1972-1974 Connecticut: Social Life

Posted on February 15, 2021 by Mike

Events and activities in the Hartford area. Continue reading →

Shortly after my arrival in Hartford I, as well as all of the other actuaries and actuarial students, was invited to a party at the home of Don Sondergeld, Vice President and Actuary of the Hartford Life. In those days everyone in the corporate world knew that parties thrown by actuaries rapidly morphed into raucous bacchanalia. They were rivaled only by accountants and undertakers in this regard.

In my whole life I had attended only a few parties, and I had most certainly never been to a fairly elegant one sponsored by my boss’s boss. I was clueless about behavior at such functions. I definitely made at least one gigantic faux pas. Mrs. Sondergeld asked me where I was from, and I answered, “The Kansas City area.” She then asked me if we could see the Rocky Mountains from there.

Having suppressed a chuckle, informed her that KC was about six hundred miles from the Rockies. So far, so good. I then asked her if she thought she would be able to see from Hartford a mountain range in the Detroit area. I don’t recall her answer, but Ithe expression on her face is indelibly etched in my memory.

In my defense, I had not yet come to appreciate how geographically challenged people in the northeastern United States were. When I arrived in Ann Arbor, I had been shocked to hear Michiganders referring to themselves as Midwesterners. When they asked me where I was from, I said the southeast. After all, I lived all my life in the Kansas City area, which is east and a little south of the geographic center of the contiguous states (a couple of miles north of Lebanon, KS).

In 1972 I had not yet seen Steinberg’s New Yorker cartoon, which makes it clear that from the perspective of residents of New York (and, I would add, New England) Kansas City is no farther from the towering Rocky Mountains than Jersey is from Manhattan.

Also, let the record to show that my societal debut in New England was not an abject failure. I spent the entire evening in the Sondergeld abode without spilling any wine on the carpet. I also did not break any precious china or figurines. I started no fights with other actuaries, and I set no fires.

My dad visited me in the Fall of 1972. He had been in New York City for business, and he took the Amtrak train to the Hartford station. It must have been on a Friday. I picked him up in the evening, and he stayed at my apartment for a night or two. I remember that I tried to fix Steak Diane for him. It was not horrible, but I was a little disappointed.

This photo is from 1957. One would expect me to remember that snazzy jacket, but I don’t.

I was often nervous around my dad, but so was everyone else. He had many habits that made people uneasy, including looking at his watch every ten or fifteen minutes—usually while someone else was talking. If you asked him, he would deny it, but he also seemed quite judgmental to me.

I knew about this visit ahead of time, and I had been dreading it. I took him for a ride in Greenie in order to show him something. Maybe we went to a restaurant for lunch. I stopped at the Gulf station on Main St. in East Hartford. After the attendant filled the tank, I swear that I carefully looked both ways before attempting a left turn while exiting the station. Nevertheless, Greenie plowed into the left side of a passing grey sedan that I had somehow missed.

I had handled a few automobile accidents as an MP in the Army and had filled out the paperwork on dozens of others. I knew that in a minor situation where no one was hurt, the first priority was to get the cars pulled over to allow traffic to flow. I made sure that the road was clear before I called the police. The collision was clearly my fault, but the officer who handled the accident did not even issuee me a warning. I was grateful but shocked. The policy of the MP Company at Sandia Base had been to issue at least one ticket in every accident. I have no idea why this cop let me slide.

Somewhere in this photo is at least one bent tie rod.

I had insurance, of course, that paid for the body work on both cars. However, when, a few months later, I brought Greenie to the DMV for the inspection required to transfer its registration from Kansas to Connecticut, it did not pass. I never experienced a problem, but the machine reported that something was wrong with the steering.

I drove Greenie to a local garage on Christmas Eve. I don’t remember whether I had an appointment, but I know that for several hours I waited for my car to get to the front of the line. It was past closing time, but the manager was aware that I had been there for a long time. All the employees had gone home when he put Greenie on the lift and determined that the tie rod on the right side was bent. The people who fixed the car originally evidently did not notice this. He informed me that he would have to order the part.

I told him that I needed to get this fixed quickly to get my car registered, and I needed my car for work. He said “OK. Give me a minute.”

When he came back he told me that he had carefully hammered it back into position. He also told me not to tell anyone what he did. I was greatly relieved. When I asked him what I owed him, he just replied “Merry Christmas.” It definitely was.

Commuting to and from my apartment in East Hartford to work at the Hartford was very easy. In the morning I just got on the Governors St. entrance to I-84, stayed to the right¹, and got off at the Asylum St. exit. Parking was free (or at least cheap) at the Hartford, and it was rather easy for early arrivals like myself to find a good spot. The return trip was almost as easy as the morning drive, but sometimes the traffic would back up on Broad St. near the entrance to the highway.

The Greaseman was 6’2″ and only 150 lbs. when he was in Hartford.

On February 1, 1974, my morning commutes became a lot more pleasant. I really enjoyed listening to the Greaseman on WPOP for the last six months that I was working at the Hartford. I tried to interest others in his morning show, but he never became a big star in Hartford. WPOP changed its format to news/talk in 1975 and sent the Greaseman packing.

If the pair is playing western cue bids, the 3H bid in this auction *asks* partner to bid 3NT if he/she has a stopper in the opponent’s suit. If they are not playing western cues, it *shows* a stopper. There is a BIG difference.

Most of the time that I was in Hartford I had quite a bit “on my plate”, but I definitely would have preferred to play more bridge. As I recall, the Hartford sponsored a weekly sanctioned game in the evening. John Sigler and I played in it once or twice. I think that we finished second once. The director played in the game. When we played against him, I asked him about one of his partner’s bids, he said that it was “probably sort of a western cue bid.” This explanation would not suffice in the twenty-first century, but what was my recourse? Call the director?

The Hartford Bridge Club² existed in 1972. Quite a few actuaries played there, but I never found out about it. Donna Feir, the club’s manager in the twenty-first century, assured me that I would not have liked it because many players were quite rude. I am not sure that that would have deterred me at all. If I could have found a place to play with high-level competition and a partner who was willing to work with me to develop a bidding system, my subsequent life may have changed drastically.

Most of the social life among my friends in the Hartford area revolved around sports. These activities are covered rather thoroughly here and here. There were also regular gatherings at a few local watering holes³ . I remember a few of them pretty well.

The bar at the Shoreham Hotel was the default gathering spot every Friday after work. Its main attraction was its convenient location right across Asylum St. from the Hartford. They served strange little puffy things to munch on. They came in various colors, none of which was commonly found in nature. Occasionally one of the bosses, Don Sondergeld or Don Francis, would join us. I remember that Sondergeld once regaled us with a tale about a group of actuaries on a expense accounts who ordered an outlandish meal in New York City. I don’t recall the details, but the punchline was, “Why such a niggardly tip?”
The White Swan Café on Park Street was another favorite hangout. Every table was provided with an endless supply of free peanuts. Customers were required to throw shells on the floor. If you set any down on the table, the waitress would unceremoniously brush them off.
I can only remember going to Fast Eddie’s on the Berlin Turnpike a few times. The most memorable one was August 17, 1973, my twenty-fifth birthday, which is described here.
I went to the House of Zodiac (a.k.a. the “Zoo”), a nightclub on Farmington Ave. in West Hartford, exactly once. Herget and a few other guys liked to go there on Fridays after the mandatory appearance at the Shoreham. On the way to the Zoo Tom generally stopped at a liquor store (locally called a “packy”) to purchase some cold beer in bottles. He always chose a brand that they sold at the Zoo. When he arrived at the club, he bought a bottle of the same brand at the bar and asked for a glass. Thereafter he refilled the glass from his private supply stashed in various pockets. This place was noisy and crowded. The only reason to go was if you were hoping to pick someone up. Conversation was impossible.

I was never at the Zoo when this band was providing the music, but you can listen to their version of “Six Days on the Road” here.

The other major social activity that I remember was helping people move from one house or apartment to another. I am pretty sure that I helped Chris and Carolyn DesRochers move into a new house. Those organizing the moving were expected to provide beer and pizza to the laborers. I seem to remember that the DesRochers set the gold standard for treating the helpers right.

I don’t remember how big Scott’s truck was.

I also helped Scott Otermat when he moved from Andover to Bristol. I was in the U-Haul truck when Scott picked it up. Our first stop was at a Dunkin Donuts drive-through window where Scott bought some donuts. The truck scraped against something—a sign or concrete awning, I think—before we got one stick of furniture into it. I confess that my first reaction was relief that Scott had been driving and not I. It also brought to mind the “Adventures in Moving” slogan, which I have long thought was the worst catchphrase of all time.

