The Campus Revolution

Acid, Booze and Ass

If you don't know where you're going, you'll probably end up somewhere else.
- a teaching manual

It's appropriate that during this initial year of the seventies, the "me" decade, the period when the "hippie" and "yippie" would endure the metamorphosis to "yuppie," I moved into the fraternity house. The previous year, my social attraction was split between the predominantly drug-using subculture of Bissell Hall and the juicers of the frat house. My relative absence at the basement bar, the TV room, the 'tails parties and the backyard barbecue had earned me the nickname, "the Ghost of Sigma Nu." I resolved that if I was to continue paying dues of a hundred dollars a term, I should make use of my House membership; also since I was no longer hitched to a steady date I figured I should maximize my opportunity to mingle with fresh prospects; and if I were to discipline myself away from the descending spiral of the drug heads, I would need the support of the rank and file at the bar. In the end, for the sake of the experience, my choice of a room at the House turned out to be worthwhile. But my basic, undefinitve personality muddled through untransformed.

My roommate, one Jackie Bell, from Rye, New York (a neighbor of Mamaroneck), was called simply "J-Bell." He was a big drinker, easy laugher, sloppy dresser. We cooked in the room on a hotplate. He taught me the trick of testing cooked spaghetti by throwing it against the wall: if it sticks, it's done. Usually, however, J-Bell preferred a liquid diet, on tap downstairs.

The House had a permanent beer smell - rancid, sour, stale beer. Mingled with the smell was the sound of the juke box, beside the bar in the basement. It was loaded with hit singles from the fifties, "Liberty Vallance" and “Chantilly Lace" being the House favorites. That bias reflected the tastes of the outgoing classes, including the resident seniors. The junior class, the 72's, added a better balance of 60s tunes, notably by the Rolling Stones. We also were responsible for the shift in social activity upstairs, to loud bedroom stereos and cigar-sized joints. In this move we prefigured the culture shift from the large-group experience of the movie theatre to the living-room crowd in front of the VCR.

The new House president, Bruce, was a junior, occupying the one first-floor bedroom. His room was the hub of this once-subversive activity, that was fast becoming part of the established ritual of fraternity life. The regular crew that gathered there was not my closest circle of friends, but it was gratifying to see some compatible tastes in the music and intoxicants of choice. I still checked into the old dorm crowd gathering in Steve's room on a regular basis, preferring hash, incense and Fleetwood Mac to Elvis and a beer-soaked joint.

---

The first week back in Hanover to start the fall term, I heard the tragic news of Hendrix's death. Tragic because of the loss of such a unique and seemingly unlimited musical talent . . . and tragic because of the mysterious, somehow arbitrary nature of the death itself. Was it suicide? Sort of. He had apparently overdosed on sleeping pills, then choked on his vomit while sleeping. The one contemporary voice of transcendent freedom, of "The Power of Soul," was silent - or at least, no longer alive.

A posthumous final album - that turned out to be only the first of an endless series of studio collections and bootleg recordings - The Cry of Love, was soon released. Jimi's latest work reached new heights of technical virtuosity, and prophetic spiritual imagery. With my fellow Hendrix fans back at the dorm I mourned the loss of our hero, listening to his newest music and our old favorites alike with renewed intensity and appreciation - and reverence. One song stood out from the new album with an oracular message that contained a cryptic challenge.

The song is called "Belly-Button Window." Hendrix laments his fate and at the same time taunts the listener from his perch -

Up here in this womb, wonderin if they don't want me around
I'll be glad to go back to spirit land
And even take a longer rest before comin down the chute again
If you don't want me now, give or take
You only got two hundred days

Spellbound, I heard Jimi's familiar voice as from the grave - on the way back to some imagined cradle. He refers to his own death in pointed fashion: "You know they got pills for ills and thrills and even spills, but I think you're just a little too late." He vows a return, "regardless of love and hate," and warns me to be ready: "I'm gonna sit up in your bed, momma, and just grin right in your face." Okay, Jimi, I think, I'll look forward to seeing you again. But what are you asking, exactly, of me? Faith in your miraculous return? Continued devotion? A commitment . . . to join you? The voice wails on, repeats its enigmatic challenge: "So if there's any questions, make up your mind . . . you only got two hundred days." I checked my calendar, counted two hundred days from the day of his death, circled April sixth. Whatever he meant, that would be my deadline.

