Even though
it comes from 1979’s “Discovery” album, when I was already back at Accutronics,
working on getting my thesis into shape so I could submit it and then defend
it, it still puts me in mind of Western Illinois University. It reminds me of
the primitive, off-brand, portable cassette player I had at the time. As soon
as I would buy an album I would tape it and then play only the cassette. On my
Advent home deck, in my Mustang, or on my Sonee Walkmun. This kept my albums in
pretty good shape.
I recall
listening to tapes in the room where all the Grad Assistants (GA’s), for
History, Math, Psychology, and Economics, had desks. Each major had a group of
desks pushed together and we used them between classes to camp out and kibbutz
with the other GA’s.
History
GA’s were the lowest paid of all (reflecting what an MA in History is worth in
the real world), since we didn’t teach any classes (like the Math GA’s did). We
proctored exams and made ourselves available for tutoring (though in a year and
a half, I don’t think any of the 5-6 GA’s were asked to do any).
We received
$210/month, plus all tuition and fees (the real payment) for 10-15 hours
of “work” (sitting in a 100 level class to take notes and prepare for tutoring).
Rent in the Graduate and Married student housing was $130/month, leaving
$80/month for food and entertainment.
On of the
most interesting classes in Grad School was Historical Research. Each week we
were exposed to a different way to look at data and sources. The first project
was a gigantic scavenger hunt, we were given a list of 35 questions and had one
week to get the answers from the Reference section of the library.
Questions
like: Who was your congressman on the day you were born? How much cotton was
produced in the US in 1854? And what was the population of Chicago in 1897? All
of us taking the class scurried about the library for 2 or 3 days, then we got
smart and got together and shared locations and books used to answer the
questions, thereby reducing our overall work.
Remember
now, this is pre-Internet, 1977, and everything was in a book (“What’s a book,
grandpa?”) somewhere in the Reference section of the library, not a few
keystrokes away on your laptop.
Another
week we completed a project whereby a computer (it took up a whole room in
another campus building) was used to collate data and generate a graph (as I
recall). We spent 1-2 days keypunching data onto IBM cards, then took the whole
stack over to the computer building (making sure not to drop or mix them in any
way) and handed them to the tech who fed them into the computer and the next
day you came in and picked up your report/graph.
One thing
for sure, I would have killed to have had a word processor in 1979, when I was working
my thesis into shape. I hand wrote my first draft of each chapter, as I do for
this blog, (I write it out on lined paper I print, because my handwriting is
small. Lines are .125 apart, and I write on every other line to allow for
revisions).
My thesis
was written on narrow ruled paper (.250 wide lines), one hand written page becoming
three pages typewritten, then typed on my Sears portable electric typewriter,
and submitted to my thesis advisor, Dr. Victor Hicken. WIU had very specific
requirements for the thesis when ready. It had to be a certain font, on a
certain bond paper, and three copies were needed. All were bound in leather,
one is in the WIU library, one is in the WIU History department, and I have the
third.
My mom
typed up my final draft on a typewriter where she worked at the time and I
submitted it in early 1979. Then Dr. Hicken came back with several revisions.
If it was a word or two, I could retype the page (once I found a typewriter
with the same font at Accu), but if the revision was a line or two, I would
have to re-type the page, plus all the following pages of that chapter.
What a
pain.
Plus, Dr.
Hicken felt my thesis needed some maps of the battles my regiment fought in. (I
wrote a history of the 36th Illinois Regiment, called the Fox River
Regiment). I had to find a book that was not covered by copyright anymore so I
could photocopy the maps and use them in my thesis. I found one at the Abraham
Lincoln Bookstore in Chicago.
It did get
me a date with a cutie at Accu who retyped several pages for me. I had a huge
crush on Bev, but she was out of my league. After doing the typing I paid her
back by taking her to see William Windom play “Thurber” at Aurora’s glorious
Paramount theater and then to see the Blues Brothers live at Poplar Creek.
Poplar Creek
was an outdoor arena in nearby Hoffman Estates that seated 10,000 in the
covered pavilion and another 20,000 or so, on the lawn. I invited a friend from
Blackburn who lived in the area, Mike P, and my best friend from Accu, Jorge B.
plus their wives, to go along.
We got a
large pizza from the Pizza Stop (long gone) in Cary and dragged it all the way
to Poplar Creek, where the guards at the front gate patted it down (it was in a
large, flat, paper bag) before letting us bring it in to eat as we sat on the
lawn.
This
concert was the night before the movie opened and the crowd was shouting for
“Rawhide”, since Steve Dahl had been playing it in the weeks leading up to the
show. Even though they didn’t play it, it was still a great concert. Steve
Cropper and “Duck” Dunn, from Booker T and the MG’s, horn section of Tom Malone
and Lou Marini, Paul Schaffer on keyboards, and others, plus Dan Aykroyd with
his harmonica in the briefcase handcuffed to his wrist, and John Belushi being
John Belushi, cartwheeling onto the stage at the start (“Everybody needs
somebody… everybody needs somebody… to love”… “Someone to love”).
Doesn’t get
much better…
Everybody Needs Somebody - Blues Brothers
A couple
nights later I took Bev to see the Blues Brothers movie in McHenry, where the
audience went wild whenever a scene shot in the area came on screen (much of
the exterior shooting of the final car chase was filmed on Route 12 in Lake
County, and another scene, with a huge PA megaphone attached to the roof of the
Bluesmobile (“Tell your friends!”) was shot at Bang’s Lake in Lake Zurich). It
was my last date with Bev, though we remained friendly at Accu.
Oh well. (See11- To Be What You Must, for a refresher on my philosophy).
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