Higher Mathematics

By Bobby Neal Winters

I started studying mathematics at the college level in 1980. I’ve studied a number of places.

Time is a teacher.

During the early 1980’s I worked as a paper-grader/office-worker in the Department of Mathematics at East Central State University in Ada, Oklahoma, for the amount of $3.10 per hour.

As a perq, we got to listen to the radio as long as it was country. One of the songs I remember hearing was “Amarillo by Morning” as sung by George Strait, who didn’t write it (Terry Stafford and Paul Fraser did) but did sing the defining version of it.

It is about the life of a rodeo cowboy.  In that part of the world, this was not a foreign notion to me. While I never, ever aspired to that life, to my 20-year-old mind the song painted a romantic picture.

The portion of interest goes like this:

Amarillo by mornin'

Up from San Antone

Everything that I got

Is just what I've got on

I ain't got a dime

But what I've got is mine

I ain't rich

But Lord, I'm free

Let us now go forward to 1988. Wikipedia says George Strait came out with his version in 1982, so this would’ve been six years later.  I am at that point working on my doctorate in mathematics and am visiting Austin, Texas for a year.  I’m married and the father of a small child.  At that time I rode on the bus back and forth to the University of Texas every day so that I could work with my advisor who was on sabbatical there.

I rode the bus because the bus was cheap.  The homeless people rode the bus because it was cheap and warm.  I am a listener, and I always have been. It’s a big part of who I am, so I listened to the homeless people.

There was one homeless man who was relating a conversation that he had with his girlfriend.  She’d said, “You love that bottle more than me.” He affirmed it. But he also added that he was happy with that.  She wasn’t his boss. No one was his boss. He’d always done everything his own way.

He seemed quite pleased to be able to say that.  Then he got off the bus and went to go live in a culvert somewhere in Austin.

Looking back, I believe he was in his sixties.  About my age.

Where is he now? I presume he is dead.  Did he die under an open sky?  Was he buried?  Is there a stone with his name on it above his head?

I’ll never know any of that.

I know that he did things his way and that he said he loved his bottle more than his girlfriend.

There is a price to be paid for getting one’s own way.  It’s usually paid in the currency of relationships with other people.

There is another country song that pops to mind right about now. The chorus goes like this:

I'd start walkin' your way, you'd start walkin' mine

We'd meet in the middle, 'neath that old Georgia pine

We'd gain a lot of ground, 'cause we'd both give a little

There ain't no road too long, when we meet in the middle

The idea of meeting in the middle is cliche. It’s utterly simplistic. One person in the relationship almost always gets their way more than the other. But it’s also what we do in most relationships.

To get something, you give up something.  I’ll step out of country music for a minute and quote Supertramp:

Give a little bit

Oh give a little bit of your love to me

I'll give a little bit

I'll give a little bit of my life for you

As men, we give up our freedom; we give up our lives. We do this in exchange for love. In my opinion, we get the better end of the deal.

I did, in the end, get my doctorate in mathematics. The most important thing I’ve learned is that one plus one is bigger than two if you give up having your own way.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.