Kris Kristofferson had varied interests as Pomona College student too
Long before he was an actor and singer-songwriter, Kristofferson, who died Sept. 28, was a student athlete, fiction writer, ROTC cadet and Rhodes scholar, columnist David Allen marvels.
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Kris Kristofferson, who died Sept. 28 at age 88, had an Inland Empire connection: He was a graduate of Pomona College in Claremont, class of 1958.
A San Mateo High graduate, he’d been encouraged to apply to Pomona by his mother. What sealed the deal for Kristofferson, who by his own account was not a scholar, was when Pomona’s football coach wrote him a letter to tell him he would get playing time.
“I wasn’t very big and I wasn’t very fast,” Kristofferson told Michael Balchunas for a 2004 profile in Pomona College Magazine. “So I came here to play. And I just loved it.”
Kristofferson, as I don’t need to tell you, became equally well known in two different vocations, actor and singer-songwriter. (Although as a singer he could be, as his New York Times obituary put it, “pitch-indifferent.”)
Even at Pomona, Kristofferson had a wide range of interests. Sports Illustrated ran a short piece on the senior’s “amazing record” in its March 31, 1958 issue.
Not only did he play standoff on the rugby team, Kristofferson was also “starting left end on the varsity football team, a Golden Gloves boxer, sports editor of the college paper (and) outstanding cadet in the ROTC battalion of which he is cadet commander,” the magazine wrote.
That wasn’t all. According to the magazine, the English major was one of four members of the senior honor society, composed folk songs in his spare time, won four prizes in a short story contest for college students sponsored by the Atlantic Monthly and had just been chosen for a Rhodes scholarship to study at Oxford.
Now there was a Renaissance man. Compared to Kris Kristofferson, his classmates were all underachievers.
Yet after that, he threw away an appointment to teach English at West Point. Instead he moved to Nashville to pursue music, outraging his parents.
“Being more or less disowned,” Kristofferson reflected to Pomona College Magazine, “was kind of liberating for me, because I had nothing left to lose.”
They say freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. That’s from “Me and Bobby McGee.” Kristofferson wrote it.
Me in SF
Where did I go on vacation late last month? San Francisco. I try to visit every year. Highlights this time included two disparate entertainments: a baseball game and an opera.
The opera was based on “The Handmaid’s Tale” — obviously this was a modern opera, not one from the 18th century — and was predictably grim and moving.
The baseball game was between the Giants and my team, the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals, as all Dodger fans will be pleased to hear, beat the Giants twice in three games: the first day and the third day.
Unfortunately, I went the second day. Insert the sound of a sad trombone, as interpreted by a stadium organist.
Highlights that didn’t double as lowlights: a steak at John’s Grill (a 1908 steakhouse cited in Dashiell Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon”); the mango chicken at Mandalay, a Burmese restaurant designated this year as an America’s Classic by the James Beard Foundation; and my purchase at Amoeba Music of a Grateful Dead concert CD, mentioned here recently, that was recorded in 1977 at San Bernardino’s Swing Auditorium.
Speaking of which…
For the third time, I flew to San Francisco from San Bernardino.
The two cities have seemingly little in common other than direct flights via Breeze Airways, but that was all that was required. That and a little luck.
Running behind schedule for my 3:46 p.m. departure on a Thursday, I drove into the parking lot of Berdoo International at 3:04 p.m. Within 10 minutes, I was through security, had my shoes back on and was up the stairs to my gate.
It had felt like I was cutting things close. Instead, I had a few minutes to kill. Thanks, San Bernardino.
It’s unknown if Breeze will prove to be here for the long haul or not. It’s the only airline operating from San Bernardino International, which is on the former Norton Air Force Base. All of the airport’s eggs are in Breeze’s basket unless or until another airline comes along.
If I were Breeze, I would start making absurd demands, like a free pony every Christmas, or gift baskets of M&Ms with every brown M&M removed.
The flights each way were uneventful, which is how we prefer them. But a couple of moments made me laugh.
While probably not unique to flights to or from San Bernardino, it was easy to imagine that the working-class city somehow served as inspiration for this Breeze in-flight announcement: “As a reminder, any personal alcohol brought on board may not be consumed during the flight.”
Also, San Francisco and San Bernardino, while very different, are not quite as different as an announcement as we landed, after our 55-minute in-state flight, made them seem.
“Welcome to San Bernardino!” an attendant said over the intercom. “The local time is 4:56.”
I checked my watch but did not adjust it.
brIEfly
On Tuesday, Palm Springs and Indio tied for a dubious honor: At 117 degrees, they were the hottest locations in the nation. A local record was set too as 117 was the highest temperature ever recorded in Palm Springs in October. The 100 degrees I experienced that day seems, retroactively, rather pleasant.
David Allen writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday, pleasantly. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on X.
