Rapid City, South Dakota
My father preferred Chevys and bought his first one after the war, a green 1948 Fleetline. He owned several and always bought new Chevys after five or six years, except for the 1963 Dodge station wagon in the middle somewhere, a slant six gutless wonder, the car I had occasional access to during high school. His 1956 Impala had blown a valve on the Ohio Turnpike returning from New Jersey. That Chevy had been driven less than 50,000 miles. That’s when he bought the Dodge. I remember the feeling (or lack thereof) when I floored the accelerator. He later went back to Chevys and gave the Dodge to my brother.
I’ve owned more than 20 cars and trucks but only three Chevys in about as many years. The Chevys developed mechanical problems…but I’m getting ahead of myself. I had forgotten about my early cars until my son, Ken, my wife, Jenni, and I were sitting in a steakhouse bar in Alder, Montana in the summer of 1985. We had been camping. I was doing some geological work in the area and trying to get Ken interested in an earth science career. He was my field assistant for a few weeks. We had tired of talking about mosquitoes and rattlesnakes, and the subject of my previous vehicles somehow came up. After ordering another beer, I managed to roll off all 20. Ken was impressed that I had owned so many, a rather dubious distinction as I think about it, especially because of the circumstances in which I bought and sold (or wrecked) some of them during my undergraduate years.
Surprisingly, my purpose in attending college was not to become a used car dealer, but a geologist. I was accepted as a freshman at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSMT, or just Mines) in Rapid City for the fall 1964 term and was excited to leave Illinois, the suburban flat lands, the humidity, parental restrictions, and boredom. I had selected Mines over other schools: Colorado School of Mines, New Mexico Tech, and Montana Tech. I was lucky enough to get accepted to all of them, but Mines was the cheapest, it had an excellent reputation, and was in a great location. My parents were hesitant about a far away college and wanted to see Rapid City and the school before my move, so I quit my summer job as an aluminum punch press operator, and we drove to the Black Hills for our family vacation that August, just a month before classes actually started. Dean Palmerton gave us a campus tour. We ate in the student dining hall in Surbeck Center, we visited the geology building, and I finalized my matriculation paperwork. I loved the school, the mountains, and the remoteness of the place, but Rapid City in the 1960’s was a poor community with an economy based on tourism, the military, ranching, and government. The poorest of the poor lived on the reservation, many spending their monthly government checks within a few days in local bars, then hitchhiking home.
When we returned to Illinois, I prepared for school by purchasing a large black steamer trunk. My final childhood memory was waiting in a hectic line of travelers at the Greyhound bus terminal in Chicago, pushing and shoving to get a good seat. My father was a good pusher, a city guy used to competing in crowded places. I hugged my mom, bid farewell to my brother, Tom, and shook my father’s hand. His last words to me were: “Don’t lose your morality”. I was surprised to hear that from him since we never talked about personal stuff like that. I think he had a deep mistrust of college life. It was a big deal for me too, but maybe a bigger deal for my parents—they were nervous and uncertain about the whole thing, especially because neither of them had been to college. My mom never completed high school. She needed to care for her younger brother, Chester, after their mom died.
I have several memories of the 30 hour bus ride to Rapid City and the long layover in Omaha waiting for a connection to Sioux City and beyond. A young woman rested her head on my shoulder while she slept. Rod, my first Mines acquaintance, got on the bus in Sioux City. Rod had barely a penny to his name, no clear way to pay for tuition and books, no place to live on campus, but full of enthusiasm sitting on a bus headed to college. I was shocked at his lack of resources but impressed by his determination. He was from small town southeastern South Dakota, where he said, Saturday night entertainment for young men was to get drunk on 3.2 beer and chase cars while barking like dogs. I philosophically agreed with the drinking part, but had serious reservations about barking, especially in a small town where it was hard to hide from local gossip. Rod and I became fast friends. Shortly after arriving on campus, he managed to get financial help and a part-time job.
The first freshman social event was a 3-day trip to a rustic summer camp in the Black Hills where we got acquainted and learned the campus ropes between volleyball games. I met several future friends there including an older guy named Tim. He was pushing 30 at the time, a discharged veteran from Kentucky anxious to get a civil engineering degree and a good job. He loved country and western music, was easy going (to my later benefit), and became a good friend. The relaxed atmosphere of freshman camp was transformed into stark reality soon afterward at a campus convocation when president Partlo informed us that more than half of our freshmen class would never graduate or flunk out. I think he wanted to scare us—he did.
I had previously filled out a questionnaire indicating my roommate preference and was matched with Jerry from McLaughlin, South Dakota, a quiet, serious guy matched with a loud-mouthed troublemaker (me). Other than my brother, I had no experience with roommates. Jerry and I were okay together in our room in Peterson Hall, but I wanted a more outgoing roommate and soon found Charlie from Mitchell, who loved to tinker with cars, and more importantly, he had one on campus. Charlie and I soon shared a room in Connolly Hall. Charlie had awful study habits and played cards 4-6 hours a day in the atrium, but that was okay with me because I had the room to myself most of the time. My lack of maturity was apparent in my early decisions. I should have stayed with Jerry, studied hard and controlled my urges to party and explore.
There were many other early friends. Tory, a local Rapid Citian who played in a rock band on weekends, was a good student and well organized. Toby, from Whitewood in the northern Black Hills, knew more mineralogy than some of the professors but couldn’t apply himself in classes. Harry, another Rapid Citian, was a part-time disc jockey at the local rock radio station. I met Larry, Tom, Harold, and many other memorable South Dakotans.
I also met Randy from another Chicago suburb not far from Geneva. We became friends and no doubt considered ourselves more sophisticated than the farm boys from South Dakota. Randy was very bright but had bad study habits, loved the Hugh Hefner playboy lifestyle, smoked cigarettes, and was a confirmed party animal. I remember asking him how he lost part of two fingers on his left hand. An M-80 had exploded as he tried to light it.
Frank was from Rapid City. He lost his father to a heart attack only months before school started. Frank was good looking—women loved him—but fate gave him the responsibility to care for his four younger sisters, brother, and mother. He was emotionally ill-prepared for school with far too many family duties, loads of stress, and poor study habits to boot. Another bad decision was in the making.
Some luck and hard work got me through my freshman year. I ended the first semester with a 3.4/4.00 and even had well over a 3-point GPA at the end of the year. I managed a B in math 1 and A’s in U.S. history and engineering drawing, a now obsolete class replaced by computer graphics. The army ROTC class (once-a-week drills, haircuts, uniforms, spit-shined shoes, and M-1 rifles) was a two-year requirement for all students at the time, but it was a guaranteed A-grade if one memorized the answers to the test questions that were posted by the department ahead of time. Anyone lazy enough not to memorize the answers deserved a bad grade. The army motto at the time was: “If a student fails to learn, the army fails to teach”. The ROTC classes seemed to have a lot of A grades.