---

Meanwhile, life had to go on. I joined in backyard football games at the House - on one occasion making good on my nickname, the ghost. Seven to a side on a narrow field, I caught a kickoff and wove through the onrushing, would-be defenders without being touched by more than a hand. A flash of greatness - going nowhere, signifying nothing.

The same might be said of my luck with the opposite sex, at the time. Every few weekends there'd be carloads of women from nearby junior colleges arriving on Fraternity Row, ready to party. In the course of the year I would make inroads on a relationship with three or four of them; but never was I sufficiently inspired (or to them, inspiring) to make it last.

There was Hillary, a little plump and slightly dumb; Marsha, who slept beside me but never let me in her pants; and Sheila, the willowy blonde who liked to smoke and who peeled down to her briefs, but again was prudent enough not to let more than a hand on that yellow tuft. Not that I really wanted to press my luck messing with pregnancy. I still had to be careful as long as I continued to shun the use of condoms. It was more a matter of seeing how far I could go with these representatives of the opposite sex, for the fun of it. Sometimes things just fell into place: like the time I noticed a familiar face, Kristine, in the basement crowd; invited her up to the third floor meeting room to watch a showing of the film Rebel Without a Cause; cuddled up beside her on the back row, both of us half-drunk; and didn't realize until the third reel that my hand, which I'd thought was around her silky belly, actually held her breast, ever so softly. I was wondering why she'd been kissing so passionately during that film . . .

---

More luck, and personal vindication: I graduated from the kitchen staff to a more independent job at the golf course pro shop, looking after the store several hours a week. There was much slow time, to catch up on studies, and, in October, to watch the World Series on a little TV which providence had arranged there. This was the Orioles' turn in the sun, after the heartbreaking upset loss to the Mets in '69. This year featured the Brooks Robinson show, as my favorites demolished Cincinnati's Big Red Machine in five games. I watched the victory in the privacy of my own world out there, surrounded by gentle nature, enjoying the culmination of boyhood dreams. But then, having arrived at the pinnacle, where is there to go?

The social highlight of each fall was the Harvard game. Hordes of north-woods wahoos would descend on the ivied bricks of Cambridge and Boston to cheer on the Big Green. Tailgate parties in the stadium parking lot provided ample fuel. This fall I hooked up with a carload of fellow revelers and entered a kaleidoscopic whirl of new experience: not just the game and its ongoing party, but the long, smoky ride to Boston; staying overnight at a former lacrosse player's house, a freak who now drove a cab; Texas Warren negotiating the infamous traffic circles in Boston as lost as can be, driving around in circles laughing like mad and hunched like a demon over the wheel with cars veering in and out from all directions; and finally unwinding after the game with some derelicts on a park bench in Cambridge, with a half-gallon jug of Ripple, or Thunderbird, or Bali High. Yes, cab drivers, bums--this was life on the other side. We said goodbye and went on our merry way back to our own ivied cloisters.

My search for a lasting purpose began to take on more weight at this time in my life. Sophomore year had been a golden interlude, in which I could freely indulge in every fancy, from smoking opium to lobbying Congress, from planning children to reading favorite novels for course credit. Now the stretch run was within sight. I'd declared a major and had to make good on it. As far as grades were concerned, I'd pulled my average up with one good term and at last could see some promise for continuing improvement, especially with a concentration on English. And as for a career . . . I still wavered on law school, wanted to keep my options open. But more and more I was leaning away from it, toward teaching.

For the winter term my course load lightened up, after the drudgery of Lit Crit and Shakespeare, and a History of the Far East. I'd done well, with all B's. But now I was ready for something different. I branched out into Comparative Literature, with a course on dramatic comedy called "The Ridiculed Man," and another intriguing title that promised to knit together my diverging interests: "Literature, Commitment and Change." The most interesting selection was a reputed easy A and fun to boot - “Musical Sound Awareness.” It was taught by a black jazz musician, Robert Northern, who on the first day said to the class, "Call me 'Ah.'"

His course was indeed a blast. Sixty non-musicians sat in bleacher-style seats and clapped, grunted, tapped, whistled, banged, drummed, hooted and generally beat on whatever "instrument" came to hand - whether African "thumb piano" or conga, harmonica or bench, bell or pair of sticks. The key was rhythm - making one and matching them together, sixty into one.

