1981-1988 Life in Rockville: Other Events

Posted on April 30, 2021 by Mike

No monumental events occurred during our seven and a half years in Rockville, but I remember all kinds of smaller ones.

Sports

Jogging: I continued to go jogging a couple of times a week, but Rockville was much too hilly for an occasional runner like me. I drove my car a mile or two into Ellington to find a surface that was relatively level. I took Upper Butcher Road, which turned into Middle Butcher Road and then Windemere Ave., up to Pinney Road (Route 286). I parked my car near the intersection.

I ran up Windemere to Abbott Road, where I turned right. I ran north alongside the golf course before turning on either Middle Road or Frog Hollow Road to return to Pinney Road. The only problems that I ever encountered were dogs. A few barked ferociously and came within a few feet of my ankles, but none ever bit me.

Basketball: During the winter of 1987-88 Tom Corcoran invited me to watch a basketball game that included some players that he knew from work. It was held at a high school gym. I can’t remember if Sue came or not. The game itself was not a bit memorable, but at halftime a door prize was awarded. It was a pair of tickets to a Hartford Whalers game, and my ticket had the winning number.

Hockey: You really should listen to “Brass Bonanza”, the Hartford Whalers’ fight song while reading this section. You can find it here. It will open in a new tab.

I had only attended one hockey game in my life, an intramural game at U-M. The tickets that I won were for the last game of the season. It took place in the Civic Center³ in downtown Hartford. The opponents were the Pittsburgh Penguins.

In those days there were nineteen teams in the NHL. Sixteen of them made the playoffs. At the time of the game the Whalers had already clinched one of the last playoff spots⁴, but the Penguins had been eliminated. So, the game was meaningless for most purposes.

The Whalers were clearly the better team, as even a neophyte like myself could discern. They held a 2-1 lead going into the third period. The home team continued to dominate play, but they could not get the puck past the Penguins’ goalie. At the other end the Penguins only took four shots, but three of them ended up in the net. So, the visitors won 4-2.

Art Slanetz also took Sue and me to a Springfield Indians hockey game. I don’t remember much about it.

Golf: I played a few times with Denise Bessette’s husband Ray and his dad. His dad was even worse at the game than my dad. I just could not afford to play regularly; golf was too expensive.

Television

We had cable in Rockville. In the days before bundling it was reasonably priced. I watched a lot of college football, and we watched a few shows in the evening, especially Thursdays. NBC showed Cheers and Frasier. I could not get into Seinfeld.

We also had the Playboy channel for a while. Its productions were awful . One show featured a woman from England. They introduced her with “And now, from across the Pacific …”

In the mornings I sometimes went downstairs to do exercises. I remember two different shows that I watched. One had a different woman leading every day. The other one, Morning Stretch, had only one hostess, Joanie Greggains. One of her favorite sayings was, “Your grew it; you lift it!”

Pets

At some point Puca and Tonto, our tortoise, died. Thereafter the home-made snake cage in the barnboard bookshelves remained empty.

I know that we had guinea pigs in Rockville for at least a couple of years. The last one was an all-white Peruvian that I named Ratso. He loved to be petted, and he whistled whenever I did. Unfortunately, he had a tumor on his belly, and it eventually killed him.

Somehow we ended up with a very nice black rabbit named Slippers. That little guy could really leap. He could jump from the floor to the top shelf of the bookshelves, which was more than six feet off of the ground.

Slippers had a bad habit of chewing on electrical cords. I went to a local pet store that had a very knowledgeable proprietor. I waited until she was free. I then approached her to ask what I could use to prevent a bunny from chewing on the cables. She quickly answered, “Nothing.”

Slippers had a stroke, and we brought him to the vet. While we were there he let out a blood-curdling cry—the only sound that we ever heard him make. He was dead. I think that that was the saddest that I had ever felt.

In the summer of 1986 a stray cat that hung around the Elks Club gave birth to a litter of three in the courtyard behind our house. One was mostly white, one was tuxedo-colored, and one was black and white with a black mask like a raccoon’s. The tuxedo-attired one had short hair, perhaps inherited from his father; the other two had long hair. At first we called them Whitey, Blacky, and the Coon Cat. Based on her disposition, we think that Whitey was female; the other two were males. Sue wrote a children’s story about them and read it to Brian and Casey Corcoran.

We did not really plan on having cats as pets, but it did not seem too likely to us that all four of them would be able to survive the winter. We did not want to be responsible for that. So, I embarked on a plan to trap them. I bought some Purina Cat Chow¹ and put a bowl of it in the courtyard about ten feet from our kitchen door. Every day I moved the bowl closer to the door. Then I left the door open and put the bowl in the kitchen. The two males came in, but the female was too timid to enter the house.

This photo of Rocky was taken by Sue. It is attached by a magnet to our refrigerator.

When the bowl was well inside the kitchen, and I knew that both male cats had come in to eat, I snuck out the other courtyard door and shut the kitchen door from the outside, thereby trapping them in the kitchen. The Coon Cat, whom we renamed Rocky shortly thereafter, threw himself at the door over and over while Blacky (later named Jake) sat in the corner and calmly assessed the situation.

I bought a litter box and some litter. As soon as they had grown accustomed to being with humans, we took the boys to the vet for their shots and to get them fixed. We kept our two new feline friends in the house all winter. In the spring we saw their mother hanging around the Elks Club, but there was no sign of their sister.

In the spring and summer we let Rocky and Jake roam wherever they wanted. When they wanted back in, they would wait patiently in the courtyard for someone to open the door.

In early October of 1987 Rocky did not come home for a couple of days. When he finally came to the door, his face and chest were covered with blood. We took him to the vet. He had a broken jaw. The vet wired it, and they kept him for a few days because we had a weekend planned in Washington (described above). All the staff loved him.

We brought Rocky home. Within twenty-four hours he broke the wire on his jaw. With his eight remaining lives he never looked back and lived for another seventeen years. He was incredibly athletic. I once saw him vault/climb the nine foot stone wall in our front yard in one smooth motion.

