Reflections on the Hill Raymond W. Collins '37 had originally intended to title my Weber College Days story "The Little Academy On The Hill," because when I started at Weber College in 1935 I felt it still had the academylike qualities that I had heard about from some of my elders who had attended the "Old Weber Academy." But, of course, there is nothing but a parking lot and apartments to mark the place where I began my college education. Actually I was "predestined" to attend Weber College when I was 12 years old. Many readers will think that this is more detail than they care to read about, but these small details should help define the kind of atmosphere to which I have referred as "academy-like" and which I learned to appreciate as a student. But even before I was 12 years old, I had studied at the Weber Gym, where I eventually qualified as an advanced swimmer in the Red Cross program at the pool. I also studied pyramid building in a Red Cross gymnastics program under the direction of Mr. Mike Watkins, my neighbor. My family moved to New Jersey when I was 12 years old as part of the crew employed by prominent plumbing contractor T. E. Thomas, who had just been awarded a contract for 11 buildings in the Veterans Hospital complex in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Wally Baddley and George Hyde were also part of that crew. Our families lived in adjoining apartment buildings in the little town of Sterling. I became popular with the Baddleys and Hydes as a baby sitter. The girls loved my home-built soapbox-type racer. Often the two toddlers were left in my charge while their parents did their weekly shopping in Summit. I gained a reputation for being "dependable." Years later in the midst of the Depression, George and Wally became employees of the old Weber College and the gym on 25th street, George as plumbing and heating engineer and Wally as Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds. In the spring of '35, Wally asked my dad if I might like to attend Weber College. Wally could arrange for my tuition. I was excited with the idea of working my way through college. I had a shop and a lab complete with white rats and bottles of chemicals in the attic of my home on 17th and Kiesel, purchased from Ogden Wholesale Drug. My folks had made it clear that they could not support me in college (my dad suggested that I should learn a trade). So I accepted Wally's offer. During the summer we cut and trimmed lawns on the campus. It was nice to have a job -any kind of a job - in those days, and it was kind of fun. Using the old hand-powered mowers, two other fellows and I took pride in being able to cut a wide smooth swath along the walks and shrubbery and flower beds. We aligned ourselves in tandem and went at Raymond W. Collins it with speed and precision! Our "contract" was that we could work sufficient hours at 50 cents an hour to pay for our first quarter's tuition. Each week Clarissa Hall, Registrar, and a relative of George Hyde, pushed our checks through the bank teller-like cage for us to sign before we pushed them back to her. Mrs. Hall was a sort of fraternity mother to the whole student body. She knew everyone personally. One day Wally left word for me to see him. I met him in the janitor supply room, and he asked me if I was any good at matching paint. I said I thought I could do it - my dad gave us the idea that a boy could learn to do anything "if he wanted to." Wally smiled the same slanting, mischievous smile that I remembered from my baby-sitting days and said, "I was sure you could do it because you're one of Em's boys" (my dad was Emory). He took me to a basement room, showed me the paint, brushes, cans for mixing, rags, and turpentine. "Here's some enamel about the color of the doors. See if you can match the paint on those doors where the dam kids kick them as they go through 'em with their arms full of books." He showed me some of the swinging doors. Even though some of them were protected with a brass plate at the bottom, they were definitely in need of paint. I remember mixing the paint, trying it on a few doors, keeping in mind that it would probably dry darker, but I don't remember any more details. I must have done O.K. because after the door project I was assigned to work with a crew of professional W.P.A. painters re-sealing classroom floors. We scraped ink spots, fixed loose flooring, and varnished the hardwood floors. It was difficult for me to adjust to the professional's standards. The men said I worked too fast; so they jockeyed me around so that I "painted myself into a comer." They would leave a strip so that I could get out but they crowded together in the last 10 square feet near the door and dallied there 'til quitting time, thus forcing me to learn W.P.A. work rules. They were allowed to work only a few hours each week, so they arranged to make it last as long as possible. I tried to understand, but that was not my dad's way. After I started school, I was assured sufficient money to pay for two years' tuition - no lab fees, no books or spending money. I was assigned a certain portion of the Moench Building to clean after school each day. I was paid for a predetermined number of work hours that was considered reasonable for my section of the building; so I received the same amount of pay no matter how long it took me. Example: One quarter I did the main hall and the adjoining women's rest room, the cooking room, and two classrooms on the main floor. Upstairs I did a small lavatory and three classrooms east of the auditorium. The floors were covered with thick brown "battleship lino- 12 leum." With huge mops made of 3/4 inch galvanized pipes 5 feet long with great wads of oiled "waste" (masses of recycled heavy string and cords of different colors) we could whiz through those well-traveled halls a few times, and they glistened and smelled clean from some kind of pine-scented oil or wax. The classrooms consisted of movable chair desks, which we jockeyed to one side so we could do the floor and then re-arrange them ready for class. We also did the chalkboards and erasers -unless the teachers left written material not to be erased. It wasn't a bad job - you worked out a system - but it was