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Humor

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He bought a new [Volkswagen] Bug then we went on another hiking trip that summer. We went all the way to Georgia, the Ozarks, and came all the way to Mansfield, Vermont. We were in the White Mountains in New Hampshire where we fought the mosquitoes like crazy. It’s classic Bob. We were climbing, we […]
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There’s an island offshore and at low tide you can walk out to it. This was a really, foggy, dark day. You couldn’t see very well and we didn’t know Popham Beach [Maine]. This was before it was a state park. We’d been there but we didn’t know the lay of the land. So we […]
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We were on a trip somewhere, me, my wife and the two younger kids and we were coming back to the Albany airport and Bob was going to pick us up. So he picks us up, yeah, but it was heavy snow. And eight-tenths of the way home, he said, “We have bald tires.” He […]
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There was this French woman. What’s her name? Collette. I don’t think he was serious about her but at the same time I know that she was, and he, somehow or other, I think it’s that whole thing about distance and intimacy, I think he flew from it and yet he wanted it. It was […]
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Fred Schuman – he would go swimming every day. That was very important to him. He explained to me one time that he would – he must have been 70, 72, maybe 68, 70, whatever. Looking back on it now I’m 78 and I sort of smile, but he said, “You know, John, I’ve got […]
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There’s a footnote that I think needs to get in here. At the time, virtually all of the faculty were male and the married ones had spouses, somebody who tended not to work and stayed home with children, or if they did work they were a secretary, they had a non-professional job. So there was […]
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When Bob was going to India he came to me because he thought I was an expert, which I really wasn’t. And I said, “Well, Bob, let me tell you about Shiva, who is one of the great Indian gods. And Shiva was really the person who was the destroyer.” And Bob said, “Destroyer! And […]
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I grew up in Williamstown. My father [Ray Washburne] had a bookstore, the College Bookstore. That’s probably where I met Bob. They both loved to be funny, tell funny stories, to have an audience. My father had a very wry wit, I think, that attracted some people to the store and it drove some people […]
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At the beginning of the year we would all meet together, the faculty members interested in bowling. And we’d divide up and take different names and so on. And I got to be chosen captain of a team. So you go round robin and you get your first pick, second pick, third pick. And I […]
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Gaudino’s ironic approach, he said, “I’m supposed to give all of you a character evaluation, ie. a grade at the end of every term.” And at the time you would put a postcard in his mailbox and ask him what was your grade on the final and what was the grade on the course and […]
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CHAPTERS

Introduction
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Final Note
credits