Three letters I received in the summer of 1954 from Don Rockwell ('56) remind us of what the summers were like.  That was the first of two summers I worked in South Dakota on an archeological field crew.  Being homesick and wondering what all the girls were doing, I wrote letters and more letters, and received a few, including these two from Don. Excerpts:

July 2, 1954:  "You're not missing anything around here--that's for sure.  It's getting deader by the minute.  I haven't done much but go down to the Pavillion [sic] every day, and even that gets tiring after a while.  All the kids have been trying to do flips onthe beach and the place is red fromthe blood!  It isn't quite that bad at all though and pretty soon we'll have it mastered.  Your tail bone, balony, it's mine that's busted.  [I had written how I had tried to do a flip wearing cowboy boots and landed on my tail bone.]

Well, the fourth of July is coming up soon and you'll probably be celebrating it with a big bang!!  I guess firecrackers are legal there, aren't they?  but who cares if they are anyway!

The weather here has been lousy except for today when the sun finally showed itself.  As for Kay andI, I've considered it a total loss and I think she's probably coming to realize that too.  I've told myself that I'm going to give up girls, but that's a big laugh!  It will only last until I meet someone new, which might have happened already. 

Sunday, July 18, 1954.  "As for the flip craze, that went by--well--it's gone and all in all no one got really hurt.

Ro's party was really swell and we all had a wonderful time drowning each other!  Now, open your ears wide, 'cause I've got two surprises for you.  First of all, I have "got a girl on the brain" - Jane Allen and second of all--I got a hundred on the geometry Regents!  boy was I ever surprised.  I know it's lousy of me to go after Jane who's going with "Bones" but I've talked to some of the kids and they've given their approv also I went ahead with it.  Paul and Betty are still going strong(er) even with Bobby Krowbar (I think that's how you spell it) around. Kurt's been upstate 2 wks and will be back in another wk--poor Judy.  I'm leaving myself for Boston this coming Friday and will be there for two wks, so don't bother to write.  Well that's it for now--your Sweety Pie "Rocky"

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 Don  Rockwell, you may remember, was a whiz at math and became Student Council treasurer in '55 when my brother Art became president, my brother Bill secretary, and I became vice president. 

The third letter was written on July 21 by a classmate working at Bridgeport YMCA Boys Camp in the Berkshires.  A few excerpts:

"During the week we worked our blisters through till our hands couldn't move.  But that was not bad compared to the 500 different dishes I have to wash every meal three times a day."

"About the girls there are none up here except some old fogies in this all boys camp.  Now I know what it feels like to be without girls around you for a couple of weeks."

I have letters from several people about both guys and gals in the class that it would be uncomfortable to quote now.  (That includes some they have from me.)  Looking back on what we wrote, one person said, "What amazing disrespect for women I displayed!  Here I was 19 going on 20 and had nothing but carnal desires.  I suspect it was 'somewhat normal' for that age and probably continues with this age group today – testosterone I guess!" 

The earlier letters he referred to and the way he had written about the women in our class was "somewhat normal" for that age.  At the same time I recall many girls and guys who were close friends in the best sense. 

A Woman's Perspective. Forget Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan--they were come-latelies and lightweights compared to some of the women in our class.  Here are excerpts from a correspondence that went on quite regularly in the first six years after we left Sea Cliff.

Sept 26, 1957

Don’t you worry your pretty little head about falling in love either.  Knowing you it’ll be either some little blonde chick who doesn’t know her head from a hole in the ground, or dominating, strange type who’ll crush you under her strident personality.  In the meantime, what’s wrong with good old sex?  Write as soon as you’ve got Duke under your grimy thumb and have made all the girls shouldn’t take more than 2 days.

October 2, 1957

What I meant by advising you to stick to “good old sex” was that there seems to be no point in cluttering up your life with any grand passion during your term of preparing to be head of World Dictators Inc. but neither is there any future in squatting in the lab with your microscope from year end to year end.  Remember, you’ve got the honor of the aggressive Sea Cliff Male to uphold.  Your getting smashed doesn’t worry me at all.  Since we sharpened our claws on each other for nigh unto four years, I imagine you’re poised enough for anything short of nuclear attack.