It actually worked. The man was a genius. His friend Dizzy Gillespie flew up one day to wow us with his wit and wild trumpet. For the course finale we performed in the college auditorium for a public audience. I'd chosen for my assignment the composition of a poem, "Starshine," to be accompanied by our unique brand of improvisational music.

"Hey, that's far out," Ah said to me. "You know what you do for this? You go to the theatre department, they got a wardrobe room upstairs, and you ask them for a magician's robe - and one of those tall, pointed hats, with stars on it. Oh yeah," he said, clapping his hands together, smiling, and rolling his eyes momentarily to the ceiling, "I can see it now."

I did as he instructed me and sure enough, found myself floating around on stage in my black, star-studded robes, gesticulating to the heavens and exhorting my haywire orchestra to accompany me in the following fashion as I intoned into the microphone:

Starlight, pure and clear,
Flooding everywhere
With energy and life
Bathes the Universe

[high piano . . .]

Planets, nine worlds,
Ride through fields of space,
Loyal servants of
Their master star.

Pluto, cold and dark,
Drifts from distance space,
A small stone caught
By the eye of the Sun.

[add finger piano]

Neptune dances with
His mermaid moons
Scattering starsand
In the ocean of the night.

[add shakers]

Uranus, stepping out
To see the stars,
Shields his eyes with green
And marches with his brothers.

[add bata drums]

Saturn, his soft colors
Floating in the velvet black,
Leaps on his rings
And gallops away.

[add cowbells]

Jupiter, a hovering giant,
Heavy breathing methane wine
The huge liquid sphere
Looms past the night.

[add bass horns]

Mars, a dry red land
Sending to war
Invisible armies
Beats to the Sun.

[add congas]

The Moon dreams
Our silver tides away

[add sax]

While the Gypsy Earth
In the shelter of her trees
Plays and dances
To her campfire flames.

[add tambourine and harmonica]

Venus, shrouded witch of love
Mistress of the morning
Flashes her eyes
And sings for the Day.

[add flutes]

And tiny Mercury
Shimmering messenger of light
Rises again
From his quicksilver bed.

[add bells]

Each world looking
Facing the Sun
Waiting for the Dawn:
Our own star
Rising before us
Bringing on the New Day.

[all]

Ah sprung a last minute surprise by bringing up some real jazz musicians from New York City to back us up. Their delicate tinklings and patternings and swirling whistles spiced up the performance of "Starshine" at the perfectly appropriate moments, helping all of us to earn a gratifying round of applause.

I discovered in Music 7 that anyone can play, even perform. I also discovered through numerous trials on the conga, harmonica, guitar and other "real" instruments that I didn't have "real" talent. I would continue to enjoy professional musicians with greater appreciation, however, especially on stage, live. We had some good ones to see in those days, too: Richie Havens, Laura Nyro, the Steve Miller Band and blues greats Muddy Waters and B. B. King.

Still, I felt, no one could touch Hendrix. I sang his praises in every discussion comparing talents, and always played his records when I felt the highest, or lowest. One night he came for a visit.

I was tripping on acid, with my gang from the dorm. We'd dropped for the local premiere of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Walking on the sidewalk to the theatre, looking down at the piles of snow, we felt as if we were in heaven, looking down at the clouds. The movie sent its powerful imagery like shock waves into our pastoral moods, shaking us into new awarenesses of life and death, evolution, time and space. When it was over I was wasted and said I would call it a night. Warren, Dana and Steve looked at me strangely, but said good night and went on to the dorm.

I walked back across campus to the House, where I thought I'd space out alone for a while. I ran the gauntlet of the leering drunks in the living room, and tuned out the senseless blare of the jukebox and the glare from the TV room.

I went upstairs to my room. J-Bell was there fixing a sandwich. "Oh, hey, it's the ghost." He cracked a smile at me, flipping the black hair out of his half-lidded eyes. "Want somepin t'eat?" Munch, mouth-full.

"Ooh, no thanks. Not hungry."

He eyed me more closely, cocking his head and easing closer. "You trippin' in there?"

"Uh, yeah, I guess. It's okay."

"F'you say so. Hey, keg on downstairs, you there? - probably not."

"No, don't think I'm up for it - hah, hah, up enough already, I guess. Heh-heh."

"Yeeuh, right. Well, I'm gone."

He started to careen off with the remains of his sandwich. I didn't feel quite right. We got on pretty well, mostly. I wanted to make a gesture of friendship, of a common bond.

