We Called Him Zewis

By Tom Poland

 

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An American Original

Talk about a blessing. A memory of an old friend pops into your head deep from high school years gone by. You’ve long given him no thought but the next second the friend is there, as real as the rising sun. And then the memories of an old familiar face materialized, Charles Lewis, he of two forenames and a nickname.

We called him Zewis and he ranks high on the list of unique characters I’ve known. Where this Zewis nickname came from eluded me but a call revealed that classmates gave Charles Lewis the name “Zewis.” The name fit this fellow with high intellect. “Zewis,” ahead of his time. “Zewis,” a name far better than Charles or Lewis for a guy who aspired to be a Beatnik poet.

I was a year ahead of Zewis in high school but in many ways he was ahead of me. He walked around with notebooks in which he wrote poetry. He championed progressive thinking when it wasn’t the popular thing to do. I recall students being angry with him for the stand he took on evolution versus creationism.

 

 

He was among the first to let his hair get a bit shaggy when the Beatles made the scene. He didn’t go the total mop top way because he was more enthralled with Beatniks, not the Beatles.

He was an American original, a bit of an outcast through no fault of his. Zewis, you see, suffered seizures. In that less-enlightened time people would shun you if they perceived you as different. Zewis was different all right. He was unconventional and brilliant. He had a quick mind and loved discussing far-ranging interests that included disciplines in science. Interests occupied his mind that the typical 1960’s high school student paid no mind to. He struck me as a graduate student stranded in high school.

We often got together to discuss rock music, writing, rocks, and minerals. Georgia’s Graves Mountain proved to be of particular interest to him and many times he discussed the rich array of minerals and gemstones found there. He knew that Graves Mountain had the finest rutile specimens in the world, and he often spoke of the mountain’s lazulite, an azure-blue mineral with glasslike luster. He came by his interest in rocks and archaeology naturally. His dad worked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and that work led him to accumulate a near museum-quality collection of Native American artifacts. How could a boy not get caught up in work like that.

The constant we had in common though was writing. Zewis wielded considerable influence on me, though he never knew it. A well-examined life generally turns up a person who helped change your destiny. With luck, you can recall the exact moment.

Zewis and I were cruising around the Georgia countryside in my 1961 Corvair one night, a cool evening with a full moon that showered silver light upon us. I want to say it was 1966. Zewis had commandeered a jug of homemade red wine heavy with sediment. It looked abominable. I didn’t want to drink muck. He strained the wine through a handkerchief and we sipped a bit as we wrote poetry on the hood of my Corvair. We swapped ideas and discussed how a subtle word change can make such a big difference when framing up a thought. The leap from poetry to lyrics is a small one. Beneath the moonlight, Zewis talked on and on about Bob Dylan’s music, in particular the lyrics in the classic “Like A Rolling Stone,” a song consistently in the top five greatest rock and roll songs ever written.

Zewis was a big Bob Dylan fan and in fact the first Dylan fan I met. In many ways he emulated Dylan. He effected a Dylan look but also appeared a bit Bohemian. Add a smidgen of a goatee and Zewis looked very much like that TV beatnik, Bob Denver’s Manard G. Krebs of “The Many Loves Of Dobie Gillis” fame. That unconventional look suited him. He was a nonconformist and despite swimming against the tides I never recall him getting in trouble though he had a mischievous side. He famously brought a watermelon to school and shared it with others. Zewis, using a hypodermic needle, had injected vodka into the watermelon. To say the least the students liked that melon.

He lived with fervor. When discussing some favored subject Zewis would stare with intensity, his head would dart about, and he’d gesture with his hands to make a point stick. He had a persuasive voice. He’d grow quite animated discussing poetry or music and you could see the fire in his eyes. In the 1967 Lincoln High Panorama you’ll find his photograph on page 90. Those of you who have that gold rustic annual should open it and take a look. Zewis stares off the page with more zeal than any person you’ll find on pages 90 and 91. Of what I wonder is he thinking.

What I sadly remember about Zewis is how he had to bum rides with others. Back then he wasn’t allowed to get a drivers license because of his seizures. What a hardship that must have been for a teenage boy. Zewis walked everywhere. You’d see him walking down Highway 378 toward Elijah Clark State Park, rain or shine. At a time when boys dream of their first set of wheels he walked and more often than not he was headed toward the park. It was there that he hung out. And why wouldn’t he. There he could meet new people, people passing through who hadn’t already prejudged him.

