rak college road trips

I had two college "roads trips" with fraternity brothers Summe and Daly (or maybe Daley; first names lost in the fog).

Daley had a Corvair.  I always got the back seat.

The first adventure I remember was local.  Daley had been drinking.  Summe was allegedly sober.  I had not drunk any alcohol.  (There may be a cameo appearance here of one of the Ossenbeck sisters here but I am not sure.)

Daley gave Summe the keys.  We were in that main road from west Covington into Covington (KY8).  We are coming down the hill.  On a half curve to the left, Summe lost control, spun the car, and we landed in bushes.  It was a good thing.  The next curve was the sharp right at the river.  If he had lost it there, we might have drowned or at least been injured.

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The second adventure was a weekend in Chicago.  The freeways had not then yet been built.  So it was a long hard schlogg.

On one road which was straight and two lane, someone in the other direction passed and could not make it.  We had just enough shoulder that there was a one point three cars abreast.

We got there Friday night.  I remember no incidents then or Saturday.  Sunday morning I slept in while they looked for a church.  They went out and found one.  Their story is this:

We went into a church and asked the usher if this was a Catholic Church. He assured us it was.  The Mass began but something was not right. [E.g. the service was in English and VII had not yet happened.]  So we go back and asked the usher again: Is this a Catholic Church?  Looking stern and discomfited, he said:  This is an English Catholic Church.  The Roman Catholic Church is down the street.  He pointed for them.

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The third adventure was setup as a visit to their friends returning from a mission trip in Honduras.  Remember this was before freeways.

We left Cincinnati and went to Louisville and then worked our way to Memphis.  They had been told there were these new things in Memphis called "Holiday Inn"s.  Unfortunately, the Church of God got there first and filled them all.  So through the night we went south on the Mississippi River road.

On a two lane road, straight but with no shoulders, the car came to a stop.  The Covair had a ser4pentine belt that had a tendency to fail.  We had a spare but no tools.  Luckily a man came by with tools.  He was the local game warden and had just come from delivering a baby.  I never did learn of what species, but I had a strong suspicion it was human.

We got going again and came to the town of Clarksville (or was it Clarksdale?).  It had a "hotel".  We checked in.  omg.  Nasty smelling room of cigarette smoke and beer and maybe vomit.  Which didn't seem to bother the four legged night visitors.  It did keep at least one of my crew awake all night.

I was always amused when later in the decade there were civil rights protests about blacks not being able to stay in that hotel.  Either they were misguided or maybe we got a room normally offered to blacks.

The next stop was New Orleans at a time I don't remember.  We went to Bourbon Street and got drinks.  I don't know if mine was alcoholic or not.  I think there was a stripper.  Not too long after I got tired.  I got the car keys and went back to the car and went to sleep.  I think we were parked on the street around a public building which had a huge lawn on all sides.

The dynamic duo stayed.  One or more bar girls appeared.  One of them gave Summe a real good feel.  He was both embarrassed and a bit proud.

The next day, we headed down US90 along the Gulf coast to Florida, all the way to Miami Beach.  The friends were in a nice high rise hotel.  We hung out for a day and headed north.

I think by this time we were low on money.  We stopped at a grocery store and got a bit of food.  Given my natural practical bent, I got a box of vanilla wafers and a large bottle (64oz?) of apple juice and got back on the road.

Before there were freeways, there were a lot less gas stations everywhere.  And there were a lot less people in northern FL.  As we were not on the coast road, we did not go near any of the coastal cities (e.g. JAX).  So there were cities, no rest stops, no gas stations, therefore no bathrooms.  I was getting desperate.  And this was not going to be a #1 stop.  Eventually we did find a small station in one of the small towns.  I was directed to the outhouse behind the building.  I barely got my pants down when I was relieved is a single spasm.

That Saturday night we did not stop.  We drove through to Knoxville.  They somehow found the Catholic Church in Knoxville.  I slept.

How we survived these trips with just a single driver must have been a blessing from God.

Alternate version: Daley & Summe

rak pgh 1

previously

After a few weeks I rented a "house" on Tripoli.  It had a stove but no other furnishings. It had three floors (two rooms per floor) and a "basement".  There was a bathroom on the second floor landing.

It was the middle slice of a building w/three identical "units".  The other three slices had been subdivided into one room "apartments", all sharing a single bathroom.

In the basement was my gas furnace   To save energy, I shut off heat to two upper stories, including the bathroom.  It was not until I left that I learned that a single vent from my furnace heated both my bathroom and three of my neighbors.

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My new employer was wonderful, one of the two best jobs I ever had.  The only one on which I ever got a real promotion.  My contract gave me some living money for the first few months living expenses, moving expenses, and three weeks vacation.

rak pgh 1 work link

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Four weeks after I arrived I drove on a Friday night  before Thanksgiving to Cincinnati.  (I-279 > I-79 > I-70 > I-75)  I stayed overnight w/mother.  I then drove straight through to Houston.  (I-71 > road around Louisville > I-65 > I-40 > I-30 > US59 > I-10)  I was desperately lonely.  As bad as my marriage was, I loved my wife and missed her.  I missed my children

From Cincinnati to Houston is about 19 hours of driving.  I got gas in Pgh and then in a station in NKy.  On later trips, gas on I-70 in OH just west of Wheeling.  I got gas at a station on I-65 north of Nashville, a station in WMemphis AR, a station around the AR/TX border, and then HOU.  Back then TX gas was cheap.

I did not usually eat at restaurants because I was trying to save money.