Mines was an extremely casual school. Cutoffs were standard attire with tee or sweat shirts, always with a slide rule strapped to a belt and the customary green denim “book bark” over the shoulder. Only 13 students out of 325 freshmen were female, a standard for the time as few women went into the sciences or engineering. Freshmen were required to wear “beanies” everywhere through homecoming weekend. Dorm rooms were inspected at all hours by seniors donned with miner hats and lanterns checking to see if freshmen were properly attired. Punishment for non compliance was severe, usually about 20 push ups. I was caught several times. I hated my beanie.
During homecoming week, the freshman beanie rule was strictly enforced by psychotic seniors. Homecoming was a bizarre event that included a student parade in downtown Rapid City, the annual whitewashing of the “M” on M Hill, a dance, and the football game. In 1964, the senior float was an old clunker of a car that had been hit hundreds of times with baseball bats, a violent act apparently directed at the opposing football team. Dates for the dance were hard to come by in a nearly all-male school, but the National College of Business and St. John’s Nursing School contributed a few eligible women. Whitewashing the M was an annual campus obligation. Freshmen were herded up M Hill with brushes, buckets, and beanies to whitewash and freshen up the school symbol. Encouragement was provided by seniors and fraternities via local liquor stores and a community punch bowl containing an Everclear brew.
The climax to homecoming week was the football game. In 1964 it was an alcohol-fueled grudge match with Rocky Mountain College. SDSMT Hardrockers were a rowdy bunch, filling the stands in a boisterous display of expletives. Liquor was extremely plentiful of course, and hours of inebriation produced an extraordinary level of vocal creativity in the cheering squad and fans. A typical cheer: “Potato chips, potato chips, munch, munch, munch, Rocky Mountain College, here’s your lunch, EAT IT!” At the same time everyone would flip the middle finger at the fans on the opposing side of the field. Or, another: “Mines rah, Mines rah, how’s yours?” A school wide convocation was held the next school day. Dr. Partlo berated us for bad behavior. In retrospect, I suspect much of the administrative disdain for our behavior was for show only. After all, we had a tradition to uphold.
Aside from physical education—Coach King called me “Dyman [Diamond], you jewel”—my favorite class was English composition. Mines students were smart, generally graduating at or near the top of their respective high school classes. They did well in their engineering and math classes, but many did miserably in communication and liberal arts classes. My freshman English instructor was Vance Aandahl, a young, dynamic and highly qualified guy who had already published several short stories in national magazines. The object of freshman English was to create critical thinkers who could communicate by way of reading, writing, and speaking. My first in-class theme assignment was a stressful affair. We had to write for one hour on some subject I no longer recall. I fretted about it over the following weekend, and was shocked the next Monday when Vance said the average grade was a D minus, and only one A grade was given, an A minus. I saw the stunned and disappointed faces around me as the papers were returned revealing mostly F grades. When my turn came, I held my folded sheets, at first afraid to open them, and then slowly turned the page to reveal an A minus. Word got around fast, and I earned some extra points by editing and otherwise helping others write their take-home themes. In class themes were an entirely different matter. I couldn’t help much with those.
By the end of the first semester, I was ready for my own dorm room and more privacy. I liked Charlie but he had some deplorable study habits. I really needed to work, not hear about all night card games. That Christmas, I flew for the first time, from Rapid City to Chicago, but returned to Denver with a high school buddy from Geneva, Fred, in his Buick. Fred was going to the University of Denver and offered to drive me to Colorado, where I would then catch a bus to Rapid City.
I acquired my first car after returning from Christmas break. Charlie had returned to school with his TR-3 and offered to sell his 1950 Dodge to Randy and me for $20. Granted, I only owned half of the junker, but that was fine. It wasn’t worth insuring as that cost would far exceed the value of the car, but it worked for dates and adventures in the mountains—emphasis on the word adventures. I don’t recall worrying about auto liability at the time.
On one occasion, Randy and I drove our Dodge into the foothills after school to do some spelunking. With one flashlight between us and near zero equipment and experience, we entered a local cave in one of the limestone formations west of Rapid City, probably the Minnekhata Limestone. We crawled 300-400 feet on our stomachs trying to locate a large chamber—we were told one existed—when we encountered a steep, nearly vertical descent. I was against continuing because we lacked ropes and additional climbing equipment, but Randy insisted on continuing the route down a steep incline. He quickly lost his footing. He fell about 10 feet and luckily landed on a ledge in total darkness, losing our only hand-held flashlight in the process. He was in pain and in no position to climb out. I lay in total darkness on the verge of panic attempting to assess our situation. I thought Randy might go into shock any minute, and my directional bearings were completely useless. I managed to turn myself around and started crawling while trying to identify the main channel out. I had to get out of the cave and back to campus for help. I crawled for what seemed like hours, but probably only minutes had passed when I smelled the scent of pine trees and felt a slight breeze, that familiar smell of the Black Hills ponderosa pine forest. I followed the smell, crawled out of the cave, got in the Dodge and headed back to campus, arriving about 9 pm, where I found friends in Connolly Hall. They had recommended the cave, real spelunkers who had proper equipment. It was an embarrassing experience for me, as a search party was organized and a caravan of vehicles headed to the site. Randy was found later that evening in good condition, although his leg was badly bruised and his pride and reputation damaged. That experience ended my spelunking career.
Several weeks later, we were driving on a gravel road in the mountains somewhere southwest of Rapid City, probably on a weekend because I had not yet developed the nerve to skip classes. We were entering a sharp curve when we encountered a car load of Rapid City high schoolers directly in front of us driving in the middle of the road. I can still see the collision. Randy was driving about 25 mph when we crashed. He swerved to the right and missed a head on collision but not enough to avoid a drivers side front impact. The crash destroyed part of our grill and headlamp, and punctured the radiator, spewing coolant onto the gravel road. No one was hurt, but an argument ensued with some pushing and shoving. The teenagers drove away with only minor damage to their car, leaving us (also teenagers) in the middle of a lonely road with a broken vehicle. They refused to take us back to town. We pushed the Dodge off the road, removed the serial number and any personal items that might trace the vehicle back to us (or Charlie), and ultimately hitched a ride into town. A week later I saw the vehicle in the Pennington County sheriff’s lot waiting for its final trip to the junk yard. I said goodbye to my first car.
