I shrugged. "What was the consensus around the house?"
"I think they'd all rather have the dog than Jerry."
"We'll announce it at dinner.", agreed Ricky.
It was the main topic of dinner that night, with about half the guys talking about the dog and the other half in disbelief over what Modanowicz had done. Ricky and I shared a table with Marty and Leo, and a few other guys, and at the end, Ricky motioned for me to stand up with him, and called for attention.
"Okay, here's what we figured out. We found Jefferson down at the pound. Buckman and I went down there and laid claim to him, and registered him in the name of Kappa Gamma Sigma. We'll do a formal vote at the next meeting. If there's a problem, I'll take him when I leave."
"How'd he get down there?", asked Joe Bradley, from a table on the other side of the room.
I took this one. "He didn't run away, if that's the question. The dog warden didn't pick him up. He was brought in by somebody, a college kid, a guy, at least according to the guy at the desk down there."
"Was it Modanowicz?", asked somebody in the back.
I shrugged. "Absolutely positively? Can't say. I will say that the guy picked his face off the portraits in the formal room, and nobody else's face. We'll have to ask him when he gets back."
That caused quite an uproar. Ricky motioned for silence and then said, "In order to rescue Jefferson, we had to get him a dog license, and he has to get his shots and get neutered."
"Just like you, Leo!", I commented. Leo flipped me off as everybody else laughed.
Ricky continued, "Which means we can't pick him up until Monday afternoon at the earliest. I'll go out and pick up some dog chow and stuff tomorrow."
"Another thing.", I said, "First, Ricky and I are out a few bucks to do this." I grabbed a ball cap from the hat rack in the corner and passed it around. "We need a buck or two from everybody." There was some grousing about that, but most guys coughed up something, and the ones that didn't said they would bring it by after dinner. "Another thing. Jefferson is just a puppy. We can't have anybody giving him booze or dope. Is that clear? That stuff will just kill him. It'd be nicer just to let the pound keep him. So nobody gives him any beer or booze, and nobody feeds him any magic brownies or acid. Is that understood?" There was a huge uproar over this, with everybody claiming they would never do this, but I knew my brothers, and somebody was dumb enough to try. Boris and the Cisco Kid came to mind.
We had a routine house meeting on Sunday night, and a formal vote was taken. Notably absent was Jerry Modanowicz. He also had cleared out his room, and I never saw him again. I mean never - not even on campus! I think he dropped out or transferred. There was never a vote to kick him out, since it takes a unanimous blackball vote to kick somebody out, and that was impossible. I don't think Hitler could have gotten a 100% blackball.
There was one other piece of grim news. The pool was in dire need of repair. We were filling it constantly, and the Pool Manager, who reported to the House Manager, had gotten a couple of guys in from a local pool company to take a look at it. The news wasn't good.
Kegs was the only house on campus with a swimming pool, which was a major source of pride and pledges, and most importantly, chicks! It was an in-ground pool, but unbeknownst to almost any of us, the pool didn't have a real concrete casting. It actually was some sort of hole in stabilized dirt with a heavy plastic liner. We kept it filled year round. Now the liner was worn out and it was leaking badly. A new liner was going to cost $10,000! No way did we have that kind of cash! Spread out over roughly 40 guys, that was almost $250 a person that very, very few of us had. The only alternative was to drain the pool and fill in the hole, at a cost of about $1,000.
Previously, we had reluctantly voted to fill in the hole. As an economic matter, a new liner would last many years more, and you could argue it was amortized over the life of the investment, but nobody had ten grand to invest. Well, almost nobody. I liked the pool as much as the next guy, and as an official polar bear, I had a certain say in the matter. The vote went as before, to fill in the pool over the summer.
Monday morning I went down to the bank and arranged to withdraw $10,000 in cash. I wouldn't be able to pick it up for a couple of days. Wednesday afternoon I took the cash and went down to the post office in Albany. I had a box in the Troy office and I didn't want any chance that somebody might recognize me. In Albany I bought ten grand worth of mail order checks. I had already used a typewriter down in the math department to type a letter and an envelope, and I stuffed it all together and mailed it to the frat.
The letter came in the mail on Saturday, and the response was one of utter disbelief. First off, nobody had ever seen a postal money order before, and they had to wait until Monday to find out if it was real. Then, that night, around the dinner table a new vote was held and the previous vote was thrown out; the pool would be fixed. I should have known, however, that it wouldn't be unanimous. There was a small group that wanted to have a party and spend the money on other stuff. There was a lot of discussion over where the money came from. Nobody knew I had money, and since the Galaxie was starting to burn oil, nobody imagined I had any cash. I started looking through the want ads for a new car.
The work would be done over the summer, when school was out and I was mostly away. Right now the plan was that I would spend some time up in the Adirondacks with Marilyn to start. We picked the week of her birthday. Suzie wasn't able to come up until the end of the month, by which time I would be elsewhere. Marilyn's family had a camp up on Sacandaga Lake, a big double wide that was only used on weekends. We could go up there and have some fun during the week. We wouldn't do much swimming, though, since icebergs float across the lake well into August. Later in the summer we would head back down to Baltimore and meet up with Tusker and Tessa for a few days, and then go back to Ocean City.
But first I had to go camping.
Chapter 41: Summer Camp
This summer I was to spend some time at the Fayetteville School for Unwed Fathers, otherwise known as Fort Bragg. The standard ROTC plan was that you spent a portion of your last two summers in some sort of training. Then, after you graduated and were commissioned, they would send you to your advanced training. Infantry officers go to Benning, artillery officers go to Fort Sill in Oklahoma, armor officers go to Fort Knox, Kentucky, and so forth. By the end of June, I would be at Bragg for six weeks
The day I was to fly south I had Marty Adrianopolis drive us over to the Albany airport. I was packing light, with just a few changes of underwear and clothing and my toilet kit in an army surplus B4 bag. We had a checklist of things to carry and you took those things and those things only. We would get gear issued when we got there. 'There' was Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and it was Joe, Bruno, and me going. I think the Navy cadets went off to Newport and the Air Force went to some base down in Texas.
Nobody actually goes to Fayetteville, which is where Fort Bragg is, even though they have an airport. Instead they flew us to Raleigh and told us to report to a military liaison at the baggage claim. At that point we would belong to the Army, and they would do whatever they wanted to us for the next six weeks. As the saying goes, 'Give your soul to Jesus. Uncle Sam gets all the rest!' The flight was the cheapest and longest trip imaginable, with stops in Philly and Richmond along the way. Nothing too good for our troops!