When Kyle Kingwood gave the valedictory speech at his graduation from Jim Bowie High School in June of 1974 he was a virgin, a baptist, and the smartest kid in the auditorium.  Two years later, at the end of his sophomore year at The University of Texas, he was no longer any of those.  

He packed up his meager belongings in the back of his old Chevy pick up truck and made his way from Fort Stockton to Austin. The realization he wasn’t the smartest kid in the room came quickly.  Within the first week he figured out he was no longer the big fish in a small pond of education, but all of a sudden a guppy in a great lake of the brightest kids from all over Texas.  It was a shock to his young system.

Everything had always come easily for him back home, especially in the math and science areas. He’d struggled to write an English paper worthy of an A, but got by. When it came to anything with numbers, he could almost do it in his sleep. He had a sixth sense. He was a natural. So when he got to UT and couldn’t sleep through class and still ace the exams, it was a wake-up call. It required him to study and work to understand the concepts. Some of the people sitting around him in class seemed to grasp it quicker than he did, another new development. In the third week, he actually had to ask the girl next to him to help him with a problem in his Manifolds and Differential Forms class. While humbling, asking for her help ultimately led to him shedding his status as a virgin. The girl’s talents and abilities apparently knew no bounds.

Shedding his baptist faith took longer, but the girl sitting next to him was just as instrumental in that process as she had been in the other two.  Seems her roommate didn’t miss Sunday morning services at Longhorn Baptist Church.  That gave Kyle and his new tutor the perfect time to perform nearly unlimited methods of multivariable calculus without the prying eyes of someone more committed to the Lord.  The notion of a differential form encompasses such ideas as the work extended by forms, the work extended by force, the flow of fluid, and the curvature of a surface.  All those were tested repeatedly in her dorm room, most frequently on Sunday mornings to the detriment of his church attendance.  Her Torino provided a much less spacious alternative, far less conducive to her instructional methods.

The result of all these things changing in young Kyle’s life was a steady descent into averageness as a student.  Differential Forms went a long way to easing Kyle’s acceptance of mediocrity.  He feared it at first, but soon found comfort in being firmly planted in the middle of the pack.  Far less pressure, a good bit more fun.  He found beer, particularly cheap beer, was the lubricant that made that slide into averageness all the easier. 

Midway through the fall semester of his sophomore year, Kyle was fairly certain life couldn’t get much better. His ‘C’ average seemed to fit him better than his old varsity jacket from Jim Bowie High did. His girlfriend from Differential Forms was providing him with more exercise than the PE elective he was taking. Austin was a goldmine of opportunity to experience new things, where Fort Stockton had been a barren wasteland of boredom, not that he made it back there very often.

The spring semester is where things began to unravel.  

Kyle stumbled into the dorm room of his tutor / girlfriend / sex instructor unannounced late one evening and was horrified to see her teaching some familiar equations to a new freshman who’d transferred to UT from Baylor after only one semester due to some NCAA violation.  To his amazement, her roommate was also involved in the lesson, an equation he’d never even contemplated, and had no idea how to solve.

Making his way back to his own dorm, he was further surprised by a letter from the university explaining that the scholarships from the Fort Stockton 4H Club and those the university had granted him based on his valedictorian status were both being canceled at the end of the semester.  His grades had fallen below the stated minimum requirements.  He finished the spring semester, but barely.

When sober long enough, he contemplated his options and they were few.  The thought of going back to Fort Stockton was like a rescued castaway returning to the desert island he’d been marooned on.  His folks didn’t have the money to pay for tuition at UT.  Even if they did, they were probably not of a mind to.  Kyle’s lifestyle and ‘big city choices’ had driven a wedge between him and his parents.  There was little chance of him being able to work enough to pay the bills himself.  The grades that eliminated the scholarships would negate any possibilities for new ones.  Kyle was between Roundrock and a hard place.

As he was packing his gear, getting ready to move out of the dorm at the end of the abysmal semester, Kyle came across a graduation card his Aunt Pearl had sent him a couple years before. The crazy aunt from his mother’s side who lived in Marble Falls. She’s always been his favorite, not just because of the hundred dollar bill she’d slipped in the card. She had a sense of humor, a coarse one at that. One summer, when the family was visiting her in Marble Falls when Kyle was 17, he was cleaning out the garage for her when she brought out a half a six pack in some ice for him. She just winked. His parents would have been appalled. The beer couldn’t have been colder or more appreciated. He enjoyed the first two while cleaning out the garage. The last one was a treat he promised himself he’d enjoy while sitting behind the wheel of her ’57 Chrysler 300C. The Chrysler wasn’t even moving, but the emotions is stirred were. The taste of the ice cold beer, the smell of the aged leather, and the style of that dashboard all gave Kyle an appreciation for Aunt Pearl he’d hold on to the rest of his life. Maybe Aunt Pearl would have some answers now.

