I registered at the University of Rhode Island, which at the time was Rhode Island State College. We lived in Pawcatuck, so I became a resident of Providence, at least as far as the college knew. My official home was in the Holmes household, until the family moved to Westerly in my Senior year. RISC was located in South Kingston, a quiet little village in the south central part of the state. There were no bars--not even a grocery store. It was a couple of miles away from the railway station at Kingston, an important stop on the New Haven. Still is--Amtrack stops there to this day. Many families did not have cars, and students largely used rails. So the college was pretty much the biggest thing in town, although one the main street. Some of the buildings were old, meaning built before the turn of the century. The gymnasium was fairly new, and during my senior year federal funds helped build a new women's' dormitory, named, in the style of the times, Eleanor Roosevelt Hall. Mrs. Roosevelt herself came to dedicate it, chipmunk teeth and all.

I joined a fraternity. I was rushed, and pledged into, Delta Alpha Psi, a local fraternity. Of, I think, twelve fraternities on campus with houses, probably eight were local. It was fortunate that in the fall of 1935 Delta Alpha Psi was just building a new house, and for a few months we had to live in an old two-story place temporarily. But in the spring we moved (remember--these were Depression days!) into a beautiful new

building--built just for the purpose. We were right next to SAE--Sigma Alpha Epsilon--, one of the nationals, and right on fraternity row, just inside the main gate, and nearly across from the President's residence. In the basement was a lounge, kitchen, and dining room, although during my time there we were never able to open the kitchen; we could afford neither a cook nor equipment. The first floor had a huge formal room that we could use for dances, a library, and a small suite for the faculty advisor, occupied by one of the athletic coaches, Bill Beck, who had a wife, a small child, and a big, black, and unpleasant dog. Live and let live, I always say. The second floor had double rooms, with build-in closet accommodations. Don Faulk was my roommate. He was studying electrical engineering, and his contribution to the decor was an electric clock of his own devising, which ran counterclockwise. Quite a conversation piece. Sleeping was dormitory style, two large rooms on the third floor, with additional washing and shower facilities. If nobody had any money during the Depression, nothing cost very much, either. I generally went home, only about twenty miles away, for the weekend, usually by train, although sometimes my father picked me up. Hitch-hiking was easy, and in general use. So I only had to buy food for five days, most of the time, which I accomplished nicely with the purchase, for five dollars, of a meal ticket. That bought three meals a day for at least five days--good cafeteria food. For example, lunch could be had, soup, salad, dessert and beverage, for a 25-cent punch on the ticket. I hardly starved. During my senior year I worked in the cafeteria and got my food in return. That was good eating, and I also had a chance to meet everyone at mealtime. Easy work, and I enjoyed every bit of it. I think the house accommodated some forty students.

Radio was well established by the thirties. I can remember that the Holmes family had a crystal radio set, which I later inherited from them. By adjusting a cats-whisker on an exposed magic substance, one could pick up broadcasts from the local Providence stations, but no further. Later one of their neighbors purchased a huge set—an Atwater-Kent--with an enormous gooseneck speaker on top. There were several dials on front, three of them condensers which had to be individually adjusted. The box was almost the size of a small footlocker, and was filled with mysteriously glowing vacuum tubes. I could bring in stations

from all over the northeast. By the time of the Dempsey-Tunney championship fight (1926-1927) my uncle

Joe had a battery set, and we went there to hear it. There was a big "A" battery, just like in a car, and a couple of other smaller ones. But the reception was good. My father wanted to hear the 1928 presidential campaign--Smith vs. Hoover. So he went all-out, and bought a Radiola. It cost $150, and consisted of a

