When I left East Rowan in 1969, I knew a lot about science, history, English, music, religion (Mr. Wayne Trexler — Old and New testaments), but not much math (through no fault of the school).  As far as my knowledge of philosophy, I had always considered it a “big gray area of ponderings.”

I met Donald Secrest (hometown, Lenoir) either in German class or the English Department at Appalachian, where he was a major. Nowadays he is an English professor at Radford University and a published author (partial list: “The Rat Becomes Light,” 1990, and “White Trash, Red Velvet,” 1993).

My father had a friend at the Spencer railway yard whom he called, simply: “Secreast.”

Don lived in an old off-campus apartment building named “Ivy Hall,” and there were ivy leaves trailing up its walls in spring and summer. In the Boone winter, only a brown, leafless vine gave corroboration to the building’s name.

Nearby, and “below” was Boone’s Rathskeller, its operation ceasing while I was yet an Appalachian student.

Don and I might sometimes eat Rathskeller pizza, before or after talking at his apartment about literature, history, music, but mostly philosophy (being collegiate men, sometimes the “philosophy of women”).

Occasionally, our subject turned to poetry, some of it our own. I wrote every now and then, but Don wrote regularly for the ASU-sponsored literary magazine, Verve.

Concerning philosophy, I remember Don as being especially enamored of Sartre and Camus. I also recall a book of verse by John Updike among the many volumes in his bookcase.

We pondered the German philosopher Nietzche, along with the music of Wagner and Mahler. One time when I stopped by, Don was playing a recording of Brahms Fourth Symphony. (but we didn’t get into the “Brahms-Wagner debate.”)

Don told me Nietzche always kept a decaying apple in his apartments, favoring the smell and feeling that it helped his thinking.

I have seen apple-scented deodorizers in stores, but none “rotten.” Beethoven had plates of half-eaten food molding in his rooms, but only due to pre-occupation.

We talked of Herman Hesse’s “Der Steppenwulf,” and in my freshman year, I saw Steppenwolf in performance at  Appalachian’s old Broome-Kirk Gym.

In a similar vein, Don told me Mahler once had a brother on the wrestling circuit: “The Missouri Mahler.”

One night, while walking through campus, Don and I became a “two-man band” and put on a “one-tune concert” (of sorts).

For some reason, our conversation that evening had turned to the Scottish bagpipe. I decided to imitate “the pipes,” even that initial bag-filling, upward-scooping “droning” (opposite that made by the dive bomber). Don “played” the bass drum, even duplicating the Scottish drummer’s twirling of the mallets.

We performed “Scotland the Brave.”

Anyone else barely within earshot of us might have sworn they were hearing the actual instruments. Those within sight would have only sworn.

The late ASU voice professor and my teacher, China Grove’s Hoyt Safrit, remarked after a faculty member’s piano recital, “You’ll hear no better in New York!”

I like to think if Mr. Safrit had stepped out of I.G. Greer (the old Music Department building) that evening, and heard those distant Scottish bagpipe “strains,” he might have similarly said, “You’ll hear no better in Edinburgh!”

Over the past few years, my daughter Rachel has managed to get me to drink red wine at the proper temperature: “room.” Back then, I didn’t know any better, accounting for my arrival at Don’s one evening with a bottle of red wine and a drink cup of ice.

Another of Don’s friends stopped by, and we chatted for a while. The friend said he had to leave for a bit, but would return. During the meantime, I decided I had drunk my fill of wine from my ice-filled drink cup (a big one) and poured a copious amount back into the bottle.

We should never think others fail to notice what we do, because more often than not, we will find ourselves amazed at their powers of observation.

Don’s friend returned, and being an “astute” lover of wine, noticed the level in my bottle being about twice as high as when he had left. His amazed face looked as it might have appeared if he had been eyewitness to the original inspiration for the “Festival of Lights” or had attended the “Wedding at Cana.”

I will always fondly remember those evenings in philosophical conversation with Don at Ivy Hall, as well as enjoying the Rathskeller’s nearby, “subterranean” pizza.

It is said that only when man’s physical hunger is satiated, can he give thought to the subtleties of philosophy.

The same, plus wine, likewise applies to the “playing” of the bagpipe.