"Hey, J-Bell, you wanna toke before you go?"

"Oh, uh . . . sure, why not?"

We sat down and I rolled a number for us. Grass was a good mellowing influence on a rocky acid trip, and besides that, could be appreciated on a new level for its own merits - the pungent aroma, the breathtaking rush, the laid-back stone. I said as much, and J-Bell offered a similar analysis justifying the combination of grass and beer.

We finished the joint and he disappeared, leaving me to the bedroom strewn with his dirty clothes and my traveling thoughts. I put on Jimi's "Voodoo Chile," settled back in the soft armchair, plugged in the headphones, and closed my eyes. Somewhere near the end of the song, the raging guitar solo, I felt a presence in the room. I opened my eyes for an instant - and saw Hendrix, or Death himself, dressed in rich maroon brocade and gold braid, sitting in the chair to my right, looking at me. It was a dark and formless face, except for the skull-like grin. I shut my eyes immediately and turned away, heart beating furiously. Could it be? Had he come to claim me, a truly committed follower? My soul screamed out that I wasn't ready yet. I opened my eyes again, and the specter was gone.

I shook the cobwebs out of my head and went downstairs for a beer. Fat Sarge and J-Bell were in fine form, cracking jokes and yukking it up with a lithe little blonde with telltale wrinkles . . . infamous Stella, who was said to have "pulled a train" - that is, an invitational gang-bang - at Beta house.

"Hey, hey, it's the ghost," sang Sarge.

Hoss, the tall Texan behind the bar, drawled, "Yeah, and hey, you look like you seen one, too."

"Ah, gimmee a beer," I said, still in no joking mood.

"Yes-sir." Hoss drew the tap, handed me a foaming plastic cup. I leaned against the bar, surveying the usual scene of debauchery: a knot of drinkers singing at the end of the bar, a blitzed Hairpie balancing himself against the jukebox while studying the titles, some inane revelers from another house come by to kick our keg . . . and Stella, like a queen bee, surrounded by a small but devoted crowd of admirers: J-Bell, Fat Sarge, and now Chris and Black Bob. The beer, and the beer-filled company, were bringing me rapidly to earth. I turned to Hoss.

"What're you doin back there, man, when there's this hot action out front?"

"Ah need all the protection ah can git, from that kinda sleaze. Why don't you move on in there, snake that honey for yourself?"

"Honey, my ass. She's no honey - just horny." Stella stole a glance at me, gave her beehive hairdo a little pat and dropped her eyes.

Hoss chuckled. "Gwan. Invite her up to your room to see your etchings."

I drained my beer. "Give me a refill there, good buddy. I’m still running on empty."

Three beers later, I'd joined the coterie of admirers surrounding the only female within imaginable sight. Female, at least, she was. She wore a tight short skirt, high plastic boots, a low-cut, V-necked, hot-pink sweater. She was right out of the fifties, pancake makeup and all - and no doubt old enough to have been bar-hopping since then. The small talk never penetrated to her past, however. It was all about notable exploits, in the male manner: the drinking contests, feats on the gridiron, great parties we’d survived, professors we'd conned. And all the "short hitters” in the world who'd already gone to bed that night, unsoused. We, in contrast, still had half a keg to deal with, and the will to persevere. "And the granite of New Hampshire / In our muscles and our brains" - the actual school song, we bellowed our way through. Stella's hand had slipped around my waist. I gave her a squeeze around the shoulders, pulled her over to the bar.

"Hey, huh?" J-Bell leered. "Where you goin'?"

"Right here, right here. The lady needs a refill."

Stella beamed at the unfamiliar compliment. Sarge choked and spewed out a spray of beer. "Oh, Gawd, I can see the shit dripping out his ears."

Stella scowled at him. "You guys," she complained. "Don't be so crude. He's cute." And with that she snuggled up against me even closer as she sipped on a fresh one.

Things continued on this wretched course for a little while longer and, before I knew it, I was lying flat on my back in bed, with Stella bouncing on top of me, both stripped down to our skivvies. We wriggled together and pawed one another with increasing abandon until, inevitably, the bedroom door burst open. Fat Sarge led the charge, brimming scepter in hand. J-Bell, Black Bob, Chris and Hoss followed on his heels.

"Awright," bawled the King, sloshing beer over our cold flesh. "You see the hard evidence before you. How do you find this couple?"

