This was a strange time. Maybe they were all strange.
Most of the "Getting There" has been covered in the
UW-M page. The rest of it is here. My entire world fit
into 3 or 4 boxes. This was a brand new dorm. My father was
still paying and he had control of it all. This would not have
been my first choice of dorms -- but it would have not been the last.
These were 3 brand new dorms at the South East. corner of the
campus. In fact more east than any of the campus exept the Admin
building and the Student Union -- both several blocks to the
north. Sellery was the dorm at the corner of Park and was
the closest of the three. Sellery like Witte was co-ed. Ogg
was only boys. I think I got the names correct. In any case
co-ed meant that they were only connected in the basement and there
were fire doors to prevent travel from one to the other.
Oh. You could travel from one side to the other during the
day. But you had better have a pass and these were hard to come
by. I know -- I got one.
The first floor was common except there were few girls travelling
through the boys corridor and vice versa. Only during serious
snow did you go through the other doorway. There was a sort of
fast food cafe on the common corner. There was a service
desk. You bought laundry tickets there. You had a mailbox
next to the office window. If you got a package your note said to
see the service desk.
There were 10 floors. I forget if it were 10 total or 10 of
rooms. I think 10 total. My room was on the second floor
directly above the front doors. The elevators were in the middle
so the building total was "L" shaped with the common area at the corner
and the corner mapped the street. Two boys to a room. My
roommate was Norm Lenberg. The two guys across the way were
somehow involved in the Student Association. I have no idea now
nor did I then of what the Student Association did.
Each wing of the building was a long, very long, rectangle with
rooms facing each side. In the middle was a wide section with no
windows. This wide section house the common area, the elevators,
and the washrooms. The building had no cafeteria, just the
cafe/lunchroom downstairs. The laundrymat was in the
basement. Living on the second flloor meant never using the
elevators -- but then why would you want to: my room was at the end so
I could walk up, turn the corner, and walk into my room. I
overlooked the main corner and the roof above the first floor common
area. I could not see any of the girls rooms around the "L".
Norm was interesting. He left Sellery at year end and moved
into an apartment with the guys across the hall. But that was
later. Now we were in the Fall of 1964. This was a serious
time for students and the country. We shall get there.
As I mentioned, the dorm had no cafeteria. My dad had bought a
food contract for one meal per day at the dining room at the Student
Union. I would not starve but that meant finding two other meals
every day. And it meant doing so on an allowance that barely
permitted the laundrymat let alone eating. Snacks were certainly
out. He made it clear that my grades were so bad that any
employment was out of the question. I was to see a psychiatrist
and send him the bill. But back to food.
The studenent Union dinners were bareley edible. I mean you
got a standard dinner plate and desert. No frills. No
seconds. But who wanted seconds? This food was barely
edible getting through the first plate was an endurance contest made
only possible by the fact that it may have been the only meal I got
that day.
Yes, he sent me an allowance. I could pay for postage and
laundry. Not meals. Not pizzas. Books at up almost
the entire semester's allowance. There was no way to spend time with my
friends. But I did have a reserve. The University had rules
on how much a student could be paid. My work at UW-M greatly
exceeded this maximum. Rather than follow the rules, Mr. Berry
had simply queued the extra hours into months after I had left.
So I received paychecks from UW-M for three more months. The
November paycheck was small. Without my summer money I would have
starved.
Food is critical. Hunger is the strongest human
motivation. Ask the folks at Guantanima. In any case, my
UW-M money made it so that I could live and have clothes on my
back. The walk across campus to the Student Union in Madison in
the winter was cruel. This was a mile walk in the snow and cold
just to eat dinner and then return home. This was at least two
hours that could have been spent studying except for the hunger factor.
I found an alternative left over from my high school days.
