Go Retire Psychiatrist

I read an interesting essay yesterday in an issue of Iowa Now about a great story in Greek mythology. It’s the story of The Odyssey, which I have difficulty remembering how to spell. And that reminds me of a couple of anecdotes. They both involve my learning about Greek mythology from two great teachers at Huston-Tillotson College (now Huston-Tillotson University), which is a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) in Austin, Texas. This goes back to the mid-1970s.

The first one is short and involved an awkward moment between Artie Hicks (an English literature instructor) and a student who was older and returning to college at the time. The student was Bennie Mae Henderson, who I’m sorry to say, died in 2020 in Austin, Texas. Artie also died, in 2023, which I wrote a short post about. My condolences to both families.

Anyway, the awkward exchange which I though was also comical, was Bennie Mae’s inability to pronounce the name of the Greek hero, Odysseus in class one day when Artie was teaching a class about the Odyssey. I don’t know how many times during class discussion that she struggled to pronounce “Odysseus” but she just never got it right, not even once. This made the usually calm and collected Artie so impatient that it showed in his face and the tone of his voice. So, I’m working very hard to spell the words “odyssey” and “Odysseus” correctly, because I can almost feel Artie in the room.

By the way, Bennie Mae graduated from Huston-Tillotson with a BA in English.

I should mention the other of my favorite teachers at Huston-Tillotson: Dr. Jenny Lind Porter, who died in 2020. She also taught Greek mythology and preferred Edith Hamilton’s book as the text, entitled simply Mythology, which was published in 1942. My version of the story of Odysseus is based on Chapter III, The Adventures of Odysseus.

The story of Odysseus or Bud, as some prefer to call him is pretty long and complicated. Let’s begin after the fall of Troy. Bud and his mates partied too hearty about that, which really pissed off Poseidon and Athena. Many of the warriors under Bud suffered loss of social security checks and whatnot, but Bud spent ten years just trying to get back to his condo in Ithaca.

The situation in his home was pretty bad. There was a large pack of would-be suitors for the hand of Penelope, Bud’s wife. The suitors laid around all day drinking beer and playing cribbage (which was amazing since the game wasn’t even invented yet). They made fun of Bud’s son, Telemachus (whose name is mysteriously easy for me to spell), snapped their fingers at him and sent him on errands to Kentucky Fried Chicken to fetch chicken gizzards, which can be really hard to chew, which led to their dentures getting pulled out and falling on the carpet.

Athena made things tough on Bud’s yacht, causing his warriors to catch rotavirus, making diarrhea a challenging issue on most days. Somehow, Bud got waylaid on the island of Calypso, who was beautiful and flirted with him, but also played calypso music incessantly on the record player.

Finally, Poseidon and Athena eased up on Bud and got him on a different cruise line with better music. Meanwhile back at the condo, Telemachus tried to get the good-for-nothing suitors to ease up on feasting on everything in the fridge and drinking all the Thunderbird. So, Telemachus called up Menelaus who couldn’t tell him much except that he’d captured the sea-god Proteus and thumb-wrestled him in an effort to get him to tell him where Bud was. But Proteus didn’t know anything.

So, Hermes gets orders from Zeus to get Bud off Calypso’s island once and for all or face prosecution. Then, Calypso gives Bud a speedboat with all the bells and whistles and Pit Bull as the driver. The parties got a little loud and Poseidon got even by conjuring up a few hurricanes, which knocked Bud out of the boat.

Bud managed to swim to an island, losing all his clothes where Nausicaä, a good-looking gal, reluctantly got him a freshly pressed yellow leisure suit, which impressed the King so much he encouraged Bud to tell the story of his long and terrifying journey over the oceans and distant lands.

So, Bud tells them about the adventures:

After leaving Troy, a big storm drove them across the sea to the land of the Lotus-eaters who gave them food which made them forget where they left their keys. Bud didn’t partake.

The next stop was the island of the cyclops, Polyphemus where he had a few deckhands for lunch, which led to Bud giving the monster pinkeye.

Bud then reached the island of the god of the winds, King Aeolus, who gave him a bag of tornados which the sailors ripped open, thinking they were Christmas gifts. They got blown to the land of the Laestrygons, cannibals who ripped up most the ships in Bud’s fleet but found the sailors too skinny to eat.

Then they reached Aeaea (which is impossible to pronounce without getting a charley horse in your jaw) where the witch Circe who turned most of the sailors into cows, because it was National Dairy Month. Bud runs into Hermes, who gives him an herb (thyme, I think) that would protect Bud and keep Circe from turning into a cow. That amazed Circe and while she didn’t use some other means of cursing him, she did actually tell him to go to hell—Hades that is. That was the place to find Teiresias (I spelled that right on the first try?) who would tell Bud how to get back home, which was to sing repeatedly “Gonna buy me a Mercury, gonna buy me a Mercury, gonna buy me a Mercury and cruise it up and down road!” Actually, the only way to get Teiresias to give the correct directions for how to get home, was to have Bud kill cows and fill a pit with their blood. Man, National Dairy Month is a killer. The blood would attract the dead but Bud had to keep them away until Teiresias spilled the beans.

Teiresias comes up with the plan, but warns Bud that the next stop would be an island where he might accidentally injure the oxen of the Sun, which would be a disaster. Oxen are like cows. Bad time to be oxen and you know why (it’s National Dairy Month).

Bud and his men had to stop by the island of the Sirens. Men who listen to their songs give up on traveling and just waste away on that island, yearning only to listen to the songs of the Sirens. So, what does Bud do? He stops up the ears of his men but orders them to leave his ears open and tie him to the mast. He does OK with it.

Next stop is the passage between Scylla and Charybdis, or the rock and the hard place. They lost a few men. And then they reached the Island of the Sun. His men killed and roasted all the oxen, which led to a lightning bolt destroying the ship. Bud made it to Calypso’s island, which finally catches us up.

Eventually, Bud gets back to Ithaca. Athena helps him by reintroducing him to his son Telemachus, which is where we sometimes get confused about what Bud actually said. He didn’t say “Telemachus, I am your father.” What he really said was “No, I am your father.”

The end of the suitors comes quickly when Bud gets his bow and arrows. Penelope challenges the suitors to try to string Bud’s bow and fire an arrow through twelve rings, but they can’t hang at all. Bud jumps up and does it, immediately fires one arrow through a dozen rings. The plan involves the herder of cattle (amazing, right) hiding all the suitors’ weapons and locking the door to the palace so none can escape the wrath of Bud. Suitors are slaughtered, and only two remain; the priest and the bard (poet).

The bard is spared because the gods taught him to sing divine songs. And Penelope, mysteriously seems not to recognize Bud. Telemachus gets upset about it, but it turns out Bud and Penelope have two ways of knowing each other.

You guys can guess about that. It has nothing to do with cows.