Scott hardly ever got upset, and this was no exception. I don’t know how much he had to pay for the accident. Maybe the U-Haul place did not really care. Would you care if a truck you were moving furniture in was scratched? I wouldn’t. It’s not as if you plan to take it to the prom.

I have twice been accused of putting scratches on passenger cars that I rented (once on Maui on vacation and once in Pittsburgh on business), but in neither case did the rental company insist on me or my insurance company paying. In fact, Avis wrote me a letter to apologize about the accusation in Pittsburgh. On the other hand, I am pretty sure that Sue’s friend from her dancing days, Sandy Tsiartas, told us that she was charged several hundred dollars when she got in an accident with a rental from an off-brand company in Florida.

I probably attended several parties after the fiasco at the Sondergeld home during those two years in Connecticut, but I only remember a couple. One was a fête sponsored by a female actuarial student who passed the last exam to become a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries—Barb Bednarz or Pat Adams (I don’t remember which). The honoree lived with her husband way to the East of Hartford. The only thing that I remember is that I led a game of Scissors⁴ which went on a lot longer than one would think among such smart people.

In August of 1973 I moved into the house at 345 Middletown Ave. in Wethersfield—the legendary 345 Club. Tom Corcoran and Tom Herget were my housemates. I had my own bedroom on the second floor. Somehow I obtained a used box springs and mattress that, thank goodness, had no bed bugs. I don’t recall that my bedroom had any other furniture.

At that point in my life I could still pack everything that I owned into Greenie. I didn’t even ask for help in moving. So, one Saturday morning I resided in East Hartford. By noon that day I was fully moved into the 345 Club. It was the best possible place for three young guys to live.

There was plenty of yard space for parking cars. Corcoran had “parked” his yellow Barracuda fastback on the right side not far from the front door. I don’t know what was wrong with it. Although it was not drivable, its gigantic rear window made it a great greenhouse. Herget planted gourds in it, and they thrived, even in the winter.
The entire front yard was considered a parking lot. It was not unusual to see six or seven cars in it.
Tom C. had a pet beagle named Cory. While Tom was at work or just out, Cory stayed on the back porch. Tom laid down papers for him in case he had to do his business, which was every day. Everyone but Tom avoided that porch.
Each of us had a bedroom upstairs with a door that had a working latch.
There were at least two refrigerators, one in the kitchen and one upstairs. Each was reliably stocked with beer. The one on the second floor had been painted by Tom C. in the manner of a lusty adventure featuring swordplay and sorcery .
On the first floor were a living room, a dining room, the kitchen, and maybe another underused room or two. Tom H. had furnished the place from second-hand stores on Park St. Except for the TV and stereo, the style might be described as Early Grandmother.
The back yard was pretty large. A railroad track that was no longer used. There was a shed back there that made for some interesting shots in the obstacle croquet games.
Best of all, the landlord was blind!

There was one small drawback to living in the 345 Club. For some reason the electricity would fail for short periods of time. Since it seldom went out long enough for the beer to get warm, it was not considered too big a deal.

The one problem was the electric clock in the kitchen. I wore a watch at all times, and I was obsessive about keeping it accurate. So, the state of the clock was immaterial to me. The other guys were more dependent on it, but it was a nuisance to take it down, reset the time, and remount it. So, Herget simply made a sign that gave the formula for the necessary adjustment: “Add 12 minutes”, “Add 31 minutes”, “Add 2 hours and 10 minutes”, etc. He then taped the sign to the clock—good as new.

You can pick up one like this on eBay for less than $16,000.

One day Cory was on the loose in the house. Somehow he got into my bedroom and made a beeline for the closet. I can’t remember if the closet had a door—probably not. Cory found my posters of the Russian revolution. His capitalist upbringing impelled him to desecrate them. He also found a baseball that my dad had given me that Ty Cobb had signed in green ink. I don’t accuse Cory of disrespect for Cobb’s batting and baserunning skills. He probably would have chewed up a ball that was signed by Honus Wagner or Cy Young just as readily.

I did not get upset. I must have been careless about keeping the door completely closed. Besides, material things have never meant that much to me. Aside from when I lived in Detroit, I did not worry too much about the security of my belongings.

At the end of the summer of 1973 Tom H. invited me to join a group of people for tubing on the Farmington River. By the twenty-first century this has become a highly organized activity. A company rents large inner tubes at a spot pretty far upstream. They also have a downstream location where the renters return the tubes. From there a van driven by a representative of the company takes everyone back to the starting point.

They now charge $25 per person for this service. I cannot imagine Herget paying anything close to that amount. I suspect that he rustled up some inner tubes from a farmer or trucker somewhere, and we just parked one car at the ending spot. I am pretty certain that our tubes were plain black and had no handles. I also don’t remember life preservers. The river was only a few feet deep where we were tubing.

I had a really great time. The sun was out, and in those days I could sit and bake in the sun all day long with no repercussions. For most of the journey we just sat on our tubes and drank beer from cans balanced on our bellies while moving very slowly downstream. The whole trip can take up to three hours, depending on the strength of the current. I only remember one rather scary “rapids” near the end. My knees got a little scratched up, but that did not detract much from my enjoyment.

Neither of my housemates at the 345 Club cooked much, but at some point in the autumn I felt like fixing my mother’s recipe of chicken breasts with bacon, mushrooms, and a sauce made from cream of chicken soup. It would be senseless to do this just for myself, and so I informed the two Toms in advance that I would be cooking dinner. All three of us enjoyed the meal, which also included rice and cauliflower. The chicken, mushrooms, and cauliflower were all consumed that evening. Five or six strips of uncooked bacon went back into the refrigerator, which normally contained only various beverages and a wide assortment of condiments, with a lot of duplication.

The next time that I looked in the fridge I did not see my bacon, but I thought nothing of it.

I don’t remember eating out very often. There were lots of cookouts in the warm weather. I remember being invited to Mel’s family home in New Britain, where I met her father, the chef du jour. I think that we probably had hamburgers, but the main attraction was the sweet corn. Mr. Majocha did not husk the corn. He soaked the ears and husks in water. Then he threw them on the coals. They taste OK this way, but a few edges were scorched. Boiling the ears in a huge pot would take longer and would not have been as festive, but I think that the result would have been tastier.

On the whole I was not impressed with New England food, but the sweet corn in the late summer is to die for. Both Silver Queen and Butter & Sugar corn are much better than anything that I have tasted elsewhere. The famous golfer Tom Watson, who also grew up in the KC area, scheduled himself to play in the Hartford Open just to eat the corn.

After being stationed in Albuquerque I craved some decent Mexican food. Taco Bell was all right, but I wanted something a little more authentic. Tom Corcoran found a pseudo-Mexican restaurant in Manchester called the Tacorral⁵. The food was passable. The establishment had no liquor license, but they allowed customers to bring their own beer. Eventually the quality of both the service and the food went downhill. The last straw was the night that they ran out of beans. A Mexican restaurant with no beans!

If I had owned or managed a Mexican restaurant, I would never have admitted to being out of beans. I would have crossed the street and entered the Taco Bell there, bought a few hundred orders of refritos, carried them back across the street, and sold them as my own.

One of my favorite restaurants was Howard Johnson’s on the Silas Deane. Most of the people went there for the fried clams, but I had a different preference. On one night per week they had a special. You could get one-half of a fried chicken at an unbeatable price. $1.29 sticks out in my memory. That may be wrong, but I am pretty sure that it was less than $2.

I could usually talk people into joining me, but if no one was interested, I went anyway.

Just before the fall actuarial exams in November of 1973 the 345 Club hosted a big “spaghettifest”. Herget did most of the preparations. He even somehow constructed a very long table. The evening was not particularly raucous, but it did go on for quite a long time.

Herg also led a pub crawl after the exam was over. We spent a brief amount of time in some really nasty spots near the train station. They all seemed to have a large jar of eggs on display on the bar. As usual, I was among the first to abandon the group. I definitely could not keep up with those guys.

I am sure that it was probably a coincidence, but Tom Corcoran was, as I recall, the only person in attendance at the spaghettifest who passed his exam, Part 5, the same one that I took. At least five or six of us failed.

The weather on the night of December 16-17, 1973, was memorable. It started with snow, and then for several hours we were treated to several hours of ice and freezing rain—the dreaded “wintry mix”. All the branches and power lines in our part of the state were coated with an inch or so of ice. The power went out almost everywhere. Then the weather turned bitterly cold.

When the roads became passable, I brought some clothes to Sue’s place in Andover, which somehow avoided most of the ice. I think that the Toms sought temporary shelter elsewhere, too. Our power was out for, as I remember it, eleven days.

