Bruce Berk Remembers

1966:  Early days in cottage one:

In retrospect it is easy to see why we had classes and sports on Saturdays.  The school needed to keep boys as busy as possible so that they would cause as little mischief as possible.  So true.

My earliest freshmen memories were about us being likeable idiots.  Early in the fall we found a pipe outside our third floor bathroom.  Someone dropped a coke can down it, and the sound seemed awesome.  We dropped more and more.  Not too much later we found that the plumbing within the cottage had all gone to hell.  Soon after that or before, we were looking out towards the football field and saw a neat, red convertible (with its top down) parked below us and not too far away.  Sooo, we took turns seeing who go throw chalk into the seat of the car, and by the by scratched up much of the car with our misses.

Hal McCann’s immortal line when we had done something else wrong again!  “Tobler [David] you break that and I will break you!”   And Mr. McCann had the paddle to back it up.  Can you imagine today – feel so sorry for the 21st youth.  Back in 1966 I think we saw being paddled as a bit of an honor.  Fourteen year old boys.

In the winter we learned a new pastime – snowball fights.  Many nights after dinner and before study hall, we went out hunting for sophomores.  We wore our ski hats over our ears since in our parlance, a shot only counted if it was a headshot.  “Hmmmmmm,” some of you might say, but there is a rest of the story.  After the first significant snowfall, I was getting ready to leave West Hall and remember a bunch of kids standing around the doors.  I left anyways.  Within moments, I was being pummelled by snowballs – all thrown by sophomores – as I tried to get past them to cottage one.  After they totally destroyed me they moved on to their next set of freshman meat.  Night time snowball fights were payback.

Northfield

Really, WHAT did we know about girls?  Very little, and I remember the first mixer or at least this girl at the first mixer so was so cute even with her braces.  Love at first sight, but I am not telling.

Remember Vitz and Jenny Porter being the cool cool couple

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