Who was our long-time
chef/advisor? Charlie Lysell.
Where did Charlie live?
In the garage.
What was Charlie’s roommate's
name?
Louise.
How did he become a chef?
He fell from the rigging on a
sailing ship and lost mobility – the galley was right for him.
What was Charlie’s old room later called?
The crypt.
Who was Charlie’s replacement?
Frank
Crozier.
Who were the two Cambridge cops who attended some of our
parties?
Gene
Rhodley and Billy Hehir.
Why did they attend?
Just in case our neighbors called
the cops.
Who was our neighbor to the West?
Mr. Gilman.
What was significant about him?
He owned Bailey’s Ice Cream
shops. And he was conveniently hard of
hearing.
Who were our neighbors to the East?
Ed
and Mrs. Swain.
What was significant about him?
Disgruntled,
but only because his hearing was too good.
(During Hell Week he always
complained about us bouncing balls off the wall.)
Who was the dinks’ “favorite” Storyteller?
Lord Satchel Ass.
Who was our longtime faculty
advisor?
Sloan School professor Erwin
(Winnie) Schell.
Who is our current faculty advisor?
Unhappily, no one.
Who was our waiter?
Ralph.
Did Ralph have a last
name?
Not that I ever heard.
What was his virtue?
He was relatively classy for a
fraternity, whether drunk or sober (on our booze),
and a talented (or at least enthusiastic)
horse
handicapper.
What kind of car did Ralph drive?
1941 Packard Clipper sedan.
What was special about it?
The cardboard window.
Who was our house cleaner?
Frances Hazard – for many
years.
What was her virtue?
She
had many. She could clean
and straighten up the house while scarcely being seen.
But mostly her
goodness inspired an unnatural degree of neatness among the brethren,
in consideration of her.
When did we start calling ourselves Club 314?
I don't have any idea.
Who was the most beloved and
loyal resident ever to have lived in Club 314?
The Magnificent Herman
What was the name of the
itinerant barber who visited the house every week? And what was
his foreign policy?
Leo, aka Slimy Leo (so called to
his face by JPB). He was an ardent Zionist.
What were the subjects of the
tale related annually by Lord Satchel
Ass?
Trapper Joe,
the Edison battery,
and a blizzard in the Klondike. Essential knowledge: Edison
batteries are
filled with small nickel flakes
which if
released can go everywhere, and when
retrieved, don't pile easily.
Who provided Dingy Slide Rules?
Mr Dingy offered tutoring (cram
classes) on nights preceding the periodic exams for which all freshman sat.
He gave out
the "Dingy Slide Rule" as an advertising promotion..... a super
cheapo soft-wood instrument with Dingy's name printed on it.
What was the grading system used for classes prior to 1954?
That system assigned marks of
H, C, P, F, and FF, standing for High, Credit,
Pass, Fail, & Double Fail
(which is where the term
"flagging" a subject came from). The system went out of fashion at the end of
the Class of 54's first year.
What inspired the Great Tram Hijack?
A pre-1950's brother had had a summer job as a
streetcar driver. According to the handed-down lore, said brother
started to get on a streetcar
but stopped in the door to
tie his shoe. The delay allowed a co-conspirator behind the car
to reach up with a pole and knock the trolley boom off its
wire.
The conductor, fuming, got
off to replace the connection. As soon as he'd done so, the
hijacker got on and drove off. He followed the assigned route,
collected all fares, turned
them in, and brought the trolley safely home to its car barn. The
subsequent charge of stealing the car could thus not be substantiated,
nor could the charge of
operating it without a license - which of course is what had inspired
the adventure in the first place.
This episode is not associated with
the plan, uncertain whether ever executed, to weld a streetcar to its
tracks by igniting thermite
which had been
stealthily packed around one of the car's wheels
while a delaying tactic held it in place for a few moments.
Who was Judge Lowell?
Variously an eel or a carp, used
for the annual measurement of the Harvard Bridge.
