Would I Lie?

Rush week at University of Florida the fall of 1953 I pledged KA. An uncle or cousin, I think named Frank Weller, had been a KA years earlier, maybe even at Florida, memory of it is long gone, and wrote a letter of recommendation, making me a “legacy.” It’s sixty years ago now and I don’t remember how many pledges we were, seems like twenty or more of us and the loudest were recent graduates of Robert E. Lee High School in Jacksonville. You were a pledge for a semester and then, if by university regulations your GPA was 2.0 or higher, you were inducted into full membership as a brother. 

Pledges had duties, two I remember in particular. There was a chart for chores that had to be done, and you signed up. One was duty in the dining room, where three meals a day were served, prepared in the kitchen by a staff of African-American cooks. A pledge’s dining room duty was to arrive an hour before meal service started, set the tables, and keep tables supplied with water, biscuits and cornbread as needed during the meal. I don’t remember whether it included clearing the tables afterward, it may have depended on the meal and your class schedule. I signed up for breakfast duty during December. Breakfast duty meant get up at three o’clock in the morning, shower, dress, walk to the fraternity house a mile or two from the freshman dorm, be in the dining room at four o’clock to set up. The brothers would start coming downstairs when the dining room opened at five. It was a straight walk from North Hall past an enormous brick structure, the football stadium, to University Avenue, then east past blocks of fraternity houses and beer halls until you got to the KA house. It was chilly in Gainesville those December mornings, and that early morning walk was the coldest and darkest and loneliest I had ever known. Often it’s the first thing comes to mind these very early mornings at the other end of my life.

The other chore, well it wasn’t a chore, it was the road trip that every pledge had to make before being initiated. Early one Saturday morning in January all the pledges gathered at the fraternity house. We were split into groups of three boys, and each group was given a roadmap and a note with their road trip task. Each boy was allowed to have five dollars and a toothbrush, all travel was to be hitchhiking no Greyhound or Trailways allowed, and you had to be back at the KA house in Gainesville for supper Sunday evening. Our task: “Bring a pound of pachyderm excretion from Sarasota.” In 1953 Sarasota was the winter quarters of Ringling Brothers Circus.

In those days, hitchhiking was considered safe, both for hitchhikers and for whoever might pick them up. When you were traveling with two other guys safety was no issue anyway, the only issue was whether anybody would stop for three college boys. As it turned out we walked a lot, but Saturday morning while we were still neat and fresh we got plenty of rides too. And we ate because unlike me with five dollars, the other two brought plenty of money. We arrived in Tampa late afternoon and started hitchhiking for St. Pete. By then the term somewhat disheveled might fit. About dusk a family of four in a rusted-out mid-1930s Plymouth sedan stopped and picked us up. In the front seat were the driver, a rough man in overalls but no shirt, a little girl who faced backward looking at us, and a heavyset country woman with a big smile and several teeth. In the back seat, a little boy who stared at us wide-eyed the whole time, and three college freshmen. “Rusted-out” is part of the memory because the Plymouth had no floorboard to speak of, you watched the highway roll by beneath the car, and you breathed the dust and exhaust smoke. As all the windows were down and the windshield was cranked open, asphyxiation wasn't a factor.

The family, simple and kind, drove us from Tampa to St. Petersburg and let us out at the intersection where we intended to head south to Sarasota. By then it was Saturday night and we were tired, hungry and looked like three escapees. 

We stopped in a bar for a beer, after the second beer chucked the idea of going to Sarasota to look for the circus, made up a lie to explain why we would be arriving back in Gainesville without the elephant ess, and hit the highway headed north with our thumbs out. Late evening a truck stopped for us, a large stake truck carrying crates of fruit, a full load covered with a tarp. The driver let one ride in front with him for conversation, the other boy and I climbed into the cargo area and up on top of the crates, right under the tarpaulin cover. We were lucky to get the ride, because immediately it started raining, thundered, lightninged and poured all night long. I curled up on those crates with the rain pelting down on that tarp six inches above me, and had the most wonderful night’s sleep of my life.

Sunday morning the driver let us out at our intersection. We walked and walked, eventually caught a ride and were back in Gainesville by mid-afternoon, filthy, scruffy, and the best liar convinced the brother in charge of the road trips that the lady who stopped for us wouldn’t let us in her car with our pound of pachyderm excretion.

And that ain't no bull.

Tom still in +Time