Edited to add: Allan Saxe has now passed away. When he retired in 2019, I talked to him about his career.

He taught for 55 years, and when I talked to him about his retirement, he said in his day, college was for misfits, but now everybody has to look professional and fit in.

“I found out college professors have no sense of humor. None. They do not understand sarcasm. They have no sense of humor. I’m overgeneralizing, but it’s true.”

He says that makes professors less memorable for students.

He also said he hoped to die penniless after donating all the money he made in his career. He said he wanted to spend his retirement living off social security and volunteering, explaining he couldn’t take his money with him, and he wanted to buy his immortality by getting everything named after him.

You can listen to that interview here.

Original post:

Loyal Scaiaholics know I frequently write, “I don’t blog about politics,” right before I write a blog about politics. In this case, I feel like this post is necessary after a covering a midterm election where people disagreed on everything except whether they should relax a bit [We’re all opposed].

This week, I attended a chamber of commerce luncheon in the mid-cities with UT-Arlington professor Allan Saxe, where he explained that maybe we should lighten up.

I won’t mention the location of this chamber of commerce luncheon because Saxe was the keynote speaker. We were sitting at the same table, and while he was being introduced, he leaned over and said, “Chili’s horrible. It’s just horrible. The food is just horrible here.” We weren’t being served chili, mind you, but he just felt strongly about chili.

I bring this up because Saxe explained how he embraced becoming an old man. Loyal Scaiaholics also know I’ve often thought becoming an old man would be an easy transition for me.

Saxe would take the stage and expand on that message. He said he became a bitter old man in the 1970s. He had polio [so it was easier for him to sit down on stage instead of standing behind the podium], but he was still sent to Vietnam while NFL football players would get deferred.

Saxe focused on how angry everyone seemed during the mid-term elections, saying everybody has a gripe, everybody has a grievance. People are worse than the kids in his classroom, and they’re terrible, he explained.

Also in the 1970s, Saxe ran for city council. He says he would drive around in a van with a banner reading, “Arlington needs Saxe.”He says someone altered the banner, cutting out the “E” and putting it over the “A.”

He said he wishes he still had the banner, so he could start driving around with it again. “Arlington still needs more of that. We’d be a lot nicer.”

But he wasn’t anti-gripe. Saxe said he made a connection with his students by saying he wanted to march on Pantego [I respect that he was really hitting the “P” in Pantego]. He had recently been stopped there and got a ticket for littering because he dropped a napkin out the window of his car.

“Littering is throwing out a sofa. It’s throwing a body out of a car,” he explained.

I brought all this up in an interview with Senator John Cornyn this morning for some reason. Cornyn had just given a speech where he said the prevalence of cable news has made it easier for people to hear what they want, not what they need, so afterward, I mentioned Saxe’s position that everyone’s too angry.

In conclusion, Saxe also said he referred to himself as “Big Al, Arlington’s pal” during the city council run. I asked if he still had that banner because I might tie it to my truck the next time I go to J. Gilligan’s.