I volunteered to write some history down for the "Ancient History" section of the Blacker Hovse home page. I am somewhat qualified to do this, being a Blacker alum ('74), 4-year resident, former Prez, and, of course, ancient.

What might be of most interest is special events and strange stuff we did then; traditions that you may not have or do now. I was fascinated, for example, to find out about the Hell Ride. We did nothing like that twenty years ago, unless you count Dabney Theater. This was when we projected pornographic (silent) movies on the side of Dabney from Hell alley.

How about the tradition of the

This was a race held annually around Beckman Auditorium (so it must have been a fairly new tradition 20 years ago, since Beckman was relatively new then). It was simple. One nice sunny Saturday morning, each alley assembled its team. You had to have four "pullers", one 50 lb. block of ice, rope, and one woman. Yes the tradition was (and I didn't start it, remember) that perched on each ice block there had to be a bikini-clad woman. Up until 1970, these were generally girlfriends of house members. After that, they often were house members. Then you tied the rope to the ice block and raced around a slalom course around the Beckman pillars. Lots of fun. My girlfriend (now wife) won the 1970 race. But she had to sit on the radiator in my room for about an hour afterwards. Then there was

These rather provocative acronyms simply stood for Sixth (or Fifth) Undercover Cannes- Kremlin Espionage Dance. (Actually, of course, the first word could be First, Second, or anything else that began with S or F). This was back when spy stuff was very big. You remember. James Bond? Our Man Flint? Whatever, it was predicated on that. It consisted of basically a treasure hunt all over campus. Teams from the alleys looked for clues to where the Treasure was. They were harassed by shadowy figures, and each other. The Treasure was inevitably located in Blacker, eventually. It consisted of party supplies, like food and booze, whereupon the "dance" part of the event took place. It fell into abeyance during my time there, so it is not surprising that it is not done today.

How about the

Back then, the Hovse motto was "the House of Gracious Living." We tried at times to cultivate the image of stuck-up snobs. Well it wasn't that hard, compared to the felons in Ricketts, the druggies in Dabney and the jocks in Fleming. We certainly were more sophisticated and refined than them! At least at times. Anyway, the Poshes generally took place at the Athenaeum. We cooked and served all the food ourselves. It was usually quite elaborate. Crown rack of lamb. Beef Wellington. Good wines, and after-dinner cigars. I have only smoked cigars four times in my life, all at Posh Dinner Parties. We even wore suits. Something of a stretch for most of us.

Then there's

I don't know if this is the same as we used to do it. We used Rubbermaid trash can lids. BIG frisbees. Comparable in size to the width of the alley itself. Made us think of waveguides. If you want to go further back, here's a brief story. My frosh year, an alum from 10 years before THAT came by to visit. He was surprised we had carpeting on the alley floor. "With this carpeting, how do you do Alley Bowling?", he asked. Uh, we didn't. Never heard of it. An even older vanished custom.

This device was legendary when I was there, but it was revived and used during my stay. It seems one Jeff Moeller had designed and build a pneumatic cannon device for the express purpose of hurling eggs great distances without breaking them (until impact, of course). From the courtyard, you could hit Fleming, and on a good day, Ruddock. We used to inject some of the eggs with small amounts of n-butyl mercaptan. Great stuff. The Flems usually had to evacuate the house for a while. Made them very upset. Fortunately, they didn't find out where it came from for a long time. I believe the cannon was broken up into component parts my senior year and not used again.

- Doug McElroy / dmcelroy@dcs04.jpl.nasa.gov