Northeastern University - Cauldron Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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Subway riding etiquette The subterranean world of a large city nurtures in its intestinal maze of tunnels an art, solely the creation of modern man. A science-fiction story of H. P. Lovecraft speaks of strange creatures, the remnants of an ancient age, that inhabit the secret places of the Boylston Street subway stop. What Mr. Lovecraft didn ' t imagine is the still- stranger beings who stalk the city ' s underworld at all hours of the day and night, producing fears and fabric- ations of the mind more bizarre than his brute crea- tions, the daily commuters. The MBTA commuter has perfected the fine art of survival by public transportation, and the novice about to embark in this peculiar existence should be aware of some of the tested techniques. Initially, the most difficult technique to master is the detached unstare. On that train tomorrow morning, while standing up all the way from Quincy Square to Harvard, take notice of the expression on the faces of the other inhabitants of the cylindrical tube. Never again in the novice ' s commuter-life is he allowed to look anyone in the eye. Noting the expression is for training purposes only and not a general practice. Observe that the eye contact between two people no less than a half-inch apart and face-to-face is almost nil. These two are instantly marked as veteran commuters. Experts in their field, they manage the detached unstare in the most difficult circumstances. The technicalities of the skill include avoiding direct eye contact at all costs. Amateurs resort to the ruse of staring at the middle button on their neighbor ' s coat instead. The result is a decidedly uncomfortable feeling on the part of the person wearing the jacket. Knocking the person behind him in the eye with his elbow, he begins to check that buttons are unbuttoned and zip- pers zipped. After being reassured, the nervous com- muter starts to wonder exactly what classification of pervert is staring at his button. Obviously, this is not the desired result. The unstare also consists of a glazed look in the eye that appears to be some kind of self-inflicted blindness. It requires forcing the eyes not to focus on a single object. Another popular alternative to the unstare is a book or newspaper. Reading avoids embarrassing eye con- tact while giving the impression of intelligence. Any novice commuter will notice the popularity of written material, from Communist handouts to the latest best seller, on the train. They are merely an ingenious unstare device. Newspapers rate lowest on the commu- ter ' s reading list. They are large enough to prove a temptation to the man next to the comics-reading trav- Three commuters at the Green Line ' s Copley station protect their personal zones of privacy. Each stays a good distance from the other; all avoid eye contact with each other. eler who forgot his copy of The Decline of the Roman Empire. The next maxim for the novice to learn is his general stance in a crowded sardine can, sometimes referred to as the everybody ' s a potential pervert or Boy, they let crazies out early today attitude. In the sweaty, stagnant air of that train, the commuter is faced with being huddled together with perfect or not-so-perfect strangers. His attitude includes consid- ering all body contact, accidental or not, to be the product of some deranged opportunist. This is the time the unstare rule is broken and the wayfarer is allowed to give the suspect a chilling look of daggers. Unfortu- nately, innocent bystanders are often victimized by this modern evil-eye. Armed with the unstare expertise and a paranoia of people, comprehended only by fellow refugees from the highway, the novice is as ready as he will ever be for his first solo journey. A few admonitions should be mentioned about the initial experience. The rocking, squealing, lurching motion of the train does not necessarily mean the train is about to crash. The novice about to be initiated into the strange world of the modern subterranean nomad should be cautious not to look panic-stricken. (Masters of the commuting life, no matter how certain of impending disaster, never flinch.) Lastly, the novice is warned about the complexity of the crisscrossing, often incomprehensible, tangle of trains and trolleys. Getting where the greenhorn com- muter intends to go is an achievement in itself. It is accomplished only by first-hand experience. The strange underworld of migratory modern man holds in its cosmos all the mundane and weird ex- periences that can be part of this unique civilization. Perverts and paranoia, fantasy and freaks, await the incautious commuter at every turn of the winding cav- erns. Was the expressway really that bad? — Mary Wessling 19

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Mini Mack Herron, the Patriots ' s 5 ' 5 answer to O.J. Simpson, sprints across the goal line for a touchdown with three Buffalo defenders hot on his trail. can Player of the Year, American College Football Coaches Associ- ation Offensive Player of the Year, and countless other awards. In his rookie season, Plunkett lived up to his expectations as he led the Patriots to a 6-8 record and was named the NFL ' s Rookie of the Year. He threw for 2158 yards, 19 touchdowns and completed 48.2 per cent of his passes. Things were looking up. The Pa- triots were in a new stadium in Fox- boro and Plunkett showed tre- mendous promise for the future. But the following season things went sour. The Patriots slipped to 3-11 in 1972, gave up more points than any of the 26 NFL teams and scored less than all but two other clubs. The team gave up a whop- ping 446 points while scoring just 192 and finished dead last in the Eastern Division of the American Football Conference. There was definitely a missing in- gredient in the formula required to make a winner of the New England Patriots. That ingredient was Fair- banks, the fiery coach of Okla- homa, who the Patriots lured on Jan. 26, 1973 with an offer he couldn ' t refuse. Fairbanks spent the off-season reorganizing the coaching staff and pouring over the waiver wires for football players. Immediately the Patriots showed an improvement, a slight one, but at least an improve- ment. In his first year, Fairbanks recorded a 5-9 record and felt it was a good starting