All this seizure business resulted from a freak accident. He was hammering away at something when the head of the hammer slipped off the handle and flew straight up. It came down claw first into the back of his head. And then the seizures began. Every so often he’d experience a seizure at school and the news would spread like wildfire. To many students it was an event.

It was also a stigma.

The cruel thing about young people is their insensitivity. Here’s a fellow having a seizure and to others it’s a news phenomenon, a cause for excitement. No wonder he walked down the high school hall not making eye contact with anyone. Zewis, the quintessential loner, a recluse of sorts.

An old classmate and I talked about Zewis one Sunday evening. The veil lifted as memories of Zewis renewed themselves. At a time when it was unpopular to express out-of-style opinions Zewis stepped forth as an advocate of evolution. He caught a lot of heat for that in a school system that has produced a long line of ministers.

And the fact that Zewis had to take Phenobarbital and other drugs because of his seizures made him experimental. He was the first person I knew who smoked marijuana. He was a progenitor of sorts of all that was to come in the turbulent 1960s and 1970s.

And then the 1980s and 1990s came. The years they do roll by. Career, family, relocating, life itself—these things derail us from the past. I lost contact with Zewis. For all I knew he had gone on to great things, but I had no real notion of what he had done with his life. We get so busy with our own life no one else’s seems to matter. And then one day in the late 1990s, leaving my hometown to head back to Columbia, I stopped to get fuel. A fellow came out the door as I came in. We brushed past each other, turned, looked, and called out each other’s name. It was Zewis. He was smaller than I recalled, slight of build. We caught up briefly. A strange coolness prevailed. We had become strangers. We bid each other farewell, which was unflinchingly true. It was the last time I saw him.

When my mom told me he had been killed in an accident in September 2001, I felt a jab, a pang from knowing that free-spirited, brilliant fellow was gone for good. And so Zewis the Dylan disciple is no more. My old friend the poet walks a dusty lane in a venue called remembrance. I see the brilliant but misunderstood Zewis hands thrust in his pockets walking alone in the rain. His shoulders are hunched against the cold. He would be a writer someday. So he said.

Zewis had something akin to epilepsy but so what. He had something else too: a mind ahead of the times. I enjoyed his views on life and art and it was fun to hang out with him and look at his rock and arrowhead collections. He never lost his love for rocks and archaeology by the way. Later in life he became a member of the Augusta Archeological Society and the Aiken Gem and Mineral Society.

Looking back I realize just how little I knew about him. I met his parents and visited him in his home. His parents had had him late in life. He had no brother or sister. Later after I went to college I visited him at his parent’s home one final time. He was home from college.

He went to Furman. I remember meeting one of his professors, a woman he brought to my hometown. They were more than friends. I want to say her name was Janine. I want to say they married but for the life of me I just can’t remember details from those long ago days. It did not surprise me that a woman in academia would be attracted to him. In fact it made sense. His mind was sharp, fast, and encyclopedic. I recall that he earned a degree in the medical field.

He was a forerunner of modern eclectic thinking. He belonged in New York City but found himself in Lincolnton, Georgia. Alas, he didn’t live that long. As the old Irish saying goes, “We should have known he couldn’t comb white hair.” Another quote comes to mind too, “Have the courage to live. Anyone can die.”

He had the courage to live among many who didn’t understand him and a few who ridiculed him. We called him Zewis but he had an aristocratic name, Charles Boswell Lewis. Born in Sandersville, Georgia, the son of the late Charles M. Lewis and Alice Duggan Lewis it was his misfortune to suffer seizures in a day when people found that reason enough to shun you.

Perhaps you, too, recall a friend who influenced you more than you realized at the time. Zewis was a colleague of sorts, and my connection with him pointed me toward writing when I was young and impressionable. For that I owe him much.

 

 

 

Visit Tom Poland’s website at www.tompoland.net
Email Tom about most anything. [email protected]

Tom Poland is the author of eight books and more than 700 magazine features. A Southern writer, his work has appeared in magazines throughout the South. The University of South Carolina Press has released his and Robert Clark’s book, Reflections Of South Carolina, Vol. II. The History Press of Charleston just released his book, Classic Carolina Road Trips From Columbia. He writes a weekly column for newspapers in Georgia and South Carolina about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and changing culture.

 

 

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