Jake was much less sociable than Rocky, but he was nearly as good an athlete. One afternoon while I was napping in the bedroom, I heard a very strange noise just outside of the window. It was the sound of Jake climbing the drain pipe for the rain gutter in hot pursuit of a squirrel that was taunting him from the ledge of the bedroom window. I don’t think that he got that squirrel, but he did figure out how to get down on his own.

Games

D&D: In the first few years after we arrived back in Connecticut, I staged a few dungeons. The best was when the debaters from Wayne State came to visit us as described above.

After that Tom Corcoran was always eager to play. Sue could usually be talked into it. Sue’s sister Betty and some of her friends could occasionally be coerced. We tried to talk a few clients into trying it, but there were no takers.

Board Games: We played a lot of board games with the Corcorans. We also played fairly often with Sue’s sister Betty. Her favorites were The Farming Game and Broadway. Sue and I occasionally played Backgammon together.

Murder Mysteries: It was easier to get people together for a Murder Mystery party, which became fairly popular in the eighties, than it was to arrange for a D&D adventure. We bought several of these games, which were sold in toy stores. The idea was that everyone was assigned a character and given secret information about the character. Only the murderer was allowed to lie. Then everyone guessed at the end.

We only played a few of these games. The quality was very uneven, as it was with the board games². In one of them the most important clue was in the very first paragraph of the description of the setting that was read aloud. When we played it, the player who had that character (Ken Owen, introduced here) did a vivid portrayal of his role in that setting. The game was ruined. It was not his fault; he was expected to get into his character; the game was just poorly designed. Another problem was that you could only play each one once.

Camping

I have always loved camping, and when I say camping I mean sleeping on the ground in a tent that one set up for oneself, not sleeping in an RV that has more electrical doodads than a hotel. Sue liked camping, too, but the sleeping on the ground part proved to be too much for her. She bought a fold-up cot with a mattress that was about 2″ thick. That proved to be a pretty good compromise, and that mattress got considerable use after our camping days ended.

On a few occasions we spent a couple of days on our own at Mineral Springs Campground in Stafford Springs, CT. This place had spaces for a lot of trailers. Some people spent every summer there for years. We always stayed in the “primitive” areas, which were just plots set aside for people who eschewed electrical and plumbing hookups in the woods. We set up the tent and scoured the woods for firewood. On some occasions we needed to supplement what we could find with wood purchased from the campground’s store.

This is the headquarters building. There were arcade games and a ballroom inside, as well as a store..

The campground had a headquarters building in and around which all kinds of activities were scheduled. There were also several areas designated for volleyball and other sports. The small swimming pool did not interest me, but I think that Sue took a dip at least once.

Many kids were forced to spend time here, and the operators did their best to give them something entertaining to do while the adults sat around the campfire and drank beer.

I would have preferred something more rustic, but, after all, this was Connecticut. It had been civilized for more than three centuries.

I relished the challenge of creating a hot supper over an open fire. I was quite proud when the result actually tasted like a well-cooked meal. Sue’s favorite part of camping was making s’mores. I can’t say that I ever developed a taste for them. I preferred my graham crackers without the gooey stuff.

In the late eighties Sue talked her nephew, Travis LaPlante, and Brian Corcoran into joining us on camping trips. If she hadn’t, I doubt that either one of them would have ever slept outside.

This is the box that our tent came in. I found it in the basement. I don’t know where the tent itself is.

They were very different kids, but we all had a pretty good time. We played some board or card games together. I don’t remember the specifics, but the two boys enjoyed them. They also enjoyed tramping through the woods looking for firewood. Travis liked playing with the fire itself.

We tried a few other campgrounds after we left Rockville in 1988. Those adventures are detailed here.

Health

My health, with one exception, was fine throughout our stay in Rockville. During the winter of 1987-88 we kept our two little buddies, Rocky and Jake inside the house. Therefore, we put out a litter box for them, and they used it.

One day Jake scratched me on the back of my left hand. I took care of the wound, but it would not heal. I ran a very slight fever, and eventually a bubo appeared under my left armpit. I continued working, but I could only concentrate for a couple of hours at a time before I needed to take a nap.

We did not have health insurance, and I had not seen a doctor since my knee healed. However, I knew that I needed medical help. I made an appointment with a doctor whose office was within easy walking distance. He asked me if my vision had been affected, which would have been an indication of toxoplasmosis. I answered that it might have been, but I was not sure. It was not significant. He told me to come to the emergency room at Rockville General Hospital at 9 a.m.

He met me when I arrived, and we skipped the usual ER routine. He lanced my bubo and gave me a week’s worth of antibiotics. As soon as he lanced the bubo I felt much better, but the antibiotics did not solve the problem. A week later he lanced again and gave me a different antibiotic. This was repeated one more time.

As soon as the third antibiotic circulated in my system, the wound healed rapidly, the bubo never formed again, and my fever disappeared. In short, I was cured.

I don’t remember what the doctor billed me for this treatment, but it was extremely reasonable.

Sue’s health problems were more chronic than mine. She had put on some weight in the time that we had been together. By the mid eighties she was having real problems sleeping.

She snored fairly heavily when she did get to sleep, and she would often wake up every few minutes with a start to catch her breath. She went to a doctor. He arranged a sleep study, after which he informed her that she had sleep apnea. I am not exactly sure what the difficulty was, but she got into a dispute with the doctor about something. I told Sue not to worry about the cost, but my efforts did not help the situation. She could be stubborn that way.

A good deal of time passed, and she only got worse. She finally got a CPAP³ machine that was connected to a mask that she wore in bed. She found it uncomfortable, but it did seem to help her sleep.

Unfortunately, I could tell that her mental acuity had deteriorated during this period. Evidently she just was not getting enough oxygen to her brain.

