Hamlet and a Brown-Bag Lunch Dan Bailey '41 One of my NYA jobs (the initials stood for National Youth Administration, which was devoted to helping students financially; however, when I became a recipient, it was known as "Nothing Yet Accomplished") was to clean the President's office. One morning I decided to leave him a note warning him not to gaze too hard at his desk as the high polishing job I had done might be harmful to his vision. The next day I was called to his office to be thanked for starting his day with a bit of humor. He was a great man! There was a young, good-looking (so the girls said), and very cocky student named Rex McEntire who was running for student body president, but it seemed he was doomed because of his arrogance. His campaign officers came to me to ask what they should do. I suggested they kidnap him and tell everyone that the opposition candidate was responsible. The day before election he returned to campus, unshaven and seemingly very humble. Everyone felt sorry for him, and he won the election. One year we had a great basketball player by the name of Wat Misaka, and during one of the final games I and a group of students wrote lyrics using his name to the tune of "Buckle Down Winsocki and surprised him by singing it at half time. I don't know if we won the game, but I do remember how pleased and excited he was for the tribute. In one of the student varsity shows there was a French sequence during which four girls did a can-can number. They wore very short skirts, and they did very, very high kicks, and I was the director/writer, and was very, very, very quickly summoned to the Dean of Women's office! The show was allowed to continue, but we were counseled concerning "decorum" and "less exuberant kicks." During this period there were two men in charge of the Drama Department: Thatcher Allred, a tall, good-looking devotee of the theater, loved and respected by all his students; and his sabbatical replacement, Dr. Albert O. Mitchell, who had recently received his doctorate for his thesis on "The Philosophy of Maxwell Anderson's Plays." I was privileged to work with both of these wonderful men, and I would be remiss were I not to pay my respects to both by the following: had it not been for their talent, kindness, understanding, and dedication to theater, I would not have achieved whatever degree of success I have accom- The "kidnapping" plished. Thank you both. Here is a secret. When I was on NYA, I was given a key to the Moench Building so I could work at night when needed. Boy, oh boy, what power! I had a key to the college! My first thought was to use my power to get into the biology lab, the heredity classroom, the English Department, find my records, and change all my grades to A- (I felt A+ was a bit pushy). Unfortunately I discovered that once I got in, all the other doors were locked except the mop closets, the men's room, and the auditorium. Soooo, I sat on the darkened stage and pretended I was Hamlet and ate my brown-bag lunch. Why I signed up to discover what Mendel had to say (Heredity 1) I will never know, but I do know that it was not my best decision since I flunked the course. However, I do remember one amusing incident. I lived on 27th Street, and coming home one evening I found a life-size papier-mache seal in the trash. My baser instincts took over, and I brought the seal home, painted it a strange green (the only paint I had in large quantities), and applied weird squares, triangles, and parallelograms of various hues (paint which I had in small quantities). The next morning, carrying my seal on a kid's wagon, I waited outside the classroom door for 10 minutes into the hour; then I burst in, pushed the wagon before the professor, and said: "I'm sorry I'm late, but here's my question: Is this the correct answer to the third assignment?" Whether this had anything to do with my flunking the class I do not know. I have always been fascinated by the art of fencing, so I took every course Weber offered, worked hard, and eventually became part of the team. Though I wish I could recount the great success of our D'Artagnan-like escapades, I have only one memory of our efforts. There were six of us on the team, and we were on our way to compete with the AC in Logan. As we were late in starting, I was driving rather fast and was pulled over by the state police. An officer came over and said, "Going a little fast, aren't you, sir?" "Yes, officer, but we're the team from Weber College, and we're on our way to the AC in Logan." The officer looked in the car and saw six teenagers in fencing uniforms with masks and swords in their hands, pulled back a little and said: "What the hell are you going to do, attack?" 22 The interim head of the Drama Department, Dr. Albert O. Mitchell, had a number of things going for him: a good sense of humor, a doctorate, a happy marriage, and a number of somewhat unruly children who were the scourge of my life. From time to time Mrs. Mitchell would appear in the drama office, place a small boy and girl by the desk, announce "I'll be back later," and disappear. This would be followed by a "Where's Bailey?" campaign throughout the campus. When I appeared, Mitch would throw me his car keys, saying, "They're in the office, and I have a class." Ruth Taylor, Dan Bailey, and Ruth Parker in the Varsity Show What followed was hours of ice cream cones, (Did you know Farr's had a licorice-flavored ice cream, and when a child licked it, it turned a repulsive gray color?), pushing swings, and answering childish questions like, "Why aren't you my daddy? Why is 24th Street called 24th Street? Why don't you clean up the licorice ice cream my sister spilled on the car seat?" When I returned the pair to Mitch, the following dialogue ensued: Mitch: How'd it go? Me: Same as always. Mitch: Good. Me: You need new upholstery. Mitch: Yea, thanks, Dan. We Were So Lucky! Ruth Tomlinson Nelson '41 The Whip Club, of which I was a member, went Pasadena, California, to support our football team. Our transportation was an old school bus. It was not very comfortable. Down the middle of the aisle was a large pipe which gave us heat. But if someone put her foot on it, and left it on too long, we could smell rubber burning. We would all yell, "Something's burning." When we first made our rest stops, we would get out of the bus and walk to the rest room like perfect young ladies, at first, that is. Eventually, we would jump out of the bus and run to the rest room yelling, "Me first!" We even started using the men's room, too. One time the bus driver came to use the rest room and saw all of us lined up at the men's room. He said, "Sorry, fellows" and walked away. What a sweetheart he was. We arrived in Pasadena. What a beautiful place it was. Then we made a trip to see the ocean. Many of us had never seen the ocean before, and we were excited. We couldn't go swimming, but we took our shoes and socks off and went wading. One of the girls got so excited she lost her balance and fell face first into the ocean. We all had a good laugh except the girl who fell in. Come to think of it, she laughed, too. I wish I could remember who that was. Attending Weber College was one of the most wonderful periods in my life. We were lucky to have gone there when we did. We got to know the professors and each other well. I had never liked school before because I was differ- ent from the other girls. I was always playing ball or marbles with the boys. However, when I was accepted the way I was, it made such a great and wonderful difference in my life. Ida Stewart helped me a lot with my inferiority complex. She told me once; "Tommy, everyone at Weber likes and admires you." Imagine what that did for my ego for her to say that. I think of Leland Monson when I hear the English language murdered these days. He was an excellent teacher. I loved all of my teachers at Weber. And our President, Dr. Henry Aldous Dixon, was great, too. Ida Stewart passed away on November 24, 1997. I went to her memorial, and when it was over, I asked if I could say a few words. Ida and I had kept in touch all of these years. We became good friends. Ida Stewart 23