When we moved back in, I cleaned out the refrigerator. I offhandedly asked who owned the unopened (but now rancid) pound of bacon. Corcoran told me that it was mine. He had bought it for me to replace the leftover strips that he had eaten. He didn’t bother to tell me that he had done so. Since neither he nor Herget ever bought anything more complicated than hamburgers or hot dogs, I should have figured out that the bacon was mine.

No, I did not eat the bacon.

Herget had returned earlier to help the landlord clean up the fallen branches and other detritus. He marveled at the nonchalant way that this totally blind gentleman wielded a chain saw. He made short work of the fallen branches. To this day, Sue strictly limits my access to power tools, and she will not let me near a chain saw.

I am not sure, but Tom may have even reset the clock this time.

We formed a car pool. Tom C. had a blue Volkswagen; Tom H.’s Volkswagen was a sort of sickly beige; Jim Cochran drove a Pinto; I had Greenie. Four strapping adults was the most that any of these cars could hold. Greenie was probably the most comfortable.

The heat in Corcoran’s Volks did not work very well, and the defroster was pitiful. He used what we all called a “hand defroster”. He placed one of his hands on the windshield to remove the fog or frost there. Then he moved the hand to an adjacent spot and peered out through the spot he just abandoned. When that hand got numb, he switched to the other hand.

Did Tom C.’s car have automatic transmission? Of course, not.

Herget’s Volks featured a fairly large hole in the floorboard in the back. Whoever sat there repeatedly had to adjust a small log that was stored there because it was roughly the same shape as the hole. Since leg room was at a premium, the rest of us were quite annoyed by this.

Jim’s Pinto seemed to be fine. It wasn’t until a few months later that the gas tanks on these models started exploding around the country.

The car pool continued after I moved to Andover. Jim Hawke, who had broken up with Leslie, took up residence in the 345 Club and assumed my slot in the car. His car was a suitable replacement for Greenie, a Chevy Nova (popularly known as “No va” in Latin America) with three on the tree.

At some point in August or September of 1973 I decided to grow a mustache. I wasn’t really too concerned about covering up the scar on my lip. Like everyone else, I was experimenting a little with my appearance. I soon realized that it made my face look more lopsided than before, and I shaved it off.

After I broke my kneecap (details are here), I let my beard, such as it was, grow. That was my look through all of my time coaching debate in Michigan and for a few years after that. History will probably call this my Jesus (with glasses) period.

I developed my famous fashion sense during my time in Connecticut. Unless I was playing a sport, I wore the cowboy boots that I had purchased in Albuquerque. When I headed outside in the winter I wore my cowboy hat and a big brown suede coat that was lined with fleece. It weighed a ton, but it was very warm.

I had to buy clothes for work. Because of the boots the pants had to be flared or at least baggy. I favored corduroy, but I also acquired one polyester sports coat. I don’t know why I bought it. Sue made me a grey wool suit. Really! I wore it once or twice, but it was too small in every respect.

That is obviously a mannequin, NOT Choo Choo. You can watch this commercial on YouTube here.

For shirts and ties I usually went to my private tailor, Mr. Ruby, who selected the merchandise for my favorite retailer, Railroad Salvage. The big store on Route 5 was one of my favorite destinations. I particularly liked their selection of dress shirts. They had quality brands like Arrow, but the styles were nothing like you might see at a department store. People still wore coats and ties to work, but nothing required the attire to be overly somber. Tom Corcoran wore a string tie most of the time. Larry Abbott did not even wear a coat to work; he kept one near his desk in case he needed to go to another department.

At Railroad Salvage I also purchased several ties, including two that looked furry. The blue one was OK (although it was close to six inches at the widest point), but the brown one was obnoxious. When I wore it, it climbed around my neck until the knot was buried under my collar. I still have thirty or so ties, but I think that all that I purchased from Mr. Ruby have been discarded.

I bought a white belt from Ruby and gave it to Scott Otermat to wear to meetings with people from the Sales Department. I wanted to bring out his inner Herb Tarlek.

I never bought any tennis shoes from the big bin at railroad salvage. The shoes relegated there weren’t matched up. If you found one that you liked, you still had to hunt for its mate. You also had to be careful that you did not take two lefts or two rights.

1. It is ordinarily critically important to move to the left on this highway when you cross the bridge from East Hartford to Hartford. If your vehicle is in the right lane going west, you must start merging as soon as you cross the Connecticut River. If not, you will find yourself in an exit-only lane.

The vehicles that are exiting off of I-84 (both northbound and southbound) hoping to go west on I-84 must move to the left one additional lane. Furthermore, the drivers who have crossed the river in order to go to downtown Hartford must, at the same time, move several lanes to the right. All of this lane-changing takes place in a tunnel beneath Main St.

As bad as this design is, it was even worse in 1972. Eastbound drivers on I-84 who wanted to go north on I-91 were required to exit the highway and drive several blocks through downtown Hartford.

2. Mark Horton and Eric Kokish published a book about a famous bridge player who frequented the HBC, Leonard Helman. The title is The Rabbi’s Rules: Tips and Tricks to Improve Your Bridge Game. The most famous rule is “If the opponent’s king is a singleton, play your ace.” A singleton king in a bridge hand is often called a rabbi.

3. All four have long since dried up.

4. The object of Scissors is to learn how to play. All players are seated. The player with the scissors must pass them to the player on their left and announce whether they are passing them “crossed” or “uncrossed”. The leader then announces whether the pass was successful or not. If not, the player must sit on the floor. Correct answers must coincide with the passer’s own legs.

5. A Tacorral in Manchester may still exist, but Google says that it is permanently closed. It moved to a strip mall at some point. The pandemic might have been the death blow.

1967-1969 Part 3A: Events at Allen Rumsey House

Posted on October 3, 2020 by Mike

The middle years in Allen Rumsey House. Continue reading →

I remember reading somewhere that James Earl Jones lived in Allen Rumsey House when he was at U-M. I don’t know whether he enjoyed it, but it really suited me. I never considered moving out.

The House Council: I was asked to serve as secretary for the House Council fairly early in my freshman year. I let my creative juices flow when I composed my minutes for the weekly council meetings, which were held on Wednesday evenings (I think). I mimeograaphed fifty copies and put one under everyone’s door on Thursdays. Quite a few guys told me that they enjoyed reading the minutes.

Elections of officers at AR were held in the spring. Only guys who planned to return to the house in September were allowed to vote. Since I anticipated that debating at the varsity level in my sophomore year would take up a lot of my time, I decided not to run for secretary or any major office at the end of freshman year (1967).

However, I did volunteer for the position of editor of the house newsletter, Rumsey Roomers, which was published intermittently using the same mimeograph machine as the minutes. It had not been uncommon for years to go by between publications. I published at least three issues during sophomore year. I didn’t really “edit” the newsletter; I wrote every word, including both the questions and answers of the interview section, which was modeled after the Playboy interviews. I interviewed God in the last issue that year.

At the end of my sophomore year I decided that I had enough control over classes and debate that I could run for president, a role that I referred to as the Big Banana, or EBM (El Banano Magno, the Spanishish version). I ran against Ken Gluski, who resided on the fourth floor.

We actually held a “debate”. That is, I gave a little speech in the lounge, and then Ken did the same. I introduced a number of ideas that were pretty good, but, I must admit, most were not within the purview of the president. Ken’s remarks were vague.

I campaigned pretty hard. My slogan was “Bananas and noodles don’t mix.” Someone told me that gluski was the Polish word for noodles. I just checked on translate.google.com. The real Polish word is kluski. Close enough for rock and roll.

I mimeographed a one-page letter about the election and slipped copies under doors. John Dalby, the fourth-floor RA, complained that this was unfair. There was no rule against it, but Ken did not have a mimeograph machine in his office. I replied that Ken could use the mimeograph machine. I even volunteered to type up whatever he wrote. This mollified John, but Ken never responded to my offer.

I won the election, but not by as many votes as I had projected. I do not remember who the vice-president or secretary were. During junior year I worked a lot with the treasurer, Keith Hartwell, the social chairman, Roger Warren, and the athletic chairman, Mike Murphy.

Roger immediately went to work lining up a “sister house” for the next year. Traditionally the two houses together sponsor a few parties. He somehow persuaded the largest girl’s dorm, Stockwell House, which boasted over four hundred residents, to match up with us. This was better than “Surf City”.

It is now called Stockwell Hall, and it is co-ed.

In the fall of 1968 Roger scheduled a mixer with Stockwell. I didn’t go, but it was evidently a fiasco. Girls showed up and then quickly left. Fortunately, Roger had another function scheduled with them a day or two later—a beach party at a nearby lake. Very early the morning after the mixer I printed up flyers and taped them above the urinals in each bathroom. They said something like “Pissed? So am I! But come to the beach party. Nobody will be able to walk away early.”

