Birmingham Southern College - Southern Accent Yearbook (Birmingham, AL)

Page 12 text:

' dnlakt Lyli . . . LymcLai and the CRAMMING FOR EXAMS — studying into the wee hours when the rest of the house is quiet and the pages blur. Drinking a huge amount of coffee and stuffing crackers to keep awake. Walking into class the next day with your hands full of blue books and sharpened pencils and filled fountain pens. Struggling through exams about muscles and nerves, try- ing to remember the causes of the Industrial Revolution, racking your brain for the ]iarts of the endoctrine system, wondering what reveil- er means. Walking out of exams with stiff fingers and an exhausted brain, stumbling to the bookstore in search of a coke. Then forget- ting all you studied, starting off on a new cycle cramming, studying into the wee hours, drinking a huge amount of coffee to keep awake. THAT QUAKING FEELING just before you open a letter signed Wyatt W. or Newman M. Wondering whether it will be good news or bad, too many cuts, too much money due, too ow erades. Rushing to set home before vour report comes in, and wondering if you ' ll get switches for Christmas if the grades arrive be- fore you do. Considering the meekness of the little letters that mean a quarter ' s work, hours cramming, pages of outside reading. Wishfully thinking it will be better next quarter. Opening vour report with fear, c losing it with trembling. WAITING FOR THE MAIL to be put up at 8 :30 and 2 :30. Peer- ing into Number 47 or 15 or 29 for a letter, a bill, or even a postcard. Hoping the box will be full of blue- stationery - morale-building epistles ; hoping it won ' t be filled with offi- cial - nerve- u psetting letters begin- ning From the President of the United States, greetings. You have been selected. . . Getting impatient when Lee is the least bit late with the mail, waiting for a letter from home or girl or somebody.

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and .=Jjate6 . . . ike =JJ)i orm. and nt ravnvi a WALKING UP TO ANDREWS HALL after an evening , where you can ' t look starry- eyed in a bunch of playful fraternity brothers. A l lace where midnight is early to bed and water l)attles are frequent occurrences. Where Doc plays deaf when the furniture gets thrown around, and strikes and spares are made on tliird floor. A place where life is raw and rough, and you have to be able to take it. A place that is a preview to life in an army bar- racks. THE SWIMMING POOL. Coach Ben teaching frightened-but - not - admitting - it stu- dents how to keep afloat. The pool itself stretching its long green cool length before you as you gather courage to jacknige in. Boys sing- ing in the locker rooms, voices yelling at Henry for tennis rackets and golf clubs, the V-T Rock- ettes training out in Alunger Bowl, the shorts- and-sweat-shirt crowd coming in from track practice or a tennis game. This is the $300,000 gym that you helped build. It is the brick and mortar symbol of muscles and strength and energy and skill. FOOTBALL GAMES, with frat men block- ing frat men, the huddles with their 15 rah ' s when the game ' s over, coeds yelling on the side- lines for a man who ' s a hero if he makes a touchdown against the KA ' s. Basketball, with the thrill of putting one in ; volley ball, when you have to remember to set up ; horseshoe and archery tournaments, ping pong and ten- nis — everybody playing all over the gym and all over the Bowl Everybody being Intram- urally inclined. h . .

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unce6 omen an jm omen THE FRATERNITY LEADOUT, the lit- tle heart-stopping moment when you and your girl have to walk out alone into the lights. The thrill of seeing the nicest, prettiest, cutest girl you know wearing the flowers you sent her and dancing first and last no-breaks with you. Hunting for the darkest corner in the gym for sentimental ])ieces, jitterbugging on Kincaid ' s fast ones. The swirl of net and satin and taf- feta skirts, the smell of gardenias and roses and Chanel No. 5. Banquets in the Greensboro Room, intermission parties in the cokes-for-a- dime bookstore, breakfasts with eggs and bacon. And then, 2 :00 a.m., and nothing but the sound of the music and the smell of the eggs left for memories. AND PERHAPS what you will miss most of all — the women. The girls who wear your pins on their blue sweaters. The girls who cried when you left, who laughed when you got your first furlough. These are the girls you left be- hind you. There are the ones who ' ll wait for you and the wings and the house with the pick- et fence around it. There are others who were having fun flirting w-ith you and will hand your heart back all unharmed. There are the sweet girls who stroll about the campus arm in arm, the studious ones who haunt the library rain or shine, the cute girls who ' ve carved their names on bookstore benches, the sophisticated girls who keep one foot under a bridge table eternal- ly. These are the girls you have left behind you. They and the Hill and home are what vou will return to when the long night is over and the firing has ceased and the battle is done.