The+Class+of+'70+Remembers....

The Class of '70 Remembers  To add your memories email your   verses to kaustin9ap@gmail.com   and they will be included in our   enduring memories. The Class of ’70 Remembers Why do I remember 45 years ago, better than last month? People, Places, Events, Emotions, Conversations, Ideas somehow endure…. I remember: Wondering, who will I meet, arriving at Sage Hall, as my whole family brought me to this famous, yet unknown, place… Ladybird, at Convocation with the Secret Service guarding her and taking pictures of those who held placards… Being glad I had been a busboy, until they gave me more tables then anyone else in the freshman-dining hall… Realizing, finally, that just about everyone was as frightened as I was… Being amazed, to this day, that all those intelligent, talented, interesting, inspiring people were my classmates and that they hadn’t sent me home yet…. We were concerned James Taylor would not survive his tormented dreams, and forever thankful, that he did… Seeing the //Graduate// at the College Cinema on Spring Street and thinking how cool it was to be at Williams…. The profanity that sailed across the quad between Sage and Williams Halls with Dean Hyde and his mother living just yards away… Not realizing then that the people they called “great” like Rudolf, Graver, Piper, Little, Gaudino, Hunt, Mehlin, DeWitt, Stoddard and so many others, really were… You really could get the best roast beef sandwiches in the world at 2:30 in the morning, at Bucky’s, on the back road, returning from Saratoga…. Coach Samuelson explaining during the required swim test, that he was the “tester” and we were the “testees”, while cautioning us to avoid a “cranial perch” on the bottom of the pool… Clarence Chaffee, even then well into his 60’s, “handing me my lunch” on the squash courts day after day… My shock at realizing Strathairn, the athlete, was the same guy I saw starring in Camelot in the Adams Memorial Theatre…. Even while drunk, Little Eva, was a musical genius when singing “Locomotion” at a house party… Sam and Dave, The Temptations, the Supremes, and Phil-in-LA-of-Soul defined “soul” far better than Religion 401…. H. Ganze Little III, actually customized explanations of concepts and ideas for each individual student in his classes, still the best teacher I ever met…. Frank Navarro, Head Football Coach, admitting to an interviewer, that what was most different about coaching at Williams was that all his players were smarter than he was…. Realizing that Art 101 with Whit Stoddard was not a required course but a privilege… We actually had maids to clean our rooms and Sunday brunches that went on forever… While we had no IPods to carry our music wherever we went, our music stays with us, and most of the world, to this day… Woodstock really happened. I can prove it. I was there…. Thinking senior year, would there come a time, far in the future, when I would want Williams so badly, for my children and grandchildren… The best way to elect all your roommates House Officers is to hold a mixer for the House with Sage girls…. When they say you must pass a Division III course, they really mean it…. Missing the foreign language exemption by one point on the SAT A.P. exam was really stupid…. Paul Simon writing the best poetry of our generation…. The guys whose dates made them sleep out on the living room couches the night “hours” were abolished…. Alsop’s didn’t care how old the House Treasurers were. We could buy booze for 20-year old upper classmen…. We searched for “Elaine” at Skidmore, Smith, Holyoke, Green Mountain and Vassar. We searched for “Mrs. Robinson” at the Williams Inn…. The roommate that was “so cute” a house at Mt. Holyoke was “renamed” for him… We actually bought buttons that read, “Sidney eats Chit!”… Seeing Mt. Hope Farm for the first time, and thinking the stables was the mansion… Having a great bunch of roommates who let me “be goalie” the first time I touched a lacrosse stick…. We thought two friends, one a southerner, the other, Afro-American, were about to kill each other during a “civil rights debate,” until they realized their beer cups were empty, put their arms around each others shoulders, and headed for the keg… My favorite cheer at football games: “Retard them, retard them, make them relinquish the ball!”…. Wondering why I had slept at night all those years, when I could have stayed up all night in bull sessions…. Whales tails, one not in, but out, whales tails three, nah who four, nah who you, nah who two…. Junior year, when the ladies arrived on campus, they were still fascinating and beautiful, but now they were brilliant too…. The Hopkins Hall seizure, campus wide discussions, the birth of the Afro-American Society, facing the past and the future in the present… The draft lottery, with a lot of beer, to celebrate, or, commiserate…. The mountains, the mountains, oh, those beautiful mountains… Road trips, fueled by hope, hormones, excitement, and desperation…. Weekend dates we tried to stretch into relationships, and, sometimes, succeeded… Thursday night sherry hours, with equal interest in the Bristol Crème and the faculty guests… Mastering all the drinking games while waiting, sober, to carry your roommates home… Papers and tests, more and more reading, procrastination filling all-nighters night after night… Greylock, Pine Cobble, Sheep Hill, Green River, Petersburg Pass…. Barely surviving the rigor of studies, again and again, slowly the seeds of confidence were sown… Dinners at the “6 House” when parents of roommates were in town… C & A Pizza and Friendly’s Fribbles and Big Beefs in North Adams… Learning, not things, nor content, nor facts, nor data, but learning how to question and how to learn… Preparing for career, for grad school, for travel, for war… Proving you can do 360’s, on snow covered roads, at night, on your way back from Smith… The student strike when we were encouraged to engage, rather than enrage, our parents’ generation… That girl from Bennington with the strange way to earn money for Christmas gifts… The beginning of the end of Viet Nam… Realizing that the keg was “required equipment” at Rugby matches… The fear of leaving the Purple Valley that had quietly, secretly, forever, become our common home… John Lindsay greeting us at graduation with the words of Spiro Agnew and sending us off to face our futures… The classmate that “tried out” your squash racquet, then refused to buy it, because it had blood on it, from him hitting you in the head with it… In the midst of all the beauty, and challenge, and growth, the people, the still so wonderful people… Now, after friends and loves, and families, and careers, and hopes and dreams both achieved and lost, and, oh so many years, I still remember… Williams.

How do you remember Williams?