In late 1981 I received a phone call from Vince Follert. I knew him as a friend and fellow coach and teacher at Wayne State, as described here. I also knew that he had been diagnosed with colorectal cancer and had a difficult time with the treatment.

He told me that he had waited to call until he had some good news. This was not the fast-talking, wise-cracking guy that I knew from Detroit. He had obviously been through the wringer. I don’t even remember what the new was. It did not sound that good to me.

He insisted that the cancer had nothing to do with the Diet Pepsi that he chain drank. I did not mention the cigarettes. He seemed to be invested now in the power of positive thinking.

The next call that I got was a few months later. It was from Gerry Cox, not Vince. He told me that Vince had died. I was not surprised.

Effy Slanetz, Sue’s mother, contracted some kind of illness at approximately the same time in 1987 of 1988 that I got scratched by Jake. Her symptoms were similar to mine, and the treatments seemed similar. However, she did not make the instant recovery that I did. Instead, her disease dragged on for years. She never got over it.

Gardening

I got interested in vegetable gardening by watching two television shows on Saturdays. The one that I enjoyed the most was The Joy of Gardening with Dick Raymond. It was sponsored by Garden Way, makers of Troy-Bilt products. The other was Square Foot Gardening, hosted by Mel Bartholomew. He was a little preachier and more disdainful of other approaches.

Both hosts had books promoting their approaches, and I acquired both of them. Dick’s book was filled with lovely color photos. He had fairly instructions about the best way of dealing with each type of vegetable. The production values in Mel’s book were not as high, but he also knew his stuff. Both men argued that vegetables could be planted much more closely to one another than was done by most gardeners.

I did not have much space in the courtyard, and so I used their advice to maximize my yield. The open end of the courtyard was on the south, but the walls on the east and west sides limited the morning and evening sunlight. There was not much I could do about that. I imagined mounting huge mirrors, but I was never that fanatical. Besides, I was cheap

I grew a fairly diverse array of vegetables. I tried to do without pesticides. I used bacillus thuringiensis to thwart cabbage worms. I just picked the horn worms off of the tomatoes. The only insect species for which I resorted to chemical treatments to counter was Mexican bean beetle. These little monsters arrived en masse in early July and they attached so many larvae to the undersides of the beans that I could not keep up with them.

I had the most success with cherry tomatoes and sunflowers. My three cherry tomato plants produced over 250 tomatoes, and the vines were over twelve feet long. The secret for my success, I am convinced, is that I fertilized them with Slippers’ poops.

I also grew one plant indoors over the winter. It was not as big as the ones in the garden, but it produced a reasonably good output until white flies found it. My sunflowers were well over eight feet high, but the birds always harvested them before I did. I didn’t really care.

My onions were pitiful. The bulbs that I harvested were hardly bigger than the sets that I planted in the spring. Mel claimed that you only needed a 4’x4′ patch to grow corn, but I never had much luck. Corn really needs unrestricted access to both the sun and the wind.

Food

We ate at home most of the time. I usually skipped breakfast. I ate a piece of fruit if one was around For lunch I usually ate leftovers or, even sometimes in the summer, some kind of chicken noodle soup. I preferred the Lipton’s version that had “diced white chicken meat”, but I was not picky.

For outdoor grilling we used the hibachi that we brought back from Michigan for a while. Then we upgraded to an inexpensive barbecue grill with wheels from, I think, Caldor’s. It provided a means of regulating the distance between the fire and the grill. I did not understand how anyone could grill successfully without this feature.

We patronized a few local restaurants. Tasty Chick was a very good fried chicken takeout place on Regan Road just off of Route 83. The owners, Michael and Marie McGuire⁵, often were behind the counter. Michael would sometimes claim that they were almost sold out. All that remained, he explained, were “beaks and toes.”

We also liked to go to the Golden Lucky⁶ for Chinese food. The ginger chicken wing appetizers were to die for. Once in a while we thought that we could afford to go to J. Copperfield⁷ for a more elegant dinner and a drink.

Live Performances

Sue and I did not attend many concerts, but in October of 1981 we were among the 40,000+ in attendance at the performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida at the Hartford Civic Center. In some ways it was not really an opera. The singers were all wearing cordless microphones, which is absolutely prohibited in most opera houses. Because of the Civic Center’s poor acoustics, they had to allow this.

The emphasis in this production was on spectacle. “The Grand March” scene included not just dancers, but elephants, camels, and, if I remember correctly, snakes.

Although it has, in my opinion, the best final scene in all of opera, Aida has never been one of my favorites. The producers of this extravaganza spent a half million dollars on the production. There was nothing left to hire top-notch singers. Even so, I think that everyone had a pretty good time. The New York Times sent a reviewer, Theodore W. Libby, Jr. He had a similar opinion, which can be read (for free) here.

The next year they tried to repeat the experience with a production of Turandot, an outstanding opera of imperial China by Giacomo Puccini (finished by Franco Alfano). We didn’t go, and nearly everyone else stayed away, as well. I am embarrassed to report that I had never heard of this opera at the time. If I had been familiar with it, I might have gone. In the ensuing years I have probably listened to it fifty times or more.

Sue and I also attended a few second- or third-tier concerts. I can remember three of them:

Sue and I went to see Livingston Taylor, James Taylor’s brother, perform at a coffee house in Hartford. It was a guy’s name followed by “‘s”, but I cannot remember it. I enjoyed it, but … My friend from U-M Raz (John LaPrelle) went to high school with James Taylor in North Carolina. He never mentioned Livingston, I presume.
We also saw Garnet Rogers, the brother of Stan Rogers. Stan’s album Northwest Passage, was one of the very few that I bought during this period. I heard Stan’s music on a show on WWUH radio that featured acoustic music. I still listen to the album on an mp3 player when I go walking.
Sue and I went up to the Iron Horse Cafe to hear Donovan. He was one of Sue’s idols when she was a teeny bopper.

