The Boo (6 page)

A gargantuan jock who stood like an anvil at left tackle during the football season went up to the head of a department and practically begged to take seven subjects his senior year. The department head persisted in knowing exactly why he had to take seven subjects. The jock, A. W. Reynolds, answered, “Because I’m married, Sir.” The teacher turned him in.

Once upon a time there was a basketball player who rose to the rank of Captain in the Corps of Cadets, a rare blend of athlete and soldier. He also performed brilliantly in the classroom. Many people turned to him whenever any discussion of model cadet arose and pointed out that he excelled in every phase of cadet activity. The night before graduation, this admirable, triple-threat cadet partook of the bottle and the vine a little too vigorously. On the way to receive his diploma, he vomited into a little bush beside Bond Hall. He was carried unceremoniously back to barracks. He received his diploma later. This vomiting trooper is now an eminent professor in the Business Department of The Citadel.

The name “Stindle” means very little unless you come from Union, South Carolina, or thereabouts. Then you’d know the Stindle’s had money flowing from the glove compartment of their blue Cadillac which sat in front of a house built for the landed gentry. Them Stindle’s owned Union. Landon Stindle came to The Citadel and became an outstanding cadet. In the early sixties, he was regimental commander. He went with a beautiful girl for four years and planned to marry her when he completed his three-year stint in the Marine Corps. He left his girl friend under the benevolent care of his best friend, Jim Rheinhart. Jim took excellent care of Stindle’s girl. He married her.

One night while making his appointed rounds of the barracks,
The Boo
had paused in a freshman room to give them merits for outstanding room during study period. While he was there, a knock sounded on the wall in the next room, the universal signal for young knobs to go scurrying to the service of indolent seniors.
Boo
left the room and cracked the door of the next room and said meekly, “Yes, Sir.” Tod Dood sat comfortably propped with his feet on his desk looking over some papers he had written. “Bring the cream in, Dumbhead, the coffee’s ready,” Dood said without looking up. “Thank you, Bubba. That’s all I need.” Dood buried his head in his hands and still without looking up or turning around, pleaded, “Colonel, you can do anything you want to me, but please don’t tell anyone how you caught me.”

Daryl Butker, in a futile attempt to popularize the troubador’s art on The Citadel campus, would waltz into Colonel Courvoisie’s living room, strap on his guitar and sing his ERW’s to the Colonel.

Another music lover, Caleb Winston, went AWOL his freshman year and took nothing with him but his two guitars. He left toothbrush, underwear, and picture of his girl at The Citadel, but his two damn guitars went over the wall with him.

During June Week of his freshman year, Denny Copester was creeping back on campus at two in the morning when a campus night watchman ordered him to halt. Since the general run of watchmen at The Citadel are selected at random from the dregs of mankind, Copester decided to make a run for it. The guard who took his job rather seriously, fired a warning shot over Denny’s head. Denny prudently fell to the earth.
The Boo
gave him a punishment order of 3/60 and fined him 53 cents for the round of ammunition the guard wasted firing the gun.

Boo
often checked the zoo area, otherwise known as “A” Company where the towering jocks grazed in relative tranquility. One night in early spring he saw a room with the lights out, opened the door, flipped the lights on, saw two figures in bed, turned the lights off, and closed the door. As he was taking the two cadets’ names off the door, he could not shake the persistent feeling that something was just not right. He opened the door again, cut on the lights once more, walked over to the beds, and threw back the covers. Dummies, complete with wigs, occupied the beds. Cadets Whitner and Reyt, imbibing freely at The Ark, returned to The Citadel late that night to discover 120 tours awaited them to walk in their leisure time.

A senior mess-carver learned that a freshman at his table was allergic to tomato juice. He made the freshman drink nine glasses that same morning. The freshman required emergency treatment at the hospital.
The Boo
and the Commandant’s Department recommended the senior be shipped, but he was given 2/40 instead. This was one of the cruelest violations of the Fourth Class System
The Boo
heard about during his reign as Assistant Commandant.