His derelict Chevy pickup hadn’t been started in months, Kyle having made use of the tutor’s Torino as much as her talents. He wasn’t sure if he could make it all the way to Marble Falls in the old thing. But then, there wasn’t really a backup plan, so he headed west from Austin and hoped for the best. He would have said a little prayer to get him there, but didn’t feel right asking after all the dorm room escapades and Lone Star Longnecks of the previous two years. But somehow God got him there without even being asked.

Aunt Pearl hugged his neck and gave him a cold beer the minute he walked up to her porch.  “The ‘Freshman Fifteen’ doesn’t look bad on you, Son!” she said.  “The ‘Sophomore Ten’ might be pushin’ it.”  They sat on the porch in big wicker chairs and shared a couple more beers.  Kyle told her all he felt comfortable with, but she could read between the lines, grinning at the parts Kyle tried to gloss over.  “Spent four years at UT myself,” she grinned.  “I may have even tutored a freshman or two.”  Kyle turned as red as a beet.

They talked for a few hours.  She got him caught up on all the family gossip he’d missed over the last two years.  As the sun started to go down she looked at him and said, “Let’s get in the car and have dinner at the Bluebonnet Cafe.  Some chicken fried steak would do you good.  Healthy home-cookin’ instead of that cafeteria crap you’ve been eatin’.  I’m buyin’.”

They got in the Chrysler, Kyle behind the wheel. He had the chicken fried steak with all the trimmings. Afterwards he ordered pie. Had to go to the bathroom before it came. “You can’t buy beer,” Aunt Pearl said, “you can only rent it!” When he got back, a big wedge of pecan pie was sitting on the table, the vanilla ice cream on top of it starting to melt and pool around the crust. Under the saucer of the dessert was a folded check made out to Kyle for $1,500.

Kyle looked up at Pearl.  “Don’t say a word.  Damn sure don’t get emotional,” she said.  “It’s not a gift.  It’s not a loan.  It’s an investment.  In YOU.  Make sure it pays off,” she said.

Kyle spent the night at Pearl’s that evening.  Got up before dawn and cleaned out her garage again.  Washed and waxed the Chrysler, all before noon.  In the corner of the garage was a small pile of the things from his dorm he’d unloaded from his truck.  Kyle hugged his aunt in the driveway, thanked her, and crawled into the old Chevy.  Made his way to the drive-through window at First National Bank of Marble Falls, Aunt Pearl’s bank, and cashed the check.  Across the street from the bank was Hill Country Honda.

Kyle peeled off twelve crisp one hundred dollar bills and handed them to the salesman.  He’d never even ridden a motorcycle before, but figured it couldn’t be that much different than a horse.  He crawled on the orange ’76 Honda CB200T.  The salesman handed him one of the Benjamins back , in exchange for the old Chevy truck.  Each smiled at the other, thinking he’d got the better deal.

Heading west, the opposite direction of the University of Texas, Kyle began a journey that covered twelve months, nine states, and seven thousand miles. He didn’t think it gentlemanly to keep a count of the girls. But there were a fair number of young women who knew a lot more about differential form after Kyle came through their town. He mastered tutoring almost as quickly as he mastered the motorcycle. He found God again in the majesty of the mountains and vowed to be a better man. He found beauty in the ocean that he could never have experienced if he’d returned to Fort Stockton. He saw answers in the blue sky that lead him to his purpose, the reason for his gifts.

A year later he was back in Marble Falls.  Back at Aunt Pearl’s, explaining what he’d done with the money.  He thought she’d be upset.  “There were no strings,” was all she said.  “You invested it in yourself, just in an unconventional way.  You’ll still get the dividends.”

Back in Austin, he sold the motorcycle and bought a second hand Schwinn bicycle at a pawn shop. Had enough to pay for tuition and books for the next semester. Lived out of a garage apartment off South Congress Avenue and started working as a waiter in the evenings, selling motorcycles on the weekends at Capital Honda. Finished his bachelor’s degree in a year and a half. Got his masters after that, selling a lot of motorcycles in the meantime. He was selling dreams, really. They just required a motorcycle.

He wrote to Aunt Pearl almost monthly.  She never mentioned her diagnosis, not even when she came to the graduation ceremony for his doctorate degree.  He just thought she looked older, more frail.  

He would always tell people he owed his career in advanced aeronautics working for NASA to an older woman in Marble Falls.  The same one he inherited the Chrysler 300C from that sits in his garage.  He met Casey in the library at UT, where he spent an inordinate amount of time getting his Masters.  She was an English major who knew nothing about math, much less differential forms.  She became a freelance writer after they married and moved to Houston.  Still wrote while raising three boys.

Each of the boys graduated near the top of their class and matriculated to the University of Texas, following in their dad’s footsteps.  Only one had an aptitude for math.  The other two learned to write, like their mother.  Kyle bought each one of them a new Honda after their second year at UT, put five hundred bucks in their pocket and made them take a year off.  “That’s where you’ll get your real education,” he told each one.  

He recommended heading west, but let each one chart his own journey.