In truth I was slightly disappointed by all of these concerts. They weren’t bad, but there was no thrill. By the way, I think that all three of these guys are still alive and performing.

Sue loved (and loves) every type of live music. She probably attended additional concerts with friends or by herself.

1. In the subsequent thirty-five years I have never fed our cats any product other than Purina Cat Chow. None of them has ever had an illness more serious than a hairball. When people tell me that their cats will not eat dried cat food, I always reply, “Maybe not in the first week, but they will eat it.”

2. The quality of some games was so bad that I could not believe that anyone had ever tried to play them before they were marketed. Others were clearly ripoffs of other games that took advantage of a popular movie or television show.

3. Stafford Springs is the least “Yankee” of all New England’s towns. Its principal claim to fame is its speedway. The main street of town is often filled with motorcycles. It feels much more like Kentucky or Tennessee.

4. CPAP stands for continuous positive airways pressure. Sue eventually found a much less intrusive model.

5. The McGuires ran Tasty Chick from 1975-89. It stayed open under separate management until the early twenty-first century. Michael McGuire died in 2021. His obituary is here.

6. The Golden Lucky opened in 1983 and closed in 1988. The sad story is documented here. We never had a bad meal there.

7. J. Copperfield was in business from 1982 to 1996.

1967-1969 Part 3B: The Guys of Allen Rumsey House

Posted on October 11, 2020 by Mike

The guys whom I remember. Continue reading →

From my sophomore year through my senior year I knew the name of every resident of Allen Rumsey House. In the lounge was a large glass-encased photo board with names and room numbers. I studied it often, and in those days I had a quick memory.

AR had about one hundred residents each year, and the annual turnover was at least 30 percent. So, more than three hundred guys lived there while I did. Fifty years later I have forgotten the names of a substantial portion of them. I blame the guys. If they had all become major league ballplayers, or if they had just done more outrageous things, I would probably remember more of them.

I have done fairly thorough Internet searches on all of the following guys, but I did not find anything substantive about many of them.

Staff: The Resident Director (RD) lived in a two-room suite on the first floor near the western door. There was a Resident Advisor (RA) on every floor. The other staff member lived in a two-room suite on the first floor near the eastern door. I am not sure whether this person was considered the Assistant Resident Director or the RA for the first floor.

Andy Something was the RD for my freshman year and, I think, for my sophomore year. My only interaction with him was at the bridge table in his suite. He was a graduate student in “Communication Science”, which was the name of U-M’s academic department that taught about computers.

Jim Krogsrud, better known as “Gritty”, was the RA of the third floor during my freshman year. He also had a staff position during my sophomore year, but I am not sure which one. I think that he was RD for my last two years. He studied some kind of engineering. He was a very good athlete, and he competed for AR in a few sports. I don’t know where he got the nickname. He had it before I arrived.

In 2020 Tom Caughey wrote me that Gritty was a lawyer. In fact I learned that he was now retired from a long career as a public defender. He now lives in Freeland, MI, and works for the Saginaw-Tittabawassee Rivers Contamination Community Advisory Group.

John Dalby was the RA for the fourth floor for two or three years. During my senior year he lived in the first-floor suite on the east side. I think that he was also an engineer. He was the captain of the undefeated A volleyball team. He scouted for new team members from all the new arrivals every year and initiated practices as soon as he had recruited enough guys.

For at least two years Ken Nelson was probably my best friend at AR. He was one year older ahead of me. I think that he was president of the House Council either my freshman or sophomore year. During the summer before my junior year I was very surprised to receive an invitation to his wedding in Niles, MI. He had never mentioned an HTH (hometown honey). I did not attend the nuptials, but I sent a gift.

In my junior year Ken lived in the eastern first-floor staff suite with his obviously pregnant wife. It was a deplorable situation. She was the only female in the dorm (maybe in all of West Quad!). She wasn’t a student. Ken still hung around with the rest of us pretty regularly, but she almost never came out of their suite. I don’t remember what they did for food. Maybe the suite had a kitchen.

After I saw the movie Blow-Up, I casually remarked in the lounge that, in my opinion, it was one of the best movies ever. Ken evidently respected my judgment and took his wife to see it. They both hated it.

I guess that it was not a good date flick.

Eventually Ken’s wife had a miscarriage. Ken graduated at the end of my junior year. I don’t remember seeing him at all when I was a senior. I was not the kind of friend who would have reached out to him.

Roommates: Charlie Delos was my roommate for the second half of freshman year and the entire sophomore year. In freshman year we were in room 315. The next year we moved to the center and across the hall. I think that our room number was 308.

We got along quite well until the day that I accidentally locked him out of the room when he was taking a shower. Charlie was quite angry, but he eventually got over it. I think that he had pretty much forgiven my thoughtlessness when I did it again, this time on purpose.

“Lucy, let me ‘splain.”

The two guys who lived across the hall from us were named Ryland Truax and Tom Cobb. They seemed to study all day and all night. When I left they were both sitting at their desks, and their door was open. As I departed I gave my key to Ryland. I told them to let Charlie get upset for a minute or two and then let him in. They agreed. They dutifully followed the first half of my instruction, but they ignored the part about opening the door for him.

The final straw for Charlie was when I scratched his Country Joe and the Fish album while he was home for a weekend. I apologized and bought him a new one, but he had had enough of me. He moved into an apartment for junior year. I could certainly understand why.

A biographical web page devoted to Charlie is available here.

My roommate for the last two years was a very good-natured guy from Pittsburgh named John Cruickshank. He was small enough to serve as coxswain (the guy who yells the stroke to the other guys but doesn’t actually row) on the crew team (or club or something).

He was a year younger than I was. In his freshman year he roomed with Ken Nelson, during which time he was awarded the name of Cramdrink or Crammy for short. This appellation was bestowed upon him because he was the recipient of far more shower parties (details below) than anyone else in the house. Crammy was addicted to puns, not clever or witty puns, just anything that sounded like what someone else said. He was always warned, but he just could not help himself from committing these execrable offenses. He never complained about the punishment. How could he? This was justice.

