Chapter 27: A Very Important Date

Two Mondays after Thanksgiving, Marty Adrianopolis showed up knocking on my door in Hall Hall. He had in his hand a large envelope in a creamy parchment sort of paper, and he told me to open it while he stood there. Inside it was a formal request to pledge Kegs, also done on the fancy paper. I read it over and asked, “What do I do now?”

“Are you accepting?”

I nodded. “Yeah, sure.”

“That’s good enough for me. Friday we’ll have the induction, so make sure you’re around for that,” he replied. We shook hands and he headed out.

That Friday night the incoming pledges assembled in the basement, dressed in suits, while the brethren, dressed in black robes, swore us in as pledges. Then we were given our Pledge Books and we went upstairs, where we took off our coats and ties and got drunk.

Pledges had to learn all sorts of strange shit, like the frat’s colors (magenta and gold), history (founded at Amherst College, otherwise known as the Oracle), and even the secret alphabet, a collection of stick figures. A century ago, those clowns at Amherst - excuse me, the Oracle - had way too much time on their hands! We were also taught proper attitudes for proper pledges, namely utter subservience to higher forms of life, like bacteria and viruses. For instance, when the pay phone in the lobby rang, it was a pledge who had to answer, even if he was upstairs in the bathroom, and even if a brother was sitting in a chair underneath the phone. Likewise, pledges were assigned duties helping in the kitchen and around the house.

Now, looking back, I can explain some of what was happening at the time. The Sunday after Thanksgiving, a week after the vacation, Kegs had a house meeting. These were held once a month and were supersecret burn-before-reading sorts of affairs. All non-brethren were thrown out onto the street. It was time to select pledges.

House meetings were brothers only. They were held either in the basement (dark, foreboding, formal) or in the formal room, which was a lot more comfortable. You only did basement meetings during the secret ceremonies. Upstairs in the formal room there were couches along all the walls and carpet to sprawl out on.

Selecting pledges was like the scene in Animal House, only with a few twists thrown in. They didn’t have a projector with slides, but they did have Polaroids taken at parties that could be passed around. The procedure was that the Rush Chairman would have a list of prospects, and one by one, would propose a name. Often there would be a discussion on the guy, but not always. Occasionally comments such as “We need the dues!” would be heard. Then they would pass the box around. The box was a clunky gizmo with a tray of white and black balls in it. You would reach in and grab a ball, and then drop the ball through a hole into the box. The whole thing was constructed so that nobody else could see what color ball you were grabbing. The box was then passed to the next brother. Generally only sophomores and juniors would vote, since they were the guys who would have to live with their choices. Traditionally seniors would allow the box to pass by, although technically they had the right to vote. A white ball signified acceptance; a black ball signified decline. It had to be unanimous. A single black ball killed the prospect.

You could almost always figure out who was going to vote yea or nay, but not always. Sometimes the most promising candidates would get a single mysterious black ball and be out. Sometimes the biggest assholes would get in. If you went back in history, for many years the national Kappa Gamma Sigma organization had a rigid and written ‘no Blacks or Jews’ policy, which wasn’t formally revised until a lawsuit in the Sixties changed it. This was especially bizarre since during the Forties and Fifties the RPI chapter was the Cuban house, where all the rich expatriate Cuban students lived. Even so, I knew of at least one current resident who explicitly stated he’d never vote to allow a nigger to move in - and he was a Jew! Go figure.

After the selection of candidates, the Rush Chairman is out of a job, and a Pledgemaster is selected. His job is to nurture and train the incoming pledges so that they can assume their rightful position as future masters of the universe, or something like that. Generally, this was a simple job. He made sure they showed up on time, knew the rules, and didn’t fuck up too egregiously.

A second vote was held before the formal induction ceremony in the spring as a full brother. Theoretically, you weren’t a brother yet, but you really had to fuck up to get thrown out at this point. In four years, I only saw one case where a pledge was deemed so screwed up that his invitation was rescinded after he pledged. Likewise, once you were a full brother, it was next to impossible to vote you out, requiring a unanimous vote to do so. Again, I only saw this once in four years, and even then the hose job wasn’t formally voted out; a group of brothers met with the asshole and told him he was not being invited back to live in the house the next year, and that if he pushed it, a vote would be forthcoming. He chose to move out.

We ended up with a large class of pledges, fifteen in all:

Bruno Cowling - a civil engineer in ROTC. He was from Maine and talked funny, like everybody else from Maine. Ay-yuh!

Joe Bradley - a math major like myself, in ROTC. More about him later.

Leo Coglan - an aeronautic engineer in Navy ROTC. Leo had several misfortunes. For one thing he took a black girl out on a date (quite unusual in 1974, when it happened) and got all sorts of shit over that (“Once you go black, you never go back!” and “You’re not a man until you’ve split a black oak!”) During the final stage of pledgehood, during Hell Week, we were renamed Neos, for Neophytes, and Leo became known forever afterwards as Leo the Neo.

