Given that I usually enrolled for the maximum number of academic hours I could take each quarter, it’s difficult to believe I had any time for a social life – one in which I sought fun and fellowship with other students. But I did. I was determined to succeed in this new endeavor, since I never did in high school. I seldom got to bed before midnight, not because I was out carousing, but rather because I stayed up to study when I returned from the Hub or another college hangout, early in the evening. It’s fortunate I had learned to exist with a minimal amount of sleep.
I admit I had great difficulty getting out of bed and to a fast breakfast and still attend an eight o’clock chemistry lab. To help, I plugged my desk lamp into my clock-radio and pointed the bulb towards where I expected my head would be at six-thirty in the morning, when the radio alarm turned on and I was tempted to smash the snooze button into oblivion. A quick use of the facilities across the hall from my room revived me enough to get to the cafeteria downstairs. McGilvery Hall was within a reasonable walk from the dorm.
Midmorning, the Hub offered a caffeine restorative. Coffee and a couple of cigarettes did the trick. Yes, I did start to smoke in my freshman year at Kent State. I continued the habit for the next 45 years. I was not alone; the Hub’s atmosphere held more nicotine than it did oxygen from early morning until late evening. Worse venues were the bars, although they usually did not begin the exchange of breathable air and un-breathable fumes until seven in the evening.
During my freshman year, I found the locations of the Rathskeller and the Venice to be reasonable walking distances from the campus. My alcoholic drink of choice was a Seven-Seven – a highball, consisting of a shot of Seagram’s Seven Crown whiskey diluted with ice and 7-Up. I learned to nurse them, drinking one over several hours. The other consumable was 3.2 beer – the usual, legal alcoholic beverage sold in Ohio at the time. A draft or bottle could last a couple of hours. Of course, there was always ginger ale, which looked more potent than it actually was and cost less than any other drink. I could easily get away with 15 cents for the ginger ale and 25 cents for a pack of cigarettes: Pall Mall or Kent (deluxe 100 with filter). My friends were fans of Chesterfield or Lucky Strike! Later, once I had joined Delta Upsilon, my hangout became Rocky’s, the bar where my new fraternity brothers drank, a place that the guys from Stopher Hall seldom visited.
Actually, my visits to the Rathskeller, the Venice, and Rocky’s were limited mainly to Friday or Saturday nights. The Hub was the usual meeting place; I seldom went to the Captain Brady, the hangout for fraternity and sorority members, until my sophomore year at Kent.
Given how often I attended movies while in high-school (three or four times a week), it’s strange I seldom went to them in downtown Kent. After all, I did have to give up something to find time for study in the evenings. In my early years in college, I did not get to many athletic contests.
Everyone had to take classes in physical education to meet graduation requirements. Mine were tennis, bowling, golf and archery; my favorites were ballroom and folk dancing. These last two were the only ones I actually participated in afterwards. Intramural sports were for other guys, not for me.
And what about “dating?” This was certainly a social activity outside my scope during high school. It took great effort to learn about it in college. My freshman year was often spent with friends from the dorm; they, too, seldom dated – unless it was when they went to their hometowns on the weekends. I did manage to find a few young ladies in my sophomore and junior years who might accompany me to significant campus dances. Experimental kissing and touching did occur – but not as frequently as fiction, on or off the screen, might portray for the fifties. Such events merit individual commentary for specific interactions, recorded elsewhere in these reflections. The same is true for comments about other individual friends and our relationships. Their numbers are better than any I could have anticipated from my high-school years. And that is the real marvel of my life at Kent State. I truly did have a happy social life. Finally!