year. The team showed marked improvement on both offense and defense, scoring 258 points and giving up 300. Plun- kett had his best season in three with the Pats, completing 51.3 per cent of his passes for 2550 yards and 13 touchdowns. Nineteen seventy-four was the year of Mini Mack Herron and the Patriots revival as the team ral- lied behind the explosive back that Fairbanks dug out of the Canadien Football League. The Pats finished at 7-7, but a rash of injuries from the mid-season point right through the end hurt. The team won its first five games against the best teams in the NFL. At one point the Pats were 6-1 before losing numerous players as well as six of the last seven games. Herron led the entire NFL in total yardage as there wasn ' t a single thing the 5-5 package of dynamite didn ' t do. He led the Patriots in rushing, receiving, punt and kickoff returns and touchdowns. His 2444 total yards set an all-time NFL mark for combined yards in a season, wiping out the eight-year-old stand- ard set by Gale Sayers of the once- awesome Chicago Bears. Herron was 10th among Ameri- can Football Conference pass re- ceivers with 474 yards, sixth in the rushing department with 824 years, second in the punt return category with 517 yards and 13th amongst kickoff returners with 629 yards. He scored 12 touchdowns, seven on the ground and five by passes to rank second in the Conference. Herron was joined in the Patriot backfield by Sam Cunningham, a second-year man out of Southern California. Before being injured, Cunningham teamed with Herron to provide the Patriots with a one-two punch second to none. Cunning- ham rushed for 811 yards and nine touchdowns and caught 22 passes for another 214 yards and two scores before sitting out the final two games with an injury. Rookie guard John Hannah an- chored an offensive line that pro- vided plenty of holes for Herron and Cunningham, and Fairbanks in- stalled a 3-5 defense that was the key to the Patriots ' s success. With the personnel the Patriots possess and the master mind of Fairbanks behind it all, the Patriots must rank as the up-and-coming team in the National Football League. — Kenneth G. Hughes Reggie Rucker pulls in a pass from Jim Plunkett that ended in a 69-yard touchdown. The Baltimore defender never got any closer than a waving arm away from breaking up the play.

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Underground Boston So much are the standards of excellence settled by time and place, that man may be heard boasting in one street of that which they would anxiously conceal in an- other. Samuel Johnson: The Rambler ' No. 201 No person frequenting Hunt- ington Avenue in front of North- eastern would think anybody was trying to hide anything there. Every- thing seems to be in plain view. Northeastern ' s Dodge Library, Quadrangle, Richards Hall, and the Cabot cage. On the other side vari- ous apartment buildings, business establishments and parking lots. Suppose we were to take the stretch of Huntington Avenue from Forsyth Street east to the YMCA property, and completely dissect, analyze, and muse over what is un- der the street. The street whereupon so many thousands drive their cars, ride in trains, walk across the tracks every day. The distinguished Boston ad- dress — Huntington Avenue, fa- mous on both sides of Massachu- setts Avenue for different reasons. World renowned. What is under it? If we stand on a point on the sidewalk on the south (North- eastern) side of the street, directly across from the east sidewalk of Opera Place (remembering the sun goes down over Huntington Ave- nue each day), descend to between four and seven feet, and proceed north, the first unnatural phenome- non we would come to is a Boston Edison power line. The main lines connect various manholes (oval, circular, and square — all with rounded corners to withstand pressure). The lines from the manholes to the buildings are the umbilical cords of power that enable the area residents to turn on the juice. The next discovery, at an approx- imate depth of seven feet, would be an 18-inch City of Boston sewer, that magic carpet for waste and organic refuse as Webster so ap- tly stated. The resident ace in the Sewer Department at City Hall on Boston ' s sewer system, the man who really knows what is underground and what is really going on down under there, is Ed Phelan, a junior civil engineer who graduated from Northeastern in 1971. Most sewers under Huntington Avenue, according to Ed, were built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The 18 sewer we first bumped into was built in 1904. How could sewers built so far in the past serve the bloated com- munity today? They were de- signed oversized, says Ed, in an- ticipation of tremendous growth in the City of Boston. So there is some long gone engineer out there who deserves tremendous credit for great foresight. The unknown engineer. The next obstacle in our under- ground path, and this is a highly explosive matter, is an eight-inch line of the Boston Gas Company. A four-inch line extends from this into the alley beside Dodge Library and in all probability provides whatever gas burns in Northeastern ' s labora- tories. Next we come to a 36-inch X 48- inch brick sewer, rebuilt in 1896. This line, according to Ed Phelan, is the receptacle for all the catch basins on either side of the street. If we tunnel up to the surface from the top of this pipe, we would break through at the curb running alongside the subway tracks about five feet up. If we were to pause in our journey here for a look to the right with x-ray vision, we would see a 42-inch high service water main running diagonally across the street in front of the opening to the subway tunnel. It provides an eight- inch fire line to Northeastern ' s Dodge Library. Secret securities are under the street. There is a maintenance factor in- volved in the Boston water system. Water reacts with the cast iron pipes to produce rust. The water is purified before being delivered to Boston by the MDC. But Joe Finneran, senior en- gineering advisor in the Water De- partment thinks, It picks up some sludge along the way. For example, it ' s not unusual for an eight-inch pipe to shrink down to two inches after the buildup of sludge, according to Joe. 20 This lonely Huntington Avenue fire hydrant is only the tip of the iceberg. The dogs can ' t even begin to guess what lies beneath it.