For some reason Crammy put up with me. I can’t remember any arguments or frustrating moments at all. We lived in the best non-staff room in AR, 109. It was a suite on the first floor in the corner bordering the passage into the courtyard on the south side. The beds and desks were in separate rooms.

I lost touch with Crammy when I went into the army. At some point in the eighties or nineties I received a phone call out of the blue from a Rumsey resident named, I think, Bob Ortman. He told me that Crammy had been shot and killed in a taxi in Pittsburgh. That is all that I know. I certainly hope that that information was wrong.

Officers: I am embarrassed to report that I remember few of the people with whom I worked. Part of this is due to the fact that the vice-president of the House Council had only one responsibility, to attend the meetings of the Interhouse Council (IHC), an organization hardly ever did anything noteworthy. The secretary took the minutes of the AR councils meetings. I did not need to work much with any of them. I interacted a lot with three guys.

Keith Hartwell, who was one year younger than I was, served as treasurer during my junior year. He lived on the second floor with Ernie Brown. He always had a good handle on how much money we had and how much we still needed to spend. As a result we were able to give a refund to all of the residents at the end of the spring 1969 semester.

I remember the first sentence of my “interview” of Keith Hartwell in the Rumsey Roomers: “Svelte is the word for Keith Hartwell.” I also remember that Keith was a very smooth dancer. I found his Facebook page on the web.

Roger Warren was probably the best social chairman that AR ever had. How he managed to get Stockwell House to serve as sister house for the smallest male dorm on campus I will never understand. Roger was enthusiastic about everything the house did. He also played on the house’s football teams.

Mike Murphy was undoubtedly the best athletic chairman who ever lived in AR. I think that he was one year younger than I was, but He might have been two years younger. We could not have won the overall IM title in 1970 if he had not been our athletic chairman. Not only was he great at inspiring or, if necessary, shaming guys into participating in sports in which they did not excel. He also was such a good athlete that his direct role was important in many events. For example, the scores that he and Bob Carr together earned in the track meets bested the totals produced by most houses.

Athletes: If any athletes resided in AR in my freshman year, I do not remember them. In my junior year two very famous football players, Thom Darden and Bill Taylor lived on the second floor. At AR they were called TD (or Thom) and BT (or Bill). I never heard anyone other that Bob Ufer call the latter Billy. Thom enjoyed an all-pro career as a defensive back with the Cleveland Browns. Bill had a lot of difficulties after he left U-M, but he evidently turned his life around.

I had one significant interaction with them. The football players were apparently given tickets for the home games. Before one of those games TD and BT asked me if anyone was looking for tickets. I happened to know someone who was. I found him and brought him to their room.

Thom’s Wikipedia page is here. BT’s page is here.

At least three other football players stayed in AR that year. Dave Zuccarelli, a high-school all-america running back from Chicago, roomed with quarterback Kevin Casey on the first floor across from the lounge. I did not know Kevin well, but Dave hung around the lounge quite a bit when football season was over, and he played cards there quite a few times.

I was shocked to discover that Dave had died in 2000 at the age of 50. You can read about his career in and out of football here.

The fifth footballer was Bruce Elliott, the son of the legendary U-M quarterback Pete Elliott and nephew of U-M’s football coach Bump Elliott.

U-M football coach Bump Elliott and his nephew Bruce.

Bruce and Thom both played intramural basketball for AR. Thom played on the A team, and he was easily the best player in all of intramurals. We had some other good players, too. I am pretty sure that we won the championship that year.

Bruce was the best player on our B basketball team. We might have won at that level, too. I am not certain.

Jim Burton, the first pitcher to throw a no-hitter for U-M’s baseball team, also resided in AR for several years. I knew him quite well. He was one year younger than I was. He played on quite a few of the house’s athletic teams. He quarterbacked one of the house’s football teams. I actually was on the receiving end of several touchdown passes from him. I remember that he took an anatomy (or some such) course in which they dealt with cadavers. He complained that the obese ones were really gross to work with.

Jim’s quite detailed biography, which includes his death in 2013, can be read here.

In my senior year some freshman swimmers lived in AR. One of them was tall and sleek. The other guy had arms that hung down nearly to his knees. I don’t remember the name of either fellow.

A couple of hockey players from Canada also lived in AR my senior year. They kept to themselves and played a lot of darts and pinochle. My freshman year a hockey player who lived in one of the other houses in WQ caused a minor sensation in the cafeteria. He was a defenseman who was really thickly built. When he ate he bent his face down towards his plate and shoveled the food into his mouth at an incredible rate.

I remember one basketball player from Milwaukee who lived in AR. I don’t remember his name, but he spent a fair amount of time in the lounge. Sometimes he brought a basketball and worked on dribbling.

Others whom I remember by name: Frank Arundel Bell of Bethesda, MD, was two years behind me. As a freshman he approached me to ask for advice on an unusual conundrum that he faced. He was in Navy ROTC. They made him keep his shoes shined. He needed a cotton rag for that purpose. He asked whether I thought it was a “good idea” to cut a piece from the middle of one of the university’s sheets before turning it in.

I paused a moment, feeling some pride that he respected my perspicacity enough to elicit my opinion on the matter, and then replied in the negative. I suggested that he buy a 100 percent cotton tee shirt instead. I am not sure whether he took my advice, but he politely thanked me.

Frank never attended the commissioning ceremony.

Frank was not a fashionista. He wore his Navy uniform when it was required. Otherwise, he always wore black trousers and a light blue or light green short-sleeve shirt. For him it was seldom cold enough for a coat.

Frank’s taste in food was equally simple. He would eat bread, peanut butter, mustard, hamburgers, and pickles. Occasionally, but not often, he would try something else, but he could easily go for a week without deviating from his five basic food groups.

