Johnny Longstreet and the Chapel-gate
By: Robert Stewart

I was standing in the parking lot near the Chapel the day I first met Johnny. I was at the freshman orientation for East Coast Christian University in 1965. A brand new little green Nash Rambler came speeding around Old Main, the administrative and classroom building, and came to a screeching halt in front of me.

The driver rolled down the window and hollered, “Y’all get in. We’re late, man.” I rushed around the front of the car got in. Before I got the door completely closed, he was laying rubber across the parking lot.

We tore down the winding gravel road to the entrance of the campus, pulled onto Bel Air Road, and we were two miles down the road before I realized I had no idea who this kid was, or where we were going. I turned and looked at him. He was about my height, but much thinner with dark brown wavy hair. He had the look of a guy who was used to hard manual labor. His clothes certainly didn’t show it, but I was sure he must have been raised on a farm. There were two confederate flag decals on the rear side windows.
The road was a two-lane, blacktop, country lane. The school was located in the middle of a collection of horse ranches, on land that had once been part of a large plantation just outside the small town of Bel Air, near Baltimore, in Hartford County, Maryland. We were taking the curves on two wheels.

I turned to him and said, “Who are you, and where in the world are we going?”
He looked at me with a broad grin and a devilish twinkle in his eyes and said, “I ain’t sure yet, but we all are sure makin’ good time.”

It was at that moment that I knew I really liked this guy and we were going to become friends. We were both rebels in a conservative, bucolic, university. We were both going to get into trouble and now we would probably do it together.

“My names, Rodney, Rodney Chamberlain” I said.

“Chamberlain? Y’all a descendent of Joshua Chamberlain, fought for the Union in the Civil War?” he said with a drawl.

“Don’t think so; don’t know. I’m from Pittsburgh. Never been farther south than Baltimore.”

“Johnny Longstreet. We all are decedents of General James Longstreet, most hated man in the South. Don’t brag on that too much. But he fit for the South and was a good general in the war. Became a carpet bagger afterward though. I’m from Winston-Salem, North Carolina.”

I was fascinated with his accent. He had a long drawl and a lilt in his voice. He said, “Nawth” instead of “North.”

“Well, Rawdney, y’all ever had a Red Bull – not the steer, but the drink?”

“Nope, don’t even know what that is; doesn’t have alcohol does it? I don’t think we’re allowed to drink, going to a Christian College and all.”

We were freshmen, of course, and unfamiliar yet with the colligate system of discipline at ECCU. While college campuses all over America were in turmoil with riots and sit-ins over the war and students rights, ECCU was virtually untouched by such shenanigans. The university was run by a group of evangelical churches and most of the students there, except for the girls, of course, were majoring in theology and hoped to become pastors some day. Most of the teachers either were, or had been pastors. They practiced something called “in loco parentis,” which meant that the administration was responsible for us and had authority over us, just like our folks, and they had some really strict rules.

“Well, y’all are about to have goo-ood thang. This ones’s on me, Yank,” he drawled.
We went to a little drive-in restaurant called “The Arctic Circle.” They had some of the best ice cream, hot dogs, Philly cheese steaks, and all the other foods that weren’t good for you. And, it was cheap; a college student’s paradise. There were carloads of girls, mostly high school girls, everywhere. Even better, they were impressed with college guys. I had my first Red Bull, a mixture of birch beer and vanilla ice cream, and a Philly cheese steak. Got to meet a couple of real nice waitress chicks too.

We got to shooting the breeze. I learned that his daddy had a tobacco farm and he had a younger brother, Charles, who was the quiet one in the family. Apparently his folks thought Johnny was a little on the wild side, and comparison to his brother didn’t help much. So they sent him to this school hoping that a Christian college would calm him down some. Were they ever wrong!

By the time we got done eating, talking and laughing our butts off at each other’s stories, we realized that we were a half hour late for the orientation. We wouldn’t have been so casual about it if we had known the dean of men, the dreaded Reverend Doctor, Earl Prince.

