The Year that Didn't Exist

By Walter Smith

Walter’s freshman year at a top Engineering School wasn’t what he had hoped for. Academic success was a given but wasn’t college supposed to be about freedom, drugs and wild sex? This was 1969 after all. But as Walter laments “freshman year was just OK, I somehow missed out on that sex thing.”

Walter was hoping sophomore year will be his MVP season. Regrettably it wasn’t, it was a nothing, in fact it was The Year that Didn’t Exist. The story opens with Walter’s big mistake: securing off-campus housing with two roommates he finds intolerable. One chapter details his accidental meeting, and getting stoned with Jane and Tom H. They, activist-celebrities, on their way to a Vietnam protest rally at the Tute, Tom being the keynote speaker.

Several chapters are devoted to his introduction and obsession with recreational drugs, pot, hashish, LSD and Ludes. How he meets his first girlfriend, the result of a bet, as to who would score better on a biology test, is thoroughly, but not graphically detailed. And finally, the only real highlight of his meaningless year, teaming up with drug buddy Strappa and winning a collegiate bowling championship, provides a humorous ending to the saga. The Year that Didn’t Exist should strike chords that ring true in almost everyone and hopefully transport the reader back to their college days, days perhaps simpler and likely filled with unbound optimism.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jun 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9781685627980

Walter Smith

Walter Smith is a mostly retired scientist living with his wife, Fran, in Wellington, Florida and New Canaan, Connecticut. The Year that Didn’t Exist is his third publication, his second featuring the mostly fictional Walter Stafford, introduced in The Walter Integral. Fran and Walter both enjoy horses, small dogs, children, only sometimes, grandchildren, avoiding deadly and annoying viruses, and not travelling by plane, boat, train or any form of transportation requiring more than a horse, car or your feet. Fran and Walter met and married while they were at the Tute, aka Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, NY in the early 1970s.

Book preview

The Roommates

Perhaps I blinked, sneezed, farted, coughed, was swooshing away a pesky fly or mosquito, possibly sitting on the throne, dozed off momentarily, was examining my finger nails, blowing my nose, trying to dislodge a piece of food caught between my teeth, or doing some other mindless thing and in doing such, I missed something really important that happened my sophomore year.

I try to find reasons to think otherwise, but each and every time I look back at that year, it seems to have been a strung together collection of nothings, no better yet, non-things.

That description brings to mind the scoreboard of a baseball team being shut out and no hit. A string of twelve zeros and just maybe each zero representing a month of that not so memorable year.

I missed an entire year.

Or at least it seems that way.

Of course, what I’m saying cannot be taken literally, and it can’t be entirely true as I do have more than a few memories of that very not notable year, albeit most, not such good memories.

Those that I do have are typically hidden away, tucked out of sight in the back of the closet, as they were not all that good to begin with, so why make it easy to access them, as such accessing would only disappoint me and likely push me toward the depressive end of that bipolar seesaw, and my reflecting upon such memories, would, as it usually does, become obsessive, and this resulting in me coming to the conclusion, and it isn’t really a conclusion, or at least a new conclusion, or a sudden revelation or awakening, as I have known of what I am about to say for quite a while, and the thing I know, I will write and not say and that thing being:

What a total fucking nothing I was for that entire sophomore year.¹

***

For most of The Year that Didn’t Exist, I lived off campus with two roommates, roommates whose names I might recall if I choose to make the effort to do so. However, I choose not to make that effort. But I’m rethinking that posit, as I actually now do recall their names, and this retrieval happened with no expended effort whatsoever.

But I am not going to use those real names. I rarely do such things as use people’s real names.

And of course, it’s writing that we are referring to, not real life.

In real life, and more so over the past decade, I find that I remember very few names of newly met people. Typically, rather than making an effort to find out their real name, I simply assign a placeholder name to those new acquaintances. I use nothing like nominative determinism. My decisions are arbitrary, at least I think so. I artlessly and perhaps randomly attach whatever name pops into my head to the new face.

Perhaps I am subconsciously using nominative determinism or some type of determinism. That has to be true. Those chosen names don’t suddenly materialize inside my overly large head for no reason whatsoever.

And it’s not like I have a spinning wheel of names, hanging out, somewhere, possibly in my head, waiting to be accessed and spun, each time I meet a new person.