Boo’s
association with the band and its members would constitute a book in itself. But one of his habits which eventually became tradition was his solemn march behind the line of bagpipers dressed for parade. On this march, he lifted the skirts of the pipers to make sure they were wearing drawers. J. W. Howt used to exchange wisecracks with
The Boo
every Friday when this ritual resumed. “Do you like what you see back there, Colonel?” “Howt, everything I see back here looks better than your face.” Each Friday,
The Boo
and Cadet Howt fired verbal fusillades at each other. What
The Boo
didn’t see was his photograph pasted onto Howt’s drums, and as the parade began, and the cutting session ended, Howt marched onto the field beating the hell out of his major antagonist.

Alvin Reet and W. J. Milder, two of the first cadets who made the discovery that
The Boo
could be a leaping son of a bitch on occasion, burned a cross on his front lawn.

Bill Winters lingered too long in the barracks after graduation, possibly reflecting on his long and distinguished career as a senior private and bum in residence, when
The Boo,
tired of waiting, locked the gate and gave Bill the distinction of being the only cadet ever locked in the barracks on the last day of school.

Before a West Point football game, the Colonel got a phone call from a man named Goldman who said he used to be a private in “G” Company. When
The Boo
couldn’t place him at first, Goldman said, “Hell, Colonel, you remember me. I was the only Jew in your company.” “Sure, Bubba.” He got the tickets.

R. V. Gordon studied like hell and had the grades to prove it. He ranked one in the political science department and fully expected to represent The Citadel at a political science convention at Annapolis. He came to talk to
The Boo
one afternoon, very frustrated and bitter, and told him his department had chosen to send a man with rank, instead of a senior private. Something like the image of The Citadel was involved.

Mickey Rollins and Ed Zurowski rated the titles of first class bums, but both of them were pretty good students. Both of them liked to have a good time and play the
la dolce vita
bit. They were playing leap frog one day on the beach, when Mickey leaped too far and landed on his head. The broken neck sustained in the fall nearly killed him. It was damn close for a while, but he made it.

Theoretically, Carey Tuttle would graduate in January if the gods continued smiling warm smiles upon him. Some god quit smiling and
The Boo
caught him selling hot popcorn on a chilly night in early January. The month restriction would prevent him from graduating, so he begged
The Boo
to give him some chance of escape.
The Boo
slapped him with a fine of $50.00 that would sweeten The Citadel’s treasury. He paid off forty-two dollars. Hereby, let it be known that Carey Tuttle still owes eight dollars.

Jimmy Spur’s father was a classmate of
The Boo’s
at The Citadel. Jimmy stayed in trouble with the law during his entire career at The Citadel. He and
The Boo
had several disagreements and
The Boo
nailed him with a punishment order. Later, some merchants downtown complained that Jimmy owed them a lot of money.
Boo
co-signed a note of a few hundred dollars so he could pay his bills.

One thing which irritated upperclassmen of the 1960’s was the sight of perspiration stains ringing the armpits of obese freshmen awaiting inspection at noon formation. Whether this was because of television’s influence with its ubiquitous commercials extolling the virtues of desert-dry underarms or simply some hang-up which became generalized throughout the Corps, no one really knew. The mother of David Wellman stormed into
The Boo’s
office one day. She was a large and effusive woman with her exaggerated features heavily made up. She begged and exhorted
The Boo
to keep the hungry pack of upperclassmen from, devouring her fat, sweating little boy, David. She had sent him deodorants, both stick and spray, special odor-killing soaps, powders, and even deodorant pads. Nothing worked. Big, ugly perspiration stains still plagued him at noon formation. She wept copiously and as she told the tragic story of her son, she did not notice
The Boo
on the edge of hysteria, trying to keep from laughing as he watched the purple rivers of mascara drip down her face with every tear.

