Three minutes earlier, Ted had left his home on Prescott Street to stride over and claim a tiny but indelible place in the history of the oldest college in America.
To his mind, he had entered Paradise.
Andrew Eliot’s father drove him down from Maine in the family’s vintage station wagon, laden with carefully packed trunks containing tweed and shetland jackets, white buck shoes, assorted moccasins, rep ties, and a term’s supply of button-down and tab-collar shirts. In short, his school uniforms.
As usual, father and son did not speak much to each other. Too many centuries of Eliots had gone through this same rite of passage to make conversation necessary.
They parked by the gate closest to Massachusetts Hall (some of whose earlier occupants had been George Washington’s soldiers). Andrew ran into the Yard and rushed up to Wig G-21 to enlist the aid of his former prep school buddies in hauling his gear. Then, as they were toting barge and lifting bale, he found himself momentarily standing alone with his father. Mr.
Eliot took the occasion to impart a bit of worldly advice.
“Son,” he began, “I would be very grateful if you did your best not to flunk out of here. For though there are innumerable secondary schools in this great land of ours, there is only one Harvard.”
Andrew gratefully acknowledged this astute paternal counsel, shook his father’s hand, and raced off to the dorm. His two roommates had already begun to help him unpack. Unpack his liquor, that is. They were toasting their reunion after a summer of self-styled debauchery in Europe.
“Hey, you guys,” he protested, “you could at least have asked me. Besides, we’ve got to go register.”
“Come off it, Eliot,” said Dickie Newall as he took another swig. “We walked past there just a while ago and there’s a line around the goddamn block.”
“Yeah,” Michael Wigglesworth — affirmed, “all the weenies want to get there first. The race, as we well know, is not always to the swift.”
“I think it is at Harvard,” Andrew politely suggested. “But in any case, it isn’t to the smashed. I’m going over.”
“I knew it.” Newall sniggered. “Old Eliot, my man, you’ve got the makings of a first-class wonk.”
Andrew persisted, undaunted by this preppie persiflage. “I’m going, guys.”
“Go on,” Newall said, dismissing him with a haughty wave. “If you hurry back we’ll save you some of your Haig & Haig. By the way, where’s the rest of it?”
And so Andrew Eliot marched through Harvard Yard to join the long, winding thread of humanity — and ultimately to be woven into the multicolored fabric called The Class of ’58.
By now The Class was all in Cambridge, though it would take several hours more for the last of them to be officially enrolled.
Inside the cavernous hail, beneath a giant stained-glass window, stood the future leaders of the world. Nobel Prize winners, tycoons of industry, brain surgeons, and a few dozen insurance salesmen.
First they were handed large manila envelopes with all the forms to be signed (in quadruplicate for the Financial Office, quintuplicate for the Registrar, and, inexplicably, sextuplicate for the Health Department). For all this paperwork they sat side by side at narrow tables that stretched forever and seemed to meet only in infinity.
Among the questionnaires to be completed was one for Phillips Brooks House, part of which asked for religious affiliation (response was optional).
Though none of them was particularly pious, Andrew Eliot, Danny Rossi, and Ted Lambros marked the boxes next to Episcopal, Catholic, and Greek Orthodox, respectively. Jason Gilbert, on the other hand, indicated that he had no religious affiliation whatsoever.
After the official registration, they had to run an endless gauntlet — of wild, paper-waving proselytizers, all vociferously urging Harvard’s now — official freshmen to join the Young Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, Conservatives, mountain climbers, scuba divers, and so on.
Countless irrepressible student hucksters noisily cajoled them to subscribe to the
Ted Lambros could sign up for nothing as his schedule was already fully committed to courses academic — by day and culinary by night.
Danny Rossi put his name down for the Catholic Club, assuming that religious girls would be a little shyer and therefore easier to meet. Maybe they would even be as inexperienced as he.
Andrew Eliot made his way through all this welter like a seasoned explorer routinely hacking through dense foliage. The kind of social clubs that he’d be joining did their recruitment in a more sedate and far less public fashion.
And Jason Gilbert, except for buying a quick subscription to the
Miracle of miracles, the mysterious D. D. was actually awake. Or at least his bedroom door was open and someone was lying on the bed, face enveloped by a physics text.
Jason hazarded direct discourse. “Hi there, are you D. D.?” A pair of thick, horn-rimmed spectacles cautiously peeked above the book.
“Are you my roommate?” a nervous voice responded.
“Well, I’ve been assigned to Straus A thirty-two,” Jason answered.
“Then you’re my roommate,” the young man logically concluded. And after carefully marking with a paper clip the line where he had left off reading, he put down his book, rose and offered a somewhat cold and clammy hand.
“I’m David Davidson,” he said.
“Jason Gilbert.”
D. D. then eyed his roommate suspiciously and asked, “You don’t smoke, do you?”
“No, it’s bad for the wind. Why do you ask, Dave?”
“Please, I prefer to be called David,” he replied. “I ask because I specifically requested a nonsmoking roommate. Actually I wanted a single, but they don’t allow freshmen to live alone.”
“Where are you from?” Jason inquired.
“New York. Bronx High School of Science. I was a finalist in the Westinghouse Competition. And you?”
“Long Island. Syosset. All I’ve been is finalist in a couple of tennis tournaments. Do you play any sport, David?”
“No,” the young scholar replied. “They’re all a waste of time. Besides, I’m premed. I have to take things like Chem Twenty. What’s your chosen career, Jason?”
God, thought Jason, do I have to be interviewed just to be this wonk’s cellmate?
“To tell the truth, I haven’t decided yet. But while I’m thinking about it, shouldn’t we go out and buy some basic furniture for the living room?”
“What for?” D. D. asked warily. “We each have a bed, a desk, and a chair. What else do we need?”
Well, said Jason, “a couch might be nice. You know, to relax and study in during the week. We could also use an icebox. So we’d have something cold to serve people on the weekends.”
“People?” D. D. inquired, somewhat agitated. “Do you intend to have parties here?”
Jason was running out of patience.
“Tell me, David, did you specifically request an introverted monk as your roommate?”
“No.”
