A Blur of Impressions

The year we all arrived in Cambridge was 1972, and that autumn brought women to the dorms in Harvard Yard for the first time. There were only four co-ed dorms at first, and Hollis, my home, was one of them.

Of course, the women were all in a separate entry, or on separate floors, but no matter. We thought we were on the cutting edge of history.

That this situation led to good friendships, and the occasional home invasion, was taken in stride.

That was the fall Henry Kissinger trumpeted “peace is at hand,” as carried on the front page of The Crimson. For many of us, with Vietnam still hanging uncertainly over our heads, it was a headline that made us rejoice.

The years are a blur of impressions now, filled with glimpses of professors and classes, friends and activities. I remember Nobel Prize-winning scientist George Wald, teaching Nat. Sci. 5, interjecting modestly upon occasion, “I knew Albert Einstein, you see. And I once told Albert...” Wald never lacked ego, but he was riveting.

Robert Kiely and David Perkins, teaching English and American literature of the 20thCentury, could make it come alive. “Pull down they vanity!” roared Perkins, reading Ezra Pound. “Come up, you fearful Jesuit,” intoned Kiely, doing James Joyce in an Irish brogue. They made us feel it.

In part, that’s why I made my life in words and writing.

Dressed in white ties, tails, or formal black dresses, we sang Brahms’ “Requiem” in the Collegium Musicum. Banging cymbals in the Marching Band, we shouted to Yalies at the Harvard-Yale game, “You may be winning, but you have to go back to New Haven.”

I met friends from all over the country and some from abroad. I learned about John Coltrane, the Allman Brothers and Jimmy Buffett from them. We even met Buffet at a concert in Boston once and hung out in his dressing room between shows.

We wanted domes, brick and ivy for our house, but many of us ended up in Mather. We jogged along the Charles, ate cheesesteak subs at Tommy’s Lunch and labored for hours in the stacks at Widener. We learned French impressionism, American transcendentalism, Keynesian economics and behavioral psychology.

I typed my thesis work on a typewriter like most everyone else. Mine was on T.S.Eliot: “The evolution of The Waste Land from the original manuscripts to the finished version.” Like the world Eliot envisioned, it was chaotic.

We went to mixers, swapped stories about romantic encounters with classmates and some even counted them. I spent much of my sophomore year at Wellesley.

Aging though we are, we all still remember these stories, plenty of them. The friendships and the memories endure.