When I came to Fresno, the university was much smaller. It was a very pleasant situation. One of the best things that English Department chair Earl Lyon used to do to get people to come here was send out a copy of the book lists for freshman composition. And when you looked at it, your eyes just went wild. Every class used different books. In almost every school across the country, if you have a freshman composition program, they all use the same books. Here, one guy was using Plato. Another guy was using the Ladies Home Journal. What it indicated was that you were absolutely free to do anything you wanted.

In Michigan, I started to develop my approach to my classes, in which I used a lot of folklore. It didn't make any difference what the class was called. I always managed to do what I wanted to do. That was the same thing I did when I came here. When I came here there was one American literature class. That was because Earl's idea was that there was really no American literature of significance. He always used to say that guys in American literature are very much like medievalists. He was a medievalist. He always used to say, "There's very little in the field but there's a lot on the outskirts."

That was not true. There was a tremendous amount of American material. It was just not being covered here. From almost the time that I came, I started to agitate to get more American lit classes.

When I came, Pete Everwine was already here and Phil Levine was already here. Pete was sort of a folkie. He didn't teach it but he was playing around town. They asked him, "Would you mind if we brought Bluestein, because he's sort of in your field." "Pete said, "Oh, no, it's wonderful."

My first office was with Pete and we were out in Home Economics. Earl had put us away from everyone, so that if we made any music we wouldn't bother anyone. I got to be very friendly with Pete when I first came and through Pete I got to know Phil. The department was fairly small. I think we had twelve people in it.

Also, before I came here, I realized that I had jumped into a nest of trouble makers, the likes I had never imagined before.

The English department was an absolutely wild place. Anytime anything happened on campus, that was a bad thing, the English department would take the case and fight it out to help, with the assistance of the guys in the chemistry

Gene Bluestein and Peter Everwine, 1966 article (photo was printed backwards)

department, especially Dale Burtner and Alex Vavoulis. They were the mafia. Every time there was a problem we and they would take care of it. Earl was the main force in the department but everybody backed him. Anytime a problem came up, Earl was right there. I'll give you some interesting examples.

Because Pete and I were in the Home Ec-Art Department we got to know guys in the art department and among them was this wonderful guy, Bill Minschew. He was teaching art. He had just come here, maybe a year before then. Minschew was a real artist so one of the things that he did was to hire a nude model. There had never been a nude model. She was a very funny, sort of fat, roly-poly woman. Minschew had not only hired her but when his students had done sketching her, he put up all of their work in the hallway. When the head of the art department saw this, he went berserk. The place was full of dirty pictures. He called Minschew in and he said to him, "What have you done?" He said, "I've only done what an art department should do. I hired, at my own expense, a nude model and I exhibited the work that the students did." The guy said, "This is not an art department. This is an art education department. We don't have no nudes here. You're fired." So Minschew came around and said, "Hey, guys I just got fired." We said, "What did you do?" We immediately told the story to Earl. Earl got a hold of the mafiosos and they took up his case and they won. This guy who had been the head had gotten so used to firing whenever he didn't like anyone.

The next case that came on the heels of that was Gail Smalley, the photographer. She came around one day in tears. I said, "What's the matter?" "Oh" she said, "I've just been fired." I said, " What did you do?" She said, "I didn't do anything." I said, "Why are they firing you?" She pulled out her evaluation for the year and on it, it said, "You are too fat and you don't dress nicely, and we're firing you." I said, "I can't believe these guys. Having the nerve to put it in print." Not only they did it, but they put it in writing. So, I called the mafia and they took up her case and of course, how could we lose a case like that. There was a grievance committee and it was generally a pretty reactionary group but in a case like this, it was so obvious. We got her job back and she has become a really top notch person in her field. She's still a good teacher and Minschew is a wonderful man. He can work in any field. Continue