THE LONG HARD DAY

Not far from the soybean fields just south of Marion, Alabama, a campus is waking up. It won’t be long before a legion of groggy cadets will rise from their bunks, off to their respective obligations. They will crisscross the quad in their Class C uniforms, intersecting the Chapel, the center of this place. This morning, above its belvedere, the sky is smiling a beautiful mouth of pink. Morning birds flutter up to the cornice of Lovelace Hall, singing their songs. Beside an obelisk monument, a chin-up bar stands menacingly—a reminder that Marion Military Institute is no fairytale world.It is 6:14 a.m. when Private First Class Tanner Carter emerges from his room in Rane Hall. His hair is brushed neatly to the side and he boasts a t-shirt, shorts, and shower shoes. Behind him, the transom-filtered sun bounces against the yellow, antiseptic walls. There is not another cadet in sight.Carter showers and dresses before returning to his room. Studying nearby is Carter’s roommate, Jason Lux, hailing from Charlotte, North Carolina. For a moment, Carter tidies up his bed, brushing his hand across the blanket to erase the wrinkles. Last night—as every night—he slept on top of his blanket, because bed check requires his billet to be in strict order (one foot to fold, six inches of fold) and Carter doesn’t want to fool with it every day. “I don’t know one person who sleeps under the sheets,” he admits.Below him, the toes of his shoes peek out from under the bottom bunk. He draws a straight line with his eyes, grabs his dummy rifle and carefully leans the grim, bullet-less souvenir against the bedpost. He closes his laptop, which rests on a wooden desk that screams 1980s. Behind him, an empty coffee cup with the inscription LIFE IS GOOD rests inside the coffee maker. For outsiders looking in, life in such Spartan accommodations might not seem too good. For Tanner Carter, it’s the penultimate stop, before paradise.It is true that things have lightened up across the year. Carter still remembers when talking was outlawed in the chow hall and he had to stand rigid as a cedar against those cold antiseptic walls, hours on end, and recite the cadet manual. Those days are over. Utilizing the front door of Rane Hall was once prohibited; it is now commonplace. During ITC, food had to be hidden in rooms (cadets came up with creative ways of scrounging). Now food is necessary room décor. Even Reveille, that famous brass tune that has awoken many a soldier, is silent. Aside from the occasional bed check or Saturday inspection—ensuring that shelves are ordered and no dust is on the ground—rules are relatively lax. Cadets, this time of year, can virtually smell summer, when four-hundred-and-fifty of them will disband to all nooks of the country, leaving campus quiet and abandoned.Carter’s first order of business is breakfast in the chow hall. Here, cadets can come and go as they please, sit where they’d like. At 0721 hours, Carter hustles up to the buffet, scooping a pile of scrambled eggs, grits, and bologna onto his plate. Toast with grape jelly and coffee compliment his meal. He sits at a table with his fellow companymen, Pagan from Connecticut and Zarlango from Alaska, to name a few. Some are bespectacled and pimpled. They will serve our country.A year and a half ago, Carter had no idea he would be in these environs. In the fall of 2014, Carter was the starting safety on Shelby County High football team. He had a 3.75 GPA and was a school heartthrob. As graduation approached, everyone else would be going to a four-year university, and they assumed Carter would do the same. Nothing wrong with that, but Carter didn’t want to be like everyone else. So when Carter told his friends he was going to Marion Military Institute, they laughed at him.Carter’s interest in Marion Military was piqued when he heard Dr. Sam Stevenson, a chemistry instructor at MMI, speak at a brunch at Vestavia Country Club last summer. But this—Marion—was Plan B. Plan A was getting accepted to the Naval Academy, but after he was rejected, Carter had to rally to find something else. That is when the lens sharpened on MMI.Marion Military Institute is a 174-year-old coeducational military junior college fronting a busy street in a sleepy town. Sprawled across 150 acres, MMI displays a series of august buildings with white-columned porticos. The cadre is about a fifth female, and welcomes students from 39 states. The average ACT for incoming cadets is a robust 22. A casual observer might think that a military school smack dab in the middle of the Black Belt is an outlier, but MMI itself, like the Black Belt, moves in a similar cadence. There is a beautiful monotony here. It is an example of the slow and routine way of life in this unique country, if you care to look.Students come to Marion for many reasons, most of which have to do with future military pursuits. The Early Commissioning Program (ECP) ensures that a cadet will receive his commission of choice and graduate as a second lieutenant. The Service Academy Program (SAP), in which our fascinating subject Carter participates, is a pipeline to one of the nation’s Service Academies: Air Force Academy, West Point, Naval Academy, Coast Guard, Merchant Marines. In this way, MMI is rarely an end, but rather a means to an end. Others come because they received a basketball or baseball scholarship. These athletes are not exempt from military duties; they