Here are some vignettes sent to Jack Dold as he writes Gael Memories, 1957-1961.
Initiation week ranks as my first and most dreadful recollection of becoming a Gael. I had been a Brothers’ boy for some time already, having attended St. Mary’s High School in Albany for four years. I probably thought moving up to college with the Brothers would be a piece of cake. No one had warned me about the hazing days. I think what kept me going, certainly as I fought to keep my mouth, nose and eyes free of mud during the mud fight that I don’t think anyone won, was the thought that I could be the hazer the next year.
I remember though how I learned one very important lesson: know the enemy. I got involved with one bunch of rebels, which included a few guys who unfortunately didn’t make it past the freshman year. I went along with the plans that the rebel frosh dreamed up to retaliate against the sophomores. However, as one platoon of us moved along the first floor of Augustine to recruit more conspirators in their rooms, we walked into a cell with a bunch of guys sitting on the bunk beds, on the window sills, and the first conspirators into the room started blabbing about our big counter offensive. Little did we know that a couple sophomores were playing good guys and were chewing the fat with the freshmen in that room. As you can guess, we were caught red-handed and became marked men for the rest of the period of harassment. Somewhere I still have that blue paddle that I earned the hard way, bent over. — Armando Rendón
That first year at SMC changed my life. I’d not been very adventurous during high school, even at St. Mary’s High, which had more than its share of goof-offs. Besides my parents had built a GI-loan tract home out in San Leandro in about summer 1959 so I had to commute from there to Albany by bus for about the last year and a half of high school—which didn’t allow for much chumming with the guys after school—probably just as well.
At any rate, being sort of on my own and ganging up with some of the crazies among the freshman class that year, I ventured forth on stunts I never would have dreamed of. A group of us, which included Bill Schlater, Dick Ramelot, Tim O’Keefe and others, spent lots of time dreaming up what we considered wild outings on weekends. I remember us driving over to the Cow Palace in San Francisco and crashing the National Rodeo Contest or whatever it was called—twice! None of us, even though I’m from Texas, had any interest in rodeos—it was just the idea of getting in for free that tempted us. Anyone reminded of St. Augustine and his pear trees?
Another time we drove down to Monterey to crash the jazz festival—it was easy. We spent most of the day and evening avoiding ticket checkers while we heard top jazz greats of the day. I have to admit I knew very little about jazz at the time so I only vaguely recall listening to the musicians and singers. Of course, since that day I’ve become a lover of jazz. A sidenote: I learned years later from my wife, Helen, that she had attended the festival that same weekend with classmates from College of Notre Dame in Belmont! — Armando Rendón
My sole ambition for attending college was to become a journalist. I had known that, I believe, since I was a kid in San Antonio. In spite of the fact that my family wanted me to become an engineer, my passion was for words: reading, writing, collecting books. At St. Mary’s High, I had worked on the school newspaper and volunteered in the library. As a freshman at St. Mary’s, I joined the Collegian staff right away and labored over its pages, first as a general reporter and columnist, then as editor in my junior year.
Every two weeks of the semester, following age-long tradition, my motley crew would gather in a backroom area where the Academic Affairs office is now, and edit stories about school politics, social events, sports, editorial columns and so on. In my stint as editor, I recall we would start off with maybe 7 or 8 guys and end up with 3 or 4 along with myself, to do a mockup of all the pages for the edition. Quite often, the “op-ed” writers would also attend as they finished up their columns. I had writers such as Harvey Mead, Bob Hass, Denis Kelly and John Veglia. Harvey had a column titled, La Lapin, always good reading. Veglia composed mad but entertaining rantings. Kelly already showed a flair for the classical. I wrote a column titled, The Hell Box—the name stood for the crate in which linotypists would throw bad lines of type as they set “hot type” using molten lead; the scraps would be melted down for re-use. Bob Hass was news editor and Dick Woods was sports editor. Pat Boylan, a soph or frosh kid, did some weird cartoons.
Anyway, our moderator was Mr. Tom Twomey, the assistant to the Dean, who fancied shaving in such a way that he always left a prominent fringe of hair above the cheeks as if he had run out of time to shave. He was a most pleasant fellow right out of a Charles Dickens novel and as I recall a stickler for detail on the job and with the Collegian. However, we staffers had one ultimate goal as we plotted out the pages and that was to write headlines and even text that conveyed subtle meanings which we hoped would slip past the censorious eye of Mr. Twomey. Perhaps we did mostly, but perhaps it was due to Mr. Twomey letting us think we had gotten away with a double entendre in a headline just to appease our boyish, prankish natures. After all, he would have been exposing a slant toward the risqué and lewd, quite unbecoming his portly self. We were so naive at the time to think that he actually cared as long as we weren’t outright obscene or stupid—I think he was more concerned about grammar.
