The Last Word

Avon Old Farms Memories

BY SETH MENDELL ’52

Graham Deckers's winning Christmas card in last year’s Avon Old Farms holiday competition brought back many special memories for me and my wife, Alice.

In September 1962, when I returned from my second tour of duty with the U.S. Army at the time of the Berlin Wall crisis, Alice and I moved into the apartment depicted in Graham’s art. Phyllis, our first child, slept in the room on the second floor with the smaller of the two dormers; our bedroom was nearer the quadrangle side of Pelican. Two years later, our second daughter, Margaret, joined the family.

The windows on the first floor of our apartment looked out from the living and dining rooms onto a sizable triangular area between the ends of Diogenes and Pelican. In his watercolor, Graham showed this area covered with snow. In the summer of 1963, I asked Headmaster Don Pierpont if the school had any old brick I could use to build a patio in that triangle. He reached for the phone, and the following morning, a large truck with a hydraulic lift deposited two large pallets of bricks in the circle in front of Diogenes. Bill Kegley, custodian of buildings and grounds, was quick to tell me to move the bricks out of the road, as they were blocking the way for emergency vehicles. It was summer, the boys were gone, and only a few faculty members were on campus. It took all day, but finally, with a little help, all 2,000 bricks had been thrown

Graham Deckers’s winning Christmas card in last year’s Avon Old Farms holiday competition brought back many over the wall and lay in a heap at the bottom of the hill. special memories for me bathrooms, and then to the doorway to the third floor, where three students

With those bricks, I built a split-level and my wife, Alice. lived. I burst through the door, and patio. The upper level surrounded a there was the source of the water large oak tree that stood in the middle cascading into our living room two of the triangle area. In the fall, we floors below. The door to the bathroom watched squirrels eat acorns up in the was open, and standing in the toilet branches from our bedroom windows. The lower patio bowl was Josh Lipman, trying to jam a bath towel down the curved around the base of the tree and made a good spot toilet to stop the flow of water. The toilets on the campus for a grill and a picnic table. To get to my creation, we were pressure flushed, and the valve was stuck open— came down the cellar stairs from the kitchen into the hence the cascade. I took off a shoe and hit the valve until tunnels that ran under the buildings and out through a it closed. Then the story came out: the boys had been eating door on the back side of Pelican. Faculty living in the oranges and throwing the peels into the toilet. To get the Diogenes apartment next door had the same access to the peels to go down, they had held the handle of the valve patio through their kitchen. We greatly enjoyed the area down, and it stuck. I explained the mess we had in our along with others for the years we lived there. living room and told them to use the toilets in the dormi-

A more humorous memory Graham's watercolor tory until the plumber came in the morning to unplug their invoked (although not at the time) involved the three toilet and fix the valve. We all smiled and said “goodnight.” underclassmen living on the third floor. At the time, the Downstairs, the living room had been put back in school was increasing in size, and Don asked the faculty order. The three of us sat down, and I started to explain families living in the quadrangle apartments in Eagle, the cause of the waterfall, when torrents of water flooded Pelican, and Diogenes to give up their third floors. This down the stairs again. Out the door I ran, turned left along worked because the third floors could be accessed the walkway into the dorm, up two flights of stairs, left through the bathrooms at the end of the dormitory down the hallway, and for a second time burst into the hallways. The interior stairways in our apartments to the boys’ quarters. No sign of the boys. I pounded the valve rooms above were blocked with large sheets of plywood, until it shut, and the water stopped flowing. I went barring any traffic up or down. looking for the boys, and all three—Josh, Malcolm Hirsh,

One evening while school was in session, Alice, Frank and Andy Schorr—were hiding in one of the rooms. Leavitt '52, and I were sitting and talking in the living Curiosity had won out, and they had had to see if the toilet room when a torrent of water gushed down the stairs and flushed. Of course, it did not. We had a little chat, and this onto the floor. I quickly ran up our stairs. However, the time there were no smiles when I left. water was coming not from our second-floor bathroom Now, nearly 60 years later, Alice and I are still in but down the stairs from the third floor—which was contact with the “boys.” We always have a good laugh totally blocked. remembering the events of that evening.

I dashed back down to the living room; Alice and Frank I congratulate Graham ’20 for winning the competition had rolled back the carpet and were mopping the floor. Out with such a spectacular view of the faculty apartment the front door I ran, turned left on the flagstone walkway on the Diogenes end of Pelican Dormitory and thank leading to the entrance of Pelican, up two flights of stairs him for prompting me to reminiscence about the time I to the third floor, down the hallway through the dormitory spent there.