Bethany College - Bethanian Yearbook (Bethany, WV)

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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

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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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partment was winning its battle, when one stu- dent with more presence of mind than the others cut the fire hose. When this damage had been repaired, the local volunteers turned their stream on the band by way of seeking revenge. History is not clear as to the outcome, except that the charred remains were later razed and that sever- al Bethanians languished for a few days in the Wellsburg jail until bailed out by the faculty. The legend of Ghost Hollow, a valley on the first bend past Point Breeze on the Bethany Pike, is one of divers versions. The most romantic idea is one which maintains that an aged chief of the tribe which held all the lands for miles around the College still wanders his solitary way in and out among the tops of the trees, bewailing his lot and wondering why he was not made a trustee of the College too. Then there is the practical point of view concerning the legend, and one which we shall dismiss. People get the idea that when the moon is shining down into the gulch, the Buffalo, wending its misty way, gives the ap- pearance of a lost soul among the trees. This is a very unromantic notion and should be ignored by those with the more fertile mind. The modern theory is that this is the ghost of a stranger who was going to visit the town and almost got here. It seems that the old trolley line ran on a high trestle along the side of the ravine. As the car he was riding was passing over the trestle, the power failed. Unaware of what had taken place, he stepped out to see a man. They collected him the next day, and ever since he has been wander- ing up and down looking for the man he came to see. Speaking of ghosts, our great diligence in the preparation of this article has uncovered one of strangest phenomenom. We did it by induction or deduction (whichever one runs from effect to cause). We reasoned thus: the occurrence of so many inexplicable happenings such as the break- ing of the light globe in front of Phillips Hall, the strewing of cigarette butts above the gates, the shadows seen moving every night behind the gym, must be due to some supernatural agent or agents. We hereby place the responsibility for for these and other such acts on a ghost named Alex, who lives in the Tower. He roams the halls of the girls ' dorms, imitating their voices and earning them black marks. He is present in Chapel when he stalks up and down the aisles during the program, whipping his invisible shroud about to give the effect of a turning page of a newspaper or textbook. In other words, we are inventing a scrapeghost to explain all the things we can ' t prove we didn ' t do. Awful Alex is guilty of a great many things around here. He ' s the one who throws empty beer bottles on the roof of the Bethany House. It is he who caused all the commotion last spring by putting the Victory Garden signs behind Old Main when the bulldozers were leveling it off. He is the one who causes you to fall asleep in classes. It is he who steals books and talks in the library. In fact, we think the best explanation for the late condition of the Tower clock is that Alex didn ' t like the light — it kept him awake nights — so he just threw the whole works out of commission. This is the beginning of a legend. Toj) — Students initiating a freshman. Bottom — Lost legend of Bethany, the old street-car, overturned and surrounded by stu- dents. Nine