Bethany College - Bethanian Yearbook (Bethany, WV)

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things were still carried on, but the passage of time and the national emergency has relegated this quaint custom to the limbo of the past. We hope that the generations after the war know enough about the history of the college to hold the torch high once more. Men will be needed like the former student who was so overwhelmed with the beauty of this affair that he smoked-out his own mother and father after they had came to see him. In the olden days Bethany had a powerful football team. Even today you may read in the history of the team of some larger institution such as Army, Navy, or Lafayette, a mention of going back into the hills to play Bethany. This was before Bethany had adopted the idea of an institution for learning . Mustachioed brusiers from the hills would enroll every Saturday to bolster the team. There is the tale of one man who lived in town with a wife and several chil- dren who would knock off work every Saturday to play ball. Some of these muscle-bound crea- tures were dripping with the milk of human kindness. Not having to study, they had much time for good deeds. One had the habit of ris- ing early any snowy morning, going to the vill- age and shoveling all the sidewalks. But they were hard, bitter men who took losses like hem- lock. In the midst of one epic of brutality, the star of the game was taken out, or rather, asked to retire in place of another man. He objected to this somewhat strenuously, but just before he came off the field he went over to the water bucket and filled his mouth with water. The opposing team was lined up on the defense, and as he went off the field be bent low and ran along the line of scrimmage, venting his spleen on their bearded faces. This year ' s crop of freshmen have not been treated to the sight of a rather diminuitive Dean of Students standing before them and tell.ng them that Bethany is primarily an educational institution, or been subjected to biting remarks concerning their dress, study habits, mode of dress, and other such things, but those who have easily gain the impression that when he was a Bethany student he was a model boy, a stainless youth who was destined to carry the torch of wisdom farther into the wilderness of the average college student ' s mind. Perhaps he was, but lie had his moments. F.H.K. for a while lived in the present office of the head of Physical Educa- tion, and which was known then as the Crow ' s Nest. This was indeed a vantage point as far as keeping up on events on and about the campus was concerned, and the good Dean was not one to let such an advantage slip. Every night wh.-n the opportunity afforded, he would grasp a meg- aphone in one hand and broadcast in his mellow, rasping voice all the gossip and scandal he had managed to collect during the day. But that was nothing. It seemed that the Dean was only human and had the same trouble as you do when it came to getting to an eight o ' clock on time. Conditions finally reached a head. Mrs. Bourne reported that he had missed a great deal of his work through this lack of will-power, and he was told that if he was late or cut one more class, the college would find it necessary to sus- pend him for a while. Things went well, but soon he began to fall back into his old ways until one morning he awakened so late that he knew it would be impossible for him to get to class and dress too, so he went in his bathrobe. He was told to go back to his room and attire himsdf like a gentleman. Seething with righteous indig- A picture of the student body taken after mock chapel . The math department, surveying ' a portion of the campus. v Page S.-tn

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Top — A class tug-of-war staged across the Buffalo. Mi Idle — The old equipment of the fire depart- ment. It iras used here until last year. Bottom — The jail, abode of the fugitives from the campus. late at night, or to place some bovine beauty at the top of the Tower. Incidentally though there are many reports of this last feat, we could find actual proof of only one time when it was really occurred, and then the wags who put her there were forced to remove Bossy when they found she didn ' t appreciate her environment. Then too, there were the Literary Societies. These institutions had as much dignity as the Colege itself, some having even gone so far as to secure charters from the state, and all of them holding their own Commencement ceremonies. In those days, bids to join one of these organiza- tions were more sought after than similar invita- tions by fraternities, and the rushing by these societies were even tougher. As soon as the new student arrived, the members started to work on him, never resting until he wore their colors pinned to his coat. It is from this that Bethany derives its custom of wearing ribbons with soro- rity pins after pledging or initiation. After the wane of the Literary Societies, fra- ternities took an important place on the campus. These groups rushed with a vengeance at the be- ginning of the year. The usual method was to meet the poor young neophyte as soon as he came to town. He was then relieved of his bags and these were taken to the house of the would-be-ab- ductors. The natural thing to do was follow the bags. This was a fatal mistake. As soon as the prospective pledge was far enough into the house so that he could not run out, the door was locked and friends gathered around to ask the usual ques- tion as to his fraternity preference. He was told that he was at liberty to choose whichever group he wanted, but in order to get out he would have to leave bearing the colors of the house. It was not until a few years ago that the streets were paved. A fraternity man was marked in those days by the color of the mud on his shoes and the height to which his pants were rolled. The tradition of the smoke-out is something very few of the present freshmen know anything about. It seems that the old-time way of de- monstrating one ' s affection for a group was to foul the air with the aroma of burning pitch or sulfur or some other pungent agent. The girls always appreciated it in a martyr-like fashion. At least they knew that someone was thinking about them. The favorite way of starting the operation was to find a way into the cellar of the house and start the fire there. The culprits then retired to some spot from which they could com- mand a good view of the place and waited for re- sults. They were not disappointed. The women fled from the house clad in what they could gather on the spur of the moment, and many a heart was thrilled when an ankle or two was un- covered in the rush. Up until last year these P.-v S •::

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The old college band. Scene of the old Chapel, the present faculty office. nation, he did But he was not to be trifled with in such a manner. Vowing to have the last word, he changed to his tux and rushed back to class, only to be thrown out again. Then there was the man who commuted from somewhere in the hills. He possessed a rather ancient car and a manner which aggravated the majority of the men. One day they decided that something should be done about his attitude. It was. The car was pushed up the back steps of the Main building and allowed to rest at the front entrance and facing the sun. When the owner found the car he was overcome, but not reduced to a state of inaction. Equal to all emergencies, he hopped into the vehicle and calm- ly drove it down the front steps and away. This business of putting everything up on the Corri- dor became quite a tradition. It has been said that the Model T which once protected this town from the ravages of fire was taken apart and re- assembled on this sacred Way. There have be en no mock chapels for the past two years, yet perhaps the custom hasn ' t passed away for good. These little episodes us- ually took place around Thanksgiving time, and consisted of a good-humored, if at times slightly acid, take-off on the oddities and characteristics of the faculty by the students. There are, of course, other traditions whose origins seem lost in musty antiquity. The ring- ing of the Tower bell after such athletic victories as may occur, the privilege of a boy has of kissing a girl the first time they go through Oglebay gates together, the way the center gates are left open during finals week to let the ponies in, the dead habit of stealing the clapper from the bell and hiding it, and many others too numerous to mention. No account of the history of the college would be complete without mention of at least one of the great events which have happened in the past hundred or so years. Perhaps the greatest of these happenings was the burning of the old Bethany House. This event even made the coast-to-coast newspaper syndicates. It seems that the old building stood in approx- imately the same place as the present Bethany House, except that it was nearer Cochran Castle. The structure was a combination boarding-house- hotel-rooming-house-restaurant, built many years before of brick and wooden frame. In its hey- day it was quite an activity center, but by the late 1920 ' s it had become rather shabby, and im- mediately prior to the conflagration it had been scheduled for wrecking. Legend tells us that every fraternity and other group in town had plans and material for burn- ing the place, but the honor of setti ng the fire went to some boys living in Cochran — and they did a good job. By the time the Wellsburg fire department arrived it was too late to halt the blaze. The whole college had turned out to watch, and later the college band organized itself and entertained the spectators with such tunes as Keep the Home Fires Burning , Let the Lower Lights Be Burning , There ' ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight , and many others. Rumor says, inconsistent though it may be, that at one time it seemed as though the fire de- Page Eight