On the days/nights that we “put the paper to bed” as we newspaper types put it, we often got hungry on about midnight. One of the secrets that had been passed on from editor to editor was how to maneuver through the back hallways to reach the Oliver Hall kitchen and food lockers. We would stock up on desserts mainly, which seemed easiest to purloin, but then perhaps over the years a canny pact had been forged between Brother Louis, who ran the kitchen and us poor starving students. Café Louis, in fact, is named in his honor as a long-suffering kitchen majordomo. — Armando Rendón
Another secret behind the job as editor-in-chief involved a complex and creative manipulating of the expenses related to carrying out my duties. Besides producing enough copy (text) to fill an eight-page edition every two weeks, I had to convey the mockup pages and text to the printer, the same company that printed the Daily Cal in Berkeley every day. An enticement for the staff was the promise of breakfast for those who plodded through the night alongside me. That usually meant about four of us driving down to Berkeley, through Caldecott tunnel and down Tunnel Road to the print shop on Oxford Street, just west of the campus to deliver the materials. Then we swung down University Avenue to Brennan’s or Edy’s, two of the few places in town that were open at all hours. The waitresses must have been glad to see us, even though we were still awake enough to be a bit rowdy but we ate like a horde of locusts unleashed on a crop of wheat—we helped boost profits for that day.
Here’s the funny (odd) part: I would total up the cost of the meal, mileage, and other assorted expenses onto a voucher, but always padded it here and there to assure that I earned maybe $15 for the total effort each fortnight. That kept me in extra cash for sundries, a trip over to Freddie’s in Lafayette for pizza, and cash to cover expenses for social outings. Because I didn’t own a car, I either had to borrow a car for the trip to Berkeley or have someone on the all-nighter staff that had one; I’d reimburse him for gas. All this expense account padding was fully condoned by Mr. Twomey and the finance office—no one ever questioned my vouchers as long as they stayed within a certain accepted amount.
What a weird setup. I don’t know if anyone else “worked” for the college under such circumstances, but I would be interested to know if anyone else filed padded expense reports for extra pocket change. The upshot, of course, is that I pulled all-nighters every two weeks for most of my first three years at the college—I think I earned every penny. Now, I hope that students who do work for the college these days at least get minimum wage. I figure if I divided what I cleared on my expense account in 1959-60 by the hours I put in to get an edition out that I probably worked for 25 cents an hour. — Armando Rendón
Your reminisces of Max Berg triggered some memories for me. As a (at the time) science major I had no choice but to take German. Presumably the science texts we’d be researching in graduate school would be in German. I found Berg to be a tough grader as I was always surprised to get final grades lower than I felt I earned. It’s rough turning in your blue book after the final exam confident that you earned a B — only to find a grade of C on the report card mailed to your parents.
I’ll never forget his pointing his finger at us and mandating, Sprechen Sie nur auf deutch! (“Speak only in German!”) To which we’d respond “jah-wahl,” an Anglicized mispronunciation of jawohl (“Yes, indeed!”).
It was particularly frustrating to have many of our texts printed in the obsolete German script. Germany banned it in 1941 (accusing it of being “Jewish”) but, perhaps, the few German language books in our library antedated World War II. — Al Cattalini
Chemistry lab, which occupied freshman science majors two afternoons a week, has some vivid memories. Our chemistry professor, Dr. Jack Jennings, a broad, pompous fellow with a large moustache and double breasted suits, didn’t appear at the labs. Here oversight was assigned to Brother James, a rather simple brother who was in over his head in chemistry lab, speech class (his official teaching assignment), and even in hall monitor duty which thankfully the administration hadn’t thought of. Attendance was verified by a sign-in sheet. Consistently signing in for each lab was one Fidel Castro, then a freedom fighter in Cuban jungles. I don’t think Brother James knew who he was — or that he wasn’t in our class.