Prince was not your average clergyman. He must have descended from the hell fire and brimstone preacher, Jonathan Edwards. He could have written, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” in far stronger and darker language than his notorious progenitor.

The orientation was held in the chapel which was a large room in the lower level of Old Main. It had a doorway to the outside in the rear, and a few rows further up on the left had one that led to the stairwell. There was also a wide wooden staircase in the hall on the main floor leading up through the other floors to something called “The Widow’s Walk.”

We entered quietly through the outside door, and sat in the back row. The academic dean was just finishing his remarks and the president was about to give his speech. We noticed a short, portly man with graying hair that was slightly balding sitting across the aisle from us in the same row. He had three chins, and a wooden leg, and was he was wearing a white shirt and dark suit and thin black tie. Which we found out later, was required of all the professors. He had a big black record book; he was staring at us and was making notations in it.

The president read or recited most of the rules. The use of alcohol and tobacco in any form was forbidden as were men’s magazines, like Playboy. We had enforced study hours, curfew and lights out. We were given a paper that listed the rules and the dress code for various times of day and various situations.

President Segraves laid down some strict rules about public displays of affection. In an era where most colleges were going over to co-ed dorms, ECCU had separate facilities and it was a major violation, subject to suspension or dismissal, for a member of the opposite sex to enter the other’s dorms at any time. We were informed that chapel occurred three times a week at 11:00 am, and was mandatory. Attendance would be taken. There was a demerit system and students accruing too many were subject to a whole variety of punishments.

We were dismissed to meet with our advisors to finalize our schedules for the semester, but Johnny and I never made it out the door. The portly man who had been watching us, stopped us and his stare told us we better remain seated.

“I am Dr. Prince, the Dean of Men. I realize that you two gentlemen are freshman and new to our ways here. We do not follow the same sloppy and inconsiderate practices you may have become accustomed to in your worldly secular high schools. By your tardiness you missed a very important message about academic procedures, and more importantly, your late arrival is an insult to Dean Cunning. Because I am a man of great patience I will ignore this misdemeanor, so long as you both provide Dean Cunning with a letter of apology no later than five o’clock today. Now may I have your names and student ID numbers please?” He carefully wrote them down in the book and told us he would be keeping a close eye on us.

Though we were tempted, we realized it was no use to lie to him, because the student body was so small that he would find out who we actually were at some point. We both knew that we were just going to love this guy. He went through the side door into the stairwell, and we could hear the distinctive thud of his artificial leg as he climbed the stairs. I noted that recognizing that sound might be very important in the future.
We hustled to the appointed rooms to meet with our advisors. Members of the faculty would shepherd us through the process called “matriculation,” a word that always sounded slightly sexual to me. You know, like, “So, I saw you with Susan in the back seat to the car, did she matriculate you?” I’ve never been especially lucky but luck was with me. I didn’t get Dr. Prince for an advisor; I got President Segraves, probably the next worse thing.

Afterward we freshman had a picnic dinner on the large patio of the President’s residence which was near the entrance to the campus. I couldn’t find Johnny anywhere. When I got back to the dorm I learned that he had gone to Bel Air and taken the two chicks we met at the Arctic Circle to the movies.

Like I said, we had strict study hours, but they weren’t enforced on the first night since we had nothing to study anyway, except the girls; which I intended to do.

The entrance to the student lounge was on the ground floor of Hobbs Hall, the residence hall I lived in. there was a stairwell that had a swinging door at the bottom which opened in both directions, but it was solid; no window. I charged down the stairs, hit the door running and it swung open – about eight inches – stopping with a resounding thud. I slowly opened the door the other way and grimaced. There was Dr. Prince sitting on the floor shaking his head and rubbing his face. I tried to help him up, but really didn’t know how to go about it with that wooden leg. He recovered quickly and glared at me.

“Mr. Chamberlain,” he said as he struggled to his feet, or foot, and attempted to recapture his dignity, “this is not the fun house at the carnival you obviously must have been raised in. We do not charge down stairwells and through doors here. You are training for the ministry, sir; not Wringling Brothers. This is twice now that you have demonstrated a dangerous lack of respect. For your sake, Chamberlain, I hope there is not a third. It would lead to grave consequences.”

