RIP Jerald
Charles Jerald Buchenauer was born on Christmas Day, 1940.
Having your birthday fall on the Yuletide may seem like a blessing. Still, you're not going to get twice as many gifts in the end, and I think this helped form the dark side of Jerald's personality.
Maybe I'm being insensitive. Maybe I'm an enabler. But I found Jerald's gallows humor hilarious. And I was always ready to join him, Spankey, Frank, Lee, Sarita, Chris and Evelyn for a beer-soaked lunch at Il Vicino, one of our favorite Italian restaurants. Or we might end up at the Taj Mahal, which specializes in Indian food.
Jerald was different than most faculty members: He actively sought out the company of staff and graduate students when he got bored. I guess we did not tarnish his sterling reputation, and if we did, he didn't seem to care.
Jerald officially held the position of Research Professor at The Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) at The University of New Mexico (UNM). And before that, he spent decades working at Los Alamos Laboratories.
He was a gentle giant whose frame towered over the rest of us. He had a hairline temper that surfaced at times, but it never really amounted to much.
Jerald wrote his reflections under the pseudonym of Randolph J. Buchannan, quoted the writings of journalist H. L. Mencken and admired the novels of Edward Abbey. He was also an avid follower of Tea Party Politician Rand Paul but he resisted being categorized, quoting the words of Woody Allen, “I'd never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member.”
All these dark, conservative influences helped make Jerald the person he was, the person we all loved but couldn't quite figure out.
Jerald was married to a professor from St. John's College during his younger days. He later divorced her after a turbulent relationship. There were times I wondered if our friendship somehow filled a void created by that split: You see, as a St. John's graduate (yes! I'm a Johnnie!), I was taught how to keep the discussion moving, no matter how meaningless it happened to be, and I think he liked that.
If Jerald had a philosophy at all, it was rooted in the writings of H.L. Mencken. "Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself," said Mencken.
After retiring from the Los Alamos Labs with a handsome pension, Jerald was offered a volunteer position of Research Professor at UNM's Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. Jerald's expertise was in antennas and electromagnetics. Although he felt comfortable working at the labs, he approached the University arena warily.
"Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small," Jerald would repeatedly tell us, echoing Mencken.
Although Jerald agreed to work for the department free, this lack of compensation sullied his disposition. And it got worse when his girlfriend, Anne, got on his case and told him that he was being exploited by UNM.
I would try to comfort Jerald during our lunches. I reminded him about his generous pension and that his investments in oil were paying out big time. He didn't need the money, but I guess compensation was a matter of principle. One thing was for sure: He needed us much more than he needed money. He just didn't know how much he needed us.
"So Jerald, what else are you going to do with all your free time if you weren't hanging out with us? You are adored by the graduate students…especially the pretty ones. You say it's not about money butv"
"In the words of H.L. Mencken," Jerald interrupted severely. "When somebody says it's not about the money, it's about the money."
Compensation notwithstanding, Jerald was the go-to man when nobody else could solve a problem in the basement labs of ECE. He would walk into a room full of exhausted, dispirited graduate students who had been knocking their heads against the wall trying to figure out some problem.
He would assess the situation and remind the grad students (in the words of H.L. Mencken), "For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong."
Then he would cock his eyebrows and say, "But bear in mind: All calculations based on our experiences elsewhere fail in New Mexico.'' (Jerald was quoting the words of Ben-Hur author Lew Wallace, who served as territorial governor here in 1880.)
And then, a few days later, he would have elegantly solved that problem…both theoretically and practically.
Jerald and I were friends, and most of our socializing took place at the now-defunct salad bar called "Sweet Tomatoes," where we would pack the food in. It was a good five miles from UNM to the restaurant, and since I was a bus commuter, we relied on his weathered Toyota Matrix to get us there.
I felt it was my job to inspire him to eat those massive, all-you-can-eat meals and not hit pedestrians on our way to the restaurant and back.
We spent countless hours over lunch talking about every subject under the sun. Sometimes Spankey would join us and the topic turned to the circle of fifths or the harmony of the spheres.
And I did the best I could to teach Jerald to treat the wait staff like human beings (i.e., learn their names, treat them with kindness, and, for god sake, tip them generously!)
When we were running late at work, we caught lunch at Cheba Hut, right down the street from the University. Cheba Hut makes the best submarine sandwiches in the world. It markets itself as a Marijuana-themed restaurant with sandwiches that have names like "Thai stick," "Panama Red," and "Acapulco Gold." Jerald didn't think twice about eating there and always ordered the "Cali Mist (spicy club)." At the same time, I had a particular fondness for the Sensi Kush (BLT).
Sometimes we were joined at Cheba Hut by my friend Dan, an accountant at Computer Science. Reiner, our department administrator, and accountant "Oskar with a K" dined with us other times, and their thick Germanic accents kept the waitresses guessing.
Jerald loved cats and had a cat-like way about him. He most assuredly used up all of his nine lives before he recently passed away at the ripe old age of 80.
Before COVID shut everything down, the boys and I began exploring Hibachi food. We made many a pilgrimage to a westside restaurant whose waiters dazzled us with their remarkable, acrobatic culinary skills.
Now that Jerald's gone, we all miss him a lot, but I'm hoping this web page might help resurrect his memory. Please leave your thoughts in my guestbook, and perhaps that will help him live on in our hearts and minds.
The video at the very top of this blog was made by Jerald's brother, Dean. The following is an e-mail Jerald sent to me on March 30, 2020, at the pandemic's beginning. It reads to me like pure poetry:
Lives Disrupted
by Randolph J Buchannan etc
Here we are in lives disrupted. Perhaps a digital pastime would substitute for the usual chatter over lunch. I had this thought for a story that you, with your literary background, could help me write.
There is a Spanish proverb that asserts, "Every mind has its own world." With this in mind, the author takes us on an expansive journey that maneuvers freely upon the boundaries between incompatible realities. Here the paradoxes and contradictions that characterize human perception and intent are most easily revealed and contrasted. Here the limitations of human perception and judgment are most easily revealed.
The author concludes that the only hope for resolving this infinite dimension of perceptual paradoxes must come from a comfortable acceptance and understanding of oneself. Tranquility for the individual and the group can only be achieved when the individuals know exactly who they are and how they got there.
Of the Profound and the Profane
by Randolph J Buchannan etc
An elderly blind man befriends a young prostitute (on the ART bus). After a conflicted beginning, they become platonic friends, and he bequests to her a substantial estate if she would play the part of his departed life-long love. Their personal interactions challenge the accepted norms of conventional personal relationships.
In a surprise ending, they both are transformed through the playing of roles that reveal the dimensions of caring, commitment, and love itself. (There is no sex in this story.) Starring Morgan Freeman and Julia Roberts.
P.S. Revealed only at the end, the long-departed love is his mother.
Please share your thoughts about Jerald on my guestbook.
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