Brown University - Liber Brunensis Yearbook (Providence, RI)

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shedding rubberoid and the rain. It even got to the point that you felt the suy who designed the quad built the tunnels just so you could get to the Ivy room without getting wet. I look at the portraits of the men in my class. Were they really like that? Well maybe on Friday afternoon before the weekend started, but that isn't how they looked the next day. We'd get back from sleeping through Saturday's classes, and then laugh at each other, eyeballs looking like the globe of the world etched in red lines, and moons under them that you could swing from. Then came the bull session when we picked up all the lost pieces of the night before. All the things that happened that you just couldn't remember and you knew why you couldn't too. But God, it was fun. A few guys had black eyes, some had terrific dates, other got blasted completely. some got bird- dogeed, and then even others studied 1nd they looked a little out of it and remorseful. Are you sure those guys in the portiaits are like they really were? Then where the devil are their exam period beards, their foul weather jackets, and the

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BROWN - 1955 Sometimes I get into what is called the reflection blues mood. It usually comes when things aren't going right, and because intro- spection is olten painlul, it is easier to glance back over times past to find myself again. Yes, the good old days always look better than the uncertainty of the future when things aren't going well. It's comfort ing to know memory has built the past into an ideal and then not care if you're fooling yourself. It builds you up. Maybe it's the real thing after all. The human mind is a funny thing. We see and know only half of what we think we see and know. The rest of it is mostly feel- ings. I was just glancing through the book and thought, Was it really like this? This is supposed to be the real thing, and yet there was so much more to it. Where are the Providence rains? Certainly they existed? Not hav- ing a raincoat was as fatal as cutting all your classes. It got to be like Noah and the Ark, and a friend once said that Rhode Island was the only place besides the Philippines where the typhoons hit. Yes, there was rain and with it came a little beauty. The smell of wet overcoats in classrooms, and outside gusty blasts ol wetness seemed to blow multicolored slickers around. Reds, yellows, and pastel shades of blue whisked by unnoticed. Not long ago sweaters with fraternity pins on- them beckoned for conversation, but that was all ended by the water

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grubby shirt they wore into every exam for luck? Where are their Scotch Koolers from the foot- ball games, their Hillhouse hats, yes, and even their beanies? Take a look at the picture of the boat that was at the crew races at Spring Week-end. It is very fine, but 1t's the outside looking in. I can't find the snap shot of the stimulated fellows who thought the Seekonk would be a nice bath tub. What courage they had when they dived into its oily depths to swim like triumphant Beowulfs to the cheering shore. Here was the magnificent dig- nity of man and a symbol of his undaunted spirit! And the slender shells that were hardly specks in the distance came flashing by, and in those specks were people you knew straining at their oars. A part of us was in each of them, for during those few seconds we were also pulling with them. Every time we saw an athletic contest we became a part of it We were the player on the field and the quarterback in the stands. Both were the same, but the camera could only show one at a time. Wait! There's a shot of the ROTC units. The men in them look like machines. Marching, order ing, automans dressed in bluc. 1 can hardly see their faces. Do they have personalities? What about the day there were no correct shirts in your drawer for drill and vou wore a button down? Standing in rank sweating out the inspec- tion was a minor catastrophe. And the day your ship had a collision in the taciial trainer in Lyman was a reality. No one can say that Navi- g;ition 301 was a gut. It's hard to operate in a third dimension and you felt Ahab was right in T S rarw