1966 Sigma Gamma Epsilon Christmas Play

Opening Scene – Dr. Jenks’ office

Jenks: The members of our staff, as well as being teachers are also geologically oriented scientists and of interest to us all is the annual G.S.A. Convention. (long pause, smile) Unfortunately, this year only four members of our staff were able to attend. Gentleman, this week’s meeting we shall be concerned with three items (smile – pause). First, reports from ole G.S.A (pause – smile) secondly, the new laboratory space acquired by our department; (pause – smile) and last, the conditions of the basement labs. Gentleman...Where’s Frank, isn’t he coming?

Koucky: (Enter, says his line and retreats) Why am I always the last one to arrive at the S.G.E. Xmas skit?

J.W.: The last I saw Frank was in San Francisco. We were in North Beach and I stepped in a mud puddle. Frank suggested that we get our shoes shined.

Jenks: So why isn’t he back? (pause - smile) What happened?

Warren: It was that topless shoeshine parlor.

Durrell: Why that was just like I was saying yesterday (pause)... I was giving a talk and showing slides to the Cincinnati Women’s Club about our last trip to Africa. (pause) I just can’t understand it. The U.S. is so civilized yet those simple, humble natives are far ahead of us. (long pause) They’ve had “topless” for thousands of years!

(Offstage voice)

Lucy Durrell: Now, Richard! You didn’t show those slides!

Jenks: So why isn’t Frank back? (Smile)

J.W.: Well, we went into the topless shoeshine parlor but it was very dark in there. Frank sat in a separate booth from me. (long pause) That’s the last I saw of him.

Larsen: I suppose he’s back. His wife hasn’t called the basement lab looking for him.

Huff: Wayne, didn’t you say you saw him taking his suits to the cleaners?

Pryor: Yes, he had them cleaned and burnt.

Sundy: Well that reminds me of the last time I was in San Francisco, back in ’45 after the Big War, boy was I taken to the cleaners! (long pause) Let me assure you that was before topless too. We flew our B-24 in under the Golden Gate Bridge, clipped the smoke stack on Alcatraz, and landed.

Larsen: (Interrupts) Uh...er..uh Harv...I’m learning to fly too.

Sundy: (Ignores Larsen and continues) My crew and I hit the town that night and we painted it red.

Larsen: Red did you say...Harv...er, uh, I don’t like the insinuation there. There is an already pervading sinister force in town which is er...uh..trying to smother us with these accusations. Ever since McCarthy investigated Claude Allen and our discussion group, I have been laying away at nights, worrying about this.

Sundy: Not that kind of red, Len. We used a Chinese red paint we picked up in Hong Kong. My crew and I hit every bar in town. We got to feeling a little scroungy, so we chucked our clothes and took a bath in a fountain downtown. The M.P.’S came and got us so at least we had a ride back to the base.

Huff: Say Harv, that wouldn’t be the fountain down on Market Street by O’Farrell?

Sundy: Let me assure you it was! Why did you ask?

Huff: Well, what happened was that I let Frank make the room reservations for our hotel in San Francisco. As it turned out he reserved us space on a bench in the Greyhound terminal.

Sundy: That’s were Frank and I stayed during the G.S.A. meetings in Miami too.

Huff: Well, to shave and everything Frank took me to this fountain. I didn’t mind the shaving, but we had to wait until pretty late at night to get a bath there. (pause) The worse thing is that Frank washed out his undies and things and left them hanging all over the fountain. I tried it with my drip-dry shirts but the pigeons got to them.

Jenks: (to Caster) Ken, I noticed that you came back late from San Francisco also. Did you fly down to Los Angeles for that screen test like you said you were going to?

Caster: Heavens no, Bill! The studio called me just before I left. What happened was the Yul Brynner finished the picture he was making in Europe sooner than expect, so they didn’t need me.

Jenks: So what delayed you so long Ken? Did you go to the topless places too?