Frank approached me around the Christmas holiday and suggested that I move in with him and his family for the next school year. They lived northwest of town about 10 miles from campus in a small isolated subdivision on the edge of the racetrack, a local name for an arcuate valley of red shale surrounding the Black Hills. The racetrack is comprised of soft, red mudstone and sandstone of the Spearfish Formation forming a low valley bounded by ridges of younger and older more resistant limestone and sandstone—a very pastoral setting. Frank’s family lived in a large single-wide trailer attached to an unfinished wood frame addition destined to be their new house. Frank’s dad had started building the house before his untimely death. We all agreed that I would save money, even with the longer commute, and Frank and his mom admitted that the family could use the extra cash.
Frank’s grades were not good that first year. He was majoring in electrical engineering, an unfortunate decision because of the heavy math load associated with it. Maybe he thought my study habits would rub off on him. Anyway, I enthusiastically agreed to the arrangement. I would pay his mom a nominal fee for room and board and buy a car to commute to campus. Ideally it sounded great, to live in the country and schmooze with his sisters. Frank’s mom was a lovely and generous person. I left Rapid City that June with high hopes and the prospect of buying a great car for the fall.
I saved extra money that summer by snagging a job at Furnas Electric Company near Geneva and managed to continue my scholarship with their Foundation. I actually enjoyed my job as a material handler, a person who replenishes parts and supplies on the assembly line. When I returned to school at the end of August, 1965, Frank informed me that he had dropped out of school. His grades were terrible, he lacked enthusiasm for the rigorous EE program, and felt the overwhelming burden of family responsibility. I totally understood his predicament, but I was disappointed—we were fated to hang out and commute to school together. I moved into their trailer, housing seven other humans. I shared a room with Frank. The trailer was intended to disappear after the house was completed. That was yet another job for Frank. I volunteered to help him on weekends despite the fact that my building skills were nonexistent. We all seemed to get along. I had a crush on one of his sisters, and even dated her a few times, which seems odd since we were all living in the same house.
My need to get a car was as strong as ever and necessary because I had to get to campus even though Frank volunteered to drop me off on his way to work. I had enough money saved to purchase and insure a junker, and that’s exactly what I got, a 1955 Oldsmobile 88 from a used car dealer on St. Patrick Street. I knew nothing about cars and bought it because it looked cool, a big gas guzzler with an auto transmission that would have been fine if the transmission hadn’t failed. I had the Olds for about 2 weeks when third and fourth gears suddenly disappeared, and within days the transmission wouldn’t even shift out of low gear. I drove around town for a week at 25 mph, running at around 4,000 rpm’s. I was getting rather depressed. Frank hadn’t participated in my purchase but agreed that the transmission was beyond hope unless I wanted to spend a fortune to rebuild it. He had worked on his dad’s trucks—his dad had been in the trucking business—and felt sorry for me. I was facing a 20-mile roundtrip commute each day to school with no vehicle. Frank suspected that the dealer was a criminal and had artificially extended the life of a “dead” transmission by adding sawdust to the fluid. I hitched a ride to campus with Frank in his 1956 Ford Fairlane for a couple of weeks while I looked for another clunker.
Despite my vehicular set back, all was going well. I was meeting new friends, classes were off to a good start, and I was on my own, an independent guy (sort of) having a good time. All of my friends had fled the dorm into apartments and had cars. Randy had returned to school with his Austin Healey Sprite. Charlie’s TR-3 was functional, and I was about to get new wheels.
Paul was a sophomore at SDSMT and involved in Newman Club, a Catholic student organization on campus. We became friends. He mentioned that his dad had a 1953 Chrysler New Yorker for sale on the family farm near Wagner, in southeastern South Dakota. If I could get to Wagner, I could buy the car on the cheap. That sounded good to me, buying a car from a friend, not a crooked dealer. I hitchhiked the 200 miles to Wagner in a long day thanks to a fellow from Kansas who was heading home from a job. Paul’s dad was a friendly guy trying to make a living dry farming on the prairie. I paid him around $30, drove off the next day with a wave, and did well until I suffered a flat tire five miles from the farm. The spare was as bald as a billiard ball, but it worked. I returned to the farm where a better tire was found. Despite the worn tires, the New Yorker was in excellent condition. It did not use or leak oil, was very reliable, and shined brightly from an abundance of polished chrome, probably weighing in at close to 4,000 lbs. The vehicle had a 3-speed standard transmission controlled by a shift stick on the column. The loose steering was the only problem. For some reason, the “play” in the wheel bothered me.
I owned the car for about a month when Frank approached me with an idea. He was replacing his 1956 Ford Fairlane with a newer 1960 Pontiac and offered me the Ford for next to nothing. Its only problem was oil consumption, probably because Frank and several predecessors drove it hard. Frank said the problem was due to leaky rings in one cylinder (maybe a quart every 300 miles), and we could fix it easily with new rings and some muscle. That Ford was a muscle car, a 292 cubic inch V-8, a faded two-tone orange and white 2-door sedan that could reach 60 mph in mere seconds. I was hooked. Even though winter was approaching, we would do the work on weekends in his unheated garage. In the meantime, Frank’s mom found a buyer for my Chrysler, a good friend of hers, a divorcee with kids who needed dependable transportation. She got the better end of the deal.
Theoretically, overhauling the Fairlane was a good idea, assuming the problem was properly diagnosed, and the work done correctly in a timely manner. After all, I was a full time student. Negative! Winter was approaching, the work took longer than anticipated, and our efforts were no fun when bruised fingers were freezing on a snowy Saturday morning. We were proud of our finished product a few weeks later and celebrated the apparent success by taking it out for a spin. New rings in those days needed to be “broken in”, so we drove slowly as instructed by the manufacturer. I was proud of my new vehicle and felt lucky that my grades were still acceptable.
I was taking a heavy course load, 18 semester hours of science and math: calculus I, physics, qualitative chemical analysis, physical geology, physical education, and ROTC. I also started dating a nursing student from St. John’s McNamara School of Nursing, a Catholic institution run by nuns of St Benedict. Caley liked my new car until about 10 pm when I had to return her to the dorm and an impending curfew. Caley was from Sioux Falls. She was a tall, attractive, brown haired woman, extraverted and opinionated. She liked to party but was very controlled. Caley was disciplined, maybe because I was a temporary boyfriend. Her favorite saying was: “If you’ve got it, flaunt it”. She often said she was “looking for a cowboy”. I’m not sure what she was really looking for, and maybe she didn’t even know herself. We met at a Newman Club party and dated through much of my sophomore year. I was an active member of Newman Club and would help organize events. Newman Club activities provided a good way to meet women since Mines was clearly not a good place to find a date.
