By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Factions, friction, fictions, fractures election factors. Schisms, prisms, prisons …
The Incinerator
Consummating college transfer I was in Room 102, ground floor of Harrison Hall, Purdue, above seven more men’s floors and east east eight women’s. Winter term’s start. Home flames unconsummated came back.
Nothing has changed, it’s still the same John Lennon sang in “Good Morning, Good Morning” in Sgt. Pepper, still with The Beatles. His solo “Mind Games” filled airwaves now as did “Time in a Bottle” by Jim Croce, dead at 30 three months earlier. Driving back from Indiana University news of this came while his “I Got a Name” was playing. If all is one, one is all, who can know what’s unmeasured against what’s not?
Harrison — named for 23rd U.S. President Benjamin, grandson of No. 9 William Henry, lost the 1888 popular vote to Democrat Grover Cleveland but won the Electoral College. Ben, the dorm’s namesake, served four years in which he got raked for supporting tariffs and voting rights enforcement for Negroes, as they were then called, was succeeded Cleveland four years later and became a Purdue trustee.
PU’s Harrison didn’t have pinball machines as had IU’s Teter Quad. I walked west to the Service Center or east to Rocky’s where Purdue basketball players — roommates 6’10” Tom Scheffler and 7-foot Dan McDermott — also played further from the glass.
Top scorer among four finalists in a Rocky’s tourney whose winner got two round-trip tickets to Jamaica, I entered cocky to a steep-pitched Williams OXO machine with tic-tac-toe theme and saw my first balls spat out its new center feature straight down between my flippers. Fifth and last ball I got it rolling too late and wound up second with a silver cup.
What would I do in Jamaica anyway? With whom would I go?
At Dad’s urging I took a 4:30 p.m. (too late) Accounting class for one session and quit, but it paid dividends. En route I discovered a tunnel network between Stewart Center, the Union and under State Street to Krannert Business School, which turned into my night haven due to its echoes, blankness.
Von’s Books & Records in Chauncey Village east down State was crammed with wonders and eccentricities stacked up and rambling down aisles, antidote to school-sanctioned Follett’s with clean lines, approved books and rah-rah Go Boilers gear.
“You have too much energy,” said one coed I took to Hort Park, a 24-acre arboretum lush and private by night.
“That’s a criticism?”
It was produce or go home at Purdue but I was there, hauling laundry biweekly from Harrison to my parents’ basement.
Near term’s end I joined Harrison peers rushing outside to see dark clouds scuttle low across green skies having been warned to seek shelter from tornados.
My post-freshman summer job was at Smilin’ Smitty’s Foodliner.
Smilin’ Smitty’s, Smilin’ Smitty’s went the radio jingle.
For all your grocery needs
Smilin’ Smitty’s, Smilin’ Smitty’s
Where you can shop with ease
I cable-locked my yellow Schwinn to a post near the grocery’s entry, clocked in and donned apron. In back peers and I unloaded boxes delivered by trucks to the dock, then forklift to stacks inside, opened tops with cutters and stocked contents on shelves above geometric aisles.
Smaller boxes freed from larger held dried foods (Cap’n Crunch and more cereals, Kraft all kinds of things …), cans of StarKist or Chicken of the Sea tunas, Del Monte fruits and veggies), set price tags from a dogeared and often-scribbled-in updated price guide Manager Fran called the Bible, swiped each with a price gun, applying sticky labels where customers could read them: 1974 physical up- and downloading.
Truck boxes emptied and flattened met The Incinerator. Open, toss in cardboard, close, push button, FOOM! At shift’s end we cleaned out ashes.
Cashiers called us in front to bag groceries from rubber conveyor belt buttresses into carts, help customers (older women, coeds glad our services) wheel them to and unload in station wagons (moms) and small, usually bright-colored compacts (non-).
Word came Aug. 8 President Nixon, in his own Watergate incinerator) was resigning, but in the store Muzak played as usual.
I never met Smitty, if he existed, but give him credit for what he pasted on his face.
Concentrate, consecrate. Devil/God in the details. Recall nouns, verbs and music from when I was 19. Ride bike home.
To be continued
