University of Southern California School of Dentistry - El Molaro (Los Angeles, CA)

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Chorus: Forgive Me I ' m Onlq Humor . . . . articulator, flasks, slides, pencil, wax, plaster tee — Hold it, I ' ve got no more room. What ' cha mean, you ' ve got another shopping bag, don ' t ya? Yeh Okey — plaster teeth, soldering tweezers, gold, knife, lock; next! Now what? Pay the lady outside. NEXT! How much did you say? $412.76 Are you sure? Yes, now write that check, we ' ve got another hundred boys that have to get their equipment. Okey. Hey! don ' t forget your shopping bags. And so we bewildered (and poor) dental freshmen get our first taste of dental equipment prices. At that we didn ' t even know what the hell we bought. And so home to recuperate, for the next day we had to go . . . where ... oh yes, to Owens Hall to pay tuition. Collectively we were sure we had just bought the entire University of Southern California. Gentlemen, I ' d like you to meet Dr. Guy C. Ho. Dr. Ho, the freshman class. Thank you. Bill. You men know how small tenth of millimeter is? You will. And so the wax flew, and as Dr. Ho promised we soon learned the value of tenth of millimeter (if we didn ' t it meant, Do ova ). Gentlemen, this is a dead body. Your project for the year is to cut it up into little bits making sure every piece has a name. It didn ' t take us long to get used to the act of corpus mutilation, however as it can be well remembered how the perennial stragglers — would enter the laboratory finishing up lunch. It wasn ' t at all un- usual to see a student diligently dissecting out the cutaneous branches of the facial nerve while munching on an apple. And speaking of anatomy, can we ever forget the contest of who had the largest callibrated finger? Wasn ' t it a tie between Roger Riley and Dave Thompson? Or who ' ll forget entering the lab and seeing Tibbetts and Tobin ' s cadaver sitting up on his table, smoking a cigarette, wearing Tom ' s specks, and deeply engrossed in reading the histology text? And wasn ' t it Hubert who played jump rope with the duodenum, illium, and jejunum? We must also give thanks to Lee Davis who removed all superfluous structures from cadavers before practical BS :% ill Monday Morning, 7:55. With a discussion of theory courses none would be complete without mentioning histology. Here was a class of supreme fascination to every one of us; a guessing game as to what else could be possibly asked that was neither given in lecture, nor was up those orange, violet, and green stained slides? it in the text. And as for those practicals, where the hell did he dig

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. . . let me in coach, I ' ll give ' em hell! With all that ex- pended energy It seems Bill should have gotten off the ground. For the four of us it was a mighty long day, what with scabbing all morn- ing and the beach all afternoon. You take it! ' Don ' t go away mad Bruce, anybody can Ditch The class held what we considered, but not the faculty, a well earned ditch. Though the instructors were not cognizant of the fact, it was agreed that we needed a rest; so off we went to Playa del Rey Beach. V-olleyball, football, loafing, bridge (of course), well filled the day to capacity. What with Stan Reichal ' s flagrant act of dumping water on the card players (and his subsequent dunking in the Pacific), Bob St. Martin ' s attractive wife and bottle of Bordeu Rouge, Harold Eissman ' s icy swim in the briny deep (fiis was entirely voluntary), the day was successful, and we were ready again to fight the seemingly never ending battle of the freshman year.

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Sweal, You Motha ! We ' ll pass over biochemistry, as it was de- cided by the vast majority that more chem- istry was known prior to entering the class than leaving. I suppose the appetite crystal constructed by Mickey and Herb must be mentioned before leaving this subject. Pretty smooth way of avoiding the leg work of that supposedly educative research (?) paper. The first semester came, and was gone be- fore we had a chance to take a breather. We all anxiously awaited the second semester. The sophomores had told us that this is where we were to learn dentistry; and who knows more about dentistry than a sopho- more dental student? The theory was a continuation of the pre- vious months, but now we were confronted with line angles, pulpal floors, flares, pon- tics, occlusal offsets, etc., etc., etc. Those plastic teeth sure cut and chipped easily; but then they were only 28 cents apiece. Will you look at that! I see it but I don ' t believe it! What in hell is it? I think it ' s a ... a ... By god it is, it ' s a shirt; that thing around Dr. Tanner ' s torso is a shirt! It hurts my eyes, I can ' t look at it anymore. More blood was spilled, more tears were shed over our freshman bridge than any other single project for the year. None of us cried quite like poor Mort though, as he vainly tried reseating his mangled mass of Aurum back on the typodont after its fateful sojourn to the curbing in front of Stan ' s house. However, with four eager hands and a bottle of Manechevitz, a semester ' s project was completed in a single night and the deadline made. Profound thanks must be given to Waldo, who, single hondedly pulled Schoenbaum out of the prosthetic doldrums. It was our first set up, time was drawing to a close but seventy eight wasn ' t going to make it. Along came one hundred one, set up his teeth, and saved the day. Again our heartfelt appreciation, Waldo; can you imagine our class without the wit and humor, without the life and sparkle, without the ever readiness to volunteer of our ever lovin ' buddy Dick? Don ' t feel bad though Dick, Phil set the uppers on the lower and visa versa that same day. And so it went, our freshman year was history, leaving behind memories of mass confusion. Prosthetics and histology opened gapeing wounds which were later to be treated with brine and salt; dental anatomy taught us what a tooth was; crown and bridge gave us the concept of polishing gold; and the whole year gave us ulcers. 34