I remember impressing Brother James with one experiment we performed. The task that day was to create soap by treating large slabs of butchered fat, supplied by our dining hall, with lye (sodium hydroxide). We smuggled in a bar of Ivory soap and melted it into our mixture. Brother James was quite impressed as our product somewhat resembled soap, especially in aroma. — Al Cattalini
Planning and executing pranks were a major activity in the dorms. My favorite was the beetle in the laundry room. Paul Desrochers was the proud owner of a Volkswagen beetle which he treated as if it were his firstborn son. He regularly washed, waxed, and dusted it and each night, before bedtime, he would go out to the parking lot to check on it (and probably to tell it goodnight). He went home to San Bernardino one weekend, leaving the car unattended in the lot. The team sprang into action. About a dozen classmates bodily lifted the car, carried it through the parking lot, and down the stairs to the Mitty Hall patio. From there it was carefully maneuvered into the Mitty Hall laundry room. It fit between the washers on one wall and the dryers on the other with just inches to spare. Then we waited.
Paul returned to campus Sunday evening and, of course, his first duty was to visit his car and tell it goodnight. What? It was gone! Paul was beside himself and we all tried to restrain our laughter. Finally Paul was sent to the laundry room on some pretext and much laughter ensued. Lugging the car back to the parking lot wasn’t as much fun, but we did that as well. — Al Cattalini
The Christmas dance in our senior year evokes some pleasant memories. The dance was held in a hall on Columbus Avenue in San Francisco’s North Beach. The gimmick for the evening was the presentation by Santa Claus (played by Bob Pola) of a josh gift to each senior in attendance. But we realized that there was no gift for Santa. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, or maybe alcohol, I traipsed down the street to Bimbo’s 365 Club and asked to see the manager. Nattily dressed in my Ivy League suit (remember those slim ties?) I explained that I was from St. Mary’s College and that I wanted to borrow a chorus girl for a few minutes. The manager was sympathetic, agreed to my request, said she’d be available at the next intermission, and had me wait in the chorus girls’ dressing room. That was fun! Soon I was walking up Columbus Avenue escorting a scantily clad dancer wrapped in a coat. We arrived as Santa was distributing presents and announced, “Santa, here is a gift for you!” The gift threw off her coat, leapt onto Bob’s lap, gave him a hug and a smooch, and brought the house down. — Al Cattalini
The phone booth stuffing has been told, retold, and embellished over the years and I’m sure some details are cloudy or forgotten. It all got revived when the College celebrated the 50th anniversary of the event on March 25, 2009. For more on this event, including photos, click here.
Here’s what I know. We were sophomores living in Aquinas Hall and learned of some folks (college students, probably) stuffing themselves into a phone booth and claiming a world record. Someone said, “We can top that.” And soon dozens of us (I was one of them) crammed ourselves into the phone booth on the first floor of Aquinas. As you’ll recall, this was more like a closet and somewhat larger than a standard “phone booth.” Well, we topped the record and someone called the Oakland Tribune to tout the fact. It must have been a slow news day because the Tribune said they’d like to come out the next day to photograph the event.
Somehow it was decided that a regulation phone booth would be used and one was obtained from a manufacturer in the East Bay. The borrowed booth was set up in the chapel quad to provide a great background for the photo shoot. Meanwhile the team of players was revised. We scoured the campus for the smallest students we could find. I was kicked off the team for being too tall. Paul Desrochers and the Dirito brothers were definitely on the team and in the booth. Paul’s head shows in the famous photo. He is perhaps the only participant clearly recognizable.
A freelance photographer with connections to Life magazine showed up and took the famous photo . It was published in Life and ended up being included in a Life anthology as one of the 100 most famous photos of the 20th Century (if I remember the distinction correctly). The photographer attended the 2009 reenactment; I chatted with him.
I've heard Paul Kunny tell the story of how he conceived and orchestrated the event. He says he learned of a record-claiming phone booth stuffing which occurred in South Africa, decided we could do better, and organized the Aquinas event and the follow-on photo op. — Al Cattalini
Membership in the Dante Club was purported to be limited to students of Italian descent, but this rule seems to have been honored in the breech. We met in a seminar room on the second floor of Dante Hall; the one that had a large, marble bust of Dante. While our stated goal was to promote Italian culture the real attraction was free beer. Yes, this seemed to be the one place on campus where one could legally drink beer — beer that was provided free by the College administration. (I could never figure out why we didn’t drink wine, but I didn’t complain.) Our moderator was Brother Louis, operator of the campus dining facilities, and, as such, he had total access to all the foodstuffs and beverages. We also were served salami along with the beer. The club president our freshman year was Don Cariani whose family owned a local sausage company. So we always ate Cariani salami. The club traditionally sponsored an annual dance called the “Paisano Shuffle.” It didn’t always happen as I remember. There were stories about the event getting out of hand and not reflecting properly on College values. Something about alcohol. But I remember being involved (I later was club president) in a Paisano Shuffle at the Brazilian Room in Tilden Park. Fun! — Al Cattalini
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