THE CRAZY ONE IN THE CAR--episode 12
Going to College 1964-1968
Freshman Year — Spring Quarter 1965
The first night back at school, Stef phones to tell me to get the pledges to the house at 1:00 a.m. and to wear “jockstraps and clothes you don’t mind getting dirty or ruined.” When I tell Bob Cragg, he laughs and says, “Yes!” At 1:00 a.m. we gather in the Crow living room. “Welcome to Hell Week,” Stef says. About twenty brothers stand silent along the walls in the living room and in the hall. “First thing: Brother Kargor will lead you through a Happy Hour warm-up.” Brother Kargor is a senior and a R.O.T.C. captain who led marching drills fall quarter for my Air Science class. “Men!” he shouts and we snap to. “Tonight you vermin will be treated as men and tonight you men will be treated as vermin.”
Somebody chuckles just enough for a couple of us to hear.
“Pledge Baylor!”
I watch George decide to go along rather than to challenge. “Yes, Sir!”
“You will live to regret that.” George literally bites his lower lip. “In fact, your pledge brothers have you to thank as we take our warm-up out into the back yard rather than in the living room.” It snowed last night. It’s below freezing outside.
“Your Pledge Brothers are with you, George!” It’s Bob Cragg.
Kargor shouts: “Outside, vermin!” and for a half hour we do jumping jacks and push-ups in the snow and we jog around the house.
When we go back inside, Stef says, “Now Brother Brown will lead you on a tour of the house. You will remove all clothing except for your jockstraps.”
There’s a groan from someone and a chuckle or two as, in the center of the room, Cragg and Graize take the lead and pull off their sweatshirts and their shoes and trou. Next to them, Huna blusters through it. I’m aware of bodies in the half light untying shoes and unzipping pants and I’m not looking at anyone as I lift my sweatshirt over my head.
“And now,” Stef says, “you will get in alphabetical order and you will crawl.”
We arrange ourselves in silence, we get down on our stomachs, and Brother Brown leads us through the dining room and into the back hall where Brother Somebody holds a bucket and Brother Somebody Else dips out spoonfuls of something we must take mouthfuls of—mustard? hot sauce? pepper flakes? and “a couple of last weekend’s used rubbers.” At the bottom of the basement stairs, Brother Klimczak smears our faces with something slimy and smelling not quite like shit but close enough. “The only way I wanna see you assholes wiping this off is with your tongues.”
There is little light in the basement. The walls are lined with waiting brothers as we crawl. It’s cold and damp and moldy and we are pushed and pulled and cursed and jabbed at. If I wasn’t working so hard at crawling, I might laugh. Or fight. Or collapse.
At the end of the Happy Hour we gather in the living room. Each of us is wet and dirty, a couple of us have vomited, and the room smells of all of us. Stef stands next to a pile of something on the piano bench. “Pledges, you will take off your jocks and when I call your name, you will step up and you will get a burlap sack which you will wear as underwear all through Hell Week. At any time any place on campus, any brother can check to make sure you are wearing your burlap. If you are discovered not wearing your burlap, you will be depledged.”
With some groans, we each get our burlap, and Stef continues. “You will sleep on the living room floor tonight—not on the sofa or in the chairs. You will be free tomorrow morning. I will see you back here at 1:00 p.m. tomorrow. Goodnight.”
Exhausted, we find our places on the floor and we sleep. In the morning we dress in last night’s clothes and go to our dorms to shower and we wear our burlap under clean clothes.
After lunch we’re in the yard at the house raking, pulling weeds, clearing debris. And when a brother calls “incoming,” we dive to the ground for an air raid; we cover our heads, and with our index fingers we shoot into the air while making anti-aircraft sounds.
At 4:00 Jerry and sophomore brother George “Brody” Broadelsohn and I go to the first track practice of the term. We get our workout sweats and our assigned lockers and we warm up and stretch out and we jog easily around the track and I feel surprisingly aligned and balanced and able.
