50 Year Reunion
Umbeck called from Indiana
The first time I met Umbeck was in the
early 1960s when I walked into his freshman dorm room at Occidental College
The Bell Young dorm rooms were typical of
institutional housing. Every room was an identical prison-cell-like cube
with a window and all the charm of a cardboard box. Umbeck and Heger
managed to transform theirs into the Tiki Lounge at Don the Beachcomber. Once
you pawed your way through hanging glass-bead curtains you were completely surrounded
by bamboo screens, thatch mats, fishnets and palm fronds covering every square
inch of wall, floor and ceiling. If I remember correctly, even the window
was covered over. There was nothing else like it either on campus or off.
It was the same year that the Ford Motor Company introduced the Mustang and Heger had one that was bright red, at least for a while. I don’t know how the idea came about but the two of them took to using the Mustang for late night jousting with trash barrels. With Heger at the wheel, the Mustang would speed down
In hindsight, what happened next was
probably for the best. The jousting came to an end one evening when
Umbeck fell out of the car, and not too long after that Heger transferred to
USC. Perhaps in part because of these developments, Umbeck is still alive
and among the count-on-one-hand former school mates with whom I still keep in
touch. There was a chance to reconnect with additional school mates if I
had attended the Occidental class of 1966 50 year reunion but for many reasons
this was impossible.
From the age of five I lived 300 yards
from the Occidental campus. The college grounds and the adjacent hills
were where I and the neighborhood kids would explore and play when we were
little. A few years later it was where I swam and played basketball in
the summers and in high school it was where we worked out during track season.
Our gay neighbor was the Director of Thorne Hall and from the tenth grade
on I was never without year round free passes to concerts, plays and sporting
events. The baseball field was named after the grandfather of the girl I
dated in high school and I went along with her family to alumni and special
events at the college. Yet through all of this I never once considered
going to college there or any college for that matter. I only applied to
Occidental at the last minute to get my mother to stop badgering me.
I am not certain exactly why but from the
time I began Occidental as a freshman until I graduated I behaved like a
lunatic. It was probably due to a combination of being overly familiar
with the surroundings while at the same time being completely intimidated
academically. I was so nonchalant about the whole affair that when the
first year began I didn’t bother to move into the dorm until the middle of the
second week.
As a local, I was the go-to guy for the best places to eat, buy beer,
terrorize the girl’s dorm, or explore the system of tunnels that ran underneath
the campus. Seemingly every night somebody would want to raise hell and I
was happy to suggest how and where, almost always joining in on the
festivities.
The nightly excursions offered an escape
from the constant feeling of despair from realizing that, as far as the classes
were concerned, I was in way over my head. Looking back, it is hard for
me to see my time at Occidental as anything less than a 4-year reign of terror.
A while back I read a letter in the college magazine from an alum named
Cheryl, who had been a member of my class, explaining why she couldn’t attend
the upcoming 50 year reunion.
Cheryl said that she had some
memories of Occidental that were so unsettling that she could never consider
returning to the campus. I couldn’t recall anyone named Cheryl but my
immediate reaction was that I was at the very least partly responsible.
Like Cheryl, I too could never bring
myself to return to campus and thus attending the 50 year reunion was out of
the question. I would feel about as welcome as Mrs O’Leary returning to Chicago
Going to the reunion would mean I would have to drive in the main
entrance passing through the Alumni
Ave Campus
Road Alumni Ave
A short stroll from the fountain would take me to the “Quad” which served as the center of the small campus. There I could take a seat by the east entrance to the student union where most everyone passed through to be served meals three times a day. Would the outside light fixtures that used to flank both sides of the entrance still be there? The fixtures had frosted glass globes that we would remove and empty our bladders into them before replacing. This resulted in foul odors on hot days and gave an eerie ochre tinge to the entrance in the evening.
If I ever went back inside where we ate
meals in the student union I couldn’t bring myself to look at the ceiling to
see if the stains are still there. During meals we used to balance a pad
of butter on the end of a spoon handle, slam a fist down on the opposite end,
flinging the butter upward hard enough to adhere to the wooden beams 20 feet
above us. Over several months we observed the butter slowly transform
into a stain which would then spread across the surface of the beam.
Were I to attend the reunion I would also
be able to view the second floor balustrade above the student union entrance
where many a night I placed a 25 foot long banner for everyone to enjoy the
following morning. One was inspired by my fascination with a sweet
harmless girl whose last name was Sinunu and whose facial features and frame
resembled a big soft bunny. Her name made me think of the foreign makes
of motorcycles being introduced in the US
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| Stewart Clelland back patio looking down on library seen on the left with red tile roof. |
These cruel, stupid and sick deeds I have
described are among those that I can
bring myself to openly admit. There
are a host of others that I will take to my grave. I can neither excuse
nor understand what came over me during those years. As far as I can tell
the lunacy began to phase out after Occidental, and I was eventually cured.
There was never any possibility I would go to the reunion and it came and went. Several months later I received in the mail from Munson a poster-sized, full-color, group photo taken at the reunion. Munson delights in sending me things that he knows I will find disturbing. I scanned the crowd of 100 or so wizened strangers who pretended to be members of my graduating class. I suspected it was a prank. I couldn’t recognize a single person and they almost all looked like they had one foot in the grave. Then I saw him.
Jim Dennis and
I went through high school together before we went on to Occidental.
Christ, I could have spotted big Jim Dennis in a wide angle shot of Woodstock