Frank drank pickle juice. I often witnessed him drink a jar of pickle juice without stopping. Later he found out that he could earn money by betting strangers that he could drink the jar in five minutes. He could easily manage it.

He invented an imaginative approach to the sport of water ballooning. I documented it here.

Frank learned to play bridge in the AR lounge. He became quite a good card player. He is now a Sapphire Life Master in the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL). He currently lives in San Antonio. He contacted me when, as a bridge player in New England, he had received promotional materials about an upcoming bridge tournament that I had sent via email.

The Navy had paid Frank’s tuition for his freshman and sophomore years. After two years he was expected to commit to serve as an naval officer when he graduated. Frank declined. He had to sit and listen to various officers scream at him for being coward, a cheat, and a traitor to his country. Nevertheless, he persisted in his refusal. I heard a rumor that he paid a good part of his tuition in his last four semesters by playing pinochle for money with Canadian hockey players.

Ernie Brown roomed with Keith Hartwell. He told me that the best thing about life was dreaming. That is why he loved to sleep. One day long after I graduated I got a phone call in Kansas City from him. He was going to be in town for some kind of event at Unity Village. I don’t remember why, but I was unable to meet up with him, and I then lost touch.

Incidentally, Ernie Brown was the first black guy that I ever made friends with. This occurred at the same time that my debate partner was Alexa Canady just after the explosive summer of 1968.

I did not know Bob Carr too well. He did not look like a great athlete, but he was very fast, and he was the first person whom I ever saw do a back flip.

Tom Caughey was one year younger than I was. He had a 4.0 grade point average in high school. His parents were very distraught when he got a B in freshman year. He roomed with Tom Rigles for—I think—three years. He liked to wear overalls. His mother tried to buy him a pair, but the salesman at the men’s store would not sell them to her because “that was not what the kids were wearing.”

He did not look like a Tom. I had a key to the picture board with names and faces of all of the residents. I replaced his name with a better one, Fred Moron (accent on the second syllable). i don’t know why; it just seemed appropriate.

He surprised me once by telling me that he had a slight crush on Celia Phelan, the president of Stockwell House.

Dr. Caughey’s degree was in Chemistry. He got his doctorate at Wisconsin. I am not surprised; he was smart, and he studied a lot. In 2020 he is VP of Product Development at Inrad Optics in NJ.

Tom Cobb roomed with Ryland Truax right next to Caughey and Rigles. Tom was into studying and the Gilbert and Sullivan Society. The only encounter that I remember with either of them was the second time that I locked Charlie Delos out of our room. The circumstances are detailed above.

Bruce Edwards came from Long Island. He was an important player on the B volleyball team that I captained. I remember him mostly as a big fan of the Mets, whom he called the “Amazin’s”. The Mets upset the Orioles in five games in 1969.

Ken Gluski ran against me for president of the House Council in the spring of 1968. I remember what he looked like, but I cannot recall anything else worth mentioning.

Thom Heinrich was a freshman from Flint when I was a senior. He loved politics, and he held strong conservative views. He had worked for Don Riegle’s congressional campaigns in 1966 and 1968, and he considered Riegle a wonderful man. He must have been crushed when Riegle switched parties a few years later.

For some reason Thom really got on my nerves. I think that he was attracted to power, and, since I was the president of AR, he always seemed to want to be around me. It got so annoying that I would occasionally climb out of my window to go to lunch rather than pass by the lounge where he was waiting for me. I called him “The Grippe”.

Larry Hull was, I think, three years younger than I am. Since most guys called him Larry Polack, I was not too surprised when, as we were walking south toward the IM Building, that his family name was not originally Hull. It was something that sounded like shuh HULL ski. The first four or five letters were consonants. I don’t remember much else except that he was a very friendly guy.

Type 3 CRS consists of levitra free sample an abrupt worsening of renal function which is caused when various chronic kidney diseases develop into the end stage. All these acquire able accoutrement on the beastly adjustment of every woman, abating the amore that may appear with menopause, adequate the all-embracing beastly action as able as artlessly acclimation the estrogen as able-bodied as the backdrop of the changeable arrangement of a lady. tadalafil tablets 20mg Vodafone has tonysplate.com cheap sildenafil claimed that Brolly would charge a battery of a smart device within underneath three hours by means of plugging into a USB port in the handle. Uncircumcised men harbor harmful bacteria over their penis foreskin which increases the risk of getting infections like HIV/AIDS. levitra price John LaPrelle was called Raz by everyone. He got this moniker from his penchant for razzle-dazzle plays in our pickup football games. He came to U-M in 1966, as I did, and he lived at AR for all four years. I think that he was an English major; nobody talked about classes. He certainly was not an engineer. I knew him as well as anybody did. He was, to put it mildly, a most unusual fellow.

Raz spent a lot of time in the lounge. He was a big guy, and his fashion taste ran to grunge. He loved to philosophize, and he was equally knowledgeable on all topics. This did not bother me, but it drove many guys crazy. I am not sure whether he played bridge with us or not. He certainly was not one of the best players. When we went to Blimpies he always ordered a triple cheese on a regular (not onion) role.

He attended high school in Chapel Hill, NC, and he knew James Taylor. I should say that he knew of James Taylor before anyone else in the house had heard of him. Wikipedia says that Sweet Baby James only spent one semester at Chapel Hill High, but he was born in 1948, which would put him in the right class. Raz also knew about Jerry Jeff Walker before anyone else did.

One day Raz got out the chess set that resided in the lounge. He challenged anyone to play him. We were playing cards; there were no takers. I was less interested than anyone. I had played a lot of chess when I was in high school, and I had to quit because it gave me insomnia. I had no interest in starting again.

Day after day Raz would talk about how good he was at chess. Finally, I got sick of it. I told him to get the set. We played one game. He was awful; the game only lasted about ten or fifteen minutes. He never brought it up again.

Raz attended most of the House Council meetings, but he never sought any office. He had rather strong opinions about many topics, and, when I was president I had to tell him to shut up a few times. He usually did.

