Pregnant Midge
Tuscaloosa
2000
I had cleared out a couple of shelves in my office for Cris Mazza to use. She was the Coal Royalty Writer-in-Residence that fall. Besides books, I kept a collection of toys in the bookcases. Fantastic Four action figures. Crash Test Dummies. Models of the real red tractors I drove on farms in Iowa. I kept Syracuse China dishes and coffee cups, seconds, I got when I taught there. And I had a Pregnant Midge, Barbie’s Friend, mint in the box. Walmart no longer sold them after customers complained. “Alabama,” I said to Cris. She gave me a trucker’s baseball cap, advertising Cooper Tires. I told her that most people think the endowment for her position was given by the Coal family. That wasn’t the case. The truth was that the university owned land that produced natural gas, methane, and she was being paid out of the royalties that generated. I offered to show her the fields if she wanted. That was the year a colleague who got HBO taped The Sopranos, and the VHS cassette was shared, passed around the department so no one would get behind on the story.