Wednesday: games-night began in earnest. It was by far, the most strenuous and the most fun evening of the entire pledge period.
At ten-thirty we were assembled for the mile run. We were driven to a back road and then paced by Actives, who were basketball players, to run to the Big House, a bar-hangout near Kent. One of the Actives, who had become a close friend during my pledging, yanked me from the race on the grounds that I had a “weak-heart problem.” After the race, all of us were driven back to the House and we looked forward to a chance to rest. Ha!
We were welcomed by the usual questions posed during this final week: “What do you do when an active enters a room?” and its follow-up: “How many pushups can you do, Camerino?” Once more I was excused, by my health-conscience Active-buddy, and did not need to follow the command for extensive pushups. Then the games truly began.
The uniform of the day was a jockstrap and a burlap bag with holes for head and arms. First there was the “war game.” The battlefield made use of furniture scattered throughout the living room and first floor of the House. Active-umpires determined who had been killed. The two sides were armed with pledge-paddle guns accompanied by different mouth sounds according to our designated names. The sound for my group was “guinea-guinea-wop-wop.” Our enemies shouted “jew-jew-jew.” We entered the stage singing the Grenadiers’ March, “Sing, row, row, row, row.” Our opponents sang “Abie, Abie, joined the Jewish navy to fight, fight, fight for Palestine.” We guineas were slaughtered.
Now that we were warmed up for war games, we went down to the bare basement for bombardier. Three pledges lay on the floor with a towel protecting their eyes. Three pledges above them on a table were instructed to break raw eggs into waiting, open mouths. The direct hits had to be swallowed! Places were exchanged so all of us played both roles. I received two near hits. Unfortunately, I scored a direct hit on one of my fellow pledges, Ken Kalish. I felt terrible.
Soon the Actives tired of our struggle. One of them started the next round by ordering us to put raw eggs inside of our jockstraps, to crack them, and to do belly rolls and bicycles on the concrete floor. It was gooey. But more goo followed. We paired off in a circle and washed one another’s faces and hair with more raw eggs. Then we were given cups of flour into which we blew. I now knew how a cake feels. The flour stuck nicely on the egg scum.
A potato race followed. Chunks of potato were placed on the concrete floor. We had to squat over a self-selected piece, pick it up with our anal muscles, and carry it as far as we could. I lost mine and had to eat a sandwich which one of the Actives claimed was made of the winner’s potato. It tasted good, only because I recognized its ingredients, one of which was cold chile.
It was past three o’clock when the Actives became tired of our games. We ended them and began to clean up the mess of eggs, shells and flour that covered the floor. While we were cleaning up, I was called aside into the officers’ bedroom on the second floor of the House. It was dark save for the burning ΔΥ candle. I was instructed to mount a straight-back chair. The next test was to show my loyalty to DU. I had to pull down my jockstrap and tie a slip string to my bit of manliness. The string was tied to a rock. If I trusted the Actives, I was to drop the rock. I dropped it and the waxed string parted. I was then permitted to shower and go home for my two hours of sleep before classes.
What was once, I thought, an evening of tortuous fun, would, six decades later, be considered to represent an evening of hateful torture. I could have omitted writing about Hell Night, but it was an important event in my life, one which led to a comradeship I had never experienced before nor afterwards. Today, the hatefulness would be associated with the language we used, words which, at the time, we did not consider being hateful. They were part of the ongoing culture, one which existed then, but is under radical change, today. The sounds we made during our mock battle, were, to us, as innocuous as the N-word Mark Twain used repeatedly in “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn.”
Just as the words of a former culture are now being modified, the physicality of that evening would no longer be acceptable. Hazing in all of its forms has been eliminated as part of a procedure for initiation into any group. Potential harm is now illicit, if not illegal. Forcing a pledge to down large amounts of alcohol in a brief interval has, rightfully, been eliminated. Fortunately, this was never part of the pledge process with which I was familiar. Being urged to consume psychologically devastating food, however, was used. This activity would be forbidden today. In the fifties, eating green sauces over burned “Mother’s Oats” and drinking blue buttermilk, as we did during our earlier Pledge Banquet, were viewed as elaborate pranks, distasteful but not physically harmful.
The average pledge was skilled in avoiding activities that might, indeed, be harmful. I was not unique in smearing my disgusting repast around my face and hiding much of it under my paper plate. Getting out of running marathons or doing pushups by means of assistance from a friendly Active was also part of the methodology employed by “Hogan’s heroes” as well as by other “collaborators,” throughout human history.
Hell Week and Hell Last night were parts of joining any brotherhood in the mid-fifties. Adversity was employed to help bring about a fellowship. Modern activism is the opposite side of the coin of hazing. Hazing is used by those in power to induce followers, ultimately, to become coequals. Pledges become Actives. Activism is used by those lacking power in order to force Actives to allow the powerless (pledges) to become coequals of the Actives.
Conflict has been used for centuries, if not since the beginning of human culture, as a means to bring about the union occurring in a family, clan, tribe, or nation. We have not yet learned how to bring about unity through a nonviolent system, albeit Gandhi and his followers have tired in modern times. Christianity in its origins was an even earlier attempt, but it, too, suffered from inadequacies. The culmination of “Holy Week” had its own Hell Night before the dawn of a reconciling Redemption.