My first lunge at higher ed turned out badly (I wasn't ready for prime time). The quake (strongest I'd felt up to that time) hit at about 6:00 a.m. I lived at that time in the "Aberdeen-Inverness" residence hall at UC Riverside. My roommate and I had configured our quarters, using 4 x 4s liberated from a campus construction site, into a crude bi-level loft. As this jerry-built structure began to shudder I assumed at first that my tirelessly priapic roommate had brought back still another Sweet Young Thing to the room, as he had been doing now and again since the previous September as I lay engorged and thunderstruck on my chaste cot, but a few moments after I woke up it was clear that not even roommate at his most energetic could make the entire building shake like this.

We went down to the dining hall, and among the first reports was a false account that the Van Norman Dam in the San Fernando Valley had failed. “Well,” I thought, “I can't very well go to my German class at 10:00, considering that my entire family has undoubtedly drowned.” They had not, of course. But I never showed my face in German again, and flunked it and my other two courses at the end of the quarter. This proved providential in the event—but that’s a story for another time.

cordially,