sleek mahogany box about two feet long and nine inches tall and deep--quite a visual improvement over the abovementioned Atwater-Kent. On top there was a separate speaker, but a "modern"-looking one. A crew came up one day and strung a wire antenna all over the roof--yards of it. It looked very handsome sitting by the window, with the speaker on top of the china closet nearby. Controls were simplified--no more tuning each condenser individually. An on/off, a volume control, and a station dial. This was the center of our home entertainment for some years. Phonographs were something else. The Holmes family, always ahead of us, had a beautiful acoustic phonograph, a really great piece of furniture. It was spring-wound, of course, but the speaker, curling through the upper part of the console, made it sound better than the little table models some people had. The drive was 78 rpm, and most of the records with it were classical, although there were popular records, and many comic records, the sort not made today. I thought it was great. Electrical recording was just become popular in the early thirties, but I never saw one until I went to college, where Delta Alpha Psi had one. We ourselves did not get a phonograph until just before WWII, when I bought a huge console radio-phonograph for my parents. That had, for the times, everything. I had a little desk radio for college, which I used constantly. Although radio nowadays is mostly music, with hourly news, and an occasional talk show, then it had a wide variety of programs. There was even Network

Radio--NBC's Blue Network and Red Network. I happened to have it on at my desk in October, 1938, when Orson Welles gave his famous broadcast of the War of the Worlds, which frightened millions. All I did was turn the dial (no pushbuttons, then) to a couple of other stations, and recognized that it was a play. I've never been able to understand the panic, but by that time I was beginning to catch on to what Mencken meant when he referred to the "booboisie." Dancing came late. When I was still in high school we had hops and proms, but I never felt confident. I think the first time I ever tried to dance was when our class (sophomore, maybe?) had a dance at the old Wequetequock casino, gone these many years. Friend Albert Sylvia had a sister, who coaxed my onto the dance floor, where we stumbled agonizedly a few times around. I'll always be grateful to Beverly for that; I did make some efforts to learn, and eventually was able to make it around the floor, but did not enjoy dancing until college. Junior proms and senior proms were the most important dances in both high school and college, but there were others, like fraternity dances, etc. A big one at college was the Military Ball every spring, which called for a major expenditure. One year we had Bunny Berigan, ("I Can't Get Started") who charged a cool thousand dollars at Depression rates. At one time or another we had some of the top bands of the thirties, all of whom made music that today's rock fans couldn't even imagine. I think the most spectacularly memorable dance was my high school Senior Prom, because it was, in one way, the most disastrous. We lived in Pawcatuck, remember, and the school was in the village of Stonington. The prom, however, was in New London. Six of us went to the dance in Ernie Mellow's father's car--a brand new Plymouth. A great dance, a great time, and we set out for home in a heavy rain pour. Going up Fort Hill, the right rear wheel fell off, and I mean off, completely. We were several hours late getting home, all of us, and I never did learn how Ernie explained it.

I studied engineering at RISC. It was my interest at the time, and though I used it only a couple of years after college, it provided a good basis for further education. Perhaps the logic appealed to me--there are blacks and whites. I had little trouble in high school, and finished as salutatorian in a class of 100. I quickly learned that college was harder, but still did well for a couple of years. In my Junior year I got lazy, and actually had to repeat a course. I learned a good lesson, and in my Senior year I was 'way up on the honor list. Anyway, for those of us in college during the late thirties, an important consideration was the coming war in Europe. Many of us saw it. I not only saw it, but was in a position to prepare for it. RISC, like all state colleges at the time, had an ROTC unit. Two years of military training were required, with the last two years, not optional, but by selection only, the choice being made by standards of scholarship, and overall achievement. I can still remember that happy day in the summer of 1937, on Washington Street, when I received notice that I had been selected for advanced ROTC. This meant that I'd not only go away for the six-week training the next summer, but that I'd have a head start on any war that would require my services. I've often wondered why more young men like myself didn't foresee that a war would come, and that we'd be involved. There were pacifists, activists, who turned most people off, but frightened a few. Some actually organized a "Student Peace Strike" every April for three or four years, along the likes of the later Sixties. Nobody paid much attention to it; I myself celebrated by wearing my ROTC uniform. A few years later the pacifists, to a man, as far as I know, all went into uniform. So much for popular mass movements. See why I'm not trendy?

During high school years everyone dutifully joined, according to his curriculum, and Latin Club, the Math club, the Business club, or whatever. Every little group posed for a picture in front of the school entrance,

a picture that was printed in the yearbook. There were no high school fraternities, and as for "gangs", they didn't exist. Nor did CYO, in those days. We had some church activities, such as amateur plays. School had drama activities, too, and one year we even put on a musical, in which, of course, I starred.

See previous commentary for my sporting life.