boring! So, I used to "play" Farrell Carter's bass fiddle left standing in the comer of the music room near the auditorium, and I often sat at the grand piano there in the hall and "did" (I use the term loosely) Toselli's "Serenade" by ear. Fatigue, boredom, hunger, and the empty hall transformed me into a "musician." One evening Clair Anderson, the organ teacher, poked his head through the swinging doors. He must have been there a couple of minutes before I noticed him. I knew I was in trouble - loafing on the job, fooling around on a fine instrument - so I just sat there waiting, but he just smiled, waved to me, and left. What in the world must have been going through his mind when he saw the janitor sitting at the piano? In the cooking room I often scrounged around for something to eat. I was always hungry by that time, and it would be five more hours before I was finished with my work. Then I'd have to walk all the way to 17th Street to get something to eat. Sometimes the home ec class left pieces of unfrosted cake trimmings used for crumbs, I guess. I sampled a few pieces from here and there so it wouldn't be too obvious that they had been taken. But Mrs. Tanner, a fine lady of high principles, finally told Wally that she suspected pilfering by the janitor. Wally warned me about it and seemed disappointed in me, but when he left the room he turned, smiled, and said, "You could have saved some for me." Another of my premeditated crimes was to check the refrigerators for something to drink. Often there would be several containers of pineapple juice left from a student dessert session. I found that I could remove a small portion from each of several containers to give the illusion of being undisturbed. This worked very well. I could take my reservoir of juice along with me from room to room as I worked; I would add a little dry ice to cool and add zip to my drink. One evening Cluster Nilsson came into his class from his office. Seeing the bubbling cauldron, he asked, "What is this, some kind of lab experiment?" "Yeah, carbon-ation," I said. I justified these crimes - the materials were just byproducts I rationalized, yet too good to throw away so long as I didn't go too far with the robbery. On Saturdays we cleaned the gym - mopped the whole place by hand - locker rooms, showers, and the floor around the pools. Every so often we also cleaned the ballroom floor, mopping, rinsing, and drying one section at a time using huge string mops and squeegee buckets. We could swing those heavy wet mops from side to side making a 15-foot arc. Sometimes when nearly finished, we accidentally overturned the squeegee bucket, and the dirty water made a black lake at our feet, which we then laboriously mopped up again. Occasionally I was assigned to mop the painted concrete floor in the basement of the Moench Building, where the chem lab was. One day while mopping under the balance table, I managed to break several students' two-liter bottles of constant-boiling HCL! I'll have to explain about the HCL so that you will appreciate what a tragedy this was. Early in the quarter the Chem 5 students were required to prepare standardized .IN HCL. The most stable form of this reagent is prepared by adding distilled water to 12 N. HCL, then distilling it in an all-glass set-up: boiling flask, Bunsen burner, ring stand with clamps, all attached to a glass condenser which was attached to the cooling water with rubber tubing. A glass delivery tube attached to the condenser delivered the precious constant-boiling mixture into a two-liter bottle. After this tedious process the mixture was titrated and adjusted to a precise concentration of approximately. 1N like .0988 Nonnal. The accuracy of this number affected the precision and therefore the grade we received on future volumetric experiments in the lab. I could have died! That evening several bottles - hours of several students' work - spreading out under my feet and amongst twenty or so still unbroken bottles arranged on the floor under the narrow table. I was doomed! I had to remove all those bottles, carefully clean up the broken glass, being sure to get the name of the unfortunate student off the label on the broken bottle, clean up the floor, rearrange the bottles under the table and figure out how to tell those students that I would make some more solution for them. But they wouldn't trust me to do the standardizing part of the process. My mind is a complete blank from here to the end of the episode. It was so unthinkable a crime and I felt so worthless that I have driven it out of my mind. I don't know who the victims were, what they said, or how they looked when they came to class next morning and discovered the tragedy. Who made everything right? Again, I have no recollection, but I can still feel the pain. I liked chemistry and loved every minute in the lab, but I was deficient in logarithms, and I couldn't afford a slide rule or an "Engelder," the special practice book for becoming efficient in the fundamental calculations of Inorganic Chem: pH, Mass action, Concentrations, Disassociation, Equilirium-constants, balancing equations and Eo. Ralph Gray was a good teacher, but he was demanding too. At the beginning of the year he gave us the Standard Chemical Placement exam that I believe originated at Cornell. On exam day he said, "This is a standard three-hour exam. At Cornell you would have two hours. Do as much as you can do." Then he counted heads, all boys in those days, and said, "At the end of the year, half of you will not be here." I was pretty good in high school chemistry and physics, so I did well enough in the exam so that I could start with Chem 4. I was not a brilliant student. I was a bad exam taker, but I did understand the concepts pretty well, and I always did my lab work. Some of the really smart guys "dry labbed" some of the experiments, but I made a serious misjudgment about working my way through college. I needed ALL the texts and a slide rule. My friends were generous in lending me an Engelder and a slide rule, but I needed a lot more time to practice those problems. I now have an Engelder, which I bought at a library sale for 50 cents. It had been used by Dr. Alvin Cobabe, my wife's cousin, or some- 13