I'll Never Let Her Out of My Sight

Boulder, Colorado - September, 1968

“What ever you do, don’t sign up for Friday afternoon classes.”  That piece of advice was the first thing out of their mouths.  Bruce had heard it maybe a dozen times since he first entered the SAE house a couple of weeks ago.

Bruce was a little apprehensive.  Being a transferred SAE he didn’t exactly know what to do.  What was the best way to announce his presence? Did he need to register or announce his intentions somehow?  Call someone? File some sort of application with the Sigma Alpha Epsilon national office?  Follow some sort of procedure.  Instead, due to lack of time and more pressing matters, Bruce decided to walk up to the SAE house, introduce himself and let it all take care of itself.

One afternoon he got up his nerve and just wandered up to the house.  Bruce decided he would introduce himself to the first guy he ran into as he walked through the door.  “Cool.  Where are you from?” said Bob Carley, who was, in fact, that first guy. The first thing Bruce noticed is that Bob Carley would never be confused with his counterpart in Miami.  Bob had on a pair of blue jeans that were ripped on both knees.  Below the left back pocket of his jeans was an additional tear, revealing a glimpse of his red plaid boxer shorts.  Bob sported a white t-shirt with a cartoon eagle on the chest with its wing’s spread and its long tongue hanging out of its mouth.    Above the cartoon was the phrase “Boulder Eating Club” spelled out in an arch above the bird – leaving little to the imagination as to what this club was all about.  On his feet, a pair of blue washed out canvas Keds sneakers with white rubber sloes, which, Bruce was to learn, identified him as a “California kid.” 

The contrast with Bruce’s former SAE’s in Miami was startling. The SAE dress code in Miami was meticulous, well conceived and strictly adhered to.  The preferred shirt, a blue button down, long sleeve, oxford shirt.  The Pants - pale yellow slacks with cuffs with no pleats. The Shoes were critical.  Broken-in (never new), Bass Weejun, loafers. The color was brown yet they had to be polished to a high shine with KeeWee Cordovan polish. And most importantly - No socks.  Absolutely, never socks – No socks.

If a formal occasion you would wear a navy blue rep tie with a gold strip.  Never a sport coat or blazer.  That was the uniform.  Strictly adhered to.

“Gotta run,” Carley called out as he turned and ran, “I’m going to register for classes.  God luck, Bruce.   Hey, don’t sign up for any Friday afternoon classes,” he advised.  He ran down the slopping front lawn of the fraternity house and vaulted into a rusted out vintage white jeep that obviously not had a top on it in years.  He cranked it up, grinded the transmission into first gear with authority and drove off down 13^th street towards campus.  “This is gonna be different”, thought Bruce as he wandered into the house. 

Inside the door in the common room were a handful of guys lounging around shooting the breeze.  Bruce introduced himself and was greeted with the same casual acceptance.  Everyone seemed very glad that they had a new brother, even though they had not voted on him.  Very accepting on this new addition.  Bruce thought back to Miami where they would have been a tentative acknowledgment of a new person followed by behind the scenes conversation and evaluation.  It’s not that the kids in Miami were snobbish.  It was more that they worked hard to build an air of exclusivity at the fraternity. A collegiate country club.  You had to work your way in with a delicate balance of aloofness, conforming to the fraternity’s standards, friendliness along with a ability for sarcastic humor, and alcohol consumption. 

The first thing Bruce noticed was that Bob Carley’s outfit was not a uniform for the fraternity.  Everybody did their own thing.  The startling contrast was the dress code at the SAE house in Colorado there was no dress code.  One guy was dressed like a lumberjack – thick corduroy pants, T-shirt covered with an unbuttoned wool plaid shirt with seriously huge and worn hiking boots.  The guy next to him wore cowboy boots, with blue jeans and a purple SAE t-shirt.  A third guy looked like he was either headed to the gym or a nap with a gray sweatshirt and pants. The dress code here was no dress code.   It was something that simply didn’t occur to anyone.