will have to participate in drill, wear a uniform, and, depending on the season, battle the hot sun or cold wind of the parade ground.Regardless of why they come, MMI ensures that your child will emerge glossy and polished, ready to tackle the world. The well-repeated motto, “Truth, Honor, Service,” rockets out from campus on a daily basis, a good reminder for a country that is losing its grip on those ideals and, sadly, is no longer convinced that the leadership education and values inherent in this rigorous culture are worth pursuit.In the past, the reputation of the military academy, as a whole, has received bruises from the harrowing accounts of hazing practices by foaming upperclassmen toward the more spindly, untested plebes. Carter assures that none of this shady business occurs at MMI, but that does not mean the military academy (or MMI for that matter) has gone soft. Cadets still prance like stallions across the quad in their woolen trousers and garrison caps. They salute and stand at attention. They march penalty hours. They about-face and perform push-ups. Going in and coming out of campus, even if it’s a short trip to the nearby Hardee’s for a Monster burger, is documented through the Commandant’s office. You don’t miss class unless you’ve got an awfully good excuse. You are expected to be places, on time, in correct attire.This morning, Cadet Carter’s first class, Physics with LCDR Meisenheimer, is at 0800 sharp. Meisenheimer begins class with his dry humor: “Anybody find any creative ways to get in trouble this weekend?” Juxtaposed with a “regular” university, where a professor might don a skinny knit tie and shirt sleeves, Meisenheimer is clad in NWUs (Navy Working Uniform), replete with blue camo and combat boots. Carter slips into a chair at a lab table with the happy contingent of Alberico from Ft. Lauderdale, Pressley from Austin, TX (“Go Horns!”), and Carter’s best friend, the amiable Holloway from Plymouth, Indiana. Before diving into loops moving through magnetic fields, Meisenheimer dishes out magnetism pre-lab homework. Carter scores a 10 out of 10.Next up is General Chemistry with Dr. Stevenson, a U.S. Navy veteran. As cadets stand at attention, waiting on the esteemed professor to arrive, the periodic table of the elements looms broadly against the south wall. Today is review day, and such lofty concepts as geometric isomers, ethers, and tetravalents, are stressed. Carter scribbles a few notes and listens adamantly as Stevenson draws a series of compounds on the whiteboard.Carter’s next class is English with Mrs. Murphy, a quirky (in a fun way), Literature-adoring scholar. Various Shakespearian prints are tacked on the wall, as well as the imperial red letters on a bulletin board: Truth. Honor. Service. Today, Carter is the “Speaker of the Day,” as he has been assigned a speech on a band from the 1970s. His choice? The Beach Boys. Carter will be graded on whether he 1) speaks loudly enough, 2) articulates, 3) tells how/where/when the band was formed, 4) describes typical stage performance. A podium in the corner of the room welcomes the cool and collected Carter, who informs the enraptured class about Brian Wilson’s nervous breakdown and the fact that only one of the band members could actually surf.“Liars!” shouts one cadet. “Hypocrites!” shouts another.Then Carter plays a YouTube video clip of his favorite Beach Boys song, “Kokomo,” on the overhead projector, the calypso sounds and familiar lyrics—Aruba, Jamaica, oooohhh I wanna take you—belting through the room.After that is LRC—lunch roll call—Carter’s first taste of formation for the day. Companies are arranged in large human squares across the hot concrete, and Carter takes his usual position with the good folks at Charlie. They execute various maneuvers before marching in lockstep to the dining hall, where a plethora of options await. Besides the regular scrumptious buffet, a grill has been installed in the center of the chow hall to bring greater joy to the proceedings (little details such as these have demonstrated MMI’s come-uppance over the last decade). And if that doesn’t suit you, cadets are free to patch together a PB&J or graze from the pasta and fruit buffet. Cookies are a favorite, as well as Soft-Serv ice cream in various flavors.When lunch is over, cadets have a few minutes to mill around before parade practice, starting at 1315. Now the 80-degree sun is blistering and the drums are thumping, as the cadets march from the quad to the grassy parade ground. Carter and Charlie Company practice their turns for over an hour at this site, where cars pass by swiftly on the street and a bold water tower overlooks the unified action like a sentinel.Carter’s duties don’t end there. Ever recruiting fresh faces, MMI has welcomed a potential cadet to campus this afternoon, and it is Carter’s job at approximately 1450 to talk to the recruit from Cleveland, Ohio, about his experiences at the school.At 1512, Carter reaches a two-hour gap in his schedule, and he is free to do whatever he pleases. Since there is rarely a time when he isn’t thinking about his future, Carter invests his spare moments at the outdoor track. He changes into his workout togs and fetches Wawrzyniak, who, along with Carter, will also be playing football for the Merchant Marines next year. As a cadet scales the stadium steps with a training mask on his face, Carter and Wawrzyniak alternate playing quarterback and running routes.