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"WHEN I WAS 17, IT WAS THE AUTUMN OF MY LIFE..."


College Days

Back in the 1960's, we would pick a few colleges, apply, and, if accepted, select one and go.  It wasn't the big business it is today.  I went off to my college without ever having seen it, no interviews or overnights.  It was exactly 338 miles between Mt. Vernon and Canton, NY, home of St. Lawrence University.

 I knew of two students there from my high school who were already attending including Larry Rauch who went on to play baseball for the California Angels organization, but there was just one other of my Davis classmates, Bruce Kashdan, who would be matriculating that year as well as myself.    It only made sense to go together.  My parents agreed to drive the long trip which took us through, first the Catskill Mountains and then, the Adirondacks.  I don't think I had ever been further north than Bear Mountain, along the Hudson River.  Bruce and I were stuffed into the back of my dad's little Anglia each with one suitcase and a little table radio.  A word about Bruce before we end our long drive...

Bruce and I, although not particularly close friends, had schooled together all the way since kindergarten.  He had had an auspicious high school career, having managed his own Caribbean Steel Drum Band in Greenwich Village and getting them gigs.  His college career was no less unusual.  He founded the Community Development Corps where volunteer college students would work with underprivileged  children and their families in the surrounding communities, tutoring, building and helping. By the time he graduated, there were 185 volunteer students.  Upon graduating, Bruce was scooped up by Sargent Shriver, President Kennedy's brother-in-law, to come to Washington to work for VISTA.  Shriver went on to head the Peace Corps and to run, unsuccessfully, for Vice-President.
I've lost touch with Bruce but I know he emigrated to Israel, became an Israeli Foreign Ministry official involved with the Lebanese invasion and, eventually, an Israeli diplomat.  He was an unusual fellow!

Bruce Kashdan working out in the community

Arriving in Canton on a warm Autumn day in 1962, the fall foliage was out in full bloom.  We were met by upperclassmen and women who were orientation leaders who helped us move into our rooms.  I had a single room on the ground floor...this fact is important and seminal to a story I'll share before the end of today's post.  I think Mom and Dad stuck around for a couple of hours and, after attending the faculty reception for students and their families, said goodbye.  Today's parents stick around for days!

St. Lawrence University

I was alone in a sea of students, all wearing red beanies with a placard around our necks with our name and where we came from.  We were all sizing each other up, wondering with whom to make friends or to eat with.  Those you met in the beginning of the week might be a totally different crowd by the end of Orientation week.  We did group activities, sang college songs, were entertained and prepared to become real college students.  The first night I was there, there was a freshman dance and, being naturally outgoing, I met loads of other students.  I, coming from a public school, for the first time, met kids from private academies who came from wealthy areas.  Occasionally, I'd get a question like "Where did you prep?" and "Where do you summer?".  This was an eye-opener for me but we were all in the same boat and the "walls" between us did not last long.

Look what I found in the basement!!!

My freshman class looking like "what's happened to my life???" See if you can find Waldo...I mean me

We came from all over.  There was Davis from the Philippines who had never seen snow in his life.  On the first snowfall, he ran outside in his bathing suit and rolled around in the snow.  Then there was Ian Feller from Canada.  The first week, I knocked on his door and it was answered by a very pretty young woman, his sister...turns out she was Miss Canada!  Many of these kids from that year flunked out.  The President told us at our first assemblage that in four years, the person on our right and on our left "wouldn't be there".  He was right.

The dorm was noisy that week.  Music was blasting from "record players", particularly the songs of Peter, Paul and Mary.  There was a group who constantly played floor hockey in the hallway.  One student, John Irving, took it upon himself to be the "sports announcer" and do a commentary on each play!  St. Lawrence had one of the best ice hockey teams in the country so this sport trickled down where everyone wanted to be a hockey player!  I remember John eventually flunked out as his "announcing" seemed to take precedence over his studies.  Ironically many years later when we moved to Rochester, NY,  I happened to turn on the radio to listen to a sportscast of our our local hockey team, the Rochester Americans.  I was taken with sudden familiarity when I heard..."This is John Irving, the voice of the Amerks, calling tonight's plays"!!!

Back to my ground floor room.  I had fallen in with a group of great guys down the hall, some of whom are still my friends today.  Once school started, I began to study in my room which had a window out onto the courtyard.  The window screen had a big hole in it and, as it was still warm weather, I kept the curtain closed at night to keep out the bugs that would be attracted by light.  One night, I was studying but was distracted by a scratching sound at the screen.  I went to the window and pulled the curtain aside and, suddenly, there was an Adirondack brown bear pushing its way into the window and making growling sounds.  Fear overcame me as I darted out of the room to seek out some help.  As I got further down the hall, I passed a room where there was hilarious laughter behind the closed door.  I slowly opened it a crack and saw all my buddies literally rolling on the floor on which lay a full-sized brown bear rug, head, teeth and all!  We all had a good laugh.

My Freshman dorm...the "bear" entered the first window to the left of the portico!

Once the academics started and the weather hardened and the snow began to fall, I started to miss home and was not sure I wanted to stay.  The months before Thanksgiving are always difficult for a new college student as it's a period of adjustment and the development of independence.  Unlike today, we had no cell phones or internet...only snail mail and collect phone calls home.  Fortunately, I was helped by a dorm counselor who convinced me that things would get better as they definitely did.  Having been a college physician for the last five years, I think things have worsened today with more pressure, stress, and helicopter parents, where every decision has to be run through an immediate phone call or text to Mom or Dad.  The cell phone has been referred to a the longest umbilical cord in the world!  Many come to college on anti-depressives, anxiolytics and ADHD medications but without the coping skills needed to succeed.

A beautiful winter day on campus

Probably the most frightening thing that freshman year was not the barrage of prelims (exams) in little blue books or the suddenness of being on one's own and left to my own devices...that paled in comparison to those fateful 13 October days of fear that we remember as the Cuban Missile Crisis.  I remember sitting around the one television in the Student Center with hundreds of my classmates, thinking this could be it, the nuclear holocaust we had all prepared for, ducking and covering under our school desks as children.  It was that close to happening.  Fortunately, reason prevailed and the Soviets withdrew their missiles from Cuban soil.  Kennedy and Khruschev had reasoned it out as we all collectively took a sigh of relief.  Only two years ago, I stood on the Malecon in Havana and took a photo of a Cuban air raid bunker...they must have been thinking the same thing.  Unfortunately, things in the world haven't changed and the threat lives on.

Air Raid Bunker on the Malecon, Havana

The rest of that year went relatively smoothly other than the ups and downs of grades, social life and getting used to being in college.  The one activity I really loved was singing in the Laurentian Singers, the premier singing group on campus, directed by the inimitable Richard Gilbert.  We tackled difficult works like Poulenc's Messe as well as the beauty of Randall Thompson's Alleluia and Frostiana ("Choose Something Like a Star).  I have returned several times for their reunions, singing with the Singers of today...however, the years have changed my voice from second tenor to baritone!  While we toured back then around the eastern and midwest US, they now go all over the world.
After hearing their music all year, we were rewarded with Peter, Paul and Mary finally coming to campus in May and tickets were a whopping $1.50!!!  These were all the songs that were integral to our first year in college.  "If I Had a Hammer..." and more.   June came and it was home for a well-deserved summer break.

"Michael, row your boat ashore..."