Axross the corner from us was a girls dorm. This was on the very
corner of campus: Park and University. Campus dorms had
cafeterias. All of them. Cafeterias had dishes that needed
washing and big dishwashers. I had a job. Working one meal
period produced enough money for two to three meals. I was good
at this. I was so good that I was permitted to load the
dishwasher -- my favorite job. Other times only the woman staff
member loaded the washer. Why was I permitted? I was
fast. Why was I fast? The disheashers accepted the dishes
across a large stainless steel "shelf". Around the corner to the
left of the washer was a large sink with a hose hanging to the
middle. The dirty dishes came from the left on another shelf.
SOme of these had rollers for the trays. When a tray came in with
dirty dishes, one of the student help cleaned it off. Trash in a
barrel. Messes (some students intentionally made a mess of their
tray) cleaned. Silverware into a bucket of hot water. The
silverware would then be sorted into stainless steel vases for loading
into the washer. At the clean end of the washer washer was
another stell shelf where a student unoaded the dishes and sent the
holders back up the slot at the rea for me to load again.
The dishes and trays were hot. I never had to worry about this
-- the guy at the other end did. He also had to worry about how
well I packed the dishes into the washer trays as a poor job would
either leave dirty dishes or a backup because they were
underloaded. I had to balance silver, food trays, and dishes to
make sure that the guy at the backend di not get overloaded with one or
the other. You figure it out. I hated the front end job
because we did not have gloves and the garbage got all over you.
We had large rubber aprons but they were not enough. I hated the
backend job because you burned your hands. The rinsing and
loading needed fast hands. If we had a full staff, the rinser and
loader were two jobs. Otherwise, the rinser also loaded. I
did not like rinsing again because of the garbage and you had to be
careful of the silverware. When you dropped a spooon, knife, or
fork into the sink everything stopped as the garbage disposal was
capable of regrugutating that piece of metal bak up so hard and so fast
that it could embed in the ceiling or your jaw, whichever came
first. You knew you had the problem because of the noise.
You had to have fast hands to hit the poer switch. Even then the
silver would still fly out. When it had safely stopped, you could
reach in and pull out the deformed piece of steel and throw it in the
trash. Then you started again. During heavy loads, this
stopped everything back to ths racks of student trays. Oh.
I forgot that part. We had a dumb-waiter. That is, upstairs
the students put their trays into a set of vertical shelves on
wheels. One of the kitchen staff then took these trays and placed
them into a similar shelf in the wall which moved down like a
continuous elevator. The guy at the bottom unloaded these onto
the rollers I already described. The dumb-waiter took no
prisoners. When there was a jam, you stopped it too. THen
the guy upstairs had to figure out what to do until it started
again. Students had no regard for kitchen staff. You did
not let the poor guy upstairs wait for long.
So now again, why was I fast? Fast hands? Yes. But this
entire layout was designed by sime imbecile who thought things should
move from left to right. All of the kitchens I worked in were
laiid out this way. This meant that the left handed person always
had the advantage. He has the advantage at any stage of this
operation. You pick up the trya/plate/.whatever with your left
hand. You empty/wash/rinse./ehatever as you transport it to your
right hand (or just hold it out of the way if you ar not at least
partially ambidextrous) and then drop the article to where it goes to
the next step.
A right-handed machine loader got his hands burned from the
steam. He was always fighting the metal steam guard that was
supposed to portect him and he had to load the tray for the dihwasher
cross-handed. Me? I just stood facing toward the machiune,
rinsed the plate, dropped it into the tray, pushed the full try with my
right hand as I brought down the next one. I always wondered why
those guys in the kitchen design liked me so much. The kitchen
staff did because when I worked there was one more staff person that
was free for the kitchen or to supervise.
So. I had my meals paid for. I had the best possible
meals. I ate in a room full of girl students. I started my
daily travels already on campus. This is a real plus when the
outside temperature has a minus in front of it.
But this took time but it was fun. This was something I could
do very well, people liked to see me walk in the door and I could eat
what I wanted as long as I marked off one meal on my pay card.