Oct. 13, 1957

Dear Buster,

     Really now, I think it very bad tempered of you to go popping off about women like a discontented volcano.  If women hold all the trumps, it’s because the men have unwittingly given them away.  In the beginning, because men were physically more powerful, woman had to be pretty clever to survive with her individuality (and a few other things) intact.  So one high card that women really hold is the need of men for them, (such as your pal with the illustrated bunk).  Anyhow, I don’t recall your ever getting the short end of the stick, so why the moral indignation.  It couldn’t be your altruistic love of justice, could it?

Oct. 22, 1957

Foo yourself!  It won’t do you the least bit of good to try and blame nature for the subordination of the males.  It’s all their own fault for underestimating their enemy.  I can see it all way back in the primitive ages—some sere old Pithecanthropus Erectus saying to his son “Well it’s like this about women, son, they are a lot of fun but they don’t have any brains.  You might say they’re just naturally the weaker sex.  If they show any sign of being sassy, just club ‘em and that’ll hold ‘em for good.  Of course your mother isn’t like that.  Wonderful woman, wonderful.  Which reminds me she told me . . . I mean we’d better be getting on home; it’s pretty near supper.” 

     “Okay pop.  Gee, you sure know a lot about women!”

     And so by sticking obstinately to the idea that because a woman was weaker physically she was also weaker mentally men handed over all sorts of weapons, unwittingly.  Foolishly they allowed themselves to develop scruples about physically maltreating their women and lost even the use of muscular supremacy.  If you’ve looked into the law books of the U.S. you’ll have noticed that women have been gradually working towards the same rights as men have and they have also kept their privileges.  (Need I enumerate—alimony, no draft etc.)  The laugh may be on youse guys but don’t blame nature.

10/31/57

Dear Buster,

What in the world did poor old Freud ever data you that you've got it in for him so?  Anyway this letter is proof that women can learn something from men. When I read all your neatly typewritten epistles I decided to give the infernal ma­chine a chance and am finding it a lot easier to compose.  From here on, personal type, hand written letters go out the window and cold, clear, businesslike logic comes in the door.

I don't by any means wish that man had'nt [sic] relinquished his physical dominance over women.  Black and blue are not colors in which I fancy myself. I do say that that for him it was a mistake since it took away his only innate superiority.  And because he does have a rather prevalent need of women at frequent intervals he’s down one before the game even begins.

I agree that even if you did know all the weapons that man has given away and I were to tell you about them, you still wouldn’t be back in the pre-Freudistoric days; but it wouldn’t be because of "damned old nature"; it would be because of damned old you You can’t fling off your civilization like a pair of dirty pants.  You may prove to yourself logically that there’s no reason why you shouldn't make women slaves again and immure you wife in purdah (poor soul) but there are several reasons why you won’t.  First there are laws against that sort of thing and I doubt that you would fly directly in the face of the penal system~ Second your reason would tell you that physical might is not a sensible basis for human relationship. Thirdly you probably wouldn't want a king-slave relationship in your little home out in Suburbia.  You'd much prefer some babe whom you believe to be slightly below you mentally but smart enough so you could expound your Olympian ideas to her and receive her appreciative coos. I suppose you could fight the whole thing if you wanted to devote your entire life to it but it would be a pretty hollow career.

Nov. 11, 1957

I agree with you (I'll have to stop doing that, or it'll go to your head) that women do have the edge, but I see no prospect of a War Between the Sexes.  All we need is enough of the right kind of men and women, so that the question of superiority on the basis of sex will cease to have importance.  Whether this ever comes about is another story.

Nov. 18, 1957

My roommate and I just took a joint poll, to keep things interesting, on what we would take in life if we could have only six things nothing else.  It came out as expected, in this order, food, shelter, clothing; sex; cigarettes; and liquor.  It just shows how materialistic one can be underneath all the fol-de rol of civilization.

Dec. 3, 1957

Well, Peyton place is rather the fashion up here at the moment. However, since I read it last year after giving it to my mother for Christmas, I’m constantly being approached by furtive undergraduates, requesting me to point out the "good” parts.  My roomate just finished it lately.

As for Jung, all I know about him is that he was originally a follower of Freud but soon disagreed and branched out to form his own school of psychoanalysis.  In general, while I'm not a blind disciple of Siggy's,[Sigmond Freud] I think he had more on the ball and is twice as much fun as Jung. 