Josh, a senior in chemical engineering was also active in Newman Club. Josh was from Mobridge, South Dakota. He was a role model for me. He had good grades, planned to go to graduate school, and even owned a small sports car. We were Newman Club regulars and organized a few dances and outings together. Josh met Katie at one of the dances. She was a St. John’s nursing student from Lead, South Dakota, and a friend of Caley’s. She and Josh hit it off immediately. Josh had a great apartment and part-time job. He cleaned an x-ray clinic in downtown Rapid City behind the old civic center building. He washed and waxed the floors, dusted, and cleaned the restrooms. The doctors paid him $30/month and a rent-free apartment in a small house in the alley behind the clinic. He worked only about 2 hours a day at that job. I was envious!
A few weeks after the ring job was completed, my Ford started burning oil with a vengeance—I mean REALLY burning oil. After the ring job was completed, it used a quart every 100 miles. Blue-gray smoke poured out of the exhaust, especially at low speeds. I was really disappointed. We did something wrong by installing rings in a single cylinder, or maybe the valves had gone bad. Neither of us had the time, money, or inclination to take the engine apart again. Despite the oil use, the car ran well. I started buying reprocessed oil by the case. I never changed the oil but simply kept adding it once or twice a week. STP oil additive helped by reducing oil consumption, but it was too expensive to use regularly.
The holidays were approaching and I was doing surprisingly well considering my time and energy in maintaining a smoking muscle car. My grades were above water, I still had a girlfriend, and my car started when I needed it. I was taking my first geology class, physical geology, from Dr Mickelson, an old-time oil geologist and salty guy who never minced his words. He talked of “roughnecks, tool pushers, and jug hustlers”. His lectures were occasionally laced with expletives, and besides, there were no women in class anyway. Back in the 1960’s we could smoke in class, and nearly everyone did. The department chair, Dr. Tullis was a chain smoker. I never saw him without one. The professors all wore suits to class and exhibited an aura of conservative authority, a standard for the time. I loved the fieldtrips to the mountains, driving up highway 44 toward Pactola Lake into the heart of the Hills, stopping at older and older rock units—Dakota, Sundance, Spearfish, Minnekhata, Pahasapa, Minnelusa, Deadwood—as we climbed higher. I was hooked on stratigraphy, the study of sedimentary rock layers through time and knew that I had picked the right field of study, although I wasn’t so sure about the engineering part. I hadn’t taken any engineering classes yet and felt some trepidation, but I was doing OK in my current math class.
I also enjoyed qualitative analysis, a lab-based chemistry class. Each week Dr Gilbertson gave us a test tube sample with a few milliliters of a clear liquid. We were required to qualitatively identify the constituents, the dissolved cations and anions using various cookbook procedures. I did well in QA partly because it was very structured and easy to follow directions. I also started attending the weekly geology departmental seminars, where professors, graduate students, and visiting lecturers talked about their research. I have a mental image of sitting in the coffee room listening to a conversation between Dr. Rapp, a mineralogist, and another faculty member talking about some mineral tidbit in the Black Hills and understanding every fifth word. The new geology building had been completed a year or two before I enrolled. It was a great physical and intellectual environment, a stimulating place with lots of smart people doing interesting things. Before long I could understand every fourth word!
Winter had arrived. Western weather was still new to me. We would get sudden severe snow storms, but warm weather would reappear in a few days. Western South Dakota experienced its first blizzard of the season over Thanksgiving weekend in 1965. Tom H and I had been invited to spend Thanksgiving weekend with Dan, a tall, quiet and serious guy from Woonsockett, South Dakota. Woonsockett’s claim to fame was the first artesian well drilled into the Dakota aquifer in the early twentieth century. Artesian aquifers are under pressure and when drilled can shoot water high in the air, a hundred feet or more above the ground surface. Tom, Dan, and I drove east in Tom’s car during a serious snow storm that November. I remember travelling with the passenger window open part of the time since the windshield defroster couldn’t keep up with the heavy snow in near zero visibility. We made it across the Missouri river to a Thanksgiving feast. Nothing seemed to deter us. We were invincible.
For Christmas break, my older friend, Tim, and his wife, Marlene, were headed to Kentucky for Christmas and offered to drop me and Randy off in Illinois. We shared gas expenses and alternatively listened to rock and country music on the all night round trip drives without any vehicular mishaps or storms.
Christmas break was short because we had to return by early January to finish the semester and take final exams two weeks later. In late January, we had another week off at semester break. With this arrangement, Christmas break was wasted writing term papers and studying for finals, a very inefficient schedule that was later changed. I made it home to Geneva and back for semester break in my Fairlane without winter storms but with the dubious distinction of using a case (24 quarts at ten cents/quart) of re-refined oil in 1,800 miles.
Looking back on that first semester in the fall of 1965, I was pretty lucky. I ended up with a 3.2 cumulative GPA with the help from A grades in geology, physics lab, and qualitative analysis. Of course, I willingly accepted the easy 1-hour A grade in ROTC. My only C grade was in calculus. I liked the class and the instructor, Mr Grimm, but I found that generally the math and engineering professors were poor teachers. Their first words in class were “Good morning everyone, go to the board…” There was very little explanation or lecturing. Their teaching approach was simply to work problems at the board each day as a way to learn. Exam problems often had no resemblance to the ones done at the board from yesterday’s homework, not an instructive way to learn in my opinion, especially if a student does not have the math gene. But all of this rambling is an excuse. In reality I was lucky that semester. My skills allowed me to do well where memorization met with success. Math doesn’t necessarily work that way.
Second semester started with good intentions but ended with bad results. A severe winter set in, cold days and lots of snow. My muscle car was now up to a quart every 75 miles. Surprisingly I was never stopped by the local police for reducing visibility on the road. Rapid City was such a poor community that oil burners were common. In addition, my classes were increasingly challenging. The second semester sophomore classes—for geologic engineering students—included crystallography, calculus II, physics II, historical geology, ROTC, and museum methods. In sum it was a recipe for disaster considering my penchant for cars and sloth. I occasionally skipped classes, either because they started at 7 am or because my car wouldn’t start due to the extreme cold.
Dr Mickelson was off campus that semester in Washington DC on some South Dakota or Mines lobbying detail, and historical geology was taught by Kyle B, an MS candidate, a bright, likable, hard working instructor who went on to get his PhD and taught in Georgia for many years. Museum methods sounded great when I signed up but turned out to be disappointing, unfortunately for me. It was taught by Mr M, a geology museum staffer who was hearing impaired, but he no doubt heard me complaining about his class to my classmates. His class preparation involved giving each of us—two older local women and me—a stack of books illustrating the osteological characteristics of our respective vertebrate fossils, and we were told to start preparing the material for display. I was given an Eocene Oreodont skull wrapped in plaster and burlap. Oreodonts are extinct Artiodactylids (even-toed mammals) related to camels and pigs, but with no close relatives living today. Mr. M didn’t lecture or demonstrate and was rarely around to provide assistance. I grumbled, perhaps too loudly, and incorrectly assumed his two (?) hearing aids were only partially effective. This was clearly an upper level class for more advanced students. My lack of maturity played a role in my attitude at the museum as well as in physics and calculus classes.