Maybe half of my dinners were at the Student Union, They did not
give refunds. I think the Union counted on people not eating
their contracted meals.. They simply had bad food and you were
motivated to go elsewhere. Mostly it was the formality and not
the food. You had to dress for dinner. The only place on
campus with a dress code.
I bought a little 50-watt radio staion box from Radio Shack.
You put the pieces together, fed in the output of a reecord player or
mike and you had a readio statuon capable of brioadcasting 100
feet. 100 feet covered a portion of my dorm. The outpput
frequency (AM) was controlled by a little coil on the top of the
box. If you know anything about rdio you know that a
condenser/coil arrangement is not like a crystal: you had
harmonics. Harmonics are sort of like echos: same stuff only
weaker. I found that if I sat on top of a radio station in the
middle of the dial, I covered the entire AM band with my
harmonics. For 100 feet. But. my friend Steve Keidl knew
how to change this. I replaced the tranfromer on the top of the
box with a larger one. A couple of other changes with heavy duty
things and I had a real rado station. The box always impressed
me. One of the necessary radio tubes was a 50C5. With the
additonal power througput (it sill got its 50 volts) but the radio
frequency stuff it passed was a whole lot stonger than for a little
table radio. This poor tube glowed ultra0violet. Probably
could give you a sunburn if you stood next to it long enough. Now
I ha power to burn but the little iwre antenna would not go any wehre.
Now you know wehre some of my money went. These toys did not
cost a whole lot but they did cost. I bough an EICOST40
Stereo. THis played records. It was not a receiver, it just
generated the music. Components in those days were big and
ugly. Maybe it also received, I really do not remember. If
so, it had a dial in the ront with a needle. No digital displays
in the 1960's. This was a kit. I later sold it to Norm when
I left the dorm. He had a problem with it and discovered that my
kit assembly techiques were not first class. I offered to refund
his money. He was nice enough to not take me up on it.
So now I had a music supply ( I had a limited number ofr records)
and a transmitter. I could exceed the 15 amps that our outlets
provided. This was not good. Adjacent rooms were separated
by cinder block walls. The entire dorm was made of these
things. There were concrete pretty slabs extending between rooms
so that you could not travel outside the building. There were
penalties for remving you window screen and using the outside shelf for
food stoarge (remeber it is cold out there). And besides, the
building would look like a regriegerator if you did this. Beauty
counted in thsose days. What to do? I always lie at this
point and tell people I cscaled the building to put up my 10-story
antenna. Really the guys across the hall had master keys to the
buiilding. They said they would kill (exageration) me if I ever
told anyone what they did. They let me out on the roof with my
coil of copper wire. One thing I forgot to mention about the
ectangular shape of the buiolding. At each end of the wing was a
stairway. I mentiuoned that. But this stairway appeared on
the outside of the wing as a smaller rectangle going up to the
top. This gave me an insde corner. That is, the real corner
of the building is an outside corner where you walk around it if you
are on the first level. AN inside corner means that you walk into
the other wall when you come to it. So I had my inside corner
from the top of the building to the roof covering the common
area. I attached one end of the wire to the railing making sure
it was insulated and then dropped the coil down to the first floor roof.
Then I went backl to my room, removed the screen, and crwled out to
the roof to my wire. this was dangerous because it was lighted
and anyone could see me as they walked up the walk to the
building. From my experience at UW-M, I knew how to look
official. I fe the wire into my eroom window, crawled back in,
jimmied the screen so that it would accept my wire (Ilearned back in
Ypsilanti the anger ensuing from cutting holes in scrren). And
now to my little blue box. My station due to the inside corner of
the buiilding aimed exactly across campus to all of the dorms except
Ogg and Witte and they were close enough to hear me anyway.
Wow. When I left at the semester, I left my wire hanging.
It lasted there for a couple of years. Long after anyone who knew
what it was for was around to explaiin it.
