Ron was the only Dartmouth student I ever got to know personally. This was in the winter and spring of '70. I was a 16-year-old high school student and Ron was maybe 19 or 20. He was average height, wiry, handsome. His hair was brown, shaggy but not long. He dressed casually. My acquaintance with Ron only lasted a few months.
I met Ron at the Kiewit Computation Center where I hung out with my closet-case high school friend and boy genius, Lloyd Kelly. Ron was refreshing to me since he was more into math and electrical engineering and not so much into programming like the rest of the students I knew at Kiewit. It was also flattering for an older guy to take a friendly interest in me, especially a student at prestigious Dartmouth.
The principal reason Ron was interested in me was because he didn't have a car and he needed me to ferry him around in my red '65 mustang.
Led Zeppelin #3
I visited Ron's 2nd floor dorm room on Tuck Drive one time. I remember it being overheated with a window open an inch in the dead of winter. While I was in his room he spoke at length about what a bitter disappointment the latest Led Zeppelin album was, I think it was #3. He repeated over and over how great the first two Zeppelin albums were and what a miserable betrayal #3 felt like in comparison. I tried to think of something to say but I never liked Led Zeppelin.
The Grey Study Area
I visited his dismal, depressing study area one time. It was a fairly small room with study carrels against the walls and also lined up back-to-back down the center of the room. Everything was grey, the walls, the floor, the carrels. The only sign of life was a poster on the wall of a big-titted young woman showing lots of cleavage that had some caption about "winners" at the bottom.
Bissell Boners
Ron lived in the Bissell dorm. He played touch football on his dorm team against other dorms. Ron’s team called themselves the "Bissell Boners" (the film "Animal House" was based on a Dartmouth frat, by the way) and their team shirt was black with orange stripes on the shoulders and white lettering on the front and back spelling the team name. I never played on their team but at Ron's urging I bought one of the shirts. I really had to nag my mom for the money, she was dead set against it. And she got the last laugh by ruining the shirt in the laundry by putting it in the dryer which melted the rubber/plastic lettering.
Andy Behrens caught skinny dipping
Andy Behrens was one of the two main Sysprogs that were instrumental in getting DTSS off the ground when it was ported to the new GE-625 mainframe, the other Sysprog being Tony Dwyer. The system component Andy was responsible for was the BASIC compiler. BASIC was fundamental to all undergraduate programming courses.
I was walking with Ron through Kiewit one time when we ran into Andy sitting at one of the tables in the TTY room. Ron stopped and mockingly reproached Andy for skinny dipping at night with another guy at a local swimming hole when Ron had happened to be passing by. Andy just chuckled. Ron stopped and harped on this for about 10 minutes, repeatedly reproaching Andy, in an arch, teasing way, for his shameless public nudity and lewdness. Andy's only response was more chuckling.
Upper Valley food
Ron was on quite a tight budget and one of his favorite treats was to go over to WRJ on Wednesdays and get the all-you-can eat-fried chicken lunch at Howard Johnsons, or HoJos as Ron called it. I drove him over for one of these lunches. I didn’t enjoy it that much, fried chicken was too heavy a taste for me at that time.
On another occasion we were out driving and Ron had a sudden craving for chili which they, apparently, never served at the college dining halls. He had me drive him over to the A&W Root Beer stand in Lebanon. He went up to the front window and proceeded to relentlessly argue with the A&W staff for 20 minutes to force them to serve him chili even though it wasn't on the menu as a separate item but only offered as part of a chili dog. They finally knuckled under and gave him his chili.
Herbert Marcuse
I took Ron to see my room at my parent's house on one point. As we entered the house and went up the stairs to my room he talked somewhat self-consciously about a book by Herbert Marcuse he was reading for a course. I had no idea what he was talking about at the time but now that I've read John Zerzan I have no curiosity about Marcuse. Nowadays, my take on Marcuse is captured by a funny scene from the artsy, gay-porn comedy, "Raspberry Reich", where one of the characters quotes him at length.
The Big Weekend Trip to Northern NY State
We took my Mustang, natch. We took turns driving. I think northern NY State may be where Ron grew up. We visited two towns, I believe they were Rochester and Syracuse.
On this trip we visited the apartment of a math wizard with a bad speech impediment. Ron took me aside at one point and told me not to mock this guy's speech because he was very bright. The wiz was Jewish so we brought him bagels and lox for breakfast and the wiz gave Ron an important math paper he wrote. I believe obtaining this paper was the main purpose of the trip.
I remember having to sleep overnight at an apartment of one of Ron's friends. I had to share a couch with some random girl. We slept side-by-side but in opposite directions, i.e., feet to head.
We went to a concert in a park with a big amphitheater, stage and half-shell. The performers were Arlo Guthrie and Judy Collins. It was a dull, boring concert. Mostly I just remember the other concert attendees straggling away listlessly afterwards.
Aftermath
I didn't see Ron much after that trip.
The last time I saw Ron was at the Hanover Inn where I was working as a busboy. I hadn't seen him in over a year. He was having lunch with his well-upholstered, brown-haired girlfriend. I came to their table and served them water, rolls and butter and he ignored me. Suit your-Ivy-League-fuckin’-self.
The following is a response from Mr. McCallister:
Wow! I'm Ron, and I just stumbled across this blog. I wish that I remembered the author, who clearly spent way more mental energy remembering my time at Dartmouth than I did. His comments are a fascinating mix of fact and inaccuracies - but like they say, if you remember the 60s, you really weren't there. That 'tight budget' comment is certainly accurate, and many details sound amazingly accurate.
Greg Miller was a classmate who gave me rides on roadtrips to girls colleges, but those were infrequent and Greg drove a Cutlass. I have no memory of a red '65 mustang, but I certainly recall WRJ HoJos. I was grateful whenever anyone would drive there; all the fried chicken you can eat is a big deal when you can't afford to eat often. (For the record, I also hated the taste, but it was cheap protein.) Frankly, Dartmouth was mostly a negative experience for me, and I've not returned since 1971; it is seldom fun to be around wealthy scions, but even less so when you are poor and living on $1/day. It is fascinating to read someone generate so much detail about a phase of my life that has faded into total obscurity in my own mind. I regret that his very detailed memories of me seem generally negative, but then, I was awfully immature while I was there, so I'm not shocked. I'm sure that I was the only person ever to have gotten into, then dropped out of BOTH Dartmouth's graduate business school and its medical school. While I was immature, I wasn't without values. I usually was glad to spend time with anyone interesting. I do recall two highly intelligent high school students who hung around the computer center where I worked. If the blogger was one of them, I genuinely enjoyed their presence (one of them memorized pi to hundreds of digits, an amazing feat to memory-challenged me). However, I was also aware that a college senior shouldn't spend a lot of time with high-schoolers, even bright and interesting ones. (Propriety exists for a reason; I'd have gotten into the face of any college student spending IMHO excessive time with any of my three sons while they were in high-school.) My not spending more time with them wasn't motivated by Ivy League snobbery; anyone who could afford a Mustang was on a much higher rung of the economic ladder than me.
Whoever the author is, I wish him well; I regret it if I ignored him while having lunch with my then-girlfriend; it was not intentional. In truth, I cannot recall ever eating at the expensive Hanover Inn (where I also bussed tables to make ends meet), but that girl was wealthy, and may well have treated me to lunch once. It was fascinating to read this blog, so thanks to whoever wrote it. Have a good life, and try not to waste emotional energy remembering a phase of my life that really doesn't merit the requisite effort!