The beach party was a big success. Even I attended, and I played a rubber or two of bridge with Celia Phelan, the president of Stockwell House.

The university was pressed that year to loosen its restrictions on visits by students of the opposite sex (there were only two in those days) in the dorms. A U-M administrator issued a notice that each house could design its own rules, but a process had to be established through which complaints by residents were processed. I worked on amendments to the house’s bylaws to put in place a rigorous process for handling complaints about our regulations. It was unanimously passed by the council. I then wrote a letter to the university administrator explaining our approach. The response came back rather quickly. Our application was approved by the administration, the first one that had ever been accepted even though we had implemented absolutely no restrictions on the presence of women in the house. I was astounded and very pleased. In those days I considered myself an anarchist.

At the same time the council made a few changes to the bylaws. One allowed people to run for the same office more than once. This was not my idea, but I took advantage of it.

We didn't ask for these. — We didn’t ask for these.

For years AR had subscribed to Playboy magazine. The president retrieved the magazine from the house’s mail box and placed it in the lounge. One day the corporation sent “Allen Rumsey House” an invitation to join the Playboy Club in Detroit. We had to certify that we were at least 21 years of age. I wrote back that Allen Rumsey House was much older than 21, but few of the residents were. I asked for an honorary membership. They turned us down. I mean, come on. I was only asking for a lousy piece of paper.

In the spring semester a fair amount of money remained in the AR bank account. Someone (I don’t remember who) proposed that the House Council donate part of it to charity. He did a good job of describing the good works that the charity did. I voted to give it some money, but the motion was voted down.

Thinking that we must do something with our surplus, I met with Keith to determine as precisely as possible how much of the money would be available. I also asked Dave Zuk how much would be required to buy a good color television for the game room. We found a way to pay for the TV over three years, and that left us with about $500. I then proposed to the council that we buy the TV and pay a refund to all residents of $5 of their $20 dues. It passed unanimously.

This was a very popular move. People could not believe it when I handed them a $5 bill. Nobody ran against me in the presidential election in the spring of 1969.

The main issues in my senior year had to do with attempts by the university to turn the AR House Council officers into an unfunded police department. Some guys on one of the upper floors had done some mischief that led to damaged property. They may have thrown a water balloon that broke a window. The university sent a bill to West Quad. The West Quad Council wanted to send the bill to AR. I vigorously argued against this, which surprised everyone at the council meeting. If they had decided to do it, I would have ordered all of the money withdrawn from the bank and paid our bills in cash for the rest of the year.

By the way the new always-open visitation policy worked fine, as well as I could tell. Life was different, but the earth stayed in orbit. It turned out that surprisingly few members of the fair sex were all that eager to set foo in U-M’s oldest dorm. It probably did not help that the only ladies’ room in AR was in the lounge, which was nearly always occupied by nerds, a few of whom were capable of rude remarks.

I resigned as president early in the second semester of my senior year so that someone else could get some experience in the job. I do not recall who succeeded me.

The staff presented an award at the end of each year. It was named after a former resident who had donated the funds for a monetary award, which, as I recall, was $50 or $100. Roger won the award my junior year. They gave it to me in my senior year. Because I was a senior, I got no cash, but I did get to hear Jim (Gritty) Krogsrud refer to me as Mr. Allen Rumsey. That was nice.

Intramural sports: In my day the university conducted two sets of year-long intramural contests, one for the fraternity houses and one for the dorms. In the major sports they ran two leagues, A and B. The better players usually—but not always—played in A.

They may have also had competitions for women¹ that I was unaware of, presumably pat-a-cake and hopscotch.

AR had never won the overall championship of the dormitory division before 1969-1970. The house’s athletic chairman that year was Mike Murphy. He was good at practically every imaginable sport, and he both played and encouraged others to play for the house. We ended up winning the overall title with the highest point total ever recorded.

I don’t think that the house’s A volleyball team lost a match in the four years that I resided there. We had a lot of good players who were 6’2″ or taller, and they started practicing together every September. In my senior year I was captain of the B volleyball team. We got to the finals, but we lost to Chicago House, a WQ rival, in a very close match. However, we were awarded the championship because the opponents used an ineligible player. Mike Murphy, who played on our A team, watched our match, recognized the ringer, and filed a successful appeal.

I actually dunked a basketball here. Scout's honor. — I actually dunked a basketball here. Scouts honor.

I was also a member of the team that won the B basketball championship, but I contributed little. I don’t think that we won the A championship, but we came close.

On one glorious day at the IM Building I dunked a basketball in warmups on a regulation 10′ basket. A number of people witnessed it. I had dunked volleyballs a few times, but this was the only time I managed to perform a real dunk.

I played significant roles in three team sports. A new event, slow-pitch softball, was held very early in the school year. We did not even understand that it was an official event until we reached the finals of the tournament. I had been pitching every game. I was not a great pitcher, if there is such a thing, but I could consistently throw strikes. Unfortunately, in the final game I lost that ability in the fourth or fifth inning. John Dalby replaced me, and we ended up losing the game.

My contribution to the B (touch) football team’s success was also substantial. As had happened when I played in the eighth grade (documented here), opponents almost never covered me. I remember that on one occasion I had been so open in the end zone so often that when Jim Burton finally threw it to me, I felt like making a fair catch.

My real specialty, however, was the pick play. The diagram at right is fundamentally flawed. There is a very good chance that the blocker, if he stands and waits for the defender as it indicates, will often be flagged by the ref. This is clearly illegal.

The intended receiver should NOT slant across the middle; instead, he should take one or two steps downfield and then cut sharply across the middle. Meanwhile, the blocker should make a shoulder fake toward the sideline, and then cut toward the middle (actually toward the other defender) and quickly look back toward the quarterback and wave for the ball. Then, when he collides with the defender, it will not look like he intended to block him.

I was expert at both techniques. As a blocker, I never missed the block, and I never was flagged for picking. As a receiver, the ball was once a thrown a foot or so behind me. I reached back and batted the ball up. I then abruptly turned up field, snatched the ball, and ran for a touchdown. I swear that this actually happened.

The pick plays nearly always worked. I remember that on one occasion, however, we could not even try it. We were scheduled to play on wet artificial turf. The footing was worse than on glare ice. Every time that anyone tried to plant his foot, he ended up on his butt.

I remember our final game pretty well. I think that we played Adams House. I scored a touchdown early while the opponents were not covering me yet. We scored a couple more, and so did they. I think that we were ahead by four or five points in the closing seconds. The opponents had the ball; I was standing on the sidelines. One of their players broke free and scored a touchdown. They then lined up for the extra point and tried to run it in. Our defense stopped them, but so what?

I was surprised to see the guys on our team, exhausted as they were, celebrating in the end zone and on the sidelines. It turned out that the opposing team had NOT scored a touchdown. One of our guys had tagged the runner just short of the goal line. The defensive stop on the last play actually had secured the championship for us. I felt foolish for a second, and then I was more excited than anyone, especially for the guys who made that heroic defensive stand.

Yowsah! I had a slight crush on Jane Fonda.

These team sports did not win the overall title for us. Mike Murphy tirelessly organized participation in every event in every sport. We won few events in either of the two track meets, but we came close to winning the overalls both indoors and out. We had participants in every weight category in wrestling. The only one we won was when two of our wrestlers met in the heavyweight final.

Towards the end of the year Mike reported that the university was interested in ideas for new IM sports. I suggested soccer and marathon dancing. I had just seen They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?.

U-M’s current IM web page is here. It appears to me that they no longer have a league for the residence halls. I wonder if any house ever broke our record for total points. It still stood in the late seventies.

Road Trip: In the sixties the drinking age in Michigan was 21. Most residents of AR were younger. In Ohio, however, one only had to be 18 to purchase 3.2 percent beer. In my freshman or sophomore year the House Council organized a bus trip to Toledo, which is only 54 miles south on US 23, on a Friday or Saturday evening. I was not interested in the beer, but I decided to go when I heard that the last stop would be at the Town Hall, a burlesque house. John “Raz” LaPrelle and Ken Nelson for sure attended. I don’t remember who else was among the twenty or thirty guys on the bus.

I went into one or two bars, mainly to listen to the music. I remember that one band had several horn players, which allowed them to play a few songs that I did not expect to hear.

I remember walking on the streets with guys who were bigger than I was and thinking “Gee, I bet we look really tough to people.”

In the end, however, I got bored and went to the Town Hall by myself while the other guys were still cruising bars. When I got there an X-rated film was being shown. All I remember is that the heroine was a natural redhead. Then a few live “dancers” did their stuff. Let’s just say that their best years were behind them. The star of the show, Ineda Mann, was much better.