Tony Defrancisco - an electrical engineer. Tony was 6’3” tall, 275 pounds, shaped like a pear, and had a pockmarked face. He was probably the ugliest human being on the planet. Dumbest, too. It took him six years to graduate. Nicknamed ‘The Cisco Kid.’

Joe Brown - a cocky and arrogant pre-med biology major. Got caught cheating in organic chem lab when synthesizing caffeine, after he ground up some No-Doz and submitted it. Still graduated and went to medical school - in Guadalajara!

Bill Pabst - electrical engineer, nicknamed ‘Pigpen’ after his room condition.

Bill Schlitz - electrical engineer. Pabst and Schlitz became best friends and roomed together. Every Christmas during gag gift giving, Schlitz would get a bottle of Pabst beer and Pabst would get a bottle of Schlitz beer.

Jack Dawson - mechanical engineer. Had an expensive stereo system and held himself out to be an expert on all things audio, even though he was deaf in his left ear.

Barry Lewis - chemistry major. Turned out to be a major league asshole, but he was quiet, and we all just ignored him when he was being a dork.

Homer Simpson - yes, that was his name, but this was long before the show ever got on TV. Homer was a computer science major. He was also a concert pianist. He turned down a full scholarship to Juilliard to accept a full scholarship to RPI. As soon as he joined the frat, the brothers went out and bought an upright piano for the house, and he played all sorts of stuff for us. He had a photographic memory for music.

Andy Kowalchuk - civil engineer and doper supreme. Flunked out at the end of sophomore year because he was always stoned and never went to class.

Bill Keswick - chemistry major. Definite doper, he ran a hash oil still sophomore and junior years. Made some really amazing stuff! You would see colors unknown after smoking pot laced with his hash oil.

Jerry Modanowicz - electrical engineer and the only guy ever kicked out of the frat that I ever heard of. At the end of the second semester of our sophomore year, a stray puppy wandered into the back yard and was informally adopted by the brothers. Jerry took offense at the puppy poop in the backyard and a few days later drove the puppy, now named Jefferson (after Jefferson Starship, the band), to the pound. When the brothers heard about this, two delegations were formed. One went out and tried to rescue Jefferson, but he’d already been put to sleep; the other told Jerry his presence was no longer required.

Harry Haroldson - civil engineer, Air Force ROTC. Eminently forgettable. Total zero.

Yours truly!

All in all, it was an eclectic group. One major change was in the ROTC makeup. For a number of years, Kegs had been a ROTC house, and roughly two-thirds of the brothers were in ROTC. By 1973 it was obvious the Viet Nam War was over, and nobody needed to hide at college from their draft boards. My pledge class was only one-third ROTC, and we were the last to join for a long time. It was very disconcerting to some of the upperclassmen.

We were also assigned our Big Brothers, a mentor among the upper classmen who was assigned to ease us into the frat. Mine was Marty Adrianopolis. I think he volunteered to be my big brother, since he had effectively left home like I had. His parents were divorced, his father was long out of the picture, and his mother remarried a few years ago to an asshole Marty couldn’t stand. He knew some of what I was going through. He never went home either.

The semester ended with a final round of F-Tests for my fellow pledges, and finals for everyone, and then most people went home for a few weeks. I ended up sleeping at Kegs in my sleeping bag on a couch, since the dorms and dining hall were completely shut down. I didn’t bother driving back home. They mailed me presents and I returned the favor. Four guys stayed there with me, and I acted as cook. For Christmas I did a ham with horseradish and mustard glaze, mashed potatoes, asparagus with Hollandaise sauce, rolls, and brownies for dessert. It was suggested that next year I try to get in the Sunday rotation for cooking. We had a house mother cook for us Monday through Saturday, at least for lunch and dinner, but Sundays we had to fend for ourselves. Cooks got paid ten bucks and rotated among three or four guys who knew what they were doing in the kitchen. One of them was Ricky Holloway, he of the dope smoking hall of fame.

I also went over to the school infirmary and got the name of an optometrist. I knew this was going to happen. I started needing glasses by the end of fall semester, both this time and the last time. Before, I had mentioned it to my mother, and I had gotten the glasses back home. Now that wasn’t an option. Further, once I started at RPI, my dad had cut me out of his medical insurance and told me to get the student policy through the college. I was going to have to pay for my glasses out of pocket. I bought three pair, wire rimmed clear, aviators’ frame sunglasses very dark, and a pair of birth control glasses for the Army. These are hideously ugly black plastic framed glasses that are totally indestructible, but so catastrophically ugly that no soldier who wears them will ever have a chance of actually meeting with and talking to a girl.