Charles Francis Guittard Authors A New Memoir of Growing Up
SCRIBBLINGS from STORAGE, The Confessions of an English Major: An Interview of Charles Francis Guittard by Randy Fiedler: Today I interview Charles Francis Guittard, Baylor 1964, regarding his creative new memoir, Scribblings from Storage: The Confessions of an English Major. The work provides through letters to his family and friends, a record of extended adolescent angst, a memoir of growing up and maturation—one that includes the last years of high school through his years at Baylor as an English major, his years obtaining a law degree, and a few more in which he sought to obtain his footing, personally, socially and professionally. What could have been a heavy trip for the reader is enlivened by Charles’ sense of humor, his chatty stories of his own insecurities, his droll comments along the way, a few poignant original poems, his student protests and pranks, his cartoons, and eighteen illustrations by Amanda Colborn, a Baylor art graduate. Charles admits his Baylor years were not always completely dedicated to learning from teachers or books.
RF: Charles, I’m familiar with your previous books about your grandfather Francis Gevrier Guittard and his career in the Baylor history department. Your current memoir seems to be a complete departure from that kind of writing as it is neither an autobiography nor work of history.
CG: You are right—it is a memoir only. It is actually my second memoir about my growing up, the first being, THINKING THINGS OVER, The Reflections of Two 80-Year-Olds, which I did with my wife Nancy.
RF: Yes, of course. What is the primary difference between this current memoir and your first one?
CG: Well, in our memoir, Nancy and I both tell our stories of growing up. Mine are about my parents’ efforts to “polish me” and ready me for adulthood. Their attempts were well-intended but only partially successful. Nancy’s stories are funny anecdotes about growing up with her family in Dallas. But most of the book is filled with our candid emails in 2021 leading to our marriage in December.
RF: You waited until you were almost eighty to get married?
CG: No, no. I married first in 1971, then again in 1986, and finally in 2021 after my second wife Pat died. No one else in my family on either side has done as much marrying. I’m pretty sure I’m through.
RF: OK, that’s good. So if you already had written a memoir, what prompted this new memoir and pray tell why you call it “Scribblings from Storage”? But wait, before we get into that, what were you doing at Baylor when you weren’t studying or going to class?
CG: Would you believe playing bridge in a downtown smoky bridge room at the Raleigh Hotel with a roommate who played under an assumed name?
RF: Assumed name?
CG: Yes, his parents were the sort of Baptists who thought he shouldn’t be playing bridge, canasta, or dominoes while he was enrolled at Baylor. Just studying for class, reading the Baptist quarterly, and going to BRH. They were missionaries or something.
RF: Can you reveal his real name?
CG: I can but don’t want to.
RF: All right. Where did your title “Scribblings from Storage” come from?
CG: The short answer is that this memoir is based on the letters, essays and other writings, cartoons, and odds & ends in storage units I had rented over the years. I would haul it all around with me when I changed cities which I did several times. Can’t believe I did that but I did.
RF: How could you make a memoir out of those things? Sounds random.
CG: Good question, but in reading over my letters and those of my father, for example, certain themes just kept jumping out at me, particularly those about overcoming my social anxiety, especially regarding dating, as well as those concerning my choice of college, and then a profession to follow college. The difference between the current memoir and the first one is that it is more reflective, clearly more focused, and is all about me! It was much harder to write as it is more revealing. A little scary.
RF: Did you at some point second-guess your choice of Baylor for college?
CG: I certainly did. I almost transferred to Rice after my sophomore year. I was assigned to room with a champion pole vaulter at Rice—no joke—and could have hung out with athletes had I transferred! That would have been a welcome step up socially, for sure.
RF: Why didn’t you?
CG: Well, first, Baylor accepted me to its Honors Program for my junior year which made me feel better about Baylor, and second, Rice was OK for me to enter as a sophomore rather than a junior, so I decided to stay at Baylor. I couldn’t see spending five years as an undergraduate. Also, I’ve read somewhere that Larry McMurtry left Rice because of the required calculus course.