One day while at class, my record player got stuck. It played
"My Boyfriend's Back" for over an hour. There was acrowd at my
door. I did not know that that meny people knew where the music
was coming from. After that I only broadcasted when I was home.
I went to the student health clinic to follow up on this
psycha=iatrist requirement. If I did not my allowance would
disappear. I was told I did not qualify for psychiatric care but
they did recommend a privte psychiatrist not too far from campus.
I went to see him. 4 times. I sent my father the $300
bill. He refused to pay it. Said the charges were
excessive. This ended my mandatory visits but $300 out of pocket
meant a lot of meals worked in the girls dorm. Maybe it was worth
it but it always huts when you are hungry.
I was new to the world of Madison. The first month there was a
real eye-opener. There was a three-day sit-in in the
Amdinstration Building. The students occupied the entire
building. They got into everyone's way that was trying to get
work done. There were people always giving speaches about how the
world should be. My father had always told me (usually after a
car accident) that if I had not been there, it would not have
happened. I walked over from Sellery to the demonstration.
I actualy got up and parroted the guy before me.
This was a really serious demonstration. The univeristy kept
class palacement scres on all of the students. You never knew
what you class placement was. This information was, however, delivered
to the Selective Service Department of the Unieted States
Government. The lowr 25% lodsst their student deferment, 2-S
rating. THis meant that sometime during the next semester after
you had paid and were halfway through your courses, you would get a
letter from Uncle Sam inviting you into an extended visit to Viet
Nam. Viet Nam would get worse but we already saw the handwriting
on our foreheads.
THe sit-in was to convince the Adminstration to stop consorting with
the Federal government on private information and instead deliver it to
the personto whom it belonged. At the end of three days, we all
marched up Bascom HIll to meet with the univeristy admnistration.
President Herrington deferred to the Madison Provost and we heard that
there to be not action taken by the U. The Ad building had been
locked behind us and so students retreated to the Student Union.
Over the next several days, several students were admited to the
hiospital for food poisoning. Health conditions in the union
building were deteriorating rapidly. The Univsersity reversed its
position and started a policy of sending the placemnt information to
the appropirate student. This along with an envelop addressed to
Selective Service with a warning of what would happen if you did not
forward the information. That was obvuious: you would be
drafted. But you had the time daly. You would be able to
finish your semester before you went to viet Nam.
The Univeriosty had capitualted. But had they been
cooperative? Unknoiwn to the students and to many employees, the
Ad building has a false basement. The primary basement is a
corridor down the middle with a row of offices on each side. At
the main end, their is the credit union and the computer center but for
the rest there is just the alley of offices. Oh. In the
back at the computer center end is the loading dock and the store room.
WHen the sit-in started, the governor called the National
Guard. In plain clothes and many boxes, the Guard, 300 of them,
were sent into the storage room just a few at a time. Bexause
unkown as I mentioned, was a second halway circuling the build under
ground. Many of the offices in the alley had a back door.
No one had keys to the back door of their office and these doors were
of interest only because they appeared togo into thefoundation wall
itself. No such luck. THey went into this outside
corridor. 300 soldiers spent three days waiting for the
command burst through these office doors and surround the student
demonstrators. Thje commend never came. The students left,
the doors locked, the soldiers sent home. All was quiet n
the home front.
Oh. I keep saying "Oh" as new thoughts arrive. Before we
marched up the hill, we were told on which side to march to be on the
appropriate news cast, All the national companies were
represented. We also had to march apst the Law building where
many law students had their "S.W.I.N.E." billboars waving at the
studeents. SWINE was the Al Capp acronym for "Students Wildly
Indignant about NEarly Everything". AL Capp was the creator of a
popular comic strip (Lil Abner) and was somewhere to the right of Rush
Limbaugh. So were most of the law students -- I talk about
thatelsewhere.