Back to the house at 7:30 where our Big Brothers present us with our pledge paddles. John and I get thumbs up on the first smack. My ass hurts all night as some of us clean the house while others accompany upperclass brothers to clean their apartments. At 11:30 everyone is back at the house for a happy hour. At 12:30 we go to our dorms.
Classes start the next day and for the rest of the week we are free in the mornings and afternoons, but we return to the house in the evenings for apartment and house cleaning and happy hours. It’s an achievement to make all of my classes and every track practice this week.
I get used to the burlap.
Friday afternoon we drive to Lake Bousson in a rented van. The college owns the little lake and the cabin and the land around it. Brother Kargor leads a warm up in the snow but the air is warm enough for mud to be everywhere. And in the mud we perform crawling maneuvers during which eggs are smashed on heads and pledge paddles swatted across asses. We join hands and in a line we run around the lake and through the swampy parts that aren’t frozen.
Jerry, Huna, and I take our clothes off for a final dip through a hole in the ice before we all begin the hour-long walk back to campus. Bob Cragg and Tom Graize check on the weaker guys. “You okay? You’re doing great. I got you.”
Either Cragg or Graize should have been pledge class president.
The Hell Week Scavenger Hunt begins at 11:30 Saturday night and lasts until 2:00 Sunday afternoon. One of the items on the list is the Allegheny College Phi Iota Chapter of Alpha Chi Rho Commemoration plaque that was stolen from the house last quarter by the Thiel College Alpha Chi Rho pledges. Jerry and I and Cakes and Augie Palumbo get a townie to drive us the twenty-some miles to Thiel in Greenville. We get there at 4:30 in the morning and when we find the house, we hide in the bushes and Augie tries the front door and it opens.
“Oh my God!” he whispers and we walk in. I almost laugh out loud when Cakes takes out a flashlight. “Be prepared,” he mouths as he turns it on.
The house is quiet. Are they all sleeping? Augie opens a door. It’s the kitchen. He takes a fire extinguisher from the wall and we go into a hall and I open a door to a study room. Jerry goes to a desk and takes the pledge paddle lying there and hands it to me and then he goes to another desk and he takes the pledge paddle hanging on the wall above it and hands it to Cakes and then to a third desk and he takes the porcelain stein with the Crow coat of arms on it. He turns and licks his lips and nearly giggles. Back in the living room, we take from the mantelpiece the framed fraternity composite photo and our chapter’s commemoration plaque. My heart is beating in panic but I might laugh in exuberant joy as we go out the door. We run down the brick path and I am about to laugh or shout or something when Cakes says, “Pinkerton.”
Down the walk a campus policeman is coming toward us.
“Here,” Augie says and we stash everything in the bushes at the end of the yard and Cakes and Jerry duck behind. I take out a cigarette and light it and Augie says, “Good morning, officer.” He barely looks at us, doesn’t break stride, grunts and keeps walking. Augie and I look at each other and I bite my lip to keep from shrieking. We carry the stuff to where the same kid who drove us to Greenville is waiting to take us back to Meadville.
During the night others have gone to the Meadville hospital where a nurse friend of someone hands them a jar with a fresh umbilical cord inside; someone gets Mama Rose from the P. V. to give him one of her 42 DD bras; others go to Conneaut Lake to steal an old anchor from somewhere and on the dock in the middle of the night, Paul Barstow asks, “Hey, guys, we’re supposed to get a live bird, right? Is a duck a bird?”
By 2:00 Sunday afternoon we have gathered every item on the Scavenger Hunt list. And that evening we become Brothers of Alpha Chi Rho. Though it is against Alpha Chi Rho code to describe the details of the activation ceremony, I can report that at the ceremony the brotherhood awards me the Postulant of the Year plaque. And President Katz announces that Doug Strothman and I are the final two candidates for president of the sophomore class.
A cheer goes up for Alpha Chi Rho.