RF: Was that a good decision?
CG: Yes, no doubt, but not so much because of the Honors Program which I was in for a year. Although I didn’t know it at the time, staying at Baylor turned out to be the best decision I could have made because of the opportunities I have had after my Baylor graduation.
RF: What opportunities?
CG: Many, but mainly to add something to my grandfather’s legacy at Baylor in the history department. I was able to make a contribution facilitating, I am told, the creation of Baylor’s Ph.D. program in history. And then I was also inspired to produce a trilogy of his life and times based largely on his letters with family along with the letters I received from seventy-five of his students still living in 1978 when I started researching his biography.
RF: Turning to your current memoir, what might interest Baylor students and Baylor graduates in this new work? Your Baylor was over six decades ago, just saying.
CG: I think, certainly hope, my story will resonate with many people, whether they attended Baylor or not, because it follows my struggle to determine who I am and what I might be able to do. I passed through several personal crises in the ten years between the end of high school and getting married to my first wife. I am, and was, the introverted type who did well in school but didn’t get on so well socially, with girls or with joining a fraternity. I tended to hang with a small group of somewhat nerdy guys. It took me a while to figure out how to call girls up for a date. Also, no joke.
RF: Did living at Baylor agree with you? Tell me what you remember about Baylor.
CG: I was into the Baylor-Aggie rivalry, Baylor football—Ronnie Stanley, Ronnie Bull, Don Trull and Lawrence Elkins, living at Penland Hall, the antics of the NoZe Brotherhood—I was not a member, going to the movies with my buddies or to Howard Johnson’s or Ira’s on Lasalle, ice cream at Vandervort’s, ping-pong at the UB, and bridge at the Raleigh Hotel. I liked many of my teachers, especially the ones I had my last two years. I especially enjoyed ordering pizza—the best—from George Tseng’s Pizza King on Dutton and having it delivered to our room at Penland. The teachers I dug the most were usually for English, philosophy, and theology courses, some German courses, but not the science, economics, or math courses. In one instance, I took a great teacher for a science course I wasn’t interested in—geology—and a great course—psychology—from a teacher I didn’t think could cut the mustard. And I was also an enthusiastic part of Baylor’s intercollegiate debate team although I’ve nothing to brag about there.
RF: I understand you participated in a couple of protests, one at Baylor and one later at SMU Law School.
CG: Yes, I guess I had a little of that college protest spirit thing back then. At Baylor in the fall of 1962, a former roommate and I protested Judge McCall’s closing, on the grounds of offensive language and subject matter, the Baylor Theater’s production of Eugene O’Neill’s prize-winning play, “Long Day’s Journey into Night.” We quickly drafted and circulated a written attack on the administration’s actions; my part was a brief anonymous satire making fun of red-neck preachers, my roommate’s a carefully written essay contending that the administration’s actions contravened traditional Baptist notions of freedom of expression.
RF: What was the outcome of your protest?
CG: I’m not sure, but I doubt very much that it has changed at Baylor. In my case, my parents received a mostly friendly warning letter. In my roommate’s case, and I have only his word for this, he was pressured to leave Baylor, which he did, transferring to the University of Texas. In the spring of 1963, the entire Baylor drama faculty, save one teacher, gave notice of their intention to join Trinity University in San Antonio.
RF: You’ve subtitled your memoir “The Confessions of an English Major.” What is that about?
CG: The “confessions” part we’ve already talked about. The “English major” theme has to do with my urge to write from early on in high school through college and law school, right up through my completion of the “trilogy” and two memoirs. In my memoir, this theme comes full circle, as I excerpt from my earliest preserved writings right on up to those written in recent times.
RF: Charles, do you have any other writing projects in mind?
CG: I have a short children’s book I promised Nancy we could do. And maybe a book of the comic book panels I’ve produced using AI. That’s all.