1964 was an election year. My roommate was the Editor of the
Daily Cardinal, the univerosity student newspaper. The war isue
was heating up. We had just finished the Cuban Missile crisis.
Barry Goldwater, that liberal from Arizona, wasrunning on the
Republican ticket. Norm had tickets and offered me one. I
got the chance to sit on the platform with Barry Goldwater as he was
about to give his speech. A great priviledge. I turned it
down.. IWent with Steve Keidl and we climbed the outside of the
Capitolb uilding to hear the speech. We missed it as we were
invited inside and not permitted to stand on the wallledge
outside. Sorry, Norm. I really did appreciate the favor. I
do not know what was i that speach but I do know that he advocated
extedning the war into the directions it ultimatley went while his
oppositon was denying that we even really had a war. Being right
does not necessarily win an election.
My writ always hurt but not as much as when I first broke it.
I fell on the steps on the back side of the math building. Now it
always hurt. I was back to biting my arm during the night to keep
from yelling about the pain. I went to Student Health. I
was referred to a Dr. Okagaji, orthopedist He called me a sissy
after looking at the X-rays. No broken bones, just chips floating
in the joint because the 'stops' from excessive wrist motion had been
broken off.. Sisy or no, I needed the operation to remove
them. He agreed to do it. I called my mother and told her
about the operation. She flew out to see me. I mean, where
was she when I needed the help? It would have been easier and
cheaper to pay for the opeartion in Milwaukee. I would have had
free room and board. The profs at UW-M were something out of the
dark ages (except Professor Katz) but I could have lived with it.
I could not have lived with the pain and I had no money. Everyone
understood 3except my parents.
But whatever. I had the surgery, my mother walked me from the
dorm to the hospital. We stopped at the girls dorm to inform them
that I could not work until after Christmas. Hospitals were
friendlier in those days. I walked in, was admitted, and told the
surgery was for 7:00 the next morning. The only problem was the
next morning someone forgot to deliver my breakfast. I ate the
box of chocolates my mother brought me. No one had told me that
you do not eat before surgery or you might regurgitate all over the
equeipment. The surgery was postponed until 11:00. It went
well. My wrist hurt from the surgery but was immediately
better. I missed a few days of classes and then went back to New
Jersey for Christmas. After Christmas, the doctor removed the
dressings and I saw my new scars.
He had seen my psychiatric record and had cut into the sides of my
wrist instead of across as he preferred. Across would have left
scars that he thought it better that I did not have. But the
sideways scars had their own issues. He had had to move nerve
bundles to get to the chips. Moving never bundles has interesting
effects. When the surgery healed, feelings in my hands and
fingers were all wrong. When one finger itched, I scratched a
different finger to make the itch go away. Since there were a lot
of itches at this point, it did not take too long to figure out where
to scratch. Fairly qquickly most sensations returned to their
proper locations. I did have a couple which took a couple of
years before they were correct. Interesing. Interesting to
me anyway.
In my various visits to Milwaukee, I maintained my friendship with
Karen Holgersen. SHe was dating Peter someone and was active in a
Russian folk troupe. It turned out the Mrs. Doos (pronounces:
deuce) lived next door to the old Stowell house dormitory. She
had several children. I do not remember them. Karen kept
asking about Bill. THe son who was attending UW-Madison and lived
in Selleryas a house fellow. I did know hime althiugh in the
various troupe meeting, he claimed to know me. My house fellow
was Bill Doos (proinounces Dues). I did not make the connection.
I got to know Peter and some of the others. Every year, there
is a Folk Festival held at the Milwukee COunty Auditrium.
Milwaukee is a very ethnic city. I jined the group on my weekened
expedtions. I leanred one,,and onlyu one, Russian sentence (?):
"Anu, damoi". Kid, go home. I could not then and never
could after dance. WHen the troupe was dancing, I got to babysit
the litlle brothers and sisters. When I came with Karen, Peter's
little sister would want to join us and Peter would yell at her to go
back in the house: damoi.