The chorus chanted, "In the raw. In the raw. Guilty, guilty, guilty."

"What shall the penalty be?"

"The crocodiles, the crocodiles!"

That meant the basement. They lifted and carried us, bare flesh and all, back to the hilarious shouts of the barroom where we were deposited unceremoniously to fend for ourselves. I left Stella to her new admirers and gingerly stepped through the puddles of beer to retrace my way back to my clothes. I was gallant enough to gather up the tart's scant garments while I was at it; but when I put in a final appearance to present them to her, she was nowhere to be seen. The revelers from elsewhere were also gone, and Fat Sarge and his court were tinkering with the taps on the keg behind the bar. Hairpie was passed out by the jukebox which played on, oblivious to it all: "Love Me Tender."
<hr>
I was glad for my old friends back in the dorm, providing a refuge for my other side, the quieter, more introspective, more creative. The new awareness provided by drugs gave me a childlike sense of wonder and appreciation for the world, especially the natural world. With Dana, or Warren, or alone, I could walk out among the trees and open spaces by the golf course or the pond and glory in the innocent beauty all around me. Inspired by the lyrics of Hendrix and my debut with “Starshine,” I decided one night while booking in the basement study room to try my hand again at verse. The result was a simple ditty called "Comes the Morning."

Jacks, clowns, fools and imps
Put all your tricks in a box.
Singers, dancers, poets and bards
Take away all of our clocks.

Priests, wizards, showmen and hacks
Try to remember your birth
Look upon the dawn of the sun
Lighting the heaven of earth.

I seemed to have caught a literary infection, from Dana and the books I was reading, and full of fresh enthusiasm for the poetic spirit, I signed up spring term for a full slate of English courses: The Romantic Period, Modern British and American Poetry, and Creative Writing.

First, however, came the longer interlude of spring break. None of the other residents of the frat house were staying around, so I crashed with a couple of my old dorm buddies, Steve and Doug, who had moved off campus to a second-floor apartment on Hanover's main street. There I discovered Alan Watts's classic book, The Way of Zen, and a good supply of hash. I also found a temporary job where I could earn some extra cash, painting Professor Bien's basement. For two weeks I meditated, smoked up and painted. At the end of it all, when Professor Bien asked me what I planned to do with my life after Dartmouth, I surprised myself by saying I wanted to write. I remembered, I told him, Joyce's dictum that "Art redeems life," and said that it struck me, then, as a worthy occupation. But I still felt rather tentative about it.

"I'm not sure," I confided, "what I would write about."

"Oh, well," he said with a wry smile, "you need to live, first. Then you'll have plenty to write about."

I couldn't quite fathom it. I had lived quite a lot already, I thought, and yet, nothing in my experience had seemed especially interesting, or worthy of elevating to the stature of "art."

My mentor listened patiently, and reiterated - "Don't worry about it; if it's meant to happen, it will. Just get on with living, experiencing the world outside these academic walls; that's the main thing."

I thanked him for his counsel and his cash, and went on my merry way, plunging into poetry, lacrosse, and more drugs - nearly into death.

---

It was early in spring term - April 6, to be exact, 200 days after Hendrix's unresolved demise. Barney and Steve and Doug and a handful of others were gathered in an unfamiliar room on the second floor of Bissell Hall for a Hendrix reunion. That is, we planned to celebrate somehow, not his death, but our devotion to him, and our readiness to accept whatever he had to offer us, or require of us, on this appointed day. To help us out in our ritual frame of mind we had some rare treats - a Nepalese temple ball (a compact mass of black hash the size of a large softball) and some high-grade cocaine.

The event was in the works for some time. The week before, Steve had approached me about the cocaine. I'd never tried it and was leery because I feared it was addictive. "No, no," he assured me. "You're thinking of heroin. It's not like that at all. It's just a mellow high; you just feel good for a while. No, it's not addictive at all." The business about heroin sounded right. I had been confusing the two, or associating them too closely. "Not the same plant," he'd said. Okay, then, I felt reassured. There was nothing to worry about.