The attempt to upgrade the Judge
one year by
substituting Perry Smoot failed. (See below.)
Who was the real Smoot whose
length was applied as a standard of distance to Harvard Bridge?
Perry Raeburn Smoot, member of
the MIT class of
1954
and of Theta Deuteron of
Theta Delta Chi . CLICK
HERE for the full
story.
What were Charlie’s Beans? MMMmmm-MMmmmm
GOOD!
(To the tune of Comin' Thru the
Rye: "Beans for
Breakfast // Beans for dinner // Good ol' beans for tea! // If I
could only be a bean // How happy I would be!")
What event at the Kendall Square Diner has remained in brother RWR's
memory to this day?
JPB's eating sausages spread with
maple syrup for Sunday
breakfast.
Who wore the dirtiest (ie most fashionable) Fruit Boots?
Almost certainly Bob
Esch; his were very
dirty. "Fruit
Boots" were the white
buckskin shoes worn by all the ivy league guys in those days.
They were called "white bucks" and it
was proper to wear them only
after they were quite
dirty.
Despite frequent ridiculing, Bob
sported them regularly, if not
daily. Bungie
Barlow did too, but his were always unfashionably clean.
How did the ROTC WAC get
treed?
Turtle,
along with your editor,
kidnapped the ROTC WAC recruiting-stand mannequin one night and secured her, en
dishabille and holding a whiskey bottle,
to a tree limb in the forecourt of Building
Ten. The
next morning, she greeted the incoming students quite prettily until she was whipped away by
curmudgeons.
What was the name of the
vendor who supplied us with liquor, adding up (sic) the prices on his
slide rule?
The
liquor store on Harvard St that was managed by
Myron Norman and his mother. He was an MIT grad and
calculated discounts on his slide rule (provided by Dingy!).
(He'd memorized the antilogs.)
Why were there topless
parking-meter poles on Memorial Drive - leaning toward the street?
Because
the meters - newly installed to the huge annoyance of the MIT
community - could be removed by looping a chain around their poles,
attaching it to a car, then driving slowly away. As the
pole gave way and leaned, the chain would slide up it, popping off the
meter (they became collectibles).
What were some other high-profile hacks of our
day?
One was the "White Powder
Caper" caper (Myron's was near
the corner where it was perpetrated). A big
black car squealed to a stop,
the doors were flung open, and in a plume of white powder, a
young lady was whisked off the sidewalk and into the car, which then
sped
away.
This irresponsible,
headline-grabbing, panic-inducing stunt was pulled off by another, frivolous, house, not by our more serious TDC.
Also during our time, also perpetrated not by
us,
was the entrenchment a few inches beneath the turf of Harvard Stadium, of dynamite
priming cord,
placed there the evening before the Harvard-Yale
game. The buried cord reached
from sideline to sideline, stretching between the two 40-yard lines
and
spelling out "M I T".
Alas, on the morning
of the game, a groundskeeper discovered under a pile of leaves, wires leading into the stands. The connection
was traced out
The story of the subsequent
bust may or may not be, well, 100% accurate. It recounts
how security guards were stationed at the entrances
to the stadium the
next day to check arriving spectators, stopping any who had a
suspicious bulge under their
coats. There were many such
of course - it was chilly and
antifreeze was in order - but those who responding negatively to the question: "Are you from
MIT?" were simply
waved through. Those few who answered "Yes" were then
asked to open
their coats.
Inevitably, a dry cell was revealed.
"Why do you have a dry cell, sir?".
"Um, er... well.... in case I run into another MIT guy who's
forgotten
his dry cell?".
The tale continues that the Dekes responsible were rounded up
and
expelled at the insistence of Harvard. They went to Canada where
they
prospected successfully for uranium, and were to be found, somehow, a year
later, to be back on the rolls of MIT,
now rather richer.
Some years later the
concept,
with a different twist, was successfully implemented by subsequent
Dekes.
In
the same locale,