Chapter 35 Version 1
1969
“If you have not had
calculus in high school, raise your hand.”
Of the thirty-five incoming RPI freshmen sitting in Amos
Eaton Hall, John and two others raised their hands.
“I suggest that you take a summer class in calculus before
you arrive in the fall. Here at Rensselaer we use the same text book that MIT
uses. At MIT, they cover the book in three semesters. Here we cover the same
material in two semesters. Our classes are worth four credits instead of the
standard three credits. That allows us to have a sophomore class in matrices and
linear algebra before taking the class in differential equations. Any
questions?”
John thought –“I am behind before I get started!”
“In freshman chemistry, we have two four credit semesters to
cover the material in the test book. Lectures will be given by the faculty that
wrote the textbook you will be using.”
“In freshman physics, we use the most used college physics textbook
in the country, coauthored by an RPI professor you may get in your recitation
class. You are encouraged to attend the lectures that are like technical magic
shows. We don’t require the use of calculus in the first semester but it is OK
if you do use calculus.”
It was late June and John was at the overnight RPI freshman
orientation in Troy , NY. He had been working at Northampton State Hospital for
a few weeks after high school graduation. He was receiving a lot of advice
lately.
“Don’t go too far away because you will be coming home every
weekend” advised his Cioci (Polish for Aunt) Lally.
“You need to change this schedule so that you don’t take
physics and chemistry at the same time. Nobody takes them at the same time”
advised John’s high school math teacher.
It was already too late to find a summer calculus class and
his schedule at the hospital would be a problem to work around. John went down
to the bookstore and bought a $.99 paperback entitled appropriately “Calculus”
and began preparing for college. All of the engineering students took the same
pre-engineering curriculum. There was a common testing period at eight o’clock
on Friday so everyone took the same test in chemistry, physics and math at the
same time. There was no deviation from the pre-engineering curriculum.
“What are you majoring at college?” asked another summer
attendant nurse who was an upperclassman at UMass.
“Civil Engineering”
“A lot of students start out in engineering but nobody
graduates in engineering.”
“A group of us attendant nurses are sending away for tickets
for one day at a rock concert in upstate New York. Would you like to join us?”
“When is the concert?” asked John.
“August 16th . The concert is multiple days but
we are just going up for Saturday.”
“ I need the money for tuition so I will pass on this” said
John.
“We are going to smoke the patients in the courtyard now. Do
you have matches? We also shoot baskets for quarters with the other attendants
– it wouldn’t be ethical to include the patients.” During training, the term
“smoke the patients” was not to be used when the attendants were lighting
cigarettes for patients. Patients could have cigarettes but not matches or
lighters for obvious reasons.
John wasn’t athletic enough to compete in basketball one on
one. Uncontested, he could shoot the basketball well. He left that evening weighed
down with a pocketful of quarters. He was never asked to play “21” for quarters
again.
Everyday at work was a crap shoot without the dice. John was
on “relief duty” so he was not assigned to work on a specific ward. Every day
he was assigned to a different ward. Many state hospitals across the country like
Northampton were built in the mid-1800’s using the Kirkbride plan. While the
architectural detailings were unique, the basic layout of a Kirkbride hospital
was always the same whether in Athens Ohio or at Oregon State Hospital where
“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” was filmed in 1975. Up the granite or
brownstone front stairs and you were into the administrative hallway. The
nurse’s station was on the left where John checked in and out and received his
ward assignment for the day. At the end of the hall was the great rotunda.
Originally the rotunda at NSH was open to the third floor ceiling with
stairways all around for access to the women’s wards on the left and the men’s
wards on the right. The kitchen, laundry and hospital store were straight
across the rotunda. Due to the number of patients launching themselves from
upper stories to the hard rotunda floor, elevators and floors on each level of
the rotunda were added later.
The wards attached to the rotunda fanned out to the north
and south like bat wings. The first wards attached to the rotunda were open
wards – unlocked both day and night. Patients on open wards could come and go
as they pleased. Assignment to an open
ward for the day was good but uncommon. As the wards stepped outward, they were
locked with separate keys. John was issued a set of keys to the wards that were
too large to easily fit into one’s pocket and an attendant nurse bent a spoon
into thirds as a belt hook for the keys. The large end of the spoon slid down
behind John’s belt and the thin end of the spoon bent upward to form a hook. A
metal chain secured the key ring to a belt loop on John’s white bell bottom
pants to prevent the keys from being taken when restraining a patient. The keys
could unlock the entrances to the underground tunnels that connected to other
buildings and contained old unused cells and water treatment therapy rooms. Staff
was dressed in white to distinguish them from the patients. Contrary to popular
mythology, white coats were not worn by the attendant nurses.
The farther the patients were from the rotunda, the more
severe the patients were until the infirmary wards were reached. In the North
Infirmary wards, the patients were generally wheel chair bound. The fifty or so
patients on each floor were taken from bed to wheel chair, cleaned, fed and the
beds stripped and remade with clean linens with hospital corners as there were
no fitted sheets. After the patients were taken care of, John would wash the
floors and maybe some of the walls if there were time.
For one day, John was assigned to do suicide watch – eight
hours of watching a person who was thought to be suicidal. One thing that John
was not allowed to do was to set up or dispense medications which required at
least a Licensed Practical Nurse – LPN like two of his aunts that worked at NSH
– Rose and Mary.
