Streaking and Gargoyling


It was 1974 and I was teaching at The Judge Advocate General’s School, which is located on the grounds of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.  Students were no longer protesting the Vietnam War.  For all practical purposes, it was over.  So how were these students, many away from home for the first time, to expend their energy.  The answer was streaking.

Streaking became quite popular on campuses across the nation.  It didn’t matter whether there was an athletic event or the outdoor meeting of the Ladies Horticultural Society, some young dude, naked as a jaybird, would go streaking through the event.  One of our Basic Class Graduations was interrupted by a streaker (and it was indoors).  No one seemed to get too upset.

The levity of the situation caused me to sit down and write the following letter to the editor of the Daily Progress newspaper.  They published it under the title, “After Streaking, What?”

Dear Editor:

Rah, Rah, Raw for the streaking streakers of this wonderful country.  No one should really complain.  Youth has always had an overabundance of energy and it must be expended.  So why not streak?  Just keep in mind that three years ago, some were expending their energy making bombs and burning down ROTC buildings on campus.  Bless their streaking streaks.

However, I am concerned about the longevity of streaking.  While streaking is great for comfortable spring days, I fear that the heat of the summer will have a deterrent effect upon even the heartiest of streakers and that the sport will wane.  In short, streaking will soon be out of season.

I submit that those of us who advocate harmless frolic are compelled to bring forth an acceptable substitute.  After some careful thought, I believe that gargoyling is an acceptable substitute.  This practice would consist of the student climbing up on the outside of a university building in the nude and assuming a position on the facade as a gargoyle.  Our society has long accepted the appearance of weird looking gargoyles on buildings, so it would be inconsistent to object to gargoyling.

While university students have competed to see which could gather the largest group of streakers, gargoyling, too, can have its competitive aspects;  for example, most gargoyles on campus, or the highest gargoyle on campus, or the weirdest looking gargoyle.  The ultimate contest could be gargoyling for the longest period of time.  Any student  who could hold his pose for over four hours would definitely be a contender.  By then, he would surely be subjected to fatigue, the campus police and those nasty birds.

While I realize that gargoyling, like streaking, suffers from the malady of being seasonal, those of us who are organizing the Society for the Encouragement of Harmless Frolics are already concerning ourselves with the selection of a winter sport.

                                                                    Sincerely,

                                                                    P. J. Rice

Dog Bites, Drug Addicts and Modern Medicine


The twelfth year of my life should have been a good one.  I was learning how to pitch.  My Dad, who caught professionally, was really excited about the way I was throwing the ball.  I was playing “B” League baseball (ages 10-13) in East St. Louis and no pitcher could be 13.  So, this was my year.  The sky was the limit.

Early in the summer, a bunch of kids were taking their bicycles out Bunkum Road and so, I raced home to get my bike.  On my way to catch them, a dog started chasing the bike.  I decided that if I just ignored the dog, I would be OK.  What a dumb idea.  The dog bit me on the calf.  It wasn’t a bad bite, but it broke the skin.  I went home and my Mom took me to the doctor’s office.  We waited all afternoon and when we saw the doctor, he gave me a tetanus shot and told us we needed to find the dog.   Well, we tried, but we never did.

The moral of the story is if you are ever bit by a dog, don’t loss sight of the mutt.  I was bit again while in Vietnam and my earlier experience paid off.  I found the owner of the dog and when the dog died (that was scary), I practically lived with the veterinarians until they let me know that the dog did not have rabies.

At age twelve, I had to take the rabies shots.  Doc Stein explained that they were given one a day for 14 days and they needed to be given in the lining of the stomach.  After each shot, I had to lay down for about 15 minutes.  I felt like I had been kicked by a horse.  Doc Stein was out of town for shots 13 and 14.  So, his father, the elder Doctor Stein gave me the shots.  He explained that there was no absolute requirement that they be given in the stomach.  He gave me shots in the buttocks and thigh that were both painless.  I just checked, and today the rabies vaccine consists of four shots and they are given in the arm, like a flu shot.  What a rip.

I had my last shot on Wednesday and started getting sick on Friday.  I was weak, miserable and throwing up.  Mom took me to see Doc Stein on Saturday and he gave me some cold medicine.  We finally got him to come to the house late Sunday afternoon (Yes, they really did make house calls).  I was rushed to the hospital.  My white blood cell count was out of sight.  I had an appendicitis.

When they operated Monday morning, it turned out my appendix had ruptured and gangrene had set in.  I found out later that Doc Stein could not complete the operation and that another doctor stepped in and saved me.  I was one sick puppy.  Thank goodness for penicillin.  Every four hours, I would get a penicillin shot in my bottom.  I got to where, during the night, I could roll over and get the shot without even waking up.  My bottom looked like a pin cushion.  They left a long drainage tube in me which required my bandages to be changed every day.  Every few days, they would pull out a little of my tube and cut it off.  Now there is a strange sensation.

I was in the hospital for about three weeks.  My pitching career was over.  About a month after I got out of the hospital and while still under Doc Stein’s care, it came out in the local newspaper that Doc Stein and his wife were both addicted to morphine.  This made a lot of things fall into place.  That’s why he couldn’t finish the operation.  That’s why he had to wait until his wife got home with the car to come see me that Sunday, when they had three cars.  I also remember his secretary telling me how fantastic he was with an hypodermic needle (lots of practice).  The only good news was that office visits took less time.  He was only permitted to care for patients already under his care.