I never even got a chance to say I was sorry. He turned, and to my horror went through a door on the left; the door to his apartment. He lived in my dorm!

It was a Friday night, lights out was at midnight. My roommate, Dave, was a sophomore and he told me about the procedures. Dr. Prince would come out at midnight and walk around the building noting which windows were still lit. The next day the demerits would be passed out. I told him that I had made up my mind not to go to bed until I was sure Johnny was back in the dorm. Midnight came and there was no sign of him.
Dave told me not to worry. He would stay up lots of nights after lights out and Prince never knew. He went to the closet that got a big heavy blanket, army surplus, I think. He had screwed hooks behind the curtain rods. The blanket attached to the hooks and covered the window, which was really a sliding glass door leading to a balcony, completely so that no light came through the window. I later found out that almost every guy in the dorm had the same defense.

Our room was right over top of Prince’s apartment. We could hear his door anytime he came or went. He had to exit into the hallway then out the front of the dorm. He could either reenter: climb a set of stairs and exit on the backside, or walk completely around the building on the grass. The former was easier with his artificial limb. There was a door at the end of the hall on either side of the second story, but he seldom used those.
I heard him go out the front and waited quietly for him to count. I heard the hallway door open and Prince coming up the steps with the wooden leg going screech-thud on each step. Then I heard him go out the back. I went to the bathroom, and while I was washing my hands a set of headlights lit up the window. Could it be… Oh, God! This would be the worse time for Johnny to get back.

I heard Prince come back in and stumble quickly down the stairs. He had evidently seen the headlights too. Before Prince got out the front door, I was out the side door and running as fast as I could across the dark campus to the parking lot. I caught John just as he was getting out and dragged him down behind another vehicle just as Prince came out the front door.

“John, I hope you had a lot of fun, cause now you got both of our butts in trouble. Prince is checking lights out and he saw your headlights. Didn’t you read the rules?”

“Well, sure, but no southern gentleman would leave a poor girl stranded. I had to take them home.”

“And I would bet you made a stop for them to see the Bay from Carver’s Lane, didn’t you?”

“Y’all would have done the same thing, Yank, if you had seen them girls. Real fine ladies they was. And it’s a real fine view. Besides, I think we’re safe enough. I don’t think he’ll walk this-a-way, and if he does we can hide behind the carriage house. He cain’t move fast enough to keep up with us.”

“You’re right, he won’t. What he will do is do a room check. He won’t have to catch us. He’s gonna knock on every door and take attendance. He’s gonna find two idiots missing and he’ll know who they are then – if he doesn’t suspect already. We’ve got to get back in there. Got any ideas?”

“Y’all are wantin’ me to thank after the evenin’ I’ve just had? You Yanks are supposed to be the smart ones, Y’all won the war!”

“Jeez Johnny – Ok, ok – let me think! When he goes in the front door he will have to climb the steps to the second floor. He will most likely start at the south end of the dorm and go into each room. We will go around and come in the back door and sneak up the stairs. The bathroom door is right by the stairs. When he goes into one of the rooms we will run around the corner into the bathroom. Then we wait until he goes into the next room. My room is one door down from the bathroom. We can slip in there and I’ll change into pajamas. Then it’s up to you to get back to your room. You can climb across the balcony and get in through the sliding doors. Think you can remember all that, Johnny Reb?”

“Y’all lead the way, General Chamberlain.”

The plan worked, we got in, quietly climbed the stairs. We heard him knock on a door, it opened and shut. We ran around the corner and burst into the bathroom. We were waiting for him to move to the next room. We heard him come out of the room, but, to our horror, he didn’t go into the next one. He was coming directly for the bathroom. The urinals were on one side along with a set of stalls. On the other were several sinks. Around the back of that wall were the showers. We moved there quietly and got into separate shower stalls.

We heard him come in; heard one of the urinal’s flush. We heard him walk across to the sinks. He was washing his hands and humming a tune. It was terrible. He had no pitch at all. Johnny couldn’t restrain himself and let out a faint snort. The humming stopped. We could hear him opening and closing the doors on the toilet stalls. I stuck my head out and saw Johnny do the same.