Raz got me in trouble with my parents. My dad had called me at the dorm about something. I was not around, and Charlie must have been in another room and left our door open. Maybe there was a card game somewhere. At any rate Raz answered the phone in a voice in a deliberately effeminate voice. He might have said something rude, too.

I called my dad back as soon as I found out, but he and my mom were so upset that they somehow wangled a flight on my dad’s employer’s private plane to come visit me. The visit actually turned out pretty well. Not only did I get a free dinner at Win Schuler’s, they also brought all my records with them.

One day Raz let slip that his family was somehow involved with followers of Edgar Cayce. I had heard about the “sleeping prophet” who died in 1945, but I knew very little about him. I cannot remember Raz ever bringing this up again. He certainly never evangelized. I did not press him about it. I never quizzed people about their beliefs.

A google search for “John LaPrelle Cayce” yielded a sizeable number of results. On the third item I found the picture shown at right on the website for “The Big House”. There was also a “Contact” email address. When I inquired at that address about Raz, I received an email from Sandy LaPrelle with Raz’s phone number and email address.

Raz responded to the email that I sent him about this project. He wrote that he was currently in rural Virginia. He had done a lot of things over the years including getting married, producing three brilliant children, and becoming a professor of psychology.

Dave Martinov was also in the class of 1970, and he stayed in AR all four years. He is the guy who gave me the nickname KC, which quickly got abbreviated to Case. He was a rabid fan of all of the Chicago professional teams, especially the Blackhawks. He was tall and a very good athlete. He played every year on the football, basketball, and volleyball teams for AR at the A level.

Dave’s roommate, whose name I have forgotten (Vlchek?), was also a Blackhawks fan. They both watched all the hockey games in the game room, often wearing Blackhawks jerseys.

Dave has reportedly retired in the Tampa area.

Jack Matthews lived on the fourth floor when I was a freshman. He may have stayed another year or two. The fourth floor and my third floor were mortal enemies. We did not associate much with the fourth floor guys. I remember only that he really liked Motown music.

What I remember about Dave Nemerovski was that he had a relative in the band named the Long Island Sound, which I discussed here.

Bob Ortman was a quiet guy. I do not remember a lot about him. I think that he was one year behind me. Several decades back he phoned me to tell me about John Cruickshank. I have been unable to locate Bob on the Internet.

Rolf Parta was a couple of years younger than I was. He hung out around the lounge pretty often. He might have played bridge with us. I am pretty sure that he was from Novi. When we lived in Plymouth (1974-77), we sometimes visited a pet store in Northville. The signs on the road gave the mileage to Novi, and when I saw them I would always think of Rolf.

Rolf’s LinkeIn page says that he is an “ex-manager, consultant & author/inventor” who lives in Bradenton, FL. His Facebook page is here.

Heikki Petaisto was an uper, which means that he came from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. People in Ann Arbor called him Henry rather than his real name, which is Finnish. He was always smiling.

Somebody owned this game or one very like it. They also had players for every NHL team, even the Seals.

He played in the table hockey league that someone organized. I don’t remember which team he owned, but they ran roughshod over everyone, especially the California Golden Seals, the team in which I had a 50 percent ownership. I don’t remember what my franchise cost, but it was worth it just to watch and admire Heikki’s hell-bent-for-leather approach to the game. His hands were constantly moving from one lever to another, slamming his players forward and twisting them magically. I don’t know how he did it.

Heikki Petaisto is an uncommon name. I think that he ended up graduating from Michigan Tech and lives in Chino Valley, AZ in 2020.

Peter Petty was, I am pretty sure, the largest student on the U-M campous. He certainly was by far the largest whom I had seen before I attended a WWE wrestling match that featured Andre the Giant. Peter was over 6’10” tall, and he weighed at least 350 pounds. His biggest contribution to the AR athletic championship was his participation in wrestling. I think that most of his wins were forfeits when the opponent first caught sight of him. He made it to the finals, where he was scheduled to face another AR wrestler from Coldwater, MI, whose name I definitely should remember—he was a key player on the B volleyball team that I captained—but I don’t. I don’t think that they held the match.

Peter could grasp a coke machine, which in those days dispensed twelve-ounce bottles, with one hand on either side near the top. He could then rock it back to him a foot or two and then slam it back into the wall. This maneuver would often cause a few coins to appear in the coin return or some bottles to appear in the dispensing area. Occasionally, a bottle would break inside, thereby causing the machine to appear to be bleeding.

One year Peter attempted to participate in varsity football as a walk-on. My recollection is that he quit after a few days. He did not have the demeanor of the jocks who lived in AR.

Peter’s famous shower party is described here.

I found some evidence on the Internet that he has joined Andre in the land of departed giants, but it was not conclusive.

Phil Prygoski was a year older than I. I don’t remember him too well, but I think that he might have been president of the House Council when I was a freshman.

I remember that he said that his family name was changed to Prygoski to make it sound more American. The original version was pronounced shuh ZIT ski, and it started with “Prszcz”. Needless to say, everyone called him Phil Polack.

He became a professor of constitutional law at Western Michigan University. He died in 2019. His Wikipedia page is here.

John Reynolds was, I think, a year behind me. He lived on the other end of the first floor. All that I remember vividly about him was that he delighted in telling a story about an irate parking attendant who once told him, “Get back in dat ho dere!” He meant for John to park his car in the empty spot to which he was pointing.

Tom Rigles was from the ski town of Boyne City. A physics major, he roomed with Tom Caughey. He was a good friend. I “interviewed” him for the Rumsey Roomers. The main motivation was to provide an excuse for a cartoon of “Rigles’ ear” which was almost never visible beneath his mop of hair.

Tom was the slowest bridge player in the world. He also single-handedly ruined one poor female grad student’s study by taking forever to do relatively easy math problems. As a physics major he was expected (by her) to handle them swiftly.