Selling my Fairlane was sad business, but the oil consumption finally became unmanageable, and I was forced to dispense with it locally, probably to someone who had the energy to work on it, although I can’t recall who that was. I discovered a dark blue 1958 Studabaker Lark, a flathead 4-cylinder four door sedan from an honest dealer for $90. It was surprisingly peppy, a 3-speed manual on the column, my fourth car in about 5 months. I missed the power of the Fairlane but enjoyed the dependable transportation. My enjoyment was short lived, ending on a snowy evening a month later in a head on collision on highway 79 in front of the Rapid City bowling alley. I was probably going too fast for conditions, heading south into town on some mission when an older man in a pickup truck turned in front of me to enter the bowling alley. He couldn’t clear my lane fast enough on the icy road, his rear tires spinning in fear. I braked but couldn’t stop in time and broadsided him at about 30 mph, an impact strong enough to bend the frames of both vehicles and totaled them. Luckily, neither of us sustained injury.
Thank goodness for Frank’s mom. She knew exactly what to do and coached me about insurance adjusters. The police issued a ticket to the fellow in the truck, and with enough hounding I received a check from his insurance company a few weeks later. I had just destroyed the best car of my short life, one that would have lasted through my undergraduate career. My grades were suffering, Caley was still trying to find a cowboy, and I was bumming rides to school from Frank so I could walk to the geology museum and try to reconstruct a shattered Oligocene oreodont skull.
My car buying skills were increasing exponentially, despite the fact that Mines did not offer classes in vehicular suicide. I was no longer a novice and could easily find the worst car on any lot and pay too much money for it. At least I insured my cars now, and liability insurance and plates usually cost more than the vehicle. That was indeed the case when I purchased a 1955 Dodge station wagon, a faded green vehicle with yet another 3-speed shift lever on the steering column. It didn’t use oil and was seemingly dependable except for one fault—a noisy throw-out bearing, an integral part of the clutch system that temporarily disengages the engine from the manual transmission while shifting. I didn’t pay much for the Dodge, and the noise was manageable. I drove that car for the rest of the semester, through the summer, and back to school in the fall listening to that bearing continuously grinding away.
The two back-to-back blizzards in March didn’t help my grades much either. I had never experienced weather that severe in my short life. It seemed unusually warm, 50 degrees and calm at about 6 pm on that March evening. By midnight it was snowing heavily and the temperature dropped to near zero as 60 mph wind gusts pounded the region. Twenty-four hours later, drifts exceeded 20 feet in some places, and we were snowed in. I remember a photograph in the Rapid City Journal showing a bridge on I-90 north of town with a snow drift reaching the top of the overpass and impaling a greyhound bus. Frank and I skied to highway 79 a day later where he had (wisely) parked his car. The main roads had been plowed and we drove to town to buy groceries. Oddly enough, temperatures had risen into the 50’s that day and it almost seemed balmy despite the white background. I discovered that city streets were in better shape and classes had resumed before I could reach campus. This was a major regional storm resulting in the death of more than 100,000 cattle and sheep on the plains. The poor animals literally suffocated as their faces froze in a blanket of ice. To make matters worse, another storm, although not as severe, arrived a few weeks later exacerbating an already severe winter. I missed even more classes.
That spring the ROTC department began marketing its advanced program. Male SDSMT students were only required to take two years of military science but could elect the advanced program for two additional years. The downside: each reservist would be required to spend two years after graduation on active duty as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. The upside: $35/month while attending college. All of this evolved in 1966 while Vietnam was churning in the background. Surprisingly, I didn’t realize the crisis would evolve into a horrific and useless war, and anyway, the ROTC faculty said that we’d in all likelihood get tech jobs stateside—pablum for the student masses. I hated the Thursday morning drills, the uniforms, and the brass and shoe polishing. During my first two years at Mines I would occasionally show up late for drill with long hair and scuffed shoes. Sergeant Major L would then share some of his favorite expletives with me, many of which I had never heard before. I did enjoy assembling my M-1 rifle blindfolded and memorizing the answers to the posted test answers. I signed up. I was very dumb.
For spring break that year, Frank and his family traveled with me to Geneva. I think his mom had been to Chicago previously, but her kids had not. My parents were thrilled to have all of us. We went to Chicago and otherwise did some sightseeing around the Fox River Valley for a few days. We drove Frank’s family V-8 Lincoln for that task.
Josh offered me his job cleaning the x-ray clinic downtown for the next year. This was a real coup for me since I would get a free apartment next to the clinic and an additional $30/month. I accepted. In reality that job would have been enough to live on, even without the ROTC dollars. One hitch was that the clinic had to be cleaned during the summer while I was in Illinois. One of Frank’s sisters expressed interest in the summer job because she was working (or going to work) at a restaurant downtown, and the apartment and extra money from cleaning would help her out.
I was proud of myself and seemed to be in an excellent position for my junior year even though I was having a seriously bad semester with the prospect of even more difficult classes in the fall. I was ambivalent about going back to Illinois for the summer as a material handler at Furnas Electric, but thankfully the company continued to give me a modest scholarship. I was fortunate too that my mom diligently sent me $10 each week as spending money while at school.
At the end of the semester, I reluctantly said goodbye to my SDSMT friends and pointed my Dodge eastward toward Sioux Falls to see Caley. Her semester had ended a week earlier, and we agreed to meet on my way east at her parent’s home in Sioux Falls. The Dodge was running well. I always drove nonstop, usually at night, straight to my destination in order to avoid motel expenses. This time I decided to drive US-18 through southernmost South Dakota, a lonely stretch of highway traversing the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. My plan was to arrive in Sioux Falls early the next day and spend some time with Caley. By nightfall, I reached Sioux country and encountered few vehicles on the highway. After an hour of listening to all night rock on KOMA radio, Oklahoma City, I saw what looked like a bonfire in the far distance ahead of me. It was a fire, and I slowed, suddenly realizing it was burning in the middle of the highway. I could make out several people standing around the conflagration with cans of what I assumed was beer. I had interrupted a party. I veered reflexively to the right onto the shoulder at about 20 mph, and as the intoxicants scattered, I sped around them, at least temporarily upsetting their party.