But all this speculation has become moot, as now, almost every new person I meet I call Larry. I don’t forget Larry.

I might be wrong, but at our club I think some of the staffers refer to me, not to my face of course, but sometimes loud enough so I can hear, maybe they think I’m deaf as well as a little daft, as the guy with the name problem thing. As far as monikers go that’s not so bad a thing to be known for. However, as I am actively trying NOT to meet new people it’s unlikely that sobriquet will be such a big thing.

Having no knowledge of what someone’s real name actually is can be a problem when writing fiction as you may accidently create a character loosely based upon a real person, or a composite of several real people, people whose real names you have forgotten, and in choosing the character’s story name you accidently pick the name of one of those real or former real people who in part inspired the creation of your fictional character. And if you happened to fashion such character in a less than positive way, even the publisher’s up-front disclaimer about no similarities to any person real or dead might not be enough to avoid trouble, and that trouble could be legal, physical, stalking or whatever.

I have not had such trouble.

It’s possible I might have already used a real person’s legal name as a character in fiction. However, if that is in fact true, it would have been the result of me accidently choosing the correct, or it might be considered the incorrect, name. Louise is definitely not Louise. In fact, there is no Louise in this narrative. There is a Vinny, and Vinny is definitely not Vinny!

While unlikely, it is possible, they, my roommates, those two whose names which I have not yet disclosed as I am still working that out, might have gone on to bigger and better things, becoming recognizable celebrities perhaps, so portraying them herein as I have or will, might be a disservice to them, although it would be a factual disservice. So, you can see my likely more than needed concern over what names to assign to the two.

I’m thinking it would be hard for the roommates to have gone on to smaller and worse things, but that’s just my opinion, and it is true I have no idea, nor care as to whether those former roommates are living or dead, and I don’t really mean don’t care existentially. If I had any influence whatsoever, I wish them to be alive, but I have no influence over their fate thus my not caring commentary.

But if I am being perfectly honest, I really don’t care if they are alive or dead. If, for whatever certainly fictional reason, I had the power over such existential outcomes, it is more likely than not, I would rely on a simple flip of a coin to dictate if their continuance did indeed occur.

That seems fair.

***

What I do remember of my roommates for those infinitely long and strikingly dismal nine months is quite frightening, frightening enough to ward off any desire to look back at those months in any detail at all nor to consider elaborating upon my interactions with the two, those interactions of which hopefully there were but a few.

But thankfully, as I recall very little of that year, non-year, during which we were roomies, I can only hope those points of intersection with them were indeed marginal and trivial.

One always can hope.

Neither the roommates nor I was fodder for the grist mills of the fraternities, not even the Nerd Frat.

Trapped behind a mountain of inertia, we three lacked the maturity, foresight, common sense, or whatever you may elect to call it, to sign up for the Tute student housing lottery, so come early June end of Freshman Year, actually that school year ended prematurely so it might have been, and no doubt was earlier than June, the three of us were simply standing about, wasting space and time, and wondering, but not with any insightfulness whatsoever, just aimlessly wondering, what would happen in the fall regarding housing for the coming year. This pondering, and there likely was very little meaningful pondering going on, occurred independently, as up until this point in time none of us had met each other.

It is true we were classmates and it is likely we bumped into one another but clearly such bumping was of no consequence and not memorable, thus my posit, had not met, at least from my perspective, seems to hold.

My end of freshman year self was unable to address, let alone solve, problems of the complexity of finding a place to live for the coming year. Beginning from whenever and lasting past the past we are now speaking of, my parents took care of such complexities, things the infantine Walter was incapable of doing.

And it’s not unlikely my less than mature self, believed these things, these problems, would be solved without my needing to do anything whatsoever and such would continue that way. Somehow, magically, things would just happen and workout, my involvement completely unnecessary, and this would simply go on.

Sure, ask me to solve a fourth order quadratic equation, such as AX⁴+BX³ +CX²+DX+E=0 This problem I could solve, not as we do today with just a few computer clicks, but via set rules, trial and error and more often than not, some mathematical intuition, not learned, just there.

You could likewise ask me to draw in excruciating detail a thirty-two-times magnification of a common screw. And that I could do, with only a compass, a T-square, a rectangular piece of finely finished wood, I believe it had a specific name and if so, such name I have long forgotten, however it was the artist’s equivalent of an easel, a three-sided scaled ruler, and assorted mechanical pencils, erasers, etc.

