23- Navy Air in Korea

As a sophomore in college, I was expected to arrange my classes and get my studies done each day. Pop quizzes were the order of the day and we had to be ready for them, then mid terms and then finals. There was never enough time and I began to drop behind. For whatever reason, the daily grind began to drive me instead of me doing the driving. No excuse...no reason. It was more fun to drop by the SAE house, have a few beers, go up to sorority row and try to pick up chicks than to study. I was always short of money. It pained me to ask my Dad for anything, especially since I was falling down on my end of the bargain.

At the end of the first semester, I heard that the Phi Gams were going to build a dance floor in their backyard. I suggested to Tolley and Crutchfield that we bid on the job. Tolley was a high school classmate studying engineering, sharp kid. Crutchfield, very bright, but like me, in a daze of some kind. Tolley figured the job. We were way below the next bid and the idiots who were in charge of awarding the job gave it to us. We had about four days to get it done during the mid-semester break. We borrowed a pickup truck from one of the brothers, stole the form lumber, rented a cement mixer, bought cement and sand which was delivered, and started work early one Tuesday morning. Crutch and I did the excavation. Tolley had laid out the site and by the first afternoon we had the forms built.

It was then that we learned that the Phi Gam House was under quarantine. Someone had come down with meningitis. No one could go in or come out of the house. It was funny because all of the residents were lined up at the back windows watching us bust our butts on their new dance floor.

The next day we began to mix the cement and pour it into the form. It had been our plan to use some big rocks as fill to save on the cement but the guys in the windows were watching our every move so we had to play it straight. About noon on the second day, we realized we were going to run out of cement. We thinned the mix a bit but we were still short. Tolley ran to the lumberyard and bought ten more bags. Not enough--.more sand, less cement. One idea that Tolley had was that we hire a cement finish guy to come and smooth the floor out. He was doing a good job and didn’t seem to be able to tell that the mix was thin.

It was after dark on the third day when we finished. Tolley had the money and we paid the finish guy. Then we had to pay Crutchfield since he had opted out of the partnership. Because of the damn extra cement, we wound up with less than ten bucks left over.

About a month later, the Phi Gams had a big party at their house. There was dancing on our new floor. A couple twirling the light fandango got too close to the edge and a chunk gave way under their weight. The verdict was that somehow the proportion of cement to sand had been improper. Everyone blamed Tolley, he was the engineer.