Minor incidents never deterred me, so I continued driving into the night. After my encounter with the bonfire I realized it was a Friday, hence the party, but I was on a mission and needed to get to Sioux Falls. Sometime later I was out of the reservation in farm country near the Missouri River. At maybe 10 pm, my headlights suddenly dimmed, a symptom of an immediate car problem. The generator had ceased to function. I would soon be without vision and a dead battery on a Friday night in the middle of Nowhere, South Dakota. I turned off the headlights and slowed down, hoping to get at least one restart on the battery when I needed it. Luckily there was no traffic, and moonlight helped. I drove in the dark for about 30 minutes when I saw a distant light ahead. As I approached, a building became visible on my left. I turned on my weak headlights and slowly drove onto a rough gravel driveway. I guess I just wanted a place to park for the night and maybe make a phone call to a local mechanic in the morning. I parked at the end of the driveway next to an open garage door and peered inside to a well lit fluorescent interior. To my utter amazement, I was looking into a mechanic’s workshop. I was greeted by the amiable owner who had been working late to get a job done for a local farmer. I explained my predicament as I opened the hood of the Dodge to reveal the source of my problem. Yes, he had the parts, and if there were no complications, I could be on my way in less than an hour with a new generator rotor and brushes.
I reached Sioux Falls late the next morning after a short nap at a rest stop—I really did have a crush on Caley. I visited that day and met her parents who were odd but very welcoming. They were party people, seemingly hard to describe, but out of the mainstream like carefree young adults, except they had to be in their 40’s at least. I kissed her goodbye that afternoon and continued my drive to Geneva while dreading my forthcoming grade report. As it turned out, I ended the term with two C’s,(crystallography and museum methods), two D’s (calculus and physics), and a B (historical geology) resulting in a revised cumulative 2.8 GPA, not really disastrous considering how immature, irresponsible, and utterly undisciplined I had become. Oh, and of course I received an A in ROTC. I was lucky to get a C in museum methods, because I didn’t accomplish much with my disaggregated pile of oreodont skull fragments. There was no excuse for the two D’s in math and physics. I just didn’t apply myself, and those classes required daily attention.
The only notable event from that summer was the “Dear Ted” letter from Caley. She found her cowboy—she actually used that word in her letter—and thought our relationship should end. It did bother me initially, being ousted by the Marlboro man because I really liked her. I recently discovered an odd note on the inside cover of the 1966 Engineer, the SDSMT yearbook. The reference to the office might have meant the Office Lounge on highway 79:
Dear Teddy,
Just think you were once a sweet innocent geology major who did nothing but study and go to church all the [time]. But what changed all that? Why, nothing of course since you met me you’re even sweeter, and needless to say, much more innocent. You carry God around you everywhere you go, and as far as studying goes, you’re at the office practically every night studying your heart out.
Sincerely, I love you even,
Caley
My undergraduate career was half over and I was behind in class work. My D grades wouldn’t need to be repeated if my GPA remained high enough, but I hadn’t even started the dreaded Mines engineering classes. And there was another very serious problem on the horizon for a new army reservist: Vietnam. By January, 1966, the U.S. had 185,000 troops in Vietnam. More than 5,000 would die that year alone, and the death rate was on the way up. There was no end in sight to that conflict.
My third year at Mines was my last. More fifty years have passed, and I still regret not completing my degree there. One of my old age fantasies is to return to Rapid City and finish my BS in geological engineering just to get closure. But when I think about it lucidly, I realize I would be taking mostly classes I didn’t enjoy—statics, dynamics, fluid mechanics, and advanced museum methods.
The reason I left Mines, as you may have already guessed, was ROTC. The weekly drills were pretty dreadful. I eventually realized the incentives, two semester hours (rather than one) of an A grade and money, were not worth the risk. But I attribute my decision to leave the program (and Mines) to one incident, a question during ROTC lecture class one day that fall. Major C, a professor of military science, was a combat veteran, a hard-nosed guy who loved all things military. The ROTC faculty included all older men, waiting for retirement in their last plush assignment. I recall the exact wording of my question while seated in the back row. I raised my hand. “Sir, why are we there?” I asked. I was of course referring to Vietnam, an important issue for young second lieutenants-to-be. Believe it or not, he said: “We’re there to kill Gooks”, referring to the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese regular army. I’m sure he thought I was asking a really idiotic question, and questions are often looked upon negatively in the military anyway. My immediate response was of course “Thank you, Sir.” Well, my feeble undergraduate brain started to mull that over, and to say the least, I was pretty disturbed, not only by that answer but how racist and superficial it was. I was expecting some kind of intellectual discussion about communism, freedom, the Domino Theory, and democracy, but Major C simply blew me off sarcastically, like how could you ask such a dumb fucking question. You idiot, we’re there to kill the enemy!
My other classes got underway in a rush: mineralogy, mine surveying, physical chemistry, statics, and economics, a difficult agenda for anyone. Unfortunately, statics met at 7 am Monday through Thursday, a personal recipe for disaster. Mineralogy was taught by David Garske, a young assistant professor, a fabulous instructor, shy and unassuming but extremely well-versed in the field. The class consisted of two one-hour lectures and two four-hour labs each week, grueling but fun. Physical chemistry was totally unintelligible, but the professor, Dr. Martin, was an amiable guy, and I think he recognized the difficulty of the class for non chemistry majors. I recall only a single concept from the entire class, enthalpy. Enthalpy is defined in Wikipedia as the thermodynamic potential, designated by the letter H, that consists of the internal energy of a system (U) plus the product of pressure (p) and volume (V), which are functions of the state of the thermodynamic system. Okay, got it!
I lived in my one-room apartment behind the x-ray clinic, studying and doing my daily chores. My apartment was half of a larger frame building that contained an additional rental unit. The radiologists next door rented the other unit to some young men, local guys from Rapid City who worked or went to high school, or just dropped out. They seemed to have a monopoly on women, high schoolers mostly or recent graduates, 17 and 18 year old adolescents hanging around with 20 year old adults. Aaron was one of the guys next door. He became a good friend. Aaron was really sincere, caring, amiable and understanding, a soft touch, who didn’t have that “tough guy image” some of the others exhibited. We all seemed to get along—they respected me as a “college guy”, and often invited me to their parties.
Rod approached me early that semester, asking if he could share my apartment and contribute to rent and groceries. I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about the request, but I agreed. Rod could be especially helpful in cleaning the clinic if I was busy with classes. Rod and I acquired a small dog, a female beagle mixed breed named Bandit. She was a stray and temporarily adopted by our next door neighbors. She migrated back and forth to both apartments and was eventually adopted by Rod and me. She was a gentle dog who loved people. She was also a big hit with women visitors.
That fall I dated women from both St John’s and the National School of Business, friends I had met either through Caley or through Katie. Incidentally, I was the best man at Josh and Katie’s wedding the following summer, and they were soon off to Boulder, Colorado where Josh was starting a PhD program in chemistry.