Caster: Heavens no! I gave that stuff up years ago. As a matter of fact, I learned my French at the Folies Bergère in Paris. I learned it so well that I never had the least bit of trouble with my language exams in college. As a matter of fact, my wife and I used to catch the midnight show of the Gaiety quite regularly. That was before the war, you know. (Pause) But then President Wilson died and the quality of the shows just went down. The last time we went there, my wife found a bed bug on her collar. That was too much. We never went back.

Larsen: So what did delay you, Ken?

Caster: J. Wyatt Durham and I got together with Ray Moore. We got to discussing our next volume of the treatise on the Crapoidea.

J.W.: Don’t you mean the Carpoidea, Ken?

Caster: No, John, Crapoidea. This fall, one of the young undergraduate students in S.G.E. after doing extensive research work on the embryology of the group discovered that they are fossil feces.

Pryor: What does that do to your revision of the Stratigraphy of the Cincinnatian based on Carpoid Biozones?

Caster: I’m afraid that it’s a whole new field with exciting possibilities for some young energetic geoscientist. Would you be interested, Wayne?

Pryor: Ken, the Freudian overtones are too much for me...besides, the whole thing stinks.

Caster: Anyhow, Ray Moore, J. Wyatt, and I got to drinking beer. We lost track of the time and tried to catch a bus back to our hotel. I don’t know how it happened, but we got on the wrong bus and the next thing we knew, we were on the field trip to the Inyo Mts.

(Koucky enters)

Koucky: Er, uh...Bill, I’m sorry I’m late. Did I miss anything? I’m sorry I couldn’t get here until now. My wife had a few projects waiting for me at home. She’d added a new wing to the house when I was gone. The boys put in the plumbing and the boys did the wiring. She wanted me to mow the lawn.

Jenks: Frank (smile) did you get to enjoy the topless shows in San Francisco too?

Koucky: Well..er...uh...as a matter of fact, Bill, it wasn’t quite that way. Warren Huff took us down to the North Beach but he took us to this place called the Red Garter. It was terrible. All they had was banjo music and a $3.00 minimum. The place next door was called Tippy’s and it was much better. They had an all-girl topless band...8 coeds and a high-school dropout.

J. Warren: Say Frank, where did you get that suit? I understand you were to the cleaners.

Koucky: Well...er...uh...as a matter of fact, John, I didn’t get this suit there. I found it rolled up under a seat on the bus on the four-day field trip. Someone must have forgotten it.

Pryor: It sounds as though you people had a lot of fun out there in San Francisco. I wish I could have gone.

Huff: Why didn’t you go?

Pryor: I’ve been on probation ever since the last AAPG meeting I went to. My wife found a long blond hair on my suit jacket and has never let me forget it. She keeps it an envelope and periodically brings it out just to remind me. The worse thing about the whole affair is that I was innocent.

Koucky: Well...uh...Wayne, what did I hear about you in Paris this summer? That wasn’t so innocent. Didn’t you spend a few nights in a house of ill repute?

Pryor: But Frank, THAT time I had my wife along. There was such a hotel shortage in Paris and it was the only place available...plus the fact that they give a special discount for College Professors...

Durrell: Warren, did you or Frank get any good air photos for the departmental collection when you were flying to San Francisco?

Harvey: (interrupts) Warren, were you using that Nikon? You should realize that you cannot do critical optical work with those Japanese products. Give me a Leica product every time. The Japanese have yet to come out with a good optical product since I bombed the Nikon factory during the Big War.

Durrell: (to J. Warren) John, you’re awfully quiet. Are you in the doghouse too?

J.W.: Yes, I am, but not for the same reason as Wayne. A bunch of us Stanford guys got to drinking the beer during our reunion breakfast. Afterwards, we all went out to one of those topless tattoo parlors.

Sundy: Let’s see it John.

J.W.: I can’t.

Sundy: (insisting) Come on

(J.W. rolls up his sleeve and has a Mickey Mouse tattoo.)