And that I could do somewhat decently, not really good, but good enough, and definitely good enough for the then and there, as I knew, at least on some level, even in those early days, that I would never become an engineer, so good enough was good enough. Mastery of such things was not required.

My mind was good at analyzing problems, not necessarily working out or choosing solutions, but at least working up the possibilities. And all the better if such possibilities were theoretical.

Considering my impending housing problem, commuting from home was not an option. I might have foolishly considered such as a possible solution, but at least in this case, I made the right decision, and rejected that idea. The truth be, little consideration was actually given to becoming a commuter, and for a number of very good reasons.

One of those very good reasons was, while my family home was but thirty-five miles from the Tute, and in theory this daily commute was doable, in the real, not theoretical world, it really wasn’t doable. And that statement an incontrovertible truth, since the home of the mythical Tute, the Troy Institute of Technology, was Troy, NY, which was, and still is in upstate NY, and Troy and its surrounds, suffered through really bad winters, and those winters started in the fall and lasted through much of the spring.

This was true some fifty years ago when I was a sophomore, this a time before global warming changed weather patterns, and in what may seem to be a paradoxical posit, that posit being, this global warming effect we are now beginning to see the beginnings of, making winters even worse now than they were back then.

Global warming does not mean warmer winters and less snow. It’s a lot more complex than that and would be way too much of a digression from the main narrative for me to give justice to. So, we will ignore a continuation of this primer on global warming² and reduce the topic to its relevant simplicity, the Tute existed in a dismal place and time, where bad fucking weather was our companion for at least five months of the school year, and this reality making commuting a mere thirty-five miles, a no go!

But snow, weather and distance were simple considerations, minor players, only marginally figuring into the why I couldn’t commute from home equation.

Have you met my family?

Perhaps you have, on paper at least, but more likely not?

You might have been introduced to the fictional version, but elsewhere, not here, and the fiction I refer to has softened the scabrous edges on the portrait of my not quite All-American Family!

My exit from that familial world, a world I have elsewhere referred to as my metaphorical womb, and my entrance into the phantasmagoric world of the Tute, was successfully orchestrated in the Fall of 1969 and I would not be going back.

Well at least I hoped to avoid such a trip.

You will soon learn I failed on that one. And in part I blame my astonishingly poor choice of roommates.

***

Roommate number2, I have arbitrarily assigned myself the number1 position, was Squiggy, the character from Laverne and Shirley. Squiggy was elfish, I’m not sure about pointy ears, but he was exceedingly thin, unhealthfully pale, and had something going on with his eyes. What, I am not sure. I pretty much never got close enough to detect an objectionable body odor, but a somewhat not to be placed smell did escape from his and roommate number3’s bedroom so something olfactory was in play. He never looked kempt, which I think means what I think it should, and dressed as a future IBMer who had lost his jacket and tie. His outfit never changed and I can’t be sure, as the answer wasn’t important to me, whether he wore the same outfit day in and day out, or had multiple copies of this kit.

He wore black Coke™ bottle-like glasses to correct his myopia, that being another but not the only eye thing, and yes, they were held together, both left and right sides, by a piece of white tape which sat on the bridge of his nose, and fuck that is the truth. The tape might have been an affectation. I believe his glasses were virgo intacta.

He was shorter than myself, which is saying a bit, was never to be seen without a pocket protector ripe with pens and other unrecognizable stuff. His slide rule was always in hand, or in its custom seems-like-leather holster on his belt, Pickering of course. He bathed semi-annually, at least I hoped so, and when he bathed it was far away from me. He had to be a brilliant engineering geek, but I had/have no direct knowledge of such. He believed drugs, atheism, abortion, exercise, dating, homosexuality, in fact any sexuality, and sports were evil. He was a card carrying member of the John Birch Society. This I know as a fact as he once showed me his precious and finely laminated card, possibly in an attempt at proselytization. A William F. Buckley poster adorned one of his bedroom walls. I am almost certain he applied but was not accepted into the Tute ROTC program, this rejection likely having a dramatic impact his life then and forever.