It was a good experience, but it was never repeated. The Town Hall was razed in 1968. Even if the trip had been repeated, I would not have gone. Once was enough.

Presentations: A few times people from the outside offered to make a presentation to the residents. I have vivid recollections of two of them. The first occurred on a September evening just before the first football game. One of the assistant coaches came to the house with some game films from the previous year. He showed the films in the game room, and he supplied the play-by-play commentary. It was just the right combination of humor and insider information. It really got everyone psyched up about the upcoming season.

I did not enjoy the second one, which occurred a year or two later, at all. In fact, I got quite angry at the presenters, and I let them have it with both barrels. The two of them represented the John Birch Society. They made many outrageous claims. The one that really set me off was the accusation that Martin Luther King supported Communism. Their evidence was a photograph of him shaking hands with Fidel Castro. This was stupidest reasoning that I had ever heard, and I heard (and made) a lot of dumb arguments in my four years of debate.

I tried to locate on the Internet the photograph of MLK with Castro. There are a lot of photographs of Fidel with international figures and a lot of King with international figures, but I could not locate even one with the two of them together. I did find photographs of the Cuban leader with at three different popes. Nobody has ever been more strongly anti-Communist than Pope John Paul II, the man who was more responsible for the dissolution of the Soviet Bloc than anyone.

The guys were shocked at my reaction to this demagoguery. None of them had ever seen me angry. It only happens about once every ten years or so.

Other Pastimes: Perhaps the most emblematic of all of the events at AR was the shower party. The concept is simple. One member would suggest that another guy had done something so outrageous (not necessarily bad) that he deserved to be thrown into the nearest shower fully clothed. A voice vote would be taken, and democracy prevailed.

I was part of a few shower parties. Once a set of guys tried to throw me in the shower, and they finally gave up. It was not that I was strong—far from it. I simply pumped my knees. Some guys grabbed my arms and torso, but they never got me horizontal, and my very bony knees did some damage to a few faces.

I was a member of many shower party crews, mostly because my roommate, John Cruickshank, was the most frequent recipient. He was addicted to terrible puns. I guarantee that I never gave up on getting a guy in the shower. My specialty was ankles.

Once I had their ankles together, I would not let go. It was only a matter of time.

One day one of the guys sitting in the game room in the basement announced that no one could throw him in the challenge. Handing my glasses to someone, I replied that three of us could do it. I pointed to Ken Nelson and John “Raz” LaPrelle, who took up the challenge. I dove at his feet and pinned both of his ankles together. I held on for dear life. Ken and Raz got grips on his torso. It took a long time, maybe thirty minutes, but we got him out the game room door, up the stairs to the first floor, all the way down the hallway to the bathroom, through two doorways to the shower that someone else had turned on. We shoved him in.

The wet person was Peter Petty, who was 6’10” tall and weighed 350 pound. This was one of the four or five greatest accomplishments of my life.

In my era AR was famous for its water balloons. A few guys threw balloons out on the courtyard side, but the best hurling was towards the sidewalks on East Madison and South Quad. The primary advantage was the target-rich environment. Also, there were no doors on that side of our building, and it was not a bit obvious how to gain access to the house from the south side.

The two most distinguished practitioners of this art were Frank Bell and Ken Nelson. Their styles could not have been more different. Frank dealt in volume, careful targeting, and deadly accuracy. He bought balloons by the gross at the Blue Front² party store on the corner of Packard and State Streets.

Frank’s favorite launching site was the first floor bathroom. He told me that his favorite target was a group of two or three females walking on the sidewalk who were engaged in conversation. His objective was to provoke the target into verbal outrage that did not spill over into a confrontation. He did not have a major-league arm, but he (with an unbelievable amount of practice) was able to loft the balloon considerably and make it land with uncanny accuracy at the targets feet. Immediately after launching he shut the window and listened for his payoff in screams and screeches. Facing a bank of 120 windows, no one caught unawares could possibly suspect that the source was at street level.

Ken was the guy whose arm was so strong that he beat out a major league pitcher (Jim Burton) for quarterback of the house’s A football team. His style was entirely different from Frank’s. He did not buy balloons in bulk as Frank did, but if he felt like flinging a few, someone would gladly supply the balloons just to be part of the event. He threw from the third or fourth floor. His heaves, which splattered in front of the door to South Quad were so epic that no one could possibly have guessed that they came from Allen Rumsey House. Unless they saw the balloon in flight—which almost never happened—the victims always looked up at the windows overhanging them in South Quad.

I never threw anything, but I considered the water balloons fun and, as the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy says, “mostly harmless”. No one suffered anything worse than wet shoes and stockings. However, a couple of freshmen who lived on the third floor when I was a senior indulged in something that was a lot more dangerous.

They had a Wrist-Rocket, which is a slingshot that is affixed to the wrist in order to improve accuracy even when the elastic part is pulled back past one’s ear. These two guys occasionally used it to shoot beebees in the direction of South Quad.

One evening two guys from South Quad had their window open and were being unduly boisterous. One of the guys with the slingshot fired at their window. The beebee went through the window of the South Quad residents and reportedly broke a lamp in their room.

The two SQ guys were not run-of-the-mill students. They were two of the most famous people on campus, and both were big and powerful. Tim Killian was a lineman on the football team who was more famous for kicking field goals.³ His roomy, Dan Dierdorf, was the best offensive lineman in the country. He became a five-time all-pro for the St. Louis Cardinals. He stood 6’3″ and weighed 285 pounds. If you asked everyone on campus to name one person whom they would never want to anger, nearly everyone would select Dan Dierdorf. I know I would have, even before I saw him at close range.

The shot from the Wrist-Rocket set Dierdorf off. He charged across East Madison and stormed through the door to AR. The first thing that he saw was the lounge, where I and a bunch of other nerds were seated. I was probably playing bridge. We all recognized him immediately.

“Who here has a gun?” he demanded

I told him that no one in this house had a gun. This was true, but I was pretty sure of what might make a person think that someone did. He responded, “Someone shot a lamp out in my room, and they are going to pay for it.”

Someone else said, “There are no guns here.”

Dierdorf picked up a broom that was leaning against a corner. He nonchalantly snapped the broom’s handle in two in his hands. He had no need for a fulcrum. Our eyes got wider, and our hearts beat faster in anticipation of “flight or fight” mode. Believe me; no one was considering “fight”.

To our great relief he marched resolutely up the stairs with the broomstick piece in his hand. His bellowing continued, but he never actually did anything. Although the guys with the slingshot would not have won a popularity contest in AR, no one ratted them out. As usual in a group of guys, omertà prevailed, and there were no further incidents with the Wrist-Rocket.

There were lots of other diversions in the dorm: sockey (played in the corridor with a rolled up pair of socks), cans (also in the corridor with a frisbee and four coke cans—two stacked at each end), epic water wars between two floors that created waterfalls on the staircases, and Arnold Palmer’s Indoor golf Game in the lounge. The course was called Sunny Beach.

The golf game was really enjoyable until a guy whose name I don’t remember (and who was not even on any of the university’s athletic teams) decided to play with us one day. You could make the little Arnold figure swing by pulling on a circular ring located on the handle of a golf club that was attached to Arnold’s back. This guy had so much power in his trigger finger that he actually drove the green on a par five! Other guys could come close on a par four, but the par five hole was the entire length of the lounge. Reaching the green in two required two monstrous strokes for everyone else.

Someone brought the Diplomacy board game into the house. We spent a few days digesting the rules. Finally, we got together the requisite seven guys and set aside a weekend day to play.

There are no dice or anything else designed to bring randomness into the game. This game is all about making deals. The rules set a time limit on the bargaining sessions, but they are totally unrealistic. We agreed to ignore the time limits. After several hours someone violated a bargain that he made with another player and stabbed him in the back. The second or third time that it happened, the victim got extremely angry and quit.

We tried playing one more time, and essentially the same thing happened. We never managed to finish a game. I was fascinated with the game, and I bought it for myself. I was never able to gind seven people willing to commit a day to playing it. It survived several moves and has been sitting in the basement of our house for decades.

Of course, we also played cards. We played rubber bridge whenever we could find four willing players. Some games would go on for hours with players finding substitutes when they need to go somewhere. Usually the games were in the lounge, but occasionally we would play in my “suite”, which was right next door.

I have a pretty clear recollection of one monumental session in Room 109 that went on from about ten in the morning until well after supper. We only broke for meals. The stereo was playing one Bob Dylan record after another. When the stack was done, the dummy would flip it over.

My recollection is that throughout that entire session I only had one opening hand. I have subsequently played enough bridge to deduce that this claim is probably apocryphal, but I am quite sure that at some point I opened the window, stuck my head through it, and screamed to the heavens that I was sick of never getting any cards.

