Memoirs of a Worldly Guy
The next term I left my steamy, aromatic surroundings and moved into the fraternity house as a full-fledged resident. I had ruthlessly abandoned my erstwhile admirers to sort out their frustrations on their own.
The Phi Kapp house at 11002-88th Avenue was owned by a Mrs. Campbell, who had to be very tolerant to watch one of her possessions being slowly demolished by a crew of hyperactive youths. I'm not sure what the rent was but I'm sure it was minimal. I believe I paid $35 a month to the house manager for room and full board, including laundry.
Gunner and I were assigned to a small room on the north side of the basement (referred to by the brothers as the 'Hell Hole'). There was a single window at ground level looking out onto the back yard. A double stack of steel army cots against the opposite wall served as a sleeping area, and a cardboard wardrobe between the bottom of the cots and the doorway served as a cupboard. My parents had bought me a fancy side-opening steamer trunk which was stuffed with drawers full of extra socks, shorts and shirts and was parked in the large foyer outside the two basement rooms. Our study desks were placed side by side with shelves above them and were thought of as torture areas when in use.
I slept in the top bunk of the metal two-level bed located against one wall. I never enjoyed rising for classes when the alarm went off because it was still pitch black at that time of day in the wintertime in Edmonton. Gunner enjoyed it even less and did not respond readily when I yelled at him each morning.
'If I don't hit the deck the first time you call me, don't be discouraged; pull me bodily out of the sack if you have to!' That was easy for him to say! Gunner had a unique sleeping style that featured him sleeping on his back with his hands clutching the top edge of his bedclothes. The first and last time I took the liberty of shaking him by the shoulder, one of his fists shot out like a striking rattlesnake and caught me sharply on the shoulder. Only my rapid withdrawal avoided a bloody nose.
'You're on your own from now on, pal! There's no way I'm going to touch you in future!' After missing two or three morning lectures in a row, he began getting up on his own. His conscience was doing the job I had bungled! An early lesson in 'learned behaviour'!
The first subject I flunked was one in Electrical Engineering. One afternoon a week we had a 'lab' during which we were confronted with a plethora of cables and electrical meters that required us to do something that completely escaped me. Unlike Gunner's tests at E.R.A. school in the navy, the equipment was not charged so we weren't even knocked across the room.
The major complication was the timing of the E.E. 33 lecture. It took place every Saturday morning at 9:00 a.m. There was no lecture scheduled for 8:00 a.m., so if we skipped the E.E. 33 lecture we could sleep in until the first lecture at 11:00 a.m. Absolutely too tempting! As a result my attendance at the lectures was minimal and I was told bluntly by the professor that I was going to flunk regardless of my test results!
The reason I'm boring you with all of this is the possibility that Gunner is alive today only because of it. He had gone off to one of his Saturday lectures one morning while I was enjoying my illicit sleep in. About 10:30 I emitted an enormous leisurely yawn, farted, and stretched my body to its full length. In so doing I pushed both feet against the bar at the bottom of my cot, the locking mechanism disengaged and the upper level swung down, suspended only by the attachments next to the wall. I was instantaneously wrapped in my bedclothes and unceremoniously dumped onto the floor.
I lay there for a moment trying to figure out what had happened, then disentangled myself and inspected the bunk bed. My level had swung down with all the speed and weight of an executioner's axe and the sharp upper corner had struck the centre of Gunner's pillow dead centre, and with sufficient force to rip a four inch by four inch tear in the fabric. Had Gunner been lying there it would have struck him in or near the temple with possibly fatal results. When I told him later about the event and showed him the ostensibly fatal tear in the pillow he was only moderately impressed. Instead of being recorded as a fatal 'accident' he carried on for years as a successful general practitioner!
Like them or not, 'Initiations' were still a significant component of a fraternity pledge's first year. Illusion played a large part in the Phi Kapp intiations, and the inductee spent much of the initiation blindfolded, for reasons that will become obvious. What was done to me and what I helped to do to later initiates have merged together in my memory.
The 'ceremonies' were usually carried out in the basement foyer I referred to earlier. I recall standing disrobed while one of the regulars fastened one end of a foot-long cord to my penis. The other end was tied tightly around a rock about the size of my head, which I calculated to weigh about twenty pounds. It was held in front of me in two hands by another assistant.
'You won't want to watch this,' said another member sympathetically, as he blindfolded me securely.
'I don't think I can watch,' I heard another member say.
'Okay, let her drop!' I heard the chief initiator say. My body stiffened involuntarily as I steeled myself for the agony of being unmanned in such a gruesome fashion. Needless to say, my tormentors had concealed a rock of similar size until I was blindfolded. I heard it crash to the floor, but the anticipated 'pecker-tearing' failed to ensue.
There was a burst of uproarious laughter as my blindfold was removed. 'You didn't really think we'd do an awful thing like that do you?' said the Chief Inquisitor. His assistant was still standing in front of me, holding the large rock and grinning like a Cheshire cat.
'Yes, I do, I really do!' I growled.
'Disengage the pecker!' said the Inquisitor solemnly--but I didn't relax until I had been disengaged.
One year 'Dangerous Dan', a farmer from outside Calgary who was studying for a B.Sc. in Agriculture was considered to be the obvious choice for the Keeper of Kruk, The Sacred Phi Kapp Rooster. This meant he was responsible for bringing a rooster from the Ag lab on the day of the initiations. He did an admirable job and arrived back at the fraternity house with a large, mature, fully-plumed red rooster.
