A Man of Two Minds, One Present, One Absent More About My Best Professor, Rufus Bellamy Is it possible that someone can have perhaps the finest mind on a college faculty and still have some of the most outrageous lapses of memory imaginable? Once again, I’m speaking of Rufus Bellamy, my favorite professor at Moorehead State. First let me attest to his brilliance. He had read and could easily sum up nearly every significant text in the English cannon, as well as everything in American and European literature. He was deep enough into Greek to teach it and was deep into Hebrew and Aramaic. He wanted to study the scriptures in the original. If you could name it, he'd read it. My daughter Googled up his biography and it blew my mind. Rufus was super bright. But even with a mind so agile, he was still human. Rufus constantly forgot to gas up his battered 65 Chevy Station wagon. On one July Sunday in Maine, he invited me to go with him from Castine to the Blue Hill music conservatory 30 miles away for a Bach concert. Ten miles out, I noticed that his gas gauge was sitting on empty. He said, “Gene, don't worry; this car can go a long ways on empty.” Well, we got to Blue Hill, heard a brilliant concert, and then came back to the car. Rufus fumbled for his keys and said, “My God, Gene, I've lost me keys!' Well, maybe I left them in the car.” Yup, he had and the car was still running with the keys in it and all the doors locked. A short tale to make, we made it back to Castine—running on fumes, I think, with no gas stations anywhere en route and no cell phones, but “Oh the humanity!” I often stopped at his place in Moorehead for a visit, but nearly always we spent the first fifteen minutes searching for his glasses. Early on most of my visits to Rufus' place were to get feed-back on “starred” papers. But nearly always I'd hear , “Oh my heavens Gene, I got so wrapped up in my studies I've totally forgotten your paper.” That news was usually a bit frustrating for me, but then the visit would turn into an exciting venture into some piece of poetry or music he had just discovered. Perhaps the most memorable of Rufus' memory lapses took place the day he offered to take me on a trial run of his “new” but very old lobster boat from Castine to Camden, twenty some nautical miles across Penobscot Bay. Castine harbor was dotted all over with sailboats, yachts, even tall ships at times, so Rufus kept his little cabin cruiser moored about 60 yds. out in front of his boathouse. Well, we set out bright and early, (about 4 pm), and headed out toward the mouth of Castine Bay. We had just progressed very slowly I thought out into to the main channel leading out into 'Ecamaggen Reach' when Rufus remarked,”Gene, we don't seem to be able to get up to cruising speed, I'd better check the engine”. He opened the big hatch to the eight cylinder motor, and there it sat—nearly up to its spark plugs in water. Rufus had forgotten to turn on the bilge pump. We were dragging several hundred pounds of of “bilge water!” So we turned back, Rufus praying and me bailing as we limped the mile and a half back to Dennet's Wharf, the main city pier where all the boats, big and little, tied up. I felt not a little embarrassed looking up at all the smirking old salts that lined the big pier. “What is it this time, Rufus?” called the harbor master. “It's the bilge pump, my engine compartment is swamped.” “Didn't plug it in, eh? Your lucky you caught it before the tide turned, or you never would have gotten back into Castine Bay.” And that was one of the scarey things about Rufus' sailing knowledge; it was all book-learning, which he trusted far too much. But we walked back to his big house on Water Street and down to his boat house. There, we enjoyed another gourmet feast: lobster, broiled mackerel, clam chowder, blue crab and sweet corn. “Sitting on the dock or the bay”/ watching our cares melt away.., we soon forgot about our brush with disaster. I did wonder how we were going to retrieve Rufus' dinghy which was still tethered to the big floating ball that marked the anchorage of his “new”boat. I had planned to take that little row boat out in the morning to get in on the mackerel run that was going strong right on schedule around the 1st of July. But no matter: I took Rufus' Chevy over to Dices Head light house five miles across town and caught a bucket full of “tinkers” and “Bostons,”and “spikes,”' often hauling them in three to five at a time. Rufus never came on any of my priceless early morning outings. Up with his books until three, he was rarely out of bed before noon. Gene Pinkney - 6/ 15/ 21 - For The Daily News html uploaded 09-03-2021