The Dave

I didn’t have time to wash my jeans before coming down to L.A., so I fiured I'd send them to the laundry service tomorrow. Then I remembered The Dave.

Dave Womack was college journalism advisor to me, Kaye, Val, Lynette and Janice back in the day, when we worked at The Driftwood newspaper at the University of New Orleans.

We called Dave “The Dave” and we called his son “Little Dave,” even though that wasn’t his name. I used to bop in every once in a while and tug on Dave’s tie, because he wore one to work every day -- I don’t think any other professors did. It was like “hey, a tie!” and also like, hey, a teacher who will let me be goofy. Cool.

Dave was the essence of cool. He never made you do anything. Instead, he’s just ask mildly if you were sure that was what you wanted to do. He’d scan an editorial you’d written and just raise his eyebrow ever so slightly and make his amused face, and you’d be all, what?

Dave never told you how to change it, but he told you what he thought about it, and it was the power of Dave that you wanted him to think you were cool and smart -- that you wanted to change it, whatever it was -- so that Dave would think it was good. If you could get that quiet little nod of approval out of Dave, man, that was the shit.

Dave used to take the top Driftwood editors to the college newspaper conference in New York every year, and so after paying our dues for a few years, one year Janice and I finally got to go.

The conference was great – we met student journalists from all over and we were in New York, by God. The details are a blur – I think there was a St. Patrick’s Day parade, and Janice got mad at me for walking too slow (strolling, really) and Dan Rather spoke as the keynote, I think. Man, I thought he was cool back then. Who knew one day there would be What is the Frequency Kenneth and Weird Danisms?

Anyways, the one thing I remember most about that trip was we were scheduled to go to dinner or something, and Janice and I dropped by the room Dave and a guy student were sharing, and the guy student answered the door with a nervous look on his face. We could hear the shower running, and the student looked over his shoulder and said (I imagine now he whispered) “Dave’s in the shower with his suit on.”

I can’t remember if I really saw it or if I’ve just imagined it incredibly well, but I have a powerful picture in my mind of Dave soaping up like crazy in a gray pinstripe. He explained later something about – well, I can’t remember his reasons for being in the shower with his suit on.

But tonite I took a Dave shower, and washed my jeans that way, and then hung them up to dry. And thought of Dave, who died suddenly a few years ago, and of how I miss him, and how he changed all of our lives for the better.

I think about Mrs. Dave and Little Dave and imagine their lives must be so sad without The Dave. He was a hell of a guy and I miss the hell out of him.