Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into Pennsylvania (22 page)

This year, we decided to give Uncle John's “Best Hijinks” award to Swarthmore College. These kids really know how to let loose
.

S
warthmore College is one of America's finest small liberal arts colleges. Its students have a reputation for being smart, intense, and bookish—a reputation that they cultivate carefully. But Swarthmore students also know how to have fun, and they have a long history of pranks and silly traditions. Here are some of the most memorable.

The Saturday morning of Parents' Weekend is the time for the Crum Regatta. Students compete on nearby Crum Creek in boats they build themselves out of “found” materials. Boats can be made out of almost anything: one student used trays from the cafeteria, and in 2007, a student waded down the creek while pulling five girls on a wooden plank. (He came in third.) Nearly everyone wins a prize—first, last, most creative, etc.

Once each semester, members of the men's and women's rugby teams run through the school's main administration building, Parrish Hall, grabbing fistfuls of dollars from the hands of eager spectators. The catch? All the runners are naked. The tradition got started in 1990 (or 1989—no one seems completely sure) when a group of players on the men's rugby team streaked through one of the women's dormitories. The women wanted the men to do it again, and they agreed under one condition: the
women had to give them some cash. It's all for a good cause, though. The money collected these days goes to buy supplies for the teams. (Rumor has it that members of the faculty have been offered cash
not
to participate.)

One night in the spring of 1970, Dave Johnson and Peter Gould, two Swarthmore “sewer rats” (students who liked to study in the basement of the school's McCabe Library), decided that they needed to let off some steam. The library had just been redecorated with new orange carpeting, and the two figured out that it would take 18 laps around the orange carpet to make a one-mile run. So when the library closed for the night, they put on their running shoes and did it.

Word of their race got around, and the next spring, 18 Swatties (as Swarthmore students are known) showed up for the run. Eventually, it became one of the school's most cherished traditions. In 1974, students even started handing out a “trophy” . . . a single roll of Scott toilet paper to honor Thomas McCabe, the library's namesake and a former chairman of the board at the Scott Paper Company.

A Unique Start

One of Swarthmore's most ingenious pranks of all time took place at the start of the fall 2007 semester. Seniors Ben Blander, Nathan La Porte, and Mike Rosenberg formed an entire fictitious department . . . the Department of Men's Studies. The three printed an “addendum” (formatted to look just like a real catalog) and handed it out to all incoming freshmen. The addendum explained that “due to a printing error, one department was left out of the College Bulletin.” Offerings in the Department of Men's Studies included classes such as Demolition, Beer and Malt Liquor, and Study a Broad. The school's registrar, Martin Warner, even allowed the pranksters to staff a table at the Departmental Advising Fair. Warner said that he found the parody of the course catalog “cute.”

 

KDKA of Pittsburgh has many things to be proud of. Here's one: it's the oldest commercial radio station in the United States
.

In 1890, 16-year-old Frank Conrad got a job at the Westing house Electric and Manufacturing Company of Pittsburgh. He would eventually spend his entire working life (51 years) there and, early on, began experimenting with the new medium of radio. In 1919, he set up a crude radio station in his garage, trading messages with just a few listeners. But one night when he ran out of things to say, Conrad played music. The people who heard it wanted more, so he did it again . . . and again.

As more listeners picked up his broadcasts, he developed a following.

A local music store was the first business to take notice; it supplied records for Conrad to play in return for on-air advertising. Next, a department store started selling ready-made radios so that people could listen to Conrad's show. Previously, most people had made their own radios, but that took time and the public didn't want to wait to hear Conrad's music. Finally, Westinghouse started paying attention.

Back then, radio stations were mostly low-key operations, headed by individuals (like Conrad) or small businesses, who used them to communicate with each other—very few people saw radio as an entertainment or profit-making medium. But because Conrad had so much success playing music,
Westinghouse came to believe that entertainment was radio's future.

On November 2, 1920, the company debuted its own station, KDKA, which would include programs aimed at creating a solid listener base and would make money from advertising. The first broadcast? Results from that year's presidential race between Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox. KDKA became the first commercial (for-profit) radio station in U.S. history.

In 1992, KDKA switched to an all-talk format, which it still uses today. The last song played? Don McLean's “American Pie,” about “the day the music died.”

If you're wondering where KDKA got its call letters, here's the story: Before 1920, radio was mostly used for communication—between ships and shore, for example. That radio network grew out of earlier telegraph stations, which had been assigned identifying call letters, and radio operators used them, too. Different countries had different call letters; U.S. stations all began with K, W, or N. When Westinghouse applied for its license, the letters KDKA were the next available on the government's list.

Being the United States' first commercial station was quite an accomplishment for KDKA, but the station racked up other firsts, too:

1921:
In January, it hired the first full-time radio announcer, Harold W. Arlin, who provided the first play-by-play coverage of a Major League baseball game: the Pittsburgh Pirates versus the
Philadelphia Phillies. (Pittsburgh won.) That year, KDKA was also the first to broadcast a presidential inaugural address, a heavyweight championship bout (Jack Dempsey beat Georges Carpentier), and a football game—between the victorious University of Pittsburgh and West Virginia University.

1922:
KDKA hosted comedian Will Rogers in his first radio broadcast.

1924:
The station took part in the first transcontinental radio broadcast. A New York City station broadcast a program from the Waldorf-Astoria ballroom; KDKA picked it up by shortwave radio and sent it to a station in Hastings, Nebraska, which sent it on to San Francisco.

1927:
KDKA became part of NBC's Blue Network, a chain of stations across the country that broadcast simultaneously. It was the progenitor of the national radio and television networks we know today.

1951:
Ed and Wendy King's Party Line
, the first radio talk show, debuted and ran for 21 years.

1954:
Rege Cordic and his talk show
Cordic and Company
set a new standard for morning talk shows. Instead of sober, straight journalism,
Cordic and Company
—with regular guests Louie the Garbageman and Omicron the Alien—featured zany humor.

1982:
KDKA was the first AM station to broadcast in stereo.

 

Think you know the history of Pennsylvania's oldest Major League Baseball team? Let's find out. (Answers on
page 302
.)

1.
When did the organization that became the Pittsburgh Pirates start playing ball?

A.
1862

B.
1872

C.
1882

D.
1892

2.
What was the earliest name of the team that became the Pirates?

A.
Alleghenys

B.
Grays

C.
Spiders

D.
Parkers

3.
When did the team play its first actual game in Pittsburgh?

A.
1892

B.
1896

C.
1901

D.
1908

4.
Why did the team become the Pirates?

A.
The nearby coastline was once famous for piracy.

B.
They stole a player from another team.

C.
Their team logo resembled a skull and crossbones.

D.
Their owner's favorite novel was
Kidnapped
.

5.
What is the fewest number of wins recorded by the team in one season?

A.
15

B.
23

C.
42

D.
51

6.
How many times have the Pirates won the National League pennant, but
not
the World Series?

A.
1

B.
2

C.
3

D.
4