6
Friday, October 14, 1977
University Daily Kansan
Bars, pranks enlivened living
Staff Writer
Photo courtesy of University Archives
By DEBBIE RIECHMANN
At the University of Kansas there was a time, 10 years ago, when women had closing hours, beer was a quarter and everyone danced to "rock n' roll."
Campus fun has changed a bit since then. Skip Moon, 2200 Harper, was a junior at KU in 1967. He recalls the barroom scene as being quite different from that found today.
Many KU students loosened up in 1987 by dancing at the Red Dog Img. 642 Massachusetts St. The Red Dog, located in the building now occupied by the Lawrence Opera House, frequently attracted crowds of more than 1,000 to hear and dance to groups like the Flippers.
"Love entertainment was the big thing,
Disco was unheard of on the coast," Moon says, adding that from 1967 to 1977 many memorable have made almost complete swimming.
Dancing to live bands and drinking beer at Lawrence bars were big among KU stu-
Students also had fun "laking" friends—throwing them in Potter Lake. When it was too far to attack a struggling victim to the lake, the Ch Omega fountain did just as well.
"I think they have been doing that since
around 1848 when they put that in," recalls
Jimmy Kimmel.
ANOTHER STUNT that has retained its popularity was putting detergent in the fountain. Lymn Couch, 421 Main St., a dark green building, is the deep green dark green in honor of St. Patrick's Day.
Other pranks were the result of the rivalry between KU and Kansas State University. Frank Burge, director of the Kansas Union since 1982, remembers one prank involving a large circular rug, with a woven Jayhawk emblem, in the Union lobby.
Some K-State students came to Lawrence dressed in dry cleaners' uniforms and told the night watchman they were there to take the rug to be cleaned. They didn't get the rug that time, but it was taken later. Burge said, most likely by other K-State students.
Another prank of that year, still practiced today, was painting the statue in front of Green Hall with either purple or green paint, often by K-State students.
ANOTHER FREQUENT occurrence before K-State football games was the kidnapping of a KU student, Deanne Tacha, 2625 Bardhill Court, a senior in '67, said. They would steal a person's hostage to prove ownership. The victim usually was taken from a Greek house, she said.
Basketball games afforded K-State students another opportunity to show their school spirit at the expense of KU students. Charles Pohl, 125 West Campus Road, remembered one game at which K-State engineering students rigged a canvas as they scored on a scoreboard during the game with a message going Go K-State, Beat Snob Hill."
Mary Cornwell, 323 West 9th St., recalls that the practice of letting loose chickens dye purple at basketball games was known in that year.
When students were not involved in mischief that included tossing cherry bombs down trash shoots and pulling residence hall fire alarms, they involved themselves in other school and social activities. And then, as now, much of a student's social life involved bars.
Looking back ..10 years
Shindiq
ACE JOHNSON, owner of the Stables and Sanctuary, said, "The bar was the center of social life, and most of them were crowded every night."
One of the most popular night spots was The Red Dog Inn, 642 Massachusetts St., in the same building the Lawrence Opera House now occupies.
Pohl remembers the most popular bar as 'the cookin' place in Lawrence, drawing on his own experiences.
Crowds of 1,000 were not unusual and entertainment featured such names as Ike and Tina Turner, Spider and the Crabs, the Hottie and the Norsemen and the Hot Nuts and Erik and the Norsemen.
MOON RECALLS music tastes of the age as leaning toward Top 40. "It hit the charts, everybody liked it and everybody went out and danced to it."
He estimates the Red Dog Inn's inn peaks years as being 67 and 88, but he said, "It might be safe to say it had two or three peaks."
A night at the Red Dog involved dancing the Walk the Dog, the Shag and the Imperial. But nights out were cut short for freshman and sophomore women who had curfew—about 11:30 on week nights and 1 a.m. on weekends.
During these years, women dressed for an evening at the Red Dog in skirts and sweaters and men wore nice sport shirts and slacks. "It was comfortable, not grubby,"
The Red Dog, however, was not the only place KU students patronized. The Jayhawk Cafe, the Wagon Hole, the Southern Pit, Louse's, the Gaslight, the Rock Chalk Cafe, and the Stables were very much a part of a KU student's life.
THE STABLES, celebrating its 13th anniversary next month, always was crowded on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, according to Johnson.
Now, moon the sole investor in the Lawrence Opera House. 7th Spirit Club and Daqwagd's worked at the Stubles while a student with caskets had the popularity of the Stueds crews.
