The Boo (15 page)

The letter goes:

198 Market Street
Charleston, S.C.
January 11, 1964

Cadet Dave Savarene

Citadel Military College

Charleston, South Carolina

Dear Cadet Savarene:

We were extremely pleased to hear of your interest in our new business. It is located, as you probably know, at 198 Market Street. We understand that it may be your wish to do business with us. Before you commit yourself any further, we wish you to understand more about our establishment.

Our establishment is not of ordinary caliber. You will find that it is clean above ordinary standards of cleanliness. Our girls believe in cleanliness before godliness. Our employees have the desire to please all mankind.

We feel that our girls are not here just to make a living … they are, in a sense, here to be a boost to all mankind. If a man is not satisfied in his sexual life, it makes sense that he will be high-strung, nervous, and in general, hard to get along with. It is our business to fulfill that need.

A cadet often needs relations with girls because of their continuous male environment. The weekend is his release for these pent up emotions … and these emotions must be spent. If you are going with a girl, you do not want the possibility of having an illegitimate child. You have your education to think of and you would not want to endanger it, we are sure. Because of this, you should come to our establishment. Your safety from disease is insured because of the high standards of cleanliness we proclaim.

Our girls are clean, wholesome, and well-versed in the skill of love-making. They are not unexperienced!! They are well trained and it is to your advantage to come to us.

The price is well within your range. Ask your friends to come with you for a very enjoyable evening worth every penny you pay!!

There is no need to worry about having to make love to pigs because we pride ourselves in having some of the most gorgeous girls in the south. Their figures are truly God’s own creation!

Sincerely yours,

/s/ J. P. McDonald

J. P. McDonald,

Director of Social Events

JPM/tsl

The next letter is from Anita Murphy. She wrote
The Boo
after her son received a punishment order.
The Boo
loved the spirit of the woman and wished out loud that every Citadel parent shared her attitude.

Dublin, Georgia

December 17, 1962

Lt. Colonel T. N. Courvoisie

The Citadel

Charleston, South Carolina

Dear Sir:

Regarding your letter of December 12, 1962, if The Citadel Censor, in this particular case, happens to be one Cadet David Murphy, then you have my full permission to turn him over on the other side and paddle the daylights out of him. I have very little respect for an informer and if I were physically able, I would take care of him personally. You have my deepest sympathy, sir, for having to be subjected to the endless antics of boys like my son and parents like me.

I am very happy to learn that David is in excellent health. That would seem to indicate that his ulcer has healed over. Also, since he has loads of time to study and there are no young (or old) women to disturb him, then he won’t be needing my car and you can tell him to send it home, because I get awfully cold walking to work every day.

We wish for you and yours a very Merry Christmas and hope that you won’t be too lonely or that things won’t be too dull while “Little Dave” and the other boys are away.

Apologetically yours,

/s/ Anita B. Murphy

Anita B. Murphy

The cadets who walked tours formed a kind of fraternity of their own. The fifty minute walk, back and forth across the second battalion quadrangle, cemented many friendships that ordinarily would never have been made. This was a fraternity of lawbreakers and inveterate challengers of the system. They walked tours together, they laughed together, they joked with
The Boo
together, and after their punishment was served, they drank beer together.
The Boo
knew these cadets as well as he knew any on campus. They exchanged wisecracks. They bantered each other mercilessly. The miscreants who walked tours were proud of their relationship with
The Boo.
Tom McDow was prouder than most. In order to preserve the traditions of the perennial tour-walkers, McDow drew up the following document:

THE SOUTH CAROLINA CORPS OF CADETS

The Citadel, Charleston, S. C.

29 September 1962

1. I request authority to hold a meeting on Saturday, 29 September 1962 on the quadrangle on Number Two Barracks of all tour-walking cadets who are interested in forming a cadet drill team to be called the Caribou Raiders.

2. The purpose of this drill team shall be:

a. to honor the good shepherd, Lt. Colonel T. N. Courvoisie, who has done an outstanding job of handling his lambs.

b. to add color to all tour formations so that they will reflect greater credit on The Citadel and the great association of privates.

c. to improve the drill of senior privates.

d. to provide entertainment for visitors on Homecoming Day, Parents’ Day, Corps Day, and the birthday of Lt. Colonel Courvoisie.

e. to plan social activities that will tighten the bonds of friendships formed on the quad and also to insure that members do not long remain off the squad.

3. At this organization meeting, it is proposed that officers will be elected as the group desires and that a constitution will be approved by the membership. The action taken at this meeting will be reported to the authorities of The Citadel through channels for final approval.

4. I am familiar with General Order 20, Headquarters of The Citadel, dated 19 February 1962 and
Blue Book
Regulations 13.01; 12.02; 13.03; and 13.04. If this request is granted, no advantage will be taken of these or other
Blue Book
Regulations.