Frank, Rod, Aaron, and I hung around together. We drank beer at the La Pouche or the Office Lounge on highway 79 west of town on the weekends, where we met Bud, an air force enlisted man from Ellsworth Air Force Base. Bud was tall, quiet, and soft spoken but hilariously funny. Bud started dating Frank’s oldest sister and later married her. I was the best man at their wedding too.
Except for statics (an applied math class dealing with forces and vectors), I was doing surprisingly well that semester. Statics was challenging for me, but the 7 am meeting time was especially difficult for an undisciplined student—I just stopped going to class with the expectation of dropping it, but I was so immature I neglected to check on the deadline dates for drop/add! Our instructor subscribed to the “go to the board” philosophy of teaching.
Mineralogy kept me and eight others extremely busy. I really looked forward to the mineral identification problems, in part because David Garske, was such a likeable person and a great teacher. Eight hours of lab each week were usually required to complete our identification exercises.
Rod and I occasionally threw an Everclear party, an event that required guests to contribute toward several bottles of grain alcohol and gallons of sweet drinks such as 7-up, fruit juice, lemonade, and ginger ale. We placed the concoction in large (new) plastic trash cans with ice and consumed it enthusiastically. Loud music and sophisticated (?) conversation were added to the mix, and everyone had an enjoyable time. Even Bandit had fun. She received much attention while slurping punch from spilled drinks that splashed onto the floor. After one of these events, Arron and I had left the apartment in my car for a “nightcap” at some bar, returning very late by way of the alley utility pole next to my apartment. Aaron was driving because I was pretty inebriated, half asleep in the back seat. Apparently Aaron was in a similar state. After assessing the damage next morning, I realized my Dodge was history and I couldn’t afford to pay the out-of-pocket expense for a new radiator on my meager income. The city never noticed their utility pole was off vertical by about 15 degrees.
A few weeks later, our next party was crashed by four local low lifers, young high school drop outs, arrogant and violent, always ready for a fight. Since we lived in an alley, our apartment was hidden from the police and other passersby. Aaron and his friends were not at the party. I suspected that our unwanted guests were looking for Aaron’s brother and stumbled on us. When I asked the intruders to leave, the youngest, Roxy Fisher, a South Dakota light weight Golden Gloves champ (?) broke my nose with one punch, very well placed but a severe misuse of his presumed title and a mistake. Rod was severely beaten by the others with the loss of some teeth. I got off easy. They quickly left not realizing that we would get even. When Aaron heard about what happened, he made some inquiries, got his brother, Lonnie, and some other friends together and visited Roxy and his buddies. I didn’t ask for a summary of their visit. Rod and I then pressed charges. Roxy was tried in juvenile court and given a suspended 30-day sentence, forced to pay my medical expenses, and fined. His mother appeared with him in court, and no doubt was stuck paying the bills. My nose still has a subtle kink.
I didn’t want to live in fear of retribution from the Rapid City underworld, so I gave up my part-time job at the clinic and shabby apartment for a tiny, maybe 200 square foot place very close to campus on Elm Street. It was another ramshackle but functional abode, this time with an additional roommate, Cory, a meat cutter at the local supermarket, who provided us with free groceries. I really needed to buckle down. Have I said this before? I was without transportation for a while but the campus was only a few blocks away.
About that time, Tim from Kentucky approached me with a proposition. His younger sister was soon to visit, and he hoped I would take her out on a date. She was pretty wild according to his description. He was right. Tim knew that I had lost my vehicle and volunteered his VW Bug for the event. An unfortunate incident took place late on the evening in question. I recommended Deadwood, about 35 miles north of Rapid City, an old mining community with lots of history, and home to the No. 10 Saloon. We were headed back to Rapid City late that night when I lost control of the Bug, probably from hitting the edge of the shoulder. The bug flipped at least once and landed upside down in the ditch next to the shoulder. Surprisingly, we were unhurt, considering other nearby sections of the road had steep drop offs. The VW was totaled. I soon bought Tim a new (used) car for $200.
I owned Tim’s VW, even though I never had a chance to drive it again. I was still heading downhill at lightning speed on the road to irresponsibility, debauchery, and general immaturity. There was an upside. My grades were minimally acceptable (except for statics)—two Cs, two Bs, and an A. I was most surprised by my C grade in physical chemistry. I was sure I was headed for an F. The average test score for the semester for all students in the class (maybe 15 of us) was about 25 percent. Dr Martin graded on a curve, and believe it or not, the class couldn’t even score a quarter of the questions correctly. I still qualified for a C based on my 19% correct answers on all tests. What would the ROTC Dept. say about that! My five semester hours of B in mineralogy really helped, but my cumulative GPA still dropped to 2.7 because of an F in statics.
Second semester classes included mine surveying II, petrology (the study of rocks), structural geology (faults and folds) , stratigraphy (sedimentary rock layers), European history, and modern physics (an old name for what we now call quantum physics). I also purchased my 10th car and found a new girlfriend. The car was another Studebaker, a light blue 1955 Lark with a flathead 4 engine. The car only burned about a quart of oil every 500 miles and would probably get me through the semester and back to Illinois, a part-time job and some money in the bank to purchase a better vehicle. My new girlfriend, Laura, was a high school senior at RCHS, funny, dark haired, extroverted. She had a part-time job at a local bakery where her father worked, and would visit after school in her mint 1953 Plymouth sedan wearing her cute bake house outfits.
When the spring semester started, Vietnam reared its ugly head. I had to deal with weekly drills, haircuts, M-1 rifles, and spit polish, but the infantry in Vietnam had it much worse, suffering casualties by the thousands. I was also getting behind in required credit hours for a four year graduation as an engineering geologist. A second attempt at statics and even more detestable engineering classes didn’t sound like fun to me. I was informed by my drill sergeant that I could drop out of advanced ROTC (and the army reserve) if I transferred out of Mines, and my new college didn’t offer a similar program. In hindsight, I suspect he thought I was not fit for the military. He was right. I did my research and approached the commanding officer. Northern Illinois University had only an Air Force ROTC program. The commanding officer signed my honorable discharge, and I was free, at least for a year until graduation and a 1-A draft classification.
I had already applied to Northern Illinois University, and by mid-semester was accepted into their earth science program. I suppose this could be viewed as a step down the academic ladder from SDSMT, but considering my ROTC problem and a required degree in engineering there, I had no other choice, and besides, I wanted to go to grad school anyway. That may seem odd to some considering my poor academic habits, but I was beginning to change, and maybe maturing incrementally.