We began with "Belly-Button Window." Hendrix was asking us, were we ready - but ready for what? For the new Voodoo Chile to come pick us up (lost souls that we were) so that unwanted by and unwanting a heartless earth, we could travel back into the ether together? It was unclear. We smoked the hash, pipe after pipe, and snorted up coke through a rolled-up twenty-dollar bill. it was good-quality stuff - too good. My heart beat slower and slower, heavier and heavier . . . then, suddenly, took off with wild, frantic palpitations. I lost what remained of my waking consciousness and fell sideways off the couch onto the tiled floor. As my head hit the floor, it flashed through my mind that I'd died. My whole life appeared, not as a retrospective series of images, but as a foregone conclusion, a sacrifice to the god Hendrix. I could see the newspaper reports, the messages home, my parents' shock. How would they ever forgive me? I'd done it, OD'ed on drugs, killed myself in the bloom of life with the poison of the ghetto. A most ignominious, a bad end. Anyway, it was my will, or Jimi's and mine.

Then hands shook me awake - a circle of concerned faces loomed over me. "Are you all right?"

I was back in the room, though with heartbeat still shaky. I told what I'd just experienced, and must have scared the assembled friends. Doug and Barney helped me up and thought it best if I walked outside, slowly, in the fresh air. My heart struggled to regain its rhythm and composure, as we walked down the stairs and outside. I looked up and thanked my lucky stars - and heard the strains of a gentle black voice, the acoustic chords of "All Along the Watchtower." The sound was coming from the neighboring dorm, Brown Hall. In the commons room a small, informal concert was in progress, featuring a tall black man with Hendrix eyes and hair who was singing his soul into the familiar anthem, speaking to me anew with the lyrics Dylan had written: "You and I, we've been through that / And this is not our fate." I reflected on the mixed truth of the lines, and the poignant, precarious nature of life: of Hendrix and myself, both poised on the edge: him rolling off one way, and me, starting to roll that darkened way, following his momentum, but then by some divine grace, coming up for air in the nick of time.

---

Poetry, poetry, poetry: I immersed myself in theory, imagery, lyric music. I'd been won over already by Shelley's "Defense of Poetry" as a manifesto for living by one's ideals, and now I reveled in the manifest form of idealism: the poetic art itself, the Word given wordy flesh. I assembled a collection of excerpts I called "Wordsworth's Greatest Hits," read Coleridge's opium visions in an opiated haze of my own, felt Shelley's inspired fire in my own breast . . . though I couldn't, of course, create any verse myself that could touch his unique genius. I read Gary Snyder with newly-discovered appreciation of the Zen spirit in the spare, pure natural facts he presents; and gloried in the anguished, elaborate howls of his friend, Allen Ginsberg.

Lacrosse season, once more, was fun but a competitive bust. That is, we still were lousy as a team, and I played hard but with little to show for my efforts. I scored a total of one goal in this varsity career of one year - a bounce shot flicked in from the crease during a 32-3 shellacking by Ivy champion Brown. After this season I would hang it up and move on.

There was more to life than books and sports - more drugs to try, for example . . . more ways to contemplate the wonder of creation. Psilocybin, the "magic mushroom," of Mexico, became available this term and provided a new opening for savoring natural beauty. In contrast to the cartoon visions of speed-laced, laboratory-produced LSD, or even synthetic mescaline, the capsules of powdered mushroom produced a mellow, organic stone in which paranoia was nonexistent and fellow-feeling high; appreciation of rosy dawns and subtle spring airs took on revelatory depth.

A new partner in the dormitory drug crowd was Dwayne, the suave Alabaman who'd hosted the party of nudes sophomore year in Little Hall. This year he'd moved off campus to a house "in the country" with two other students. But he found a social connection on campus with us. He and I hit it off pretty well and by spring's end I was invited to move to the house in Cornish for senior year, to replace one of the three guys there, who was moving out. I'd visited a couple of times and was entranced with the rustic surroundings, the freakish painting on the side of the barn, and the seventy-mile view to the mountains of Vermont.

At term's end I received a call from my old friend Steve from high school, with whom I'd kept up a steady correspondence. He'd met a girl at his co-ed college that he'd gotten deeply involved with - a serious contender for the long-elusive "L.R."

Julie hailed from Washington, D.C., Steve informed me, and her folks there had some roofing work to be done. He said he also had an aunt in Maine who needed an old house painted; and his parents in Illinois, had also been making noises about a new paint job for their house's siding. Was I up for a summer of roving work, painting and roofing? It sounded perfect to me. I hung up the frat house phone filled with a new spirit of adventure. Still a year from graduation, I was now set for some major changes of scene.