The drill was as follows: a sloppy mix of warm water, oatmeal, bran and raw eggs was prepared in a bowl and carried down to the initiation room and placed out of sight. Once again the initiate, who had already seen Kruk strutting about pretentiously, was blindfolded and forced to lie on the floor. The Grand Inquisitor would then intone a bunch of bafflegab, including the information that the inductee was to open his mouth so that he could be imbued with the Sacred Spirit of Phi Kappa Pi. As he did so, Dangerous Dan would set Kruk on the initiate's chest while another acolyte would administer a large dollop of the ersatz 'rooster poop' to his open mouth. Then everyone would step back as the mixture was spewed back out with impressive velocity.
'Aw, what a pity,' the Grand Inquisitor would sigh, 'the candidate does not relish the Sacred Esence!'
On one occasion 'Dangerous Dan', the official custodian of 'Kruk', reacted to the initiation procedures in a most unlikely manner; his hyperactive imagination betrayed him. After viewing the initial part of the ceremony Dan suddenly began to gag and needed to rush quickly to the toilet in the shower room. As a full-time practising farmer he was subject to much subsequent needling because of his unexpected squeamishness.
Another popular ritual was 'The Fondling of the Phi Kapp Turd'. The articles required were: a reasonable facsimile of an old-fashioned 'thunder mug' filled with warm salt water, a freshly-peeled banana and a suitable stench. (Luckily?), 'Buck' Foxlee, studying for his doctorate in chemistry, had no difficulty concocting a small vial of simulated human shit smell, 'the rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril' as the bard would say.
The initiate, blindfolded in advance, was required to kneel in appropriate obeisance prior to 'The Sacred Turd' being carried in.
'Dip into the 'Sacred Chamber Pot' if you so choose!' intoned the Inquisitor in sonorous tones. 'Fondle 'The Sacred Turd', sip the surrounding liquor, thus further purifying yourself!' Few, if any, of the initiates accepted the generous offer; we seem to have had a minimum of urine-drinkers recruited from year to year.
As soon as the initiation ceremonies concluded, one of the acolytes was told to dispose of the putrid contents forthwith. Instead of flushing it down the toilet, he cleverly went to the front steps of the house and pitched the mess into the nearest snowbank. Very clever! As a result, until well after the snow melted in April, and for some time after, we would on occasion, if the wind were just right, receive a staggering whiff of the simulated 'ca-ca' just prior to going in for lunch.
Except for a few geniuses and ne'er-do-wells, most of the residents went to their rooms after dinner and studied until 10 p.m., then converged on the kitchen for a 'snack'. Snacks ranged all the way from tubes of liver paste to anything else that was edible, including white sliced bread and 57 Sauce.
Gunner and I lacked the staying power to sit at our desks studying until 10:00 p.m. If we were both required to read extremely boring study books or notes our deep sighs and restless movements seemed to transmit an arcane message between us.
'Whatta you reckon is playing over at the Garneau tonight?' I would ask.
'I haven't got a clue! Do you know?'
'I think it's some kind of murder mystery.'
'We could just catch the last show if we left now!'
'Bugger this!' we cried in virtual concert as we headed for the theatre.
We missed the snack time at the fraternity house but stopped in at the coffee counter for a date square on the way back to the fraternity house.
Gunner had never been a proficient linguist, I'm afraid, and his university stay came a temporary cropper as a direct resultt of this. Althought 'the powers that be' obviously felt that his other general studies were acceptable, they found it impossible to ignore his despicable report in French.
'Gunn!' shouted Monsieur Sonet in his strong Gallic accent. 'I loff you, but I flonk you!' As a result Gunner became part of a Naval party headed for training as an Engine Room Artificer in faraway Eastern Canada. I recall his letter to me relating in detail how he had learned to fly backwards eight or ten feet after touching an electrical installation at the wrong time. Don't do that! as the doctor said.
A couple of our fraternity brothers had been swallowing live goldfish in the Arts Building for some kind of promotion and our conversation one night turned from that to the subject of swallowing raw eggs. Several of the lads mastered the ability to swallow one based on the trick of relaxing the throat muscles. One of our brothers could not master the trick. He could get the egg down as far as the glottis but no farther. After a moment or two when we thought he had mastered it he would have a major throat spasm and the egg would hurtle back out of his mouth. It was quite a messy business to tell the truth!
Of the twenty-one regular diners at the noon table, there were two engineering students, two commerce students and one post-graduate in chemistry. All of the remaining sixteen were medical students. Need you ask what the usual topics of discussion were? Any attempted discussions of engineering subjects were either rudely rejected or ignored. I really didn't mind too much because medical topics fascinated me. We all enjoyed the first few days of anatomy lab for the first year 'med' students. They had been introduced to their 'stiffs' and, try as they would, not unlike Lady Macbeth, they could not wash out the odour of formaldehyde preserving fluid on their hands. Most of them had little or no appetite for the best part of a week. All the more 57 Sauce for the rest of us!
That year I decided to run for President of the Junior Class, to be in effect the following year. I had corny pamphlets printed featuring a picture of a contented cow under which was stated 'Vote for Helmer, there is no 'udder' choice!' Yuk,Yuk! I got elected in spite of my pamphlets.
— The End —