Pryor Scrapbook Dr. Joe, 1982

"Pledge Harris!! Come over here!", a cold voice ordered. "Yes, Sir, Pledgemaster Grady, Sir." Danny Jo Grady was a classic plegemaster. He could be mean and hard and ruthless but if you stayed around him enough you could sure meet a lot of girls. "Pledge Harris, do you see that bunch of girls over there? Well, go over there and propose. Get down on your knee and make it good! "Yes, Sir," I replied. "But which one do you want me to pro– pose to?" "Why, all of them, of course! ! Now, hurry up, pledge. " You might think that a rather embarrassing chore, and I guess I'd have to agree, but it was certainly made more palatable by the fact that of the eight girls in the bunch five were cute and three were down right good looking. Well, I just marched right up to the whole bunch of them, plopped down on one knee, and commenced group proposing. I must have proposed for a good five minutes before Danny Jo yelled at me to hurry up. I guess I did pretty good, though. I got six definite "yeses", one "no", and one "I-would-but– I 'm-going-with-a-guy-back-home." Grady was mad at me for taking so long, so he gave me two merits for proposing to eight girls and ten demerits for enjoying it. I hate that rough night has been taken away but I guess that's what happens when people abuse a privilege. But it's still a shame. You develop such a closeness with those with whom you share rough– night. And it seems that the more difficult the experience the closer you are to fellow club members who share it with you. When I think of comradship . born out of roughnight there are three names that immediately come ·to mind: Ken Dowdy, Jim Green, and Byron Howell. Those are the three I spent my roughnight with and I would have to say that these guys became some of my very closest friends at Harding. Byron and I used to talk about it and we were sure that those pledging experiences really helped bond us together. So we started developing games to play with the pledges -during rough night to try to build closeness. And we came up with a classic. It was called "Bazooka" and we played it in its refined form in 1973 on roughnight at the old Wildewood gym area. The first participants were Jon Wry, Gary Rhodes, Dan Istre , and Ste,ve Woodhouse. Oh yes, I can hear it yet • • • "Sound off, Pledges!!" "Wry" "Rhodes" "Istre" "Woodhouse" After the usually unusual trip to "the bridge", the run to the site, and calesthenics to expend any reserve energy, we began rough– night. Byron, D. Mark Moore and myself took our four blindfolded pledges on serveral short adventures ending up in a small clearing just south of the old gym, whereupon, we began the game. "Pledges!" Byron announced, "we need a volunteer to be the bazooka." "I'll be the bazooka, Sir!"