At Colorado there seemed to be an attitude that anyone who made it to the Rockies to spend four years in Boulder was proof enough that you were cool. Attitudinally both fraternities were cool. CU SAE’s were nonchalant cool.  Miami SAE’s were chalant cool (if there were such a word as chalant?)

Within 15 minutes, in this new environment, Bruce felt at home.  There first question was, “You want a room in the house?”  Bruce replied that he was set up already.  One of Bruce’s good friends from home, with the unlikely name of Brick Devolgulare had also transferred to Colorado from Northern Michigan. They had agreed to room together and had rented an apartment off campus.  But Bruce thought, “How nice of these guys.  To offer to get me a room and they didn’t even know me.”  The easy conversation continued. In rapid succession Bruce learned that the fraternity’s weekly meetings were held on Monday nights, Bruce would be part of the rush team to evaluate the new freshmen and he should sign up for meals so he’d be around everyday.  He was asked what he was majoring in (business), if he had registered yet (No).  The guys that majored in business as well started outlining the best classes.  Real Estate 101 – A lock A, if you get Joe Bryant as the professor.  He’s funny, completely disorganized, either a little drunk or stoned most days and rumored to be a part time publisher of pornography.  The best part.  He never changes his tests.  We got them all in our test files.  You will Ace every test.  A layup.

Be sure to take any marketing with Dodds Buchanan you can get – He’s an easy B if you get to know him.  They also advised which to avoid like Business Law 350 with Joe McCarty. “Sign up for B-Law every semester but drop it immediately if he’s your professor.  The guy is a ball buster.  No way you will pull anything higher than a C and you’ll work your ass off for that. Bruce felt he was with the right group of guys.  These were good guys.  No pretense.  In it for a good time while dedicated to pulling good enough grades so they could stay in school, have a great time and still land a job once they graduated.  After the third time someone mentioned the Friday thing, Bruce finally asked, “Why no Friday afternoon classes?”  FAC was the answer.

FAC – Friday Afternoon Club.  FAC was not an organization.  It was a tradition, a recurring event, a state of mind, a living legend and one great idea.  Starting about 2 pm on Friday afternoon hordes of students would instinctively head for The Hill.  Tradition dictated that this was not a dating situation.  No one brought a date.  It was also perfectly acceptable for girls to walk into any of the bars on The Hill on Friday afternoon without a date.  In fact, it was expected.  There was also no real need for girls to go in a group.  Everyone just finished their last Friday class and headed for The Hill. “I’ll see you at FAC,” was the battle cry. The whole idea was to shake off the travails of the academic week, mix it up, meet new people and start the weekend without effecting Friday or Saturday night social schedule.  A freestanding opportunity to meet new people.  The Sink was the epicenter of FAC.  On Fridays the joint would be absolutely jammed with kids, drinking 3.2 beer and getting to know each other.  They probably didn’t sell five hamburgers between 2 and 6 pm, but boy the Coors flowed.

Fraternities and sororities made their own contribution to FAC an invention of their own called The Function.  A fraternity would schedule an open house on Friday afternoon at their fraternity house.  All students were welcome to come.  The key concept was the fraternity would formally extend an invitation to a sorority. Why go to a fraternity function when the Sink was packed with kids?  Two important reasons.  First, the beer was free at the fraternity.  Second, the invitation to the sorority would guarantee a large group of brand new talent would attend.  You see, attending a function or going to FAC was strictly optional, except for sorority pledges. Freshmen girls who had just pledged a sorority had to attend their designated function. Bruce was bowled over by the concept. Think about it.  A party to start the weekend, where dates were discouraged, with free beer and to top it all, the function would be loaded with the campus’ newest female arrivals, the pick of the sorority system.  Bruce committed right to never register for a Friday afternoon class, ever again.  

The next Friday, Bruce and his roommate, Brick, climbed up past The Hill up to the SAE house.  Bruce was excited because the SAE’s had invited the Kappas to the function.  The Kappas were a big sorority with a great national reputation.  He was sure that they would have a huge pledge class filled with great looking girls.  The day was warm, not a cloud in the sky – a picture perfect Colorado.  The mountains looked like movie set backdrop, so beautiful they looked unreal.  Man, heaven on earth for this boy from Illinois.

