A Deeper Blue by Robert Earl Hardy Read Free Book Online Page B

another friend in Fort Worth, then he hitchhiked to Oklahoma, to Luke Sharpe’s farm. He told his parents of his exploits only after he returned home. Harris knew that he had more work to do.23
    Some of Townes’ friends and classmates at Shattuck reflect the view that Luke Sharpe summed up years later, that Townes had always been a “creative type,” and that creative types “can be pretty hard bipolar characters; and that was Townes in a nutshell,” says Sharpe. “He was prone to stimulants, prone to bursts of creativity, and then prone to the depths of depression. That’s our boy.…
    But I never saw Townes as a weak person, or as controlled by substances. This was always a clear choice by Townes.”
    4
    No Place to Fall
    A FTERGRADUATINGFROMSHATTUCKANDsurviving summer in the West Texas oil fields, much to his relief, Townes Van Zandt was accepted at the University of Colorado at Boulder in September 1962, the fall after his sister Donna graduated.
    He loved Colorado, loved the Boulder area, and, short of following in his parents’ footsteps to the University of Texas, CU was an obvious choice for Townes. The Van Zandts had just moved back to Texas, to Houston, where Harris had accepted a position as vice president of the Transwestern Pipeline Company—
    something less stressful, hopefully, than his work with the giant Pure Oil—and Townes naturally liked the idea of staying far from home. He signed up for a general liberal arts schedule at Colorado. “I hit that place like a saddle bronc hits the arena—coming right out of military school and all,” Townes later said.1
    His dramatic description is only partially misleading. Before hitting CU “like a saddle bronc,” Townes had a false start and quietly withdrew from school on October 8, after barely a month of classes. He had first phoned his parents and told them that he was uncomfortable, and that he was sure he just wasn’t ready 33
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    A Deeper Blue: The Life and Music of Townes Van Zandt to get serious about college. They thought they had convinced him to stick out the semester. Instead, Townes dropped out and hitchhiked to Minnesota, where he stayed with an old girlfriend near Shattuck. After a couple of days, Townes wandered onto the Shattuck campus and went to see his old acquaintance, the headmaster, who decided to try to help Townes’ cause.
    Townes was confused and discontented, but he trusted the headmaster and claimed he wanted to work. With a combination of understanding and indulgence, the headmaster laid out a list of teaching and coaching duties he thought Townes could perform if he were to accept a position there at Shattuck.
    He then promptly phoned the Van Zandts and explained that Townes was there, that he wanted to work, and that he would give Townes a chance.2
    Two weeks later, Townes was back at his parents’ house at 6322 Deerwood in Houston. Exactly what Townes told his parents about his reticence to either work or start college is unclear.
    He later told a doctor that he started experiencing increased feelings of depression during this period, but it is not clear that he revealed this to his parents at the time. Harris was apparently willing to give Townes time to get his bearings if he needed to, but there’s little doubt that he was somewhat perturbed. It is likely that Harris told his son at this point to make up his mind quickly. Townes spent the holidays in the bosom of his family as he prepared to return to Colorado for a second try at college in the upcoming spring semester.
    Now, the saddle bronc hit the arena. Classes almost immediately became secondary to other pursuits. Townes’ drinking and substance abuse, at first sporadic and experimental at Shattuck, soon became methodical and habitual, and the pattern of mood swings he had exhibited in his later teen years became steadily more pronounced. As Van Zandt told the story, during his freshman year he would shut himself up in his apartment for days at a time,