Pryor: I don’t think it matched this one. (Pryor rolls up his sleeve exposing a red heart.)

Koucky: Say, uh, that isn’t your wife’s name.

Pryor: I know, and so does my wife!

Jenks: I think I’d better interrupt. Wayne, could you give us a run down on what’s happening with the Grad School Curriculum Committee?

Pryor: Bill, we have decided that our PhD program is not rigorous enough. Since I have been here, none of our PhD candidates has had a nervous breakdown, this is just terrible. Life is a constant struggle, dog-eat-dog, and we have to start cracking down on these people, some of them must have breakdowns. We must make them realize that there is a constant struggle between people.

Larsen: I agree with you, Wayne. We should tighten up our curriculum both graduate and undergraduate. We should get the students out in the field more for to map a rock is to know a rock. Now that we have new laboratory space under the health center, we should encourage students to do laboratory research. For it is only in the laboratory that we can begin to understand rocks. Another thing, Bill, is that we are not taking noon seminars seriously enough. I’d like to propose students and faculty sign up to take it for credit. We could have written homework, and best of all, a final exam we could take together.

Sundy: My sentiments exactly, Len, but couldn’t we suspend the homework and final exam for the faculty?

Larsen: No, I think the faculty members should set the pace for the department and in the past we have been too lax in our grading and a “C” is a perfectly good grade for our students or faculty.

Pryor: Len, I’m in favor of revising the curriculum, but not in that way.

(Durrell gets up, looks out the window).

Jenks: Is there something wrong, Richard?

Durrell: I’m just checking to see if the crew came from Building and Grounds. I was talking with my wife last night and we decided that the trees should be cut down.

Lucy: (offstage) Now Richard!!!

Larsen: Dick how could you do it? How could you kill a living thing? It’s almost sacrilegious, especially a tree, I think I shall never see a poem so lovely as a tree...

Huff: Say, Richard, this is a change for you, especially since you are national president for the Lucy Brown fan club and a disciple of Fenneman.

Pryor: Dick, cutting down those trees isn’t a half bad idea. I’ve got a great idea. We can use the area for a miniature stream system. We can open the fire hydrant at the end of the building and flood the sidewalk.

Huff: Say, Wayne, don’t you think it would be better to use the space as a parking area for sports cars? What with our increased enrollment, I have to walk farther and farther to my car every day.

Larsen: This space should be kept as sacred as the University itself. I move that we dedicate this space for a Free Speech Alley.

Caster: THAT’S nonsense. WE should move some of our cases from the museum out there.

J.W.: I’m glad to see the trees go. The squirrels kept climbing them and jumping onto my windowsill. They kept stealing my cookies.

Jenks: Dick, I’d be curious to know exactly what you had in mind for this alley.

Durrell: The whole thing came to me while I was talking to my minister on the phone the other day. Here in Cincinnati we have the perfect eco-niche for a simple, quiet grove of redwood trees. They could provide shade for old Tech. The students and staff could work in quiet contemplation of the mysteries of nature.

Lucy: (offstage, dismayed) Now Richard, that’s too much of a mega-idea!

Huff: Say, it’s getting late. I’m getting hungry and I’d like a bite to eat before my afternoon lecture.

Koucky: That’s a good idea. Shall we adjourn to the usual place?

Jenks: Yes, the Vernon Manor would be fine by me.

(All file from the room)

Announcer: The scene is now Vernon Manor (all file in except Warren Huff)

Durrell: It looks like we’re all here but Warren. What happened to him?

Sundy: Warren said that he’d rather eat down the road at the White Castle. He says that they are the most sandwich for the money and besides, he thinks they’re delicious.

Durrell: Well, let’s order.

J.W.: (Brings out his lunch bag with Mickey Mouse on the front) I’d love a pine float.

Waiter: What is a pine float?

J.W.: It’s a glass of water with two toothpicks in it.

(All get up and bow) EXIT.