A few of us also played at least once in the sanctioned duplicate pairs game at the Michigan Union. By then we were playing Howard Schenken’s Big Club. We did pretty well, but we did not finish first.

Grub: For burgers there was only one choice, Krazy Jim’s Blimpy Burger with Krazy Ray on the grill and Krazy Jim taking orders. It was very close; we took a shortcut through a fence. It closed in 2013. A store with a very similar name opened downtown the next year.

Omega pizza, which was on the northeast side of central campus, had the best pizza when I was an undergraduate. It was a long walk, but we felt that it was worth it. If the weather was bad, which happened often, we ordered delivery from somewhere. There are references to Omega Pizza on the Internet, but I think that they have moved or gone out of business.

In the sixties there was a small shop on State Street that made outstanding hot submarine sandwiches. It was gone by the time that I returned in 1974.

Miscellaneous: I was naughty at least once. Newsweek magazine somehow got addresses for everyone in the dorms at U-M. They sent postcards offering discounted subscriptions. To get one, all you had to do was put a checkmark in a and mail the postcard back to them. There might have been a place for a signature.

The postcards must have arrived at West Quad in one big stack with a rubber band around it. Instead of distributing them to the individual boxes of the addressees, the mail person just put them out on a table with a sheet of paper telling people to take them if interested.

One evening when no one was around I picked up the stack of cards and dropped them in a mailbox. I then did the same with the ones at East Quad and South Quad.

Newsweek evidently did not check to see if the boxes were checked, and no one there was surprised that so many were returned at once from one location. Everybody in the dorms got a few free issues of the magazine and then an unwanted bill. A few people were upset for a little while, but it soon blew over. Nobody knew that I did this until decades later.

I went to mass every Sunday at St. Mary’s, the parish associated with the Newman Center. I liked the music that they sang, especially the pieces written and led by Bob Franke. Eventually he moved over to the Episcopal church.

I attended at least two performances at The Ark, a “coffee house” associated with the Episcopal Church. One was to hear Franke. The other was when Ramblin’ Jack Elliott came to town. His concert was fantastic. He sang “Me and Bobby McGee” twice because he was dissatisfied with his first rendition. This was before Janis Joplin released her version. I bought one of Jack’s albums, but I was disappointed with it. He was much better in person.

Both Bob and Jack are still alive in 2020, and they both still perform regularly.

One of the local bands really impressed me. They changed their name from The Long Island Sound to Fox and then to something else. I loved their song “I Want to be a Cowboy.” Dave Nemerovski, a resident of AR, was related to one of the members.

I did not watch a lot of television. One show that filled the TV room every week was Mission Impossible. A group of us would count the words uttered by Willie Armitage, the strong man. I think that the record was thirteen. I liked Mr. Riggs better than Mr. Phelps.

Bill Kennedy at the Movies was on every day. I would pop down if Bill was showing a Bogey movie or one with Gary Cooper, the Marx Brothers, or W.C. Fields. One day I was astounded to watch The Story of Mankind, the strangest movie (with the most amazing cast) ever made. On another occasion I watched The Pad and How to Use It⁴, a bittersweet movie that sparked my interest in opera.

Several of us were big fans of Walter Brennan, who won three of the first five Oscars for Best Supporting Actor. He had a fairly popular Western called The Guns of Will Sonnett. Walter and his grandson rode around looking for the kid’s father, a famous gunfighter named Jim Sonnett. When people asked how fast he was, Walter would say, “He’s fast, but the boy here is faster, and I’m faster than the both of them. No brag, just fact.”

I wrote to Walter Brennan to wish him luck in finding his son and to ask for an autographed picture. He sent it, and I put it in the AR trophy case. It was still there in the middle seventies.

Saturday morning was often devoted to watching cartoons. I know that we watched “George of the Jungle” and “Rocky and Bullwinkle” in reruns.

One of our favorite shows was a live-action kids show called “The Banana Splits Adventure Hour”. It featured four performers in bizarre animal costumes. Bingo was a gorilla, Fleegle a dog, Drooper a lion, and Snorky an elephant. They were also a rock-and-roll band that spent a lot of time in amusement parks.

From left: Drooper, Bingo, Fleegle, and Snorky.

Each Split had a very distinct personality. All of them could talk except Snorky, who only honked. My favorite was Drooper, who was played by Anne W. Withrow. Drooper had a long tail, which apparently got in the way sometimes. When she wasn’t pretending to play the bass guitar, Anne usually carried the tail in her left hand. All the rest of the performers were guys. Of course, the costumes meant that you could not tell.

Occasionally they would do some jokes that were very unusual for a kid’s show. I remember that once they asked how to get a miniature poodle to pull a dog sled faster. The answer was “Get a bigger whip.”

We all sang along to the Banana Splits song. I still can recite the lyrics, which you can read here. The third verse (“Two banana, four banana, …”) was not sung on the show. It was added for the non-hit single.

The late sixties was not a good era for cinema. There were no multiplexes within walking distance, but two very large theaters bordered the campus. A few smaller theaters showed foreign films. I saw three movies that I really liked: Antonioni’s Blow-Up, Midnight Cowboy, and (my favorite) Z. At the end of Z everyone in the theater loudly applauded. I had never heard a single person applaud at the end of any other flick that I had seen. You know that they can’t hear you, right?

Fred is now more famous as Too Slim, the bass player for Riders in the Sky.

Fred LaBour was one year behind me at U-M. He worked at the Michigan Daily. On October 14, 1969. the Daily, which was (and presumably still is) read by nearly all students, published an article written by Fred and John Gray that confirmed the conspiracy theory that Paul McCartney was dead. Their evidence was mostly in songs recorded by the Beatles, but it could only be heard if you played them backwards. Many students did, including some in AR. Adding to the mindless speculation was a lot of fun, but nobody whom I knew took it seriously.

LMC did not debate; I never heard of it. Now it has two additional campuses.

The Daily also published a gigantic crossword puzzle, and offered a prize to the best solution submitted. AR’s team, which included me, finished second or third. I think that we missed the three-letter word for a college in Benton Harbor. We got to go to a party full of journalism nerds. It was the only party that I attended other than the AR-Stockwell beach party in my four undergraduate years. That is also where I drank the only beer that I consumed as an undergraduate.

Some alcohol was consumed in AR and, especially in the last year or so, some marijuana. I never smoked any, but occasionally you could smell it in the hallway. However, it was in no way comparable to what was around me every day when I was in the army in Albuquerque. I wrote about those amazing days here.

1. Women were not allowed to be cheerleaders (!) or band members when I came to Michigan in 1966. The cheerleaders were male gymnasts and members of the trampoline team. In my four undergraduate years I never heard any mention of sports for women. Title IX was not passed until 1972. There may well have been no varsity sports for women when I was at U-M. Prior to 1956 women could only enter the Michigan Union, where President Kennedy gave a speech in1960, if they were escorted by a man. Even so, they had to use the side door. The Billiards Room in the Union was closed to women until 1968. People at the time considered U-M a very liberal university.

2. Inside and out, it seemed like a relic in 1966, but it did not go out of business until fifty-three years later. They even sold magazines for nudist colonists! New owners reopened it as a craft beer and wine store a few months later in 2019.

3. Tim Killian’s most valuable contribution to the university might have been the fact that he removed more than half of the entries in the U-M football record book. On October 26, 1968, I watched him kick three field goals in the 33-20 victory over Minnesota in Michigan Stadium. This broke the previous record of one, shared by everyone who had ever kicked a field goal in Michigan’s storied football history.

4. The Pad appears to have disappeared. You can’t buy a copy in any format, and it is never on television. I would really like to see it again.

1955-1961 Part 5: Events and Activities

Posted on September 4, 2020 by Mike

Daily life in Prairie Village, KS Continue reading →

Jamie: The biggest event, by far, of my years in grade school was the birth of my sister Jamie on January 4, 1956. Since I had been hoping for a younger brother whom I could shape in my own image, I was bitterly disappointed at the news. I was seven years and four and a half months old, in the middle of second grade in the weird split class taught by Sr. Lucy.

I remember little about those first few years. She quickly became a very cute little girl with blonde hair and dark eyes. Both of my parents had very dark hair and brown eyes. I inherited their hair, and she got their eyes. Her hair got darker as she got older. My eyes constantly changed color but never turned completely brown. I can’t remember Jamie having any serious health issues while we were in Prairie Village.

We would often watch Romper Room (with Miss Virginia) or Captain Kangaroo while I waited for my school bus to arrive. Our favorite parts were the Tom Terrific cartoons, especially Might Manfred the Wonder Dog. Jamie called me “buzzer”, and when the Bluebird arrived, she happily announced “Bus school!”