If you punched number2’s nose, you would undoubtedly break at least one of his fingers. His not real name for future reference will be Ralph! But I’m not sure I will use that name!

Roommate number3, and no, he will not be referred to as Lenny, let’s just call him TBD, might have been the least offensive of the two. An external observer, viewing the three of us together, a rare event indeed, would conclude that I was the least offensive of the three, because as you do recall I did not exist at this time and how can you be offensive on any metric whatsoever if you do not exist!

Roommate number3 mimed number2 with respect to hygiene. Similar bathing rituals, or lack of. He was porcine in form, long hair, black, oily, and it looked more like fish or seal skin. Our voyeuristic external observer might have been confused and thought he was a pot smoking, acid dropping I don’t give a fuck about anything hippie, this divination based only on appearance, but not so. He was avidly drug opposed, his thumbs not so. Beer belly born from an aversion of beer. I have no doubt if I met this, and let’s just call him Billy as he was not, this Billy, today, would be sporting a MAGA hat! He was NASCAR before NASCAR was NASCAR, and I have no idea of how to finish this biop so I’m just going to leave it as is!

Similarities to each other, many, but only behavioral, they each sported a quite different look. They might have been separated at birth non-identical twins. Billy and Ralph were quite unaware of traditional cleansing rituals. Where’s a cat when you need one? And yes, many college-aged males do believe in water conservation but these two took it to the extreme.

They did however enjoy fine dining. And that fine dining would be the pleasure of Kraft’s™ or some cheaper knock-off brand of macaroni and cheese. Each evening, around some o’clock, to the kitchen they would trek, it was but five feet from their bedroom door, and prep their protein-free dinner. A box each I believe was the dosage.

Ralph or Squiggy was the sous chef in charge of opening the box, throwing the now empty box onto the floor, relocating the dried food product from its plastic home into a large metal sauce pan, adding water, and then heating up the mix on our looking like it should have been trashed twenty years ago natural gas-fired kitchen stove.

Billy would retrieve two plates and forks from the black hole, aka sink, perhaps select the least dirty, these utensils were never washed, but there was always a least dirty.

At some time (t), in the very near future, the now cooked pasta and cheese-like product would be flung, somewhat equally, into the two not clean plates, and relocated, along with Bill and Ralph aka Squiggy, to their dining room aka bedroom.

They were big fans of the first law, the conservation of energy, as both Billy and Squiggy had grasped the notion that if you would be preparing the same dish on Tuesday as you had on Monday, why bother cleaning any of the hardware associated with the preparation of such slop, or any of the hardware or software, whatever that might be, essential to the consumption of such. A minimalist’s approach to dinner at least.

And who cares if there were flies hovering over the sink, or cockroaches performing the night check. Such just added to the ambiance of our digs.

The good, I paid $5 per month extra and got the single, and that single, perhaps providing somewhat of a buffer, might be a significant factor as to why I am still here today, striving to write, ostensibly, about the Tute Bowling Team.

Wait, let’s stop for a bit, you might be asking how we got from occupying Cartesian coordinates in June, or May, end of freshman year, to being roommates for our sophomore year.

Well, the fuck I know! True!

But that was me, Walter, aka Walter, Walter back in 1970! Things just happened and life moved on.

The short version, and parts will be elaborated upon later, maybe, or perhaps not, we three met at some point in time, we found an available two bedroom, three beds apartment on, and how apropos, and I did have to Goggle Maps it, College Ave, somewhere between 36 and 76, on the south side of the street and through something which I can only equate with magic, we were given a lease, and signed such, all three of us, and this lease binding us into occupying, or at least paying for occupancy of such space from September 1, 1970, until June 15, 1971.

That we did, two happily so, the third as time went on, mostly in abstention.

---

I struggled with the appropriate word to fully describe my then self. I chose nothing, but nothing doesn’t really do it. More than a few words are likely needed to fill the then me in. Loser, asshole, dweeb, nerd, nascent, naïve, dud, never-been, dork, weirdo, obtuse, unrealistic, confused, infantine, and puerile. Yes, that’s better.↩︎

It seems Global Warming is now referred to as Climate Change so please make the appropriate changes. Global Warming is too confusing for the masses to understand. Changes in the jet stream and all that nonsense influencing things other than high summer temperatures is simply beyond the grasp of most Republicans.↩︎