“Post!” Zip.“Slant!” Zip.During a break, Carter opens up about his intrigue with the Merchant Marines. Just a few weeks ago, Carter received an appointment to this prestigious maritime service academy, and on June 27, he’ll arrive on campus, located on the northern tip of Gatsby territory—West Egg of Long Island, NY. “It’s the best feeling in the world when you have an appointment to a service academy. Now I finally know what I’m going to do for the next four years of my life,” he says, spinning a football in the air.Carter stresses the regular confusion between attending a service academy and enlisting in the service, as well as the general public attitude toward joining the military. “When I say ‘Merchant Marines’, people think I’m going into the Marines—no,” he says. “The thing that pisses me off the most…when I tell people I’m a Marion Military student…they almost make fun of me. They hear military, and they’re like, ‘Oh, this dude is enlisting’. They think you’re throwing away your life. Forty, fifty years ago, in the middle of war if you said you’re going to serve your country, it was a huge deal. Now, they’re like, ‘you’re smart, you made good grades in high school, why are you doing this with your life?’ They think the military is a thing people go to when they can’t get into college, when they can’t get a job. I just wish people would spend an hour researching military academies. Every one of the service academies are in the top twenty in polls in the United States, but nobody knows that. When I get out, hopefully I’ll be making six figures. The Merchant Marines will give me the opportunity to travel the world before I’m out of college. I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.”Carter’s labyrinthine application process took almost a year. He arrived at MMI as a non-sponsored SAP Cadet, choppy waters for someone who, unlike sponsored cadets, wasn’t guaranteed an appointment. Choosing MMI was a limb-of-faith maneuver, one that Carter hoped would posture him for one of the service academies. The Merchant Marines happened to be the one that he chose, and the one that chose him.After football, rumors of an ice cream social began to circulate at the next formation, DRC. Minutes later, the chow hall is once again slammed, lines snaking out from the buffet, halfway to the door. During dinner, the main topic of conversation (if there is one—cadets are tired) is this phantom ice cream gathering at the President’s mansion. Is there one? Is there not one? No one is totally certain. But, just the mention of the words “ice cream” and “social” raise a few eyebrows and beckon keen interest from the cadets in blue and grey.Which brings us to the main points of Carter’s life at this small military school that is pumping blood through the aorta of the Black Belt. Here’s a kid who has decided to go against the grain and do something unconventional. He’s decided to lug a year of his life to the sacrificing stone, move into a cubbyhole and submit to the tedious yet worthwhile routines of a military junior college. Instead of pining for the freer, Sound-of-Music-college life, Carter is happy to trade a few liberties for what he believes will be a brighter future. Instead of longing for variety—variety of bars, parties, and randy co-eds—Carter is happy to submit to the routines and the beautiful monotony of MMI. (He’ll freely admit that he’s already lost a girlfriend over it.) “At first, the days would go by so slow, but as it went on, you get in that routine and get your day planned out a week before. Once you got in that routine, it started getting faster and better. It got more fluid,” he said. Instead of pushing thresholds to the hilt, residing on the edges of newness and instant gratification, Carter has found value in reducing and the wait. “There’s a cell phone coming out almost every year,” Carter says. “Everyone wants that new one. They want to be on the edge. If something new comes out, of course you want it because you want to look cool.” It must be reiterated that there is nothing wrong with what some folks do. Carter simply believes that, for him, there is a better life whose passageway leads through MMI.It is night now, and the sun has majestically dipped behind the Chapel. Outside, the lights on the quad are spraying their white rings. The wind howls through the columns and corridors. Cadet Carter settles into his room for a time of study and fellowship. Late in the evening, there is often an open-door camaraderie at Rane Hall, cadets fluttering in and out of doorways, shirtless, jovial, mischevious. They truly like one another, because through this endeavor—life at the military academy—they feel a deep sense of connection, a mutual respect.In a world infatuated with variety and newness, MMI hails sameness and routine. In a world that is telling us to speed up, MMI teaches us to slow down. In a world that lusts for newfangled everything, MMI helps us to appreciate the old and the timeless. In a world where thresholds are pushed so far that we are no longer amazed, MMI teaches us to be amazed by the little things: an ice cream, a sunset, the wind.Carter hits his pillow around 2200 hours. The long hard day is over. Tomorrow, he’ll do it again.And there’s honor in that. 78Al Blanton is the owner of Blanton Media Group, based out of Jasper. He writes for both 78 Magazine and Blantononline.com. All Photos by Al Blanton.