As I foresaw my switch in schools, I had to complete two more semesters for a BS in earth science, mostly meteorology, geography, anthropology, and paleontology classes. With geology field methods added the summer after graduation, I would qualify for entry into the MS program in geology there. My Mines career was coming to an end. I had mixed feelings about leaving because I had friends there, and I felt like Rapid City was home. Despite my behavior, I was really interested in geology and my area of focus would be sedimentary geology and paleontology.
I managed to complete my final semester at Mines without wrecking another vehicle, but my GPA dropped further to a 2.6/4.0. My structural geology professor continually referred to his former grad school advisor from Columbia University, a god in his eyes, by saying Donath did this or Donath did that. I didn’t devote the time to fully understand 3-dimensional rock problems, the stereo net, and math calculations, resulting in a D grade. My modern physics professor, Dr B, was a poor lecturer and rambled endlessly in class—I stopped going and didn’t bother to drop it. It’s interesting that I spent much of my career teaching middle school and college, at least part time, and would be pretty demanding of myself to give clear and entertaining lectures. I suppose I actually learned something from my poor instructors.
In early June, I said goodbye to Laura and pointed my Studebaker eastward into the future, back to the Central Time Zone in a myopic blur. I was moderately nearsighted and lost my only pair of glasses during my last week in Rapid City, a final act of disorganization. The drive to Illinois was a fuzzy one visually, but Bandit provided good company.
Geneva and DeKalb, Illinois
My first task in Illinois that June was to find another car (my Studebaker was dying) and a job to pay for it. I discovered a part-time position and a car in one fell swoop. I applied for a job at the Big Banjo, a family-owned beer and pizza place specializing in banjo music and draft beer. It was located in Glen Elyn, Illinois about a 15-mile drive east of Geneva. My responsibilities included pouring beer, serving pizzas, and other tasks that needing attention. It was hard work but I enjoyed it and made good tips. The owners were friendly, easy going folks. Their daughter was buying a new car and offered me her 1960 VW Karmenghia for $200, a red, sporty soft top two seater, a pseudo sports car with a 3-speed on the floor. Anyway, I considered it a sports car, although it had a small air-cooled 4-cylinder engine. Wow…I didn’t hesitate after test driving it, my eleventh car in 3 years and a convertible to boot. The folks were honest, and I trusted them, and besides I was an expert in purchasing used cars. I loved my new wheels.
I was excited to start school as the fall semester approached and signed up for earth science degree requirements: meteorology I, conservation of natural resources, physical geography, paleontology, and anthropology, a heavy load by NIU standards. The classes were easy when compared to Mines, and I was able to balance my part-time job and school while temporarily living with my parents in Geneva. I thoroughly enjoyed paleontology. I thought I could make a career out of fossils. Dr Stan Frost, my professor exuded enthusiasm as an easy going, knowledgeable guy. He was a micropaleontologist which means that his critters were single-celled calcite-secreting invertebrates often used in the oil and gas industry to determine the age of sediments in wells. He focused on foraminifers. They evolved rapidly and could be found in the drilling mud that came up the well bore as an oil or gas well was being drilled. All a micropaleontologist needed was a microscope to identify forams and knowledge of where in the stratigraphic section—the age and name of the formation—the drillers had penetrated. Stan had done his PhD dissertation at the University of Illinois on Eocene forams from Chiapas, Mexico and was looking for qualified graduate students to help continue his research in other areas. Stan always called me “Tad”. He had a son by that name and presumed that a Thaddeus should be a Tad. He took forever to grade exams and write letters of recommendation but I was extremely fond of him.
That fall, my aunt Stacey approached me to work as a bartender for her at the Club Moderne, her bar east of Geneva. My parents originally partnered with her and her husband Stanley Patek in the 1950’s but later quit the business. Stacey continued to run it and occasionally needed part-time help. I later quit my job at the Big Banjo and worked at the Club on weekends. My commute was much shorter and I knew my boss well. Bar tending was hard work, especially late Saturday night after the bars in town closed. The Club was outside the Geneva city limits and stayed open until 2 am. At 12:15, the Club was flooded with drunks needing one, two, or more nightcaps. I would occasionally refuse to serve some customers, especially if they were obviously drunk. That situation often created late night discord, but I was a good schmoozer, an important skill of a good bartender and would buy the occasional drink for steady customers. I was well aware that bartending was a dead end career for me but it was fun for a while.
By mid-semester I snagged an even better job, a steady one with the local Miller High Life beer distributor in Geneva as a night manager, loading trucks, filling gas tanks and managing inventory. The term night manager was an overstatement of course, but the job was entertaining, and I made good money for the late 1960’s, while working from about 4 to 7 or 8 pm. The warehouse also distributed Strohs, a Detroit beer, and Heineken, a popular import from Holland, which was by far the best beer in the warehouse. I became a skilled forklift driver, especially after drinking beer for several hours from my 16 oz plastic cup delicately balanced on the lift next to my steering wheel. The warehouse maintained a refrigerated keg, usually of Strohs, and a breakage pile. Most of the beer came in long-neck glass bottles in cases loaded on wooden pallets. Trucks returned at the end of the day with partial cases and a few broken bottles, or I would inadvertently break bottles during the loading process. A diminishing breakage pile was cause for concern, and quickly remedied by me or one of the drivers. I filled my Karmenghia with gas from the warehouse pump (with the owner’s approval). My Karmenghia trunk usually contained a vcase of Heineken from the breakage pile. My popularity with the earth science crowd at NIU increased exponentially when my part-time job was revealed.
ROTC was history, but by spring 1968 the draft again loomed large for me and thousands of other college men. Acquiring a 1-H teaching deferment after graduation seemed to be the best approach, and as long as I could maintain a full time job in an elementary or secondary school, I would be draft free. I applied for and received a provisional teaching certificate from the state of Illinois, allowing me to teach while actively working toward an education degree. I was opportunistic but really hated the war—like many others—and started applying to Catholic schools in the region that accepted provisional teaching certificates. I registered for the summer 1968 term at NIU anticipating a start toward my education certificate. I also received an offer to teach math and science to 7th and 8th graders at St Bernadette School in Rockford, Illinois.
The spring semester went quickly despite boring lectures in anthropology and southeast Asian history. My geology classes were fun and I liked all of the professors in the earth science department. I ended up with a cumulative undergraduate GPA somewhere above 3.0 (thanks to two semesters of excellent grades at NIU), and I managed (surprisingly) to own the same car for more than a year.
My parents held a graduation party for me, an open house on the back porch in Geneva in early June. The weather was clear and warm. My aunt Stacey and some neighbors and friends were there. I managed a few dollars in graduation gifts and hearty congratulations from all. Our mailman also gave me a gift. He was delivering in our neighborhood during the festivities. One of the envelopes was handed to me, a letter from my draft board informing me that I had been reclassified 1-A.
THADDEUS DYMAN 