When Larry Wolf walked up the flight of stairs in Jenkins Hall and walked into Courvoisie’s office, it was easy to tell that something was eating the kid. “Colonel, I have something to tell you.” “What is it, ‘Wolf’?” “Colonel, I just have to get married. I have to. I love her and she loves me and we just have to get married.” “That’s fine, Wolf. But The Citadel’s no place to be married. Your wife can’t be with you. There’s no sense of companionship. You’d miss the hell out of her during the week, break barracks every time you got the chance, and get yourself into a lot of trouble.” “I know, Colonel, but we’re in love and there’s nothing else we can do.” “O. K. Good luck, Bubba, whatever you do.”

Several weeks later Larry returned to his office with tears in his eyes and said, “Colonel, something terrible has happened. I have to go home right now. I can’t wait for the weekend.” “O. K., Bubba, you have twenty-four hours.”
The Boo
later learned that Larry’s girl had married another guy from their home town.

Pete Reston and Jerry Bester engaged in a kind of psychological warfare against each other their entire senior year. Jerry, being a cadet major, held a distinct advantage on the disciplinary battlefield. Pete, fighting with limited resources, helped stimulate Jerry’s intellectual life by ordering over sixty magazines and signing Jerry’s name to the purchase order.

In February 1966 Colonel Bosch, the Comptroller, called Colonel Courvoisie and asked him to hunt a cadet for him. Bosch went on to say that $47.50 worth of senior business books were charged to a freshman’s I.D. card. The freshman had left The Citadel in November. When they punched a few holes in the proper places and ran a card through the computer, Bosch and his assistants discovered that all seniors in the business department had bought books except three. “Is there anything you can do to help us, Colonel?” “Yes, Sir, I believe so.”

Boo
went to second battalion and asked Allan Wudie, Band Company Honor Representative, to walk around campus with him on some business which might involve the honor court. Wudie complied.
Boo
had three names on a sheet of paper.

The first name belonged to a cadet who lived on the top gallery of second battalion. Cadet North, a second lieutenant in the corps, popped to attention when Colonel Courvoisie and Wudie walked into his room.

“At ease, Bubba. Could I see the books you’re using in your major field this semester?” “Yes, Sir. Here they are, Sir. Why are you looking, Sir?” “Just checking, Bubba.” Six brand new business books lined the top shelf of his bookcase. Cadet Wudie carefully wrote the name of each book on a piece of paper. Before they left the room, Cadet North asked again, “Have I done anything wrong, Colonel?” “I don’t know, Bubba. I was just told to check some books. Good Morning.”

The next cadet was asleep on his bed in fourth battalion when
The Boo
walked into the room. His two roommates who were studying leaped from their seats, but Harold Griddle oblivious to the presence of danger lurking in his room, slept on in undisturbed slumber, until
The Boo
let out a roar for Harold to hit the floor. Blanching and stuttering in surprise, Criddle stood in his underwear at rigid attention. “Where are your senior business books, Bum?” “Well, Ah, Colonel, Sir. Well, I haven’t picked them up this semester yet. You know, I just wanted to save a little money. Thought I’d use my friends’ books just to get by.” “Bubba, do you realize this college requires you to have textbooks so you can extract every morsel of knowledge from your courses to help you in your future life?” “Yes, Sir.” “You pick your books up tomorrow and bring me the receipt for their purchase.” “Yes, Sir.”

Wudie and
The Boo
then climbed the “O” Company stairwell and found the room of Preston Grant empty of occupants.
The Boo
yelled down to the O.G. on duty, “Find me Cadet Grant and get him to this room immediately.” So the frantic O.G. placed calls all over the campus, sent his orderlies on scouting missions, searched Bond Hall, the library, the pool room, and finally found him watching T.V. in the Senior Lounge.
“The Boo
wants you in your room right away,” an orderly said. “What in the hell did I do this time?” Preston intoned, as he broke out of Mark Clark Hall in a sprint and did not slow down until he stood before
The Boo
breathless and still wondering what crime he had committed. “Mr. Grant, show me your senior business books you bought this semester, immediately.” “Colonel, I just haven’t picked them up yet. You know with graduation and all how important it is to save money and stuff. I’ve got one book, but it belongs to a friend of mine. We’ve got a test in that course tomorrow.” “Bubba, you prove to me in my office that you bought every God-blessed book your department requires, understand?” “Yes, Sir.”