew about.
On the way up, a truck cut into my lane on the highway and took out my rear bumper. Poor guy didn’t have a license or insurance to his name, so we just settled on two hundred dollars cash after we looked up the replacement part on his phone.
Evidence A of the Crime Scene (and admittedly the only piece of evidence).
I'm telling you this as context behind my mood the next day, where I sat down at a picnic table on Campus Lake to talk on Zoom with the great Flint Chaney, an ironic combination of Chattanooga-based photographer and fellow Saluki, to reminisce about what SIU was like when he arrived in 1992 for cinema and photography versus what it was like when I showed up in 1970 for radio and TV.
Enough whining about car troubles, It’s showtime!
This week's Boomervision includes:
This week’s Sponsor is: Healfast
The people keeping the lights on at OK Boomer this week is the Healfast
As one of the oldest and most respected bird conservation organizations in the country, they've been working to protect birds and the ecosystems they depend on for over a century.
Right now that work is more urgent than ever. If you care about the outdoors, this one's worth your attention.
Tell them what they win if they support you, Healfast!
Surgery Recovery Starts Before Surgery
Many patients prepare for the procedure itself — but not recovery afterward. HealFast provides physician-formulated nutritional support designed specifically for surgical recovery.
Back in My Day: College
Flint Chaney attended the same college as I did. That's because Southern Illinois University at Carbondale accepted virtually anyone who graduated high school...and still breathed. Neither Flint nor I had set the academic community ablaze during our high school years yet....
SIU had one of the top five radio and TV programs in the country, and Cinema and Photography was also nationally recognised—Air Force ROTC was, at one time, the number one detachment in the Air Force, and the Aviation program at SIU-C was, and still is, one of the top such programs in the country. I was an R&T major and an AFROTC cadet, and I had flown my first solo flight at SIU. Flint was a Cinema and Photography major.
Baby Rickman behind the desk at SIU’s Broadcasting Studio, circa 12 B.C.
Furthermore...
During the 90's, when Flint attended SIU, Halloween was also nationally recognized. Yup, This from the SIU newspaper The Daily Egyptian, about 1985.
"Attendance was now recorded in the tens of thousands, and Halloween ads for costumes and events covered two and even three pages of the DE. They ran alongside multiple complaint columns, rosters of injuries in the dozens, and reports of property damage in the thousands of dollars."
Nineteen years later, Halloween was shut down.
Back in 1970, when I was attending SIU, Halloween was all year round!
The DE reported that,
"In spring 1970, SIU was shut down, and the commencement ceremony was canceled due to Vietnam War protests, marches, and riots that had taken place at the beginning of May."
Riots and demonstrations were replaced by streaking, barely controlled street parties, and trips in SIU buses with beer kegs on ice to Shawnee National Forest, where the students could get smashed without the police and National Guard hassling them.
Then there was the ever-present perfume of pot smoke wafting through the dorms, and beer on ice in the dorm room sinks.
So, where can a marginal ADHD high school graduate go to take advantage of nationally recognised programs while being constantly entertained?
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. The home of the Salukis!
Go Dawgs!
This week's episode is with: Flint Chaney
My guest this week is my new friend Flint Chaney, A well-attributed photographer and fellow Saluki who now also happens to call Chattanooga, Tennessee their home.
He also happens to be the man who once showed up to an all-Japanese Halloween party dressed as a ninja and thought nothing of it… you’ll understand when you watch the episode.
Flint came to SIU in 1992 for the cinema and photography program, which remains (in my very professional opinion) one of the best decisions any human being can ever make in the state of Illinois.
I arrived in 1970 for radio and TV, which was also a fine decision, except for the part where the campus was actively on fire. Although we’re twenty years apart, SIU still seems to create the same species of chaotic warmth in large quantities like they did back in my prime.
Well I’ll be Damned
Flint and I went to SIU twenty years apart.
Completely different eras and programs, and even different versions of what the landscape of Carbondale was while we attended. Yet the more we talked, the more that our stories ran parallel to one another.
Neither of us had SIU as our first choice. Flint decided on it last minute on the recommendation of a photo assistant who sold him on the program. I showed up because it was one of the few schools willing to take me. We both landed in the same communications building, under professors who had actually worked in the field who came down from Chicago and New York with real credentials and strong opinions and no patience for students who weren't paying attention.
Photo credits courtesy of Flint Chaney (duh.) when we made our first introduction at Chattanooga Entrepreneur Week!
We both struggled academically before it all decided to click in our brains (some quicker than others), and left with a career built around finding something worth capturing and figuring out how to share it.
The school gave both of us the tools then more or less got out of the way. What we did with those resources are the part that we can proudly call ours.