War! The player on the bottom wins all ten cards in the middle.

When she was older we sometimes played cards seated on the floor in the living room. Her favorite game was war, which she almost always won. I have never been known to take losing very graciously. On one occasion, after a few defeats at war, I was frustrated enough to suggest that we play a different game called sevens and fives. I invented rules as we went along, always with some reference to seven or five, for example, “Oh, you got a deuce, 7-5=2, so you must give me five cards.” She never caught on, and I was finally victorious.

My parents sometimes joined us in the Game of Life. I did not cheat.

My dad worked in advertising and public relations. His company, Business Mens Assurance (BMA) required him to travel a few times every year. My mom also usually attended the annual meeting, which was held at some resort location like Sun Valley, ID, or Banff in Canada. On those occasions we had a babysitter. I think that my grandmother Clara took care of us once or twice, but usually the sitter was hired. Jamie and I did not like this. The ladies were nice enough, but we were used to delicious and nutritious meals every night. None of the sitters came close to reaching this standard.

On the other hand, if my dad went on a trip by himself, our meals actually improved. There were a few really tasty dishes that my dad banned from the table. There were several of these, but the most memorable one was chicken breasts wrapped in bacon and chipped beef, covered with mushrooms, and baked in cream of mushroom or cream of chicken soup. She served it over rice, which my dad detested.¹

Jamie went to kindergarten at Tomahawk School when I was in the eighth grade at QHRS. I paid scant attention at the time. However, much later she told me that she had to walk to school, and on one occasion some older kids had assaulted her in some way, verbally or physically or both. That is all that I know; I have no recollection of this at all.

Jamie liked to go to Fairyland, a small amusement park on the Missouri side. Our parents took us a few times. I did not enjoy it much. Rides have never been my thing.

Medical/Physical: My health was generally good. My mom had to take me to Dr. Batty’s office to get stitched up a few times. Other than that I was pretty healthy; I probably got the flu once or twice, but I remember that I had close to perfect attendance nearly every year. I never even broke any bones.

I got the left side but never the right.

Like everyone who was around when the polio vaccine effectively removed one gigantic worry, my mother definitely believed in inoculations. Since I hated needles, this was a problem for me, especially since my smallpox inoculation never “took”. I had to go back every year or two to try again. Several times my mother sat me down and emphasized that if there was ever an outbreak of smallpox, I must try to get inoculated.

My dental health was essentially perfect after the water got fluoridated. I had hyperdontia, an extra tooth between my upper incisors and the left canine. The dentist checked it every time that I visited his office. Finally he decided to pull it, and all of the other teeth just adjusted themselves in my gums. I never needed braces.

I got my first pair of glasses in 1959, and until the end of high school every time that I went to the optometrist I needed a stronger prescription. After I reached forty I needed reading glasses, but a decade or so later, my need for both types of lenses decreased.

I have hypermobility in the joints of my hands. In grade school I could painlessly touch every finger and my thumb on my left hand back to my wrist. My right hand was only a little less flexible. I could also slip any finger in and out of the lowest joint. I could still touch my left thumb all the way back a few years ago, but it hurt. Now my fingers sometimes painfully slip into the wrong joint by themselves, and I have to force them back.

I entertained the guys and grossed out the girls with these tricks. I also liked to show how I could wiggle my nostrils and my ears. I learned the former from a pet rabbit and the latter (both at once or one at a time) from Howdy Doody’s goofy friend, Dilly Dally.

Pets: I have a dim recollection of a pet rabbit that got away and got caught by a dog a few houses down the street. That did not end well.

I know that I also had parakeets at least twice. One was named Mickey, and one was named Nicky. I taught them both to talk.

One day a black and tan dachshund showed up in our back yard. He would not leave, and he came inside as soon as we opened the door. My dad wanted nothing to do with him, but my mom, after placing notices in all the proper places, gave him food and water. I named him Sam.

After a couple of months, when everyone but my dad had fallen in love with him, some people from a few blocks away claimed Sam. We let them have him back, of course, but the three of us were pretty upset about it.

At the time my grandmom Hazel also kept in her apartment in KC MO a slightly chubbier dachshund with the same coloring named Tippy. At some point after Sam’s departure she gave Tippy, whose real name was Donnys Perry von Kirsch, to us. He was a little more difficult to love, but, once again, three of us came around.

The problem with Tippy was that he liked to bite ankles. He had a wonderfully intuitive sense of where every creature’s Achilles’ tendon was located, and he had strong jaws. There were a few small incidents, but we learned to control him.

Tippy liked to sleep with me in my bed, and, after we had moved to Leawood, he loved to play ball with me in the living room. I would throw a handball against the brick base of the fireplace. He would chase it when it bounced back. Then we would fight over the ball, and he would growl with pleasure.

I remember that on one Easter Sunday my mother had baked a rather large ham in the morning. I don’t know why, but while we were at mass she left it on the kitchen table. Tippy somehow got up on the table and devoured about half of it. Needless to say, my mom was upset, but there was instant karma. Tippy was miserable with an upset stomach for several days.

Sports: My parents occasionally visited their friends, Boots and Fay Hedrick², to play poker. They had a son, John, who was my age. He had a deluxe Erector Set, and a basketball hoop was in their driveway.

For some reason, I spent the afternoon at his house once, and we watched the Celtics on TV. Ever since then I have been a Celtics fan. I have never seen an NBA game in person except for one exhibition game to which Tom Corcoran invited me in the nineties.

I played football and basketball at QHRS. Separate posts document my heroics on the gridiron and (posted here and here) the hardwood (posted here).

I was an avid but not fanatical baseball card collector. I also read all of the box scores for every Major League game every day. Since there were only sixteen teams at first, this was not that burdensome.

I played 3&2 baseball. My travails and glory on the diamond are detailed here.

There was not a lot of space around our house. I was therefore very excited to discover the Wiffle Ball shortly after its commercial introduction. It allowed baseball games in confined areas. I saved up my allowance money and rode my bike to the Prairie Village shopping center to buy the original set, which consisted of a skinny wooden bat and a hollow plastic ball with holes on one side to facilitate curves.

The holes provide wind resistance. Thus, a Wiffle Ball will go nearly as fast as a hardball when it is thrown or hit, but it will slow down much more rapidly. To make the ball curve, the holes must stay on the same side of the ball throughout flight. Any spin added by the fingers or wrist is counterproductive.

The best pitch, in my opinion is thrown perfectly sidearm with the holes down. This causes the ball to sink, and, since the harder part of the ball is on top, it normally produces hard grounders or soft fly balls, both of which are usually easy outs. The spectacular pitches are straight overhand with the holes on one side or the other. Whereas a major league curve ball might break two or three feet, a Wiffle Ball will often break twice that much (over a much shorter distance), and the right curve and left curve are thrown with exactly the same motion. It is also possible to throw a sidearm riser, but the hard side is on the bottom, and so fly balls carry pretty well.

The balls did not last long. They tended to crack and tear because the bat had no “give”. Seldom did a ball last a week. A few years later a 32″ yellow plastic bat greatly improved the durability of the balls. My training with throwing and catching a Wiffle Ball did not greatly improve my performance in hardball, but i put it to good use in our pickup games at Sandia Base in 1971.

I also collected football cards and played with them in the hallway. I remember being astounded by the Charlie Ana card because his weight was listed at 300 pounds. This is a vivid memory, but it must be wrong. There is no trace of him on google.

My dad and I watched NFL games together. He liked the Chicago Bears. My favorite team was the upstart Cleveland Browns. My favorite players were Otto Graham, Lou “The Toe” Groza, and, a few years later, Jim Brown.

I went bowling at Overland Bowl a few times. They charged ten cents a line and had human pinsetters. I was not very good. I could not get the ball to curve on demand, perhaps because of my super-flexible wrists. My best game was 180, a record that stood until I rolled a 190 when I was in my fifties. That was the last game that I ever bowled.

I also remember that my grandmother Clara took me and my cousins Johnny, Terry, and Ricky bowling at least once in Leavenworth. That establishment also employed someone to set the pins. I remember this as a great time. I am pretty sure that my grandmother also treated us to some ice cream.

I never took bowling as seriously as other sports. I did not have a ball, and I had to rent shoes. I remember, however, that my parents bought Jamie and me an indoor bowling game that had vinyl pins and a hollow plastic ball. We set it up in the hallway of the house on Maple St. It was the perfect width.

King Louie was the big name in bowling allies in KC. They had automatic pinsetting machines and projectors that displayed the scores above each lane. They charged a lot more than a dime. Some of their buildings seemed like palaces to me.

My dad could not swim. My mother insisted that I take swimming lessons in the morning at the Prairie Village Pool. I think that I did this for two years, but I don’t remember the details.