"It was known as a pretty rowdy place in "63 and "64," he said. "It wasn't a place where people were allowed to eat."
though, the general consensus was that it was just a good place to go."
The popularity of the Stables also was enhanced by its special beer prices on Thursday nights. A pitcher was 80 cents from 8 p.m. to midnight. Another special night was for women, who paid 50 cents for all the beer they could drink.
Another drawing card of the Stables was that anything could happen.
1 "remember when the rodeo scene was in and everyone was following the rodeo." Moon said, "The Rodeo Queen moon through the Stables for about 20 minutes."
Some of the "great" bars are gone, but memories of them tinger. One such spot was the Gaslight, located on Oread Ave. north of the Union.
Leftists
From page four
Others, however, speak readily of their feelings then and now.
Irving Barrish, assistant professor of human development, was a student at KU in 1967. He remembers those years as complex and frightening.
"It's like a dream alright, and not entirely pleased," he said. "It was a scary time."
Barrish said students fell "insulated" at KU. He said the protests and demonstrations set a strange atmosphere for the University.
JOHN WRIGHT, professor of human development and psychology, was an associate professor at KU during those years, and he remembers a similar divergence of peo-
"A lot of people were into helping others, not just raising hell." he said.
Some of the hall-raisers weren't students. They were transients, yet they formed a viable political group, as they were labeled "the new generation" that they were both constructive and angry.
Later, Wright was an assistant instructor for a class in New Leaf politics sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Although he admits that some of the assistant instructors involved with such classes went "overboard" in introducing leftist doctrine to their students, he thinks the classes are a valuable element of the rebellious time.
"They (students and street people) basically had two things in common. One was they really hated the war—all the power and states of hierarchy in the world. The other thing they had in common was the drug a symbol of their rebellion, Wright said.
"I DON'T think it was a success as an educational experience," he said, "I think it was a success in exposing people to revolutionary opinion."
What do revolutionaries do when the rebellion has subsided? Wright said that the same motivation to help people was recharged by what he said those have taken more conventional directions.
"A lot of these people quietly turned what were genuine service motives back into society. I think that's the most important part of it," he said. "The Bobby Seales and Stokely Carmichael are not the important people."
Wright said that he thought that the same motive for social criticism existed today, but that the protest movements are on a different level.
"It's not a big change," Wright said. "It's in the quality of social action. It'a little less important."
Such flamboyance and visibility is not so important today, William Balfour, professor in 1967 and dean of students in the fall of 1968, said recently.
Balfour said the administration in 1967 and later years was not readily willing to listen to the protestors when the unrest began.
"I think at first we were concerned about bringing takeover and violent protest," he said.
Later, Balfour said, the administration set up rules for the demonstrators in an effort to control the unrest while listening to students' opinions.
AS THE proteins continued, Balfour said, to symbiont instillation began to symptomate with the disinfection.
"Gradually, most of us began to see theolly of the Vietnamese War, but we were still in a state of uncertainty."
There were many who criticized the university for its stand on the demonstrations, Balfour said. Most of the criticisms concerned the way some of the student activists were dealt with by the administration.
"There were a lot of them who felt we were too soft on the protesters," he said. "They thought we should have kicked them out of school."
But the administration's actions, Balfouraid, were the best that could have been done.
"I think the universities that had the most trouble were the ones that stayed behind a cordon of police," he said, "Say you have two people in an argument. One slaps the other and the other slaps back. Pretty soon you have a fight going."
STATE SEN. Tom Rehorn, D-Kansas City, shares that opinion. He was serving as a campus minister with the Wesley Foundation, a Methodist organization, in 1968 and 1967 and remembers the division of people in the movement.
"It was a rough time, in the sense that we were a lot of good people on both sides of the river," she said.
"It it was a time when a lot were trying to get CO (conscientious objector) status, some for good reasons, some for not-so-good reasons."
The nature of Rehon's job at the Wesley Foundation was such that he came in contact with many students and he found that they had been brought reasons for being involved in the protests.
REHORN SAID he perceived his role as that of a mediator, rather than a "trailblazer." He worked with both sides of the movement, sometimes arranging meetings between student leaders and administrators.
"The conservatives saw me as a radical,
the radicals saw me as well, one guy called
Mr. Bush," he said.
Reharn said he thought the student protest years were important and beneficial in spite of the problems.
"The students did not do everything right by a long shot," he said.
Rehorn said people were incorrect in thinking that the students created unrest over the topic of the war, contending that they were a barometer for all of society.
"I think they were a manifestation of unrest." he said.
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