There was a lot going on that summer. The Apollo 11 moon
landing by Neil Armstrong was accomplished on July 20th. The head
administrator of the Apollo program was a RPI grad who later became the
Institute’s president. The next spring, Jack Swigert who earned a RPI master’s
degree in Aerospace Engineering at Hartford was the last minute replacement astronaut
on the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission. Swigert was an engineering test pilot for
Pratt & Whitney Aircraft from 1957 to 1964.
One of the patients on a locked ward that John had been
assigned to a number of times was a good artist. Carlos was selling pictures of
the moon landing he drew for cigarettes. John bought one and Carlos also drew
his portrait. John was on good terms with Carlos who had an outgoing
personality.
Sooner or later John needed to register with the draft
board. On July 24st, he went down to register in person as in his
mind that would be within 10 days of his eighteenth birthday. He filled out the
form and handed it in. He needed to get a 2S deferment to go to college.
“Your registration is late.”
The registration was required by the eighteenth birthday.
After realizing his error, John choked out “I’m here now.”
“You will be hearing from the board in a few weeks.”
John showed up for work on time at 6:45am for Sunday morning
on August 17th. He had heard from his draft board in the prior week.
The selective service registration card showed a July 24th registration
date. He was relieved to see his classification card came in a few days later
with a 2S. That Sunday morning, the nurse in charge seemed relieved to see him
but she was still in a state of panic.
“I am so glad to see you came today!”
That is an unusual greeting thought John.
“We are short staffed today so we will try and get someone
to work with you on 3NH1. Here are the names of two patients that are
trustworthy. They can help you feed the patients at lunch time.”
3NH1 was the third hall on the first floor on the north side
from the rotunda which was a locked ward that John had never been on. John
headed off to his assigned ward. When he entered, he saw that the stainless
steel food cart had been used to feed the 75 patients on the ward. The patients
on this ward were ambulatory and certifiably insane. The two trustee patients
were just finishing helping clean up from breakfast. John made a quick
inspection of the ward keeping his back toward the walls and decided that today
there would not be much cleaning done. A nurse did show up and set up the meds
but was off to the next ward quickly. John took the patients down to the
nicotine stained solarium room to smoke the patients. He tried to keep his back
to the wall as he lit their cigarettes. He set out some puzzles and games and
tried to keep the patients occupied so they would not notice that he was the
only staff on the ward. Then it was lunch time and the food cart returned with
lunch. After lunch, John received a call that nobody was available to pass meds
so the meds were passed. John went back into the ward office and locked the
door behind him. He opened the Physician’s Desk Reference (PDR) and looked up
the medications that had been passed. Thorazine, artane and mellaril were the
most common ones and made interesting reading until the next shift arrived at 3
o’clock. John made the report for the shift as the person in charge. “8/17/1969
1st Shift - No Incidents.”
“No, I don’t wish to work another shift today” John politely
told the nurse in charge as he left that day.
He pushed the Chrysler Newport’s pushbutton transmission into
drive and turned on the radio. “The Weight” by Bob Dylan’s backup band “The
Band” was playing. The song was from John’s favorite album from the summer
entitled “Music From Big Pink”. There was a report that the New York State
Thruway south of Woodstock was closed due to the abandoned cars as people
walked their way to the rock concert where Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
were currently performing. John hoped that the other attendant nurses would be
back for tomorrow’s shifts.
By the third week in September, John was packing his
footlocker with everything he would need at RPI. With working the summer at
minimum wage, he was able to save about 25% of the cost of tuition, room and
board for a year at RPI. Just another week of work at the state hospital. John
had hoped to make some connections with civil engineering construction
companies at the RPI summer alumni party to get a job in construction the
following year. “We are more interested in finding jobs for graduates” he was
told. John would have to keep his options open to work at the state hospital
again for the next summer.
“Keep an eye on Harold today. He is quite agitated and will
probably jump someone. We can’t do anything until he makes his move so just be
alert.” John had not been the target of a malicious move by a patient all
summer. At the beginning of summer, a full time attendant told John that in the
event of an altercation, make sure to get rid of his glasses fast. If a punch
came his way and it hit his glasses, it would likely break the bridge of his
nose. The patients were being smoked in the solarium when Harold made his move.
John was lighting a cigarette for a patient who had gotten his hands on a pair
of electric hair clippers. He clipped a path down the center of his head into a
reverse Mohawk. “Do you like my new haircut? I did it myself because I am the
bald eagle!” At that moment Harold got a running start and headed straight for
John. A few yards from his intended target, Harold was tackled and brought to
the floor by Carlos, the artist patient. The other two attendants on the ward
along with John subdued Harold while the ward nurse administered a sedative and
led Harold to an isolation room containing only a rubber covered mattress.
Harold would stay in only as long as it took for him to regain his composure
and would be taken out by two attendants for a bathroom break every so often.
John went back to the solarium to pick up his glasses off the floor. Carlos had
earned another pack of cigarettes that evening.
John arrived at RPI at the end of the summer. In his mailbox,
found he had mail. His schedule was there and a formal letter from the physics
department with his homework assignment, reading and problems, due on Monday
morning. He looked over his schedule and saw that there was two hours of
physical education every week for no credits. He counted up the classroom hours
and found that there were twenty-seven hours in classes including all the labs.
There were also instructions to meet at the Field House for a convocation with
the President. John made his way to the Field House noting posters that there
was going to be a freshman college mixer the next weekend and a concert by a group
he had never heard of called Iron Butterfly next month. Student tickets were
$2/each.
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