But the surprise was at the Folkl Fair. I had a spiffy
green RUssian outfit and sold trinkets in the Russian booth.
There ware a lot of trinkets as the Russians are very good at making
things from wood. We had a group of people marching around the
booth. They were anti-communist and as Russians, we must be
Communists. After ousr of these people and the more senior
members of the group being very dismayed and then going off to perform
their dancing acts, I was in charge of the booth. Two things
happened. I went to the leader of the protest group and explained
the situation. I was niither a Communist nor a Russian. I
was a student. None of the people in the booth were Communists.
We allhated the Communists that were running our country. We
would protest with them if it made any sense but it made no
sense. We were doing the best we could to reperesnet the poeple
of Russia in spite of the current government. I explained that
his group of people would be better supporting us than protesting
us. They left. I was releived. THen my Housefellow walked
up and asked if I had seen his mother. I was surprised to see
him. I was shoccked at his question. He explained that his
mother was the organizer of teh group and my mouth fell open. I
had never made the connection. we became better friends.
To sort of back track here. When I ran my rdio staton I used a
lot of powwer. I had cross-wired outlets in my room to outlets on
the opposite side of the wall in the room next and over the ceing to
the room across. I had power from three rooms instead of my
normal 15 amps. But whenever I went on the air, I would get a
call from the building engineer's office saying "I do not know what you
are doing up there but it is bad and you should stop", WE always
laughed at this because when they would arrive to inspect the room they
would not discover anything except the coil of wire which was the
bottom endof my roof antenna. They never followed the wire.
The oulets appeared normal since the rewiring was done inside the wall
and the wall was concrete/cinder block. But at a party after
Christmas, Bill told me that the engineers had torn apart the room
looking for my mysterious enrgy consuming equipment and had found
nothing. what was there to find? The antenna was outside
but they could have traced the wire outside the window. THey did
not. The stereo was a normal looking stereo. As was the
record player. My homemade clock radio at the end of the counter
was in a nice walnut cabinet. They might have noticed it had no
radio frequency dial. But why even look at such a nice box.
Why? Because inside was my Radio Shack transmittor, microphone,
calbes, etc. But the clock on the front worked and it was
pretty. and they found nothing unusual. We had a good laugh
at the party. I was surprised that they had shown that much
interest. When I left at the semester, I took my stuff except for the
atnenna which I cut loose and for a couple of years it just waved in
the wind. I could see it as I walked by. I always wondered
why nobody else ever bothered it.
This was real problem. The math department offered two
sessions of Differential Equations. One for Math majors (me) and
one for Engineers. My problem was that the math section, and
there was only one, conflicted with all choices of English
LIterature. I signed up for the ENgineers section. after
all, diffy Q was diffy Q, how different could the classes be? I
was wrong. I immediatley had a problem. My visits with Dr.
Okagaki were always on days of my new Diffy Q. This was a
hard class for me so I skipped my lit clases and sat in on the Math
Diffy Q. Not bad because the Mth prof was better able to
explain. Engineer profs always had this attitude that it
was their job to talk and my job to learn regardless of the issues.
In any case, what was taught was extremely different. My
girlfriend sat in on my ENglish classes and took notes for me.
Most of the English was old hat anyway. I had discussed the
issues with my Teaching Assisant for Diffy Q several times. He
told me that the prof was aware of my conflict and my sitting in on the
other section. But came the final exam. I was
relieved. Of the 14 problems, I solved them all. I was
leated as I had loist sleep over this.
But I got an "F". The methods I had used were not taught in
the professor's class and therefore my answers did not count. I
protested to the prof. He told me that if I could not do math
then I did not belong in the math department and refused categorically
to review my exam. I complained that he was aware of my attending
the other session and tol me that I then should have trnasferered
sections and not wated both of our times. I still hate that
man. Obviously.
Now I had failed out of school for a year. I returned to UW-M.