“What do we do now, Einstein?” He said.

“Take your clothes off!”

“What!”

“Take off all your clothes. Dump them in the next shower stall; hurry!”

Prince came to the last stall and slammed the door. Then we could hear screech-thud, screech-thud, as he rapidly made his way around the partition to the showers.

“Hum,” I said

“Hum?”

“Yeah, hum, we’re supposed to be getting ready to take a shower.”

Dr. Prince stopped abruptly when he heard the humming. He moved slowly in front of the stalls we were in. he put a hand on each shower curtain and in one swift move, opened them both.

We screamed.

Dr. Prince turned red as a beet and, without saying anything, turned and retreated to his apartment.

Weekends we had much less supervision. There was only a student monitor on duty and he paid little attention to the rules. John and I spent Saturday night on Carver’s lane with a couple of waitresses we had met at The Arctic Circle. On Sunday we went to services at the Crosswell Church on the edge of campus and they had a dinner for us freshmen. We met some interesting young women there too. We didn’t see Prince all weekend.

On Monday, classes started. I liked most of mine. I didn’t have any with Prince. There were very few electives the first year, mostly required courses, so Johnny and I were in most classes together. The problem was that they started at 7:00 am. Many of the students were on a work study program and we finished classes at noon so everybody could go to work. At the end of our last class the Professor told us that Dr. Prince wanted to see us in his office right after lunch.

He was seated behind a big heavy desk and he never looked up as we entered the office.

“Sit down gentlemen,” he said. It wasn’t a request. He looked up slowly and stared at each of our faces a long time like he wanted to paint a portrait or something. The room was deathly silent. Then he stood up, walked around the desk and sat on the front of it just a few feet from us. He was looking down on us and we had to look up.
“Contrary to what you may think, while I am handicapped physically, I am not mentally. I have a photographic memory and an IQ that is twice that of the two of you combined. You cannot outsmart me. If I did not hold authority in such high regard, you both would be looking for another college in which to play your tricks. But there are rules and regulations I must follow and I never break the rules. I know what happened Friday night. I know, but I cannot prove it. Therefore I cannot punish you in the manner that I would like to, or that you deserve.”

We looked at each other and breathed a collective sigh of relief. It was premature.

“However, I can and will make your lives as difficult as possible. Neither of you have shown yourselves worthy of serious consideration for ordination. But, we have years to rectify that. Since I cannot get rid of you, I intend to mold you into something approaching intelligent life-forms.

“President Segraves has given me permission to create an independent study group for exceptional freshmen. You two are certainly exceptional. Therefore, you will be the first, and at the moment, the only members of my class,” he said, with a broad smile.

The next few weeks were a living hell. He gave us research project after research project. We almost never got out of the library afternoons and evenings. We still had to study for our other classes. Once or twice a week he would ask us to fulfill our “community service” portion of his class. That usually meant some menial task around campus that other students got paid to do. The campus was an old southern plantation with trees, flowers, orchards and open fields all around the buildings. We spent long hot afternoons with sickles cutting tall weeds, shoveling fertilizer brought in from the horse farms, and raking up grass or leaves. It also meant we would have to do our studying on Saturday instead of sleeping in.

Sunday was the only break we got. He was always gone on Sunday. We always ended up on Carver’s Lane showing young ladies the sights. The northern girls were fascinated by his southern drawl and smooth manner. The southern belles thought my Pittsburgh accent was cute; and liked my rebelliously long hair. I wasn’t even aware I had an accent.

We had a course on world missions in the morning with Mr. Paul Wojciekowski, or Woji, as we called him. He was Polish and taught in broken English. He evidently had been a great missionary, but was a lousy teacher. We worked so hard and so late that it was hard to stay awake in his class at 7 a.m. Johnny bought a large brief case with a hinged top. He would put a pillow in it and after Woji started to talk he would open it so the lid blocked Woji’s view, put his head in the case and go to sleep. As time went by he started doing that in other classes. Nobody seemed to miss him.