In the fall, I went out for junior high football.  I made it through the three tough weeks of preseason ball, but when the doctor showed up for physicals, I knew I was in trouble.  The hole where the tube had been had healed, but not properly.  The doctor told me that he would not approve my physical, but if I could get my doctor’s approval, I could play.  I went to see Doc Stein and he cut the skin tissue over the hole and let it drain.  I remember him saying, “This shouldn’t hurt.”  Maybe he was referring to himself.  It hurt like hell.  I healed up fine, but my 8th grade football season was over.  What a helpless feeling.

No one will ever convince me that the rabies shots in the stomach weren’t the cause of my appendix going bad and rupturing.  I have never gotten a doctor to agree with me.  They can’t tell me what caused my appendicitis.  They would just blow me off.  But, these are the guys who used to put leeches on people.

Disney and Golf


What can I say?  We love Disney World.  I think it opened in 1971 and we took our kids in 1973.  Since then, we have gone over a dozen times.  We have taken our children and parents.  We have had family reunions involving four generations and lately, it’s been just me and Carole.

It’s nice to go someplace that is clean and everyone is friendly and helpful.  Think about that.  It’s the Disney philosophy.  No arrogant clerks.  You never get the feeling that someone wants to pass you on just to get rid of you.  Sweet.  I find myself smiling a lot.  Even when I see young parents with three worn out, cranky kids, I smile and say to myself, thank goodness they’re not ours.

The last two times we have gone down, we have combined Disney World with a two-day golf school at David Leadbetter’s Champion Gate.  It’s only about four miles down I-4.  While at golf school, we stay at Shades of Green, the military recreation center at Disney World.  And Missy, our daughter who lives in Jacksonville, came down to keep Carole company.

One of the neat things about the Leadbetter Academy is they let me pick the dates for my instruction.  Then, they post the dates on their website and fill up the class (four students per instructor).  Maybe this was the one time that the economic downturn helped me.  It turned out that I was the only student who signed up.  The class only took about five hours  each day, rather than eight, but I was receiving one-on-one instruction.  Not bad.

Andrew Park, my instructor, video taped everything I did.  We spent quite a bit of the first day reminding me of what I had learned and forgotten two years before.  That’s a hell of a note.  I won’t forget again.  We also spent a lot of time in the classroom looking at the videos.  Andrew would set up a split screen with me on one side and Tiger Woods or Ernie Ells on the other.  Now, I ask you, is that fair?  Once you got past the fact that we were all swinging from the right side, the similarities vanished.  Oh yes, the ball looked about the same.

The split screen is an excellent way to observe what Tiger was doing wrong.  Oh, I’m sorry, I was referring to Tiger Rice.  Andrew wanted me to be tall like Ernie and Tiger.  So did I.  So did my football coaches.  It just ain’t going to happen.  When I was growing up, my Mom told me that if I ate my salad, I would grow tall.  What a crock.  I finally figured out that Andrew wanted me to stand taller over the ball.  “Stand tall like Tiger.”  I got it, but it took me much too long.

I do love the game.  The Washington Post, for Valentine’s Day, asked people to express love in six words.  All I could think of was, “It’s curling, curling.  It dropped in!”

The down side of a golf school is it will take me two or three months to be hitting the ball as well as I was before I went to school.  But the thought of hitting the ball farther, straighter and stopping the ball on the green like a “dropped cat” keeps me going.  Oh, I forgot to mention.  I finished first in my class.


For the last five or six trips, we have obtained a Disney package that included everything.  Room, meals, recreation (spelled GOLF- I played twice), transportation and entry to all the parks.  We also have been staying in the concierge building which provides breakfast, late morning and early afternoon snacks and appetizers between five and seven o’clock.  We seem to be paying for a lot of duplication and we plan to take a look at how to be more frugal.  Disney World has great restaurants.  We particularly like Narcoossee’s,  located at the boat house at the Grand Floridian.  But let’s face it.  You can only eat so much and with everything free, it becomes a task.  Eating should never become a task.

Because all the help is so polite, it’s fun to watch them struggle with stupid questions.  Stating, “That’s really dumb” is not an option.  For example, there is a launch that takes passengers from the Magic Kingdom to the Grand Floridian and then, on to the Polynesian Village.  We always stay at the Polynesian Village.  As the launch was pulling into the Grand Floridian, I asked the captain if the boat was going to take me to Fort Wilderness.  I could just see the captain mentally racing through his etiquette book.  Just saying, “Didn’t you read the signs before you got on the boat?” wasn’t acceptable.  Also, after having one of the concierges change a few reservations for us, she asked for our room number.  I told her we weren’t staying in the concierge building.  The look on her face was priceless.  Then, Carole gave her the room number.  The concierge later told me that she would have handled the matter politely because that was what was expected of her.

This is the first year that I can remember when I didn’t buy a Disney T-shirt, golf shirt or tie.  You can only wear so many and I never dispose of any of them.  Also, I received a Leadbetter pullover and cap (part of the goodie bag).  The “free” goodie bag comes with the not-so-free lessons.  I did buy an Uncle Sam stove pipe hat.  When I wore it I “stood taller.”  I was almost as tall as Tiger.  Andrew would have been proud of me.