Seventeen Wisconsin students were admitted to Harvard and Radcliffe in 1966, and my high school classmate, Alixe (Alexandra) Murphy, got into Radcliffe. I was assigned two roommates. Joe, who played football, grew up outside Detroit. His father taught at a public college, and his mother also was a teacher. I believe he had four male siblings. My other roommate, Andy, is a sociology professor at the University of Chicago. He came from Phillips Academy while Joe and I attended public high school.
My roommates and their friends often made fun of me because I was a kid from a conservative and narrow town. Joe grew up in a broad and diverse background, while Andy was brilliant and well read. My personality was such that Joe, Andy and others often made fun of me, doing things such as destroying my wastebasket. It helped me to learn and broaden.
Andy began to brew loose tea (many varieties) every night at 10:00 p.m. We would return to our room and talk about anything. We talked about different people and different countries. We tried to understand unusual personalities. We talked about urination patterns (time of day and frequency). Andy and Joe, with whom I stayed and drank tea for four years, knew more about mixed populations than I did. One night we took turns to say a sexual word. I quickly ran out, but Andy and Joe knew all sorts of weird words. I learned a lot. I learned so much about politics and the war in Vietnam, particularly from Andy.
Andy got a national newspaper, and I read it every day. It helped me to grow, as I had only read the Milwaukee newspapers prior to then. And I had typically only read the funnies and sports sections. We sometimes performed a crossword puzzle from the newspaper. Later, I started to read The New York Times every day. I became much more concerned about the war in Vietnam, and I read the Times in great detail.
Other people sometimes joined us for tea, and I started to learn about different people and different parts of the country. I also learned a lot about politics. Our Law School friend invited a man who (many years later) was a Supreme Court Justice of United States.
Andy often invited his girlfriend over for tea, and in my senior year I invited Ellen (whom I later married). One evening Andy wore some sort of thin Chinese cloth and nothing else.
At the beginning of college, I was impressed by the brilliant preppies who sometimes came to our tea party. But by junior and senior year, I finally felt equal to them.