We had Thanksgiving.  I remember nothing except I was home and had chores to do.  The following Saturday I packed up and reversed direction.  At some point I either bought or brought from home a small toaster oven.  So maybe there was no stove.

I did this same process at Christmas.

rak pgh 1 choir link

to be continued

Western & Southern Life Insurance Company

Either summer or Fall of 1961, Gertrude (via Kelly Employment Services, aka Kelly Girl) got me a job at Western & Southern Life Insurance Company in downtown Cincinnati on 5^th over near where the garden in front of the P&G world headquarters is now, probably Broadway. I stayed there either until I graduated from VMC or until the end of that summer.

W&SLI, on the top floor of the new building on the corner of 5^th & Broadway, had what today we would call their data center. The processing was using punch cards with no other media storage. They had a brand new 1401 which they were learning how to use. Our crew of college students worked second shift.

There were 18 model 083 card sorters, one new model 101 statistical sorter, a number (more than 5 and less than 10) of model 407 printers with attached "summary" punches, a few model 557 "interpreter"s that printed information on a card from its contents. There was an old model 604 calculating punch seldom used. There was a model 650 drum memory computer in the corner used for statistical calculations for actuaries. It ran so hot that it had a large pipe (~2' diameter) above it to vent its heat out the roof.

Repetitive work included printing the books the agents carried to manually record the premiums paid by the policy holder (so called "industrial insurance".

One special job I can remember came one day when we were told we had to make a test file for the 1401. The doors of the freight elevator opened and out came a forklift holding a pallet of boxes of IBM punch cards. In the end we used 3000 boxes of 2000 cards in each box.

We went to a lower floor where there were large machines holding trays w/about 1000 cards per tray. The trays were on a device in the machine which rotated front to back so all trays could be accessed. There were ~ 10+ trays across.

We took the trays up to the top floor where we reproduced the contents and put the cards back into the same tray. We then ran a pass through the interpreter, before going to the sorters. That many cards required block sorting on policy number. Instead of the the usual low (right) column to high (left) column sort, we sorted first on the high column. Because the high column had alphabetic values (two punches per column) from policies of acquired companies, the first pass was on the "zones". The top hole is the "12" hole for A-I; then the "11" hole for J-R; then it was tricky. The "0" hole could be a numeric if only one punch or else a signal of S-Z if two punches.

The output was 3 or 4 stacks of cards placed in large metal vertical trays. The next person took a tray, say "12" punch, and sorted that numerically. The pockets 1-9 would contain letters A-I. These were placed in other tray or in boxes marked with the letter contained..

When the column was done, the next lower column could be done.

Sigma Alpha Lambda fraternity

Villa Madonna College had its roots in the post-secondary education of young women to be elementary school teachers by the Benedictines of St Walburg convent in the diocese of Covington.

Later it admitted all women.

After WWII and the GI bill, it admitted men.

As group of those men formed a men's club and called it a fraternity.

I pledged in my sophomore year, not my freshman year.

It had a "house".  The original one was facing Madison on the east side, part of the group of buildings at 11^th.  The back of the building faced Latin School across the Cathedral parking lot.

There were a group of buildings at that corner on Madison.  At some point, the one on the end was condemned and torn down.  But it had been holding up the one next to it.  So one by one all the buildings came down.

The next one was above a medical office on 10^th or 11^th west of Madison but before the railroad tracks. I think it lasted one year. My senior year, it was the second floor of a building on Madison above 12^th street on the east side.

The first floor of that building was a small church of the evangelical variety.  I don't remember if it was ever done, but a one time there was a casual proposal to screw a speaker to the floor of a closet and attach an amp and a mike.  The goal was to "talk" to the assembly below as "God".

I was part of the crew that emptied that building.  It was Memorial Day.  For some reason there was no new building and the detritus left over could not be just left for the garbage people as is done today.  A pickup truck was loaded.  One of the brothers from Campbell county (tall, heavy set, can't remember his name) said he knew we could use one of the dumps over there.

But when we arrived at the dump, it was closed.  The fence was low but for some reason the stuff was not just tossed over the fence.  Instead he had a new idea.  We went to a one lane road with woods and no buildings on either side.  We heaved the stuff over the side.

Of course this road was a short cut used by police to get back to the station.  We were arrested and had our day in court.

I cannot hear the song "Alice's Restaurant" without having a flashback about this event.

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I don't know when the fraternity ended but it exists no more.

Requiescat in pace

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See also:   .College Road Trips.

rak_4

<1966>

I remember little about the day other than being called into my advisor's office on the second floor of the John Millis Science Center of Western Reserve University. Karl J Casper said he had been denied tenure and was leaving to take a position at the newly forming Cleveland State University. He would no longer be my advisor. I think I was being transferred to Berol Robinson.

He said that, if I wished, I could go to Oak Ridge TN and do thesis research at the Chemistry Division of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

I chose to do that. I packed up my things and put them into my VW bug. I had a carrier on the top. On it I placed a large heavy box of "stuff", probably books and left. Neither I-71 from Cleveland to Cincinnati nor I-75 south from there were finished.

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My social life in Oak Ridge was minimal. There were few people of post high school age in Oak Ridge, other than graduate students. In the summer, someone, possibly the local Baptist Church, had a volleyball game night on a tennis court.

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At some point, I went to Knoxville and found the Newman Club.

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This story reminds me of one outing the Newman Club made. We went to a house in LaFollette TN where we celebrated Mass in the "pool house".

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