May I point out that without wine and women there would be no humankind to be plagued, be­sotted and infatuated?

Dec. 11, 1957

Now then, what’s all this querulousness about women for mmmmm?  Ordinarily, I would say no, that wine and allied potables are not necessary to the furtherance of the human race.  But taking a look at Today's Man, especially the college variety, I’m not even sure that the grain and the grape will do any good.  Let’s face it, the average specimen is a pretty sorry lot.  Maybe that's why they’re doing away with him.  I don’t think they’ll eliminate him completely, tho because women will always need diversion at times.  How would you like to be pampered, spoiled, catered to, fed chocolates and spend every day on a chaise lounge?  It just might come to that.  O well.

“Men give more damns about women, than they do about anything else.”  [says it is from her new book, Why Not Stop Kidding Yourself]

February 11, 1958

Bring Love in the Western World home with you spring vacation; I'd like to take at look at it and find out what else is wrong with us all.

"Your psyche about to go bust?

Try a little lust."

Feb. 24, 1958

If you’re ever looking for a libidinous movie; calculated to drive youth to a life of wild debauchery, drop in on And God Created Woman, THAT French import sporting the charms of Brigitte Bardot.  I’11 say this for it, it certainly shows BB at her best.

Dec. 5 1958 [from WK to her]

All the girls are going wild in psychology since we have now embarked quite uninhibitedly upon sex drive with a very sophisticated prof.  (Experiments, optional).  The phenomenon is probably similar to the one you mentioned last October in connection with a popular sociology course.

Feb. 2, 1959

The rash of engagements depresses me just because they are engagements.  I can think of nothing more tedious than flinging oneself into the kind of compact this is and is and which usually ends, I believe, in a thing so disastrous as marriage.  It's rather horrifying too, to see the way people go into it, clamping on the chains themselves with gleeful abandon, pledging themselves to spend the rest of their lives picking up someone's pajamas, as well as that old "love, honor, and obey”.  It's not quite so bad for a man, because even if he does have to pay some extra bills, he gets a all around domestic servant (although probably not as competent a one as he’d get from an employment agency, but for a woman, it turns her from a human being into a brood mare.  In a word—UGH.

Hide your id, kid,

Or they’ll make you wish you did;

Those weaponless ones who for recreation

Prefer the grimy safety of cold stagnation.

For if they learn and say they forbade it,

That’s it buddy, man, you’ve had it!

As for those whose way, is the icer

That’s all right, but id-iocy is nicer.

Feb 13, 1959

I don't have anything against bringing children into the world except for the fuss and bother the whole drawnout process entails it slightly ridiculous, somehow, to see people living for their children, determined that they shall excel that parents, before the parents themselves have had a chance to realize their potential.  There are certainly more than enough people in the world as it is, and I've often thought that people have children because they have no confidence in the meliorating progress of their own character and lives.

Face it kid,

The id can't be hid

Completely

It will come to light,

by day, by night.

Or Beatly.

Try and shed it in booze or by hypnosis,

and it will pop up in fetish or psychosis.

So comfort it, tend it,

Buy it and spend it,

And at the end of each day.

You'll be able to say,

"I'm interesting if not happy."

May 20, 1959

Did you notice the ads that have been appearing lately for Lady Chatterley's unexpurgated Lover.  It may be that this is a crack in the wall of Great American Puritanism.  While we're on the topic of banned books.  Have you ever read any Henry Miller?  That man lived.  I have to say that for him.

Tonight we're having the classics picnic in annual route for the slippered pantaloons who take Greek and Latin.  I didn't go last year, so I'm not quite sure whether I should wear a toga.

 Righteous is not right, she said,

no more, indeed, then deftly, dead.

For when we are young we are righteous.

Not to mention fighteous.

And as for the "unclean"

at last, what does it mean,

except that one is not.

As one would be seen.

And what ideal can ever be.

Except for the those who will not see.

The real.

Because they feel.

And want the lie of.

The ideal.  So it is, though, who can know,

the final blooming, horror show.

12/6/60 [from WK to her]

By this time I hope the psychiatrist and you have been able to recapture the organization of your mind.  You always said that you had no problems and that you were completely rational and here you are going off the trolley track before me who admits being a slave to the irrational.  I’m not trying to draw up a program of “sanity thru irrationality,” only scientists and philosophers can attempt that.