That means the dandy you see in the photo could well remember 13 years of dressing in black and white. But by ’75, when that picture was taken, my late first wife Gwen had taken me in hand and was garbing me in the taste of the time.

Gwen delighted in dressing me to fit those Disco Years; and, a fashion illiterate, I was a docile model. (Maybe she chose me because I was a 42 Long.) Check out, please, the oh-so-stylish wide lapels and five-inch necktie, the macho leather watchband, and (dear Lord!) French cuffs and links. Too bad you can’t see the pants. The cuffs were flared and deep enough to house a family of squirrels.

Oh, and note the hair. I had a lot_could have matched the Crier’s Casey Campbell, follicle for follicle.

The photo embedded in this column reveals certain changes since then, and not just in length. My brow is now far loftier. And, on the back of my head, I’ve developed a distinctly monkish bare spot. Karma, I guess.

There’s also the matter of about a 25-pound weight difference. Back then, my waist size was 32. Now, it isn’t.

That was a flexible, energetic body in those days, capable of a lot of running, climbing, hiking. And, dare I say, of dawning skills that would have had no application back in the monastery? (Gwen always called my time in vows, "Jim’s cold-storage years.")

Though he’s about 34, the photo guy lived with a boyish delight. He was still a naif, still sheltered inside faculty life. A few years later would come the shift from professor to administrator. Then would follow a dozen years spent holding the college together, holding the world at bay, so that others could do the job of teaching.

The black-haired guy loved college teaching, that wonderful dynamic of students, subject matter, and professor. In it, the prof’s job is to confront the students with the subject and use personal skills and enthusiasm to open it to them. But, with a captive audience, the prof has to avoid distorting the process by centering it on merely amusing the students, or, worse, by centering it on himself, basking self-indulgently in their admiration.

I’ll bet you’ve sat before all three types of teacher in the classroom.

They’re found at every level of education. I still despise the kind who makes himself the subject matter and cheats the students out of knowledge. Perhaps, among hell’s elevator stops, there’s a mezzanine for that type.

As I remember him, the photo guy was a good teacher_a bit too full of himself, but really excited about students’ learning. Maybe it’s too bad that, as his colleagues said, he "fell in with a bad crowd and became an administrator." That move changed and somewhat darkened his life.

And, of course, something much worse lay ahead of the man in the photo. Fifteen years later came Gwen’s cancer, early death, and grief beyond his imagining. And change. And growth.

It’s across a chasm, but I recognize that photo guy. No trouble for me to think my way back into his body and brain. I still know him.

But, I wonder, could he possibly recognize me? I’m older now than was his mother at her death, almost as old as his father was. I’m married to a different woman, another strong and wonderful one, this one an artist born in the Canadian West. I live in a tiny New York hamlet.

I tend, not students, but chickens and sheep. I spend time writing, not policy statements, but this weekly letter to friends.

In quiet moments by the woodstove, your aging correspondent can trace his way back along all the events that tie the old photo of the young guy to the new photo of the old guy.

But what about that young man, the one with the mop of hair? The man who, after the picture was taken, jumped up easily, brushed off his bell-bottoms, and breezed inside to expound on rhetoric or comparative religion?

I watch him go through those doors behind him in the photo, into the Humanities Building, and I wish him well.

He had a quick mind, but he couldn’t begin to imagine the long chain that links him to me. And just as well, I’m sure.

Read Jim Atwell’s new book, "From Fly Creek _ Celebrating Life in Leatherstocking Country" at JimAtwell.com.