Tom’s greatest contribution to the field of contemporary education was an adaptation of Mr. Spok’s Vulcan Mind Meld. Before an important test he would move his chair near the pillow side of his bed. He then placed the textbook open to the most difficult section. He took off his glasses and placed them on the chair between his pillow and the textbook. He aligned them carefully so that, while he was dreaming, he would be able to view the text through the glasses. He swore that it worked.

Tom once told me that if more people were like me, life would be a lot easier. This was one of the two or three nicest things anyone ever said about me.

I am not sure, but I think that Tom currently lives in Coeur D’Alene, ID.

Kurt Scarbro lived on the third floor. The only thing that I remember clearly is that he thought that Myrna Loy was the most beautiful woman ever. I would certainly rank her in the top 1 or 2 percent.

From references on the Internet I deduce that Kurt must currently live in Maryland. I think that his Facebook page is here.

Mark Skipper was one year behind me. He played on the AR tag football team, and he was a ferocious pass rusher. Nobody could stop him.

I remember that he was known as a real ladies’ man. I never witnessed this, but the legend was that he would spend time on State St. approaching various girls and asking them if they wanted to go out or something in more Saxon terms. Allegedly he seldom struck out and nearly always persuaded one of them to, in the words of Mick Jagger on the Ed Sullivan Show “spend some time together”.

In 2020 Mark is a lawyer in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

I used to attend mass on Sundays at St. Mary’s with Ron Verleger. I never saw anyone else in AR go to church even once.

Ron, known in AR as Ron McDon, was very devoted to his father, who was a builder. After a short time at the big U, Ron met a lot of people who thought that his father’s conservative values were outdated. Ron seemed to have a hard time with this.

He graduated with a degree in business and set up his own contracting company. It still has a website, but it has not been updated in a while. It says that he is 55, but he did not wear diapers when he lived in AR. In 2020 he lives in Lawton, outside of Kalamazoo.

Dave Zuk was my age. He lived across the hall with Paul Stoner when we were freshmen. He stayed in AR for at least a few more years. He studied some kind of engineering, and he has been the Chief Engineer at Michigan Aerospace for fifteen years.

Unless my eyes played horrible tricks on me, he had two sets of two nipples, one over the other.

Memorable Guys; Forgotten Names: The level of bridge in AR was elevated by a couple of guys from Ypsilanti. The one who lived in AR had a Polish name that began with an L. I remembered it for a decade or more, but over the years it has been confused in my mind by Lewonczyk, the name of a family of friends, and Lewandowski, the name of both the guy who worked for Trump and a world-famous soccer player.

The guy who lived in AR tried to get us to play some conventions, but nobody was really interested in taking the time to learn them. At least I wasn’t. I did buy a copy of Howard Schenken’s Big Club book. He talked a few of us into playing in the sanctioned game at the Union once or twice. He also played the piano pretty well.

The other guy from Ypsi was an equally good player. I think that he lived in South Quad, but he spent a great deal of time in our lounge.

I also remember another outsider named Mike Smith who dropped into the lounge to play cards from time to time. I am pretty sure that he belonged to a fraternity, maybe nearby Delta Upsilon. I am fairly certain that he was left-handed, but that is all that I remember.

I have drawn a complete blank on the name of a talented cartoonist who was a great help to me. I enlisted him for Rumsey Rumors. He did some wonderful illustrations that I always featured on the cover page.

We took an anthropology class together during my last semester. He went to all of the lectures, and he let me use his beautiful notes from the class to study for the final. This allowed me to pass a class that I almost never attended. I hope that I thanked him for saving my bacon.

A guy from Kentucky played basketball and other games with us. He was very accurate with a shot that he threw up with both hands from right next to his right ear.

When I was a freshman a guy from Texas, whom everyone naturally called Tex, sometimes ordered a medium-sized pizza delivered to the game room. He had no trouble finishing it by himself. I may have seen someone do something similar later, but at the time this astounded me.

I remember the guys who lived in 312 (next to Dave Zuk and Paul Stoner) during my freshman year. I already mentioned the one named Raphe (short for Raphael), who got a 4.0 in the first semester. His roommate was, if memory serves, very interested in trains, both real ones and models.

It surprises me that I have no recollection at all of the guys who lived in 313, the room next to the one that I lived in.

I remember a guy whose first name was Leonard. Everyone called him Filthy Leonard or Crazy Filth. I can picture him pretty clearly, but I have no solid memories. I have no recollection at all of how he got his nickname. These things just seemed to happen in the dorm.

My last entry requires understanding of spring break in the sixties. Almost all universities scheduled a break from the classes for the same week. Students from all over the country gathered in places like Fort Lauderdale. U-M had no such break. To compensate our classes ended earlier than almost anyone else’s.

Occasionally people from U-M would try to participate in the fun anyway. None of my many close friends had a or car even access to a car. A guy whom I did not know very well and who lived on the second floor of AR evidently did. He got together three or four of his friends (no AR residents) to undertake the trip over a long weekend. Google maps indicates that it is a 1,348 miles from Ann Arbor to Fort Lauderdale. They drove in shifts, stopped only for food and gas, and made it in less than 24 hours. They evidently had a great time and returned to Ann Arbor the following Monday evening. I don’t know any specifics.

The guy with the car enjoyed himself so much in Fort Lauderdale that he tried to assemble a group to go back with him the next weekend. There were no takers. So, he decided to make the trip by himself. He left on Thursday evening and returned to AR late on Monday.

When he reentered AR he did not immediately collapse of exhaustion, and he did not regale his fellow students with tales of fun and mischief in Florida. Instead, he stayed up all night and studied for a test scheduled for Tuesday. He kept his eyes open until just an hour or two before the test. Then he more or less passed out and slept for many hours.

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.

Wavablog

Memoirs, bridge, popes, travel, and other stuff

Tag Archives: LaPrelle, John

1981-1988 Life in Rockville: Other Events

1967-1969 Part 3B: The Guys of Allen Rumsey House

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