I did not enjoy this activity. It usually seemed chilly to me before entering the water, and I was so cold after I got out that I could not stop my teeth from chattering. Another annoying factor was that I was a below-average swimmer. It was obvious that no matter how much I practiced, I would never be very good.

I often rode my bike to swimming lessons. One morning a German shepherd came sprinting toward me from the left. I have never been afraid of animals, but this one jumped up and bit me on the left thigh. I don’t remember what happened next, but the dog’s owners had to keep him chained up for a month to make sure that he was not rabid. My wound was not serious; I don’t even think that I needed stitches.

One great benefit of the swimming lessons was that I was able to earn the Swimming Merit Badge without much difficulty. I also took a Red Cross class that rewarded me with the Lifesaving Merit Badge, at that time the biggest impediment for most guys to attaining the rank of eagle.

No skiing or skating.

Fads: I could make the hula hoop spin for a few minutes, but I was not great at it.

In 1959 or 1960 trampoline parks started popping up like dandelions in Johnson County. I never went to one. Suddenly they all closed down, presumably because of lawsuits from people who broke an arm or leg.

The only songs on the radio that I really liked through my years in grade school were novelty songs like “Beep Beep” or the ones that featured a guy imitating Walter Winchell.

Scouting: I spent a lot of time in the Boy Scouts. I became a Cub Scout as soon as I was eligible, and I went right up all the ranks—Wolf, Bear, Lion, Webelo. My mother was a den mother for a while. We wore our uniforms to school if we had a meeting afterwards. I remember that “A cub scout follows Akela,” but I never had any idea what it meant.

I was also in Boy Scouts. At the end of the summer after eighth grade, I had achieved the rank of Life, and I only needed one merit badge for Eagle.

Getting lost in KC is almost unheard of.

My favorite merit badge was for hiking. It required three or four hikes of a few miles and one longer hike. I took the long hike with Gary Garrison and maybe one other guy. There were no adults. We walked out to Swope Park, had a picnic lunch, spent at least an hour or two at the zoo, and returned. We did not solve any of the world’s problems, but we at least defined the crucial issues concerning our friends, our families, and our school. It was tiring, but we had a great time.

I almost always enjoyed extended periods of time spent with friends. I loved going on camping trips. I never missed one. Our troop usually camped out in a field, which still abounded in the KC area, at least once per summer. On one of these outings I first tried coffee. I could tolerate the bitter taste if I added quite a bit of milk and sugar. I never drank coffee regularly until I started working on computer programs ten or more hours per day in the eighties.

I attended all the Camporees, held on one weekend every year. We had to put up our own tents and sleep on air mattresses or whatever we brought. Patrols competed against one another in various events. The one that I remember is knot-tying. I also remember frying steaks in Italian dressing. It was an accident, but they were absolutely delicious.

The most memorable one was when the clouds exploded one night, and I awoke to find myself afloat on my air mattress outside of the tent. We packed up and abandoned the field on which we were camping at dawn. It was great fun!

I absolutely loved going to Camp Naish for a week every year. We slept in permanent tents with raised wooden floors. We used straw mattresses. They supplied the straw and bed frames; we supplied the ticks and sleeping bags.

We sang interesting songs at meals, and there were huge bonfires most nights. We did all kinds of stufff—orienteering, capture the flag, many varieties of games with pocket knives such as stretch, mumbley-peg, and chicken. I cannot remember any medical emergencies, but I have trouble imagining how they could have been avoided.

I have many other memories, too, but I think that I will keep them to myself. I will just say that you grow up a little bit each year at scout camp.

I was never homesick. I have absolutely no negative memories of summer camp. My only negative memory of any camping trip was that Camporee night in which the field in which we were camping transmuted into a shallow lake.

One year Boy Scout Troop 295 (or maybe Cub Scout Pack 205) must have needed money. We were all asked to sell upscale candy bars to our neighbors. The person who sold the most won a new bicycle. I knocked on a lot of doors, and I did sell a lot of candy. However, Mike Kirk sold more and won the bike. I won the second prize, twenty silver dollars, which are still resting comfortably in an envelope in my sock drawer as I write these words. I suspect that they are worth a lot more today than Mike Kirk’s bicycle.

I read Boys’ Life from cover to cover every month. I especially enjoyed the fiction, which for several months involved the adventures of an alien being.

Me wearing last year’s pants sitting on my saxophone case with QHRS’s best lunch between my feet. I was probably waiting for the school bus. The shoes puzzle me. I could swear that I never wore loafers.

Music: I did not have much interest in recorded music until the eighth grade. However, QHRS did have a band of sorts. My parents agreed to purchase an instrument for me. My inability to pucker eliminated the brass instruments. I ended up selecting the saxophone. The cheapest available model was an E-flat alto, which is what I got. If I had it to do over, I would pick a piano or a string instrument, which would have forced me to learn more about chords and keys.

The band director was Rocco DeMart. My mom would drive me to lessons with him in the basement of Jenkins Music Store in Prairie Village. The band put on at least one concert, and Mr. DeMart also held recitals. I played in at least two of them.

I did not really enjoy playing the saxophone much. My mother had to nag me to practice. My only clear recollection from those days was Mr. DeMart’s pleasure when I unexpectedly played “Was that the human thing to do?” in double-time. He thought that the way that I played it sounded better than the way that it was written.

The saxophone mysteriously disappeared when I was in the Army.

Reading: I read a very large number of books. I can’t tell you why, but I read David Copperfield twice. I really enjoyed Robert Louis Stevenson and anything that had sports or adventure.

Movies: I remember going to a few films. I am pretty sure that I saw Gone with the Wind in the theater with my mother and some other people. I slept through most of it.

The movies that I saw with friends were mostly westerns or war movies. I remember standing with some friends in a very long line at the Overland Theater to see Sink the Bismarck. We got all the way to the front of the line. However, rather than sell us a ticket, they told us that it was sold out. We all had to ride our bikes home, but we saw it later. It was not worth all of that effort.

Birthday Party: One year my parents said that I could have a birthday party. I got to invite two guests. I chose Joe Fox and either Kent Reynolds³ or Rick Ahrendt. I don’t remember any other details. Hardly ever did any of my friends come to our house.

I also threw myself a party for my thirtieth birthday in 1978. Other than that, none.

Visits: My dad would occasionally bring home one of his company’s agents or sales managers for supper. These were basically non-events for me. After supper I would retreat to my room to read, work on model airplanes, or play with my baseball cards.

I am not sure of this, but I think that occasionally my mom would host three ladies in the afternoon to play bridge. I might have watched a few hands. I know that by the time that I was in high school I had a reasonably good idea of how to play. It seems plausible that I might have learned something by watching. I think that we had a copy of one of Charles Goren’s books. If so, I undoubtedly read it. I read all the books that my parents had.

My dad’s army buddy, Jake Jacobson, visited us at least once. I am not sure of the year, but I clearly remember several things. It was warm out, and Jake drove us around in his convertible. In those days he was portly enough that he could use his stomach for steering if he needed both hands for something else.

We drove out to Swope Park in KC MO for a picnic. Mom was there, but I don’t think Jamie was around yet. Jake and dad drank beers and threw the empty cans into trash cans from long range. Such antics were new to me. When I got rambunctious, Jake would say “Michael, decorum!” My dad really liked that phrase.

If my dad and Jake ever talked about the army days, it was in solemn tones.

Work: I mowed our lawn. My dad must have mowed it when we first moved to Prairie Village. I cannot remember that ever happening, but I don’t think that he would have hired someone. Maybe my mom did it. She could do anything. By the time that I was ten or so, regular lawn-mowing was part of my chores. My recollection is that my allowance was a quarter per week.

I have no clear recollection of mowing any of the neighbors’ lawns when we lived on Maple St. in Prairie Village, but I might have.

Somehow I got involved with selling Christmas cards every year. I don’t remember the details, but I showed samples to a lot of people. I also took orders and delivered the cards when they arrived. My mom definitely helped.

1. I think that his prejudice was largely due to his experiences in World War II. He associated rice with the Japanese, and he had no use for them. I purloined this recipe and have prepared it to enthusiastic receptions dozens of times. I omit the chipped beef because it is too expensive and the dish has plenty of flavor without it.

2. Fay Hedrick lived to be 100. She outlived Boots by thirty-four years. Her obituary is posted here.

3. Kent Reynolds’ LinkedIn page is here.

Wavablog

Memoirs, bridge, popes, travel, and other stuff

Tag Archives: Bridge

1972-1974 Connecticut: Social Life

1967-1969 Part 3A: Events at Allen Rumsey House

1955-1961 Part 5: Events and Activities