*****
Most days Jerry and I walk to Robertson Field together; we warm up together; he goes to the pole vault and I go to the hurdles. There are a few other hurdlers and we acknowledge one another, but each keeps to himself. The shot putters and the javelin men and the high jumpers work mid-field and the sprinters use the track on the side of the field opposite the hurdlers. The field is wide and flat and under the vast vault of the sky muted laughter and talk carry easily. Occasionally a whistle sounds or across the field a coach calls out instructions to someone or an upperclassman shouts encouragement or good-natured ridicule to a teammate. It all makes me feel part of a community as I did on the high school track team. Then I was as excited as I was intimidated by the upperclassmen joking and jostling one another as they opened lockers and slammed them closed. They undressed casually and unafraid and their easy-going banter echoed throughout the room. Senior Teddy Gaetano would pull his t-shirt up over his head and step out of his pants and take off his briefs while telling stories of his weekend exploits. As he got into his jockstrap, he would turn to the guy sitting on the bench next to him and adjust himself and ask if he could get a ride home after practice. And after practice he would walk naked from one part of the locker room to another, snapping his towel casually, joking under his breath to one guy and then turning and shouting something to another at the far end of the room. In the showers he would smile big-toothed and joyful as he breached locker room protocol that keeps one naked body from invading the space of another. He would grab his crotch and cackle and grab at others and they would howl and laugh. I watched unnoticed because freshmen were invisible like little scampering mammals who stayed out of the way of the mightier beasts as they moved about, oblivious to us. I envied Teddy Gaetano and his friends and I wanted to be one of them.
Here, I am one of them. Stretching out. Breathing. Attention to muscles. To alignment. To flexibility. Strength. I work on form. On starts out of the blocks. On the ten strides to the first hurdle. Here my maleness is equal to everyone else’s. Here it’s not about complicated feelings. Here it’s only about my body and its abilities to run, to take a hurdle, to master the three steps between hurdles, to power to the finish line. At Robertson Field no one is waiting on the ground to tear me apart and there are no high-tension wires in the sky.
*****
I’m reading Tonio Kroger. I know great literature reflects real life but I’ve never before felt like an author was reading my mind or my heart—or had lived my life. I pin on my bulletin board these quotes:
He who loves the more is inferior and must suffer.
Do not chide this love. There is longing in it, and a gentle envy; a touch of contempt and no little innocent bliss.
I stand between two worlds and am at home in neither.
Jerry’s come to my room to get a book he forgot and I’ve watched him read the quotes.
He has said nothing.
*****
At the house several after-lunch bridge games are in progress. When I come in, John Fergus looks up from his cards and says, “Congratulations.” He shows me today’s issue of The Campus. I’m next year’s sophomore class president.
“Jesus, Downs,” A. J. says, “take a break, give somebody else a shot,” and everyone laughs maybe a bit too heartily.
“What can I say?” I say and I shrug a what-can-you-do shrug and I don’t say, “Fuck you.” I wanted to win. I want to have too much to do. In the fall I’ll put all my energies into freshmen orientation and freshmen rush. One more way to keep me above the clawing hands of the mob, one more way to keep me out of the criss-crossing electrified wires.
Senior Charlie Hareston gets up from the sofa and says, “Dave, may I ask you something?” He’s a serious, intense fellow whose smile always seems something his truer self begrudgingly allows a more surface self to engage in. He takes me aside. He’s not smiling. “Are you dating Joan Calder?”
I almost laugh in surprise as I thought it was going to be something important. “I’ve gone out with her a few times. We’re friends.”
“Would you mind if I ask her out Saturday?”
Why the hell is he asking me? “No, of course not.”
On Sunday I ask him how the date went and he says they had a great time but that she got nervous and edgy until he asked if she’d like to go back to the dorm. She called him an hour ago and she wants to talk to him today.
“What did you do to her?” he says. His eyes are trying to see through to something deeper in mine.
I’m feeling defensive, though I don’t know about what. “What do you mean?”
“Something’s happened to her. Did you do something to her?” He hasn’t blinked.
“No, I don’t think so, I mean, what do you mean?”
He’s not sure what he means because she wasn’t very clear about what she meant.
I’m feeling as if I just walked through cob webs.
Or into a spider web.
The Crazy One in the Car is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products sof the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely co-incidental.