I learned to sleep with my eyes open. It was something my dad often did; must be a family trait. If a professor asked me a question I would wake up, act like I was hard of hearing and ask him to repeat the question.

We both fell asleep in English class one day. English was just before chapel. We woke up to an empty room and knew we were in a great deal of trouble. We ran down the staircase and out the back door and quietly slipped through the outside door to the chapel. They were standing and singing a hymn so no one noticed. I noted that Prince was not in his usual seat across from us. He was sitting in the third row from the back on the end by the side door. He had to turn his head to take attendance behind him. We were lucky. He had taken it from the front to the back. He hadn’t noticed we were late.
Chapel was pretty predictable. We would sing three hymns. Someone would have a prayer, and then the Dean or President would make announcements. Some group would do a duet, trio, or quartet number, then President Segraves would introduce the speaker; usually a local clergyman, but sometimes a member of the faculty.

Something strange happened that day. As Segraves introduced the speaker, Prince very quietly moved from his seat, stood with this hand on the doorknob of the side door. When the students applauded the speaker, he slipped out the door. I was hoping he had gotten sick. But, no, he was waiting for us later that afternoon for our “independent study.”

I began to notice a pattern by the third time we had chapel after that. He would always take attendance and leave at exactly the same point in the service. I didn’t know what he was doing, but he certainly was breaking the rules and I wanted to find a way to get even.

We were raking one day when I asked Johnny if he had noticed it too.

“Sure ‘nuff. That old rascal is up to something for sure,” he said.

“Well, I sure would like to find out. It would be great to have something on him. Maybe he’d let up on us some.”

“By the prophet’s beard! I think I know just how to do it,” Johnny said, “It’s chancy and it will take the both of us, but I thank it’ll work. Y’all willin’ to risk it?”

“I’ve had enough of this crap. We ain’t done anything that bad. He just doesn’t like us. What more could he do to us. Most that could happen is we get kicked out. There’s other schools we can go to. Let’s do it Johnny Reb.”

He told me what he had planned. I liked it. It was a stroke of genius. We could get caught, but so would he and he would know who did it to him.

“Johnny, if the Confederacy had a few more like you, I’d be speaking with a southern drawl too. If this works you shall be know henceforth as John the Dee-vine!”

It was Monday, chapel day. We hung back in the English class until everyone was gone. We went down the stairs to the landing at the chapel. We waited for everyone to get inside. Chapel started and we waited until they finished the first song. He would not start taking attendance until everyone sat down after the last song.

There was a pop machine and a vending machine on the landing. There was also a large barrel for the cans and wrappers. It was picked up on Monday afternoon. That meant it was a full as it would get. The door from the chapel was a metal door that opened outward onto the landing. We took pop cans out of the barrel and made a row three deep at the bottom of the door. Then we started working our way carefully and quietly upward until we had filled the entire doorway with pop cans. We slipped out the back door and walked around to the outside chapel door. We sidled into the back row, unnoticed, as they finished the last song.

Prince started taking attendance. He turned, saw us, and reluctantly marked us present. Then one of the girls sang a solo. President Segraves got up and gave an introduction to the speaker. Prince moved slowly to the door and put his hand on the knob. We held our breath. There was applause.

The next sound was thunderous. As Prince opened the door the pop cans reigned down onto the concrete floor in the stairwell and echoed to the top of the building. There stood the Reverend Dr. Prince with his hand on the door and a look of embarrassment on his face. Every eye was focused on him, including that of the Dean and the President as well as the astonished clergyman.

We grabbed each other and danced. What a beautiful sound; what a marvelous sound; what a wonderful enormous sound! Prince had been caught breaking the rules in a way that Dr. Segraves dare not ignore. We had been revenged at last. He was looking at us. He knew, but his own record book vindicated us.

But then the room became very silent. Something happened that we had not expected; could not have expected in a thousand years. The door to the locked storage room on the other side of the stairwell opened, scattering cans. A scantily clad woman stood in the doorway and said, “Earl, honey, what’s going on here?”

THE END