Once in a while the cadet would raise his voice in a song of agony. He would do it for no other reason than to be heard. He needed pity for a single moment. Whether he was serving confinements or walking tours, the lamentation which issued from his mouth was an indication that the pressure was getting too much. Cadet Black wrote his poem in a bleak frame of mind and sent it to
The Boo. The Boo’s
reply is written below. Two poets locked in combat. What is lacking in meter is made up for in emotion.
The B
oo-poem proves that the Colonel was wise in choosing the Army as a career instead of literature. But the cadets loved these word battles. Even if his verse was suspect,
The Boo
never lost one of these matches.

CONFINEMENTS

Many an hour at my desk I sit

Wishing like hell I hadn’t pulled that …

Cursing the system and raising hell

And swearing in the future I shall do well

For all wrongs committed one has to pay

In cadet tradition, what can I say

But from it all a lesson is taught

If you do something wrong dammit don’t get caught!!!

“67”
BLACK

(handwritten)

You are so right

And you would look bright

at Joe College where you would

Always be right.

/s/
Boo

THE GREEN COMET

An ugly car. No doubt about it, a very ugly car. It was squat and awkward, a car neither to be raced or exhibited with pride, but a car which became the most immediately recognizable symbol of discipline on The Citadel’s campus. The General’s car displayed several waving flags. It was brash and imposing—a black Cadillac that reminded one of wreaths and funerals. The cadets ignored the General’s car, for it was commonly conceded among the Corps that you could be raping a Vestal Virgin and never merit a glance from the exalted eyes in the back of the great Cadillac. The green Comet called for vigilance. Usually when you saw it, it was already past you or coming up to you. Its pace was slow and determined as it wound through the well planned environs of The Citadel, as it circumnavigated the parade ground, or cut behind the barracks to intercept cadets intent on a stolen day in Charleston. The cadet knew this car like he knew the face of his mother, the bark of his dog, or the sound of reveille at 6:15 in the morning.

It had character. If given rank, most assuredly the title of senior private would be bestowed upon it. A sloppy, disheveled car in a world of Impalas and Super Sports. A relaxed car, strolling the campus unhurriedly, seeing what could be seen in the tiny universe to which it was confined; a car where justice sat, where judge and jury smoked a long, long cigar and awarded punishments for scuffed shoes and corroded brass.
The Boo’s
car could drive by a whole company of cadets and elicit cries of “Hey
Boo”
from a hundred sources. A car which sometimes swung out of Lesesne Gate and followed the railroad tracks to The Ark, where scores of cadets have met a Waterloo. A place where many cadets have exited with bellies afire to find themselves facing the inscrutable headlights of the Green Comet and the faint glow of a Tampa Nugget illuminating the steering wheel.

The Green Comet became a landmark, a touchstone universally accepted by cadets as a symbol of The Citadel. Cadets at home on Christmas or Easter Furlough would see a similar car pass them in Cordele, Georgia, or Pen Yann, New York, and the reaction would be the same. Their heads would turn instinctively to see if by some chance, some blind miracle that it was
The Boo’s
car they saw. When they returned to the campus, they would stop Colonel Courvoisie to tell him they thought about him during furlough.

The Citadel Museum could never collect any item which could define and embody a group of years so well as the car
The Boo
drove. The car became a symbol of the man and ultimately of the school. The car itself represented the discipline which separated The Citadel from other schools. It also caught the spirit of the school itself: a trifle eccentric, a little odd, yet possessing a character and fascination all of its own. The cadets would wave at the car and the man inside would wave back. That’s the way it should be. That’s the way it always was.

OF AND ABOUT MUSEUMS

The Citadel Museum is a sterile, quiet place where nice, dedicated people gather to preserve the school’s history behind glass cases and locked doors. Cadets usually go there once in their career at The Citadel and never go again. The museum is financed so poorly and supported so inadequately by the school itself that it is a tribute to the dedication of the staff that the museum has survived at all.

One problem the museum has always had in the eyes of some cadets is its worship of General Mark Clark. One whole room of the museum is dedicated to the propagation of Clark’s exploits through two wars. The room itself is dark, an inner sanctum lit with tabernacle lights, and smoking with a kind of mystical incense which seems to complement the godly aura of the man himself. One display case shows the pair of pants Clark wore on a spy mission to North Africa. In the next case the visitor fully expects to see the jock strap Clark wore during an intramural volleyball game at West Point. Statues of Clark, pictures of Clark, letters from Clark, letters to Clark, speeches by Clark, and a seemingly endless amount of Clark memorabilia helps make the museum a monument to his career. If any pictures were available of Clark walking on water or changing wine into water, they would dutifully be placed in the museum by people who suffer guilt feelings that The Citadel has never produced an international figure of its own. Instead of the museum being a reflection of the cadets and of cadet life, it has become a reflection of The Citadel as some would like to have her projected to the world: a signer of peace treaties, a victor in major battles, an important force in the affairs of the world. The unique flavor of cadet life has been preserved only in a couple of displays and they constitute the most significant portion of the museum itself.