Bruce walked up to a couple of brothers he recognized.  They gave him a big hello.  Bruce introduced Brick and then asked the all important question.  “Where’s the beer?”  “The keg is downstairs.”  The two boys entered the house and found the stairs down to the basement where the kitchen and dinning room were.  The place was jammed full of kids.   They made their way over to the keg which had the tap wide open because there were so many kids looking to fill their cups that there was no reason to keep turning the tap on and off.  With the tap left wide open, people just stuck their cups under the open tap until it filled up, replaced by a new empty cup.

“Let’s get out of here and go out on the lawn,” Bruce said after their second beer was finished.  They filled there cups one more time then started to wedge and elbow there way back up the stairs.   By now there were even more kids making their way downstairs.  It was shoulder to shoulder, groups of kids headed both ways forming a huge traffic jam.  No one was headed anywhere.  Brick noticed and open window.  “Follow me.”  The two climbed up to the open window and one at a time squeezed their way out, jumping down to the lawn below, preventing their beers from spilling by passing them to each other.

They settled down to the lawn and looked around.  They were astonished but what greeted them.  In the 15 minutes they were down in the basement the place had filled up with people – mostly women – they were everywhere, talking, drinking beer.  The Function was in full swing.  “Ok, let’s me somebody.”

The two surveyed the lawn for a minute.  “How about those two?”  There were these two blonds sitting on the lawn.  Bruce’s roommate asked, “You want the one on the right or the one on the left?”   They were both beautiful girls.  It hardly mattered.  “I’ll take the one on the right,” Bruce said and they walked over to the girls.  They introduced themselves.

Immediately Bruce was struck by how pretty and nice this girl was.  Blond hair, medium length, held simply in place with a little gold barrette.  She had this cute little pug nose, sparkling green eyes and a perpetual warm smile.  Her name was Linda.  She said her last name but forgot it almost as soon as she said it.  It was short but he had never heard it before.  She was from New Orleans.  Bruce knew something of New Orleans since his older brother was a junior at Tulane and Bruce had gone down to New Orleans the year before to visit.  With that nice little start they chatted about The Royal Orleans and Preservation Hall.  Soon, however, the topic was exhausted.  Bruce started to panic about what to talk about.  Sitting there on the lawn he knew that he liked this girl.  She was so cute and so nice.  Bruce felt he had to keep the conversation going.   He wanted to make an impression and get a date with this cute New Orleans Kappa pledge.  But what to say.  At a loss suddenly words just came out of his mouth to end the silence.   “I just want you to know that my first daughter is going to be named Tyler.”  That slowed both of them down.  Sitting there on the lawn, Linda laughed a little laugh, looked down which made her hair fall in front of her eyes.  She smoothed her pale blue dress out with her hands and said, “Tyler, well, OK.  That’ s a nice name.  Fine with me if you want to name your baby Tyler.” Well, a little crazy but its a start.  That should leave an impression, hopefully a good one, he thought. 

Bruce’s roommate didn't seem to be doing quite as well.   It looked like they were ready to move on. "well, it was nice meeting you."  Bruce felt the need to make a move.  “Do you think you would you like maybe to go to nickel beer with me Monday night?”  “OK,” Linda said.  Every bar on The Hill served small plastic cups of beer on Monday night, which only cost a nickel each.  A perfect first date for a guy with Bruce’s limited finances.  Linda took a piece of paper out of her purse along with a pen, jotted a note and handed it to Bruce.  Bruce looked at it.  It said, “Linda Koch, Libby Hall.”  It also had a picture of a clown on it, with a round nose, pointed hat and a big clown’s collar.  Unusual thought Bruce, but not as unusual as opening a conversation by telling a perfect stranger what you were going to name your unborn female child. 

They all said goodbye as Linda and the other girl walked down the lawn.  “That girl will never go out with you,” said Brick.  “Why?” I asked.  “Because she’s nice.” True enough.  I had never had much success with pretty girls that were also nice.  “You got a point.  But I will tell you one thing.  If that girl will go out with me, I’ll never let her out of my sight.”