A very true account of how some fairly innocent nocturnal pranks resulted in a pernicious hysteria which gripped the Otterbein campus in the summer and autumn of 1973.
Introduction and General Housekeeping
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Firstly, I would like the reader to know that the following is 93% true. I reserve a portion of fiction to poetic license with regards to minor details. I will also concede a smaller fraction of that fiction to the inevitable distortion that 33 years will have on memory. Given this caveat, I will tell the absolute truth as much as humanly possible.
Secondly, I have not attempted to protect anyone’s
sensibilities, and in all but one instance I have used real names. By your actions you shall be known. Let the chips fall where they may.
Having said that, and knowing the statute of limitations has expired, I shall begin my story.
Scott Quad – Summer 1973
Scott Quad is an early 1960’s era campus dormitory tucked between a 19th Century cemetery and the track field. Expense was spared in its construction. Only the finest linoleum, cinder blocks and metal siding was used to fabricate this one-story structure. The architect could have easily used Lego blocks in its design. If you looked at the structure from the sky it would appear as an airplane on the ground with equally long wings and tail. At full capacity I suspect Scott Quad would hold 250 students. Two students to each dreary, pastel enamel painted, cinder block room. Toss in a metal bunk bed, two wooden chairs, desks, and chest of drawers, and you have the generic institutional cell, perfect for college freshmen or convicted felons.
This particular summer Scott Quad was only housing a total of four students and a mandatory resident advisor. This meant we all had our own rooms, which made Scott Quad barely tolerable.
Steve Rippy was a pleasant, quiet, tall, lean track scholarship recipient from some small Ohio town. Bob Pitts, in contrast was urban, probably an Affirmative Action student who was forever working a pick into his moderate length Afro.
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Gar Vance was our resident advisor who spent a lot of time off campus. I think he went to the Indianapolis 500 and then home, probably cashing in on the juicy $115 a month stipend to cover his expenses (gas then was about 30 cents a gallon). I think he was the best resident advisor I ever had.
Billy Clarksville was from a large Ohio city and lived a stones throw away from a river that carried an ancient Indian name. Billy was a brand new freshman on a football scholarship. He was a linebacker who eventually had eight knee surgeries. If it wasn’t for his knees he would have probably played for Ohio State.
It was a hot, slow Midwest summer and Otterbein was on life support. There could not have been more than a hundred students in total on campus and the bulk of those were in the frat houses. There was absolutely nothing going on. On the track field side of Scott Quad was a basketball half-court and we would often play two on two, or three on three pick-up games with Ralph, one of the two uniformed campus cops, joining in. Ralph was in his mid 40’s, but had to have been a high school star. He would park his belt in the cruiser and play in his black uniform and patent leather shoes. He didn’t ever dive for a ball or even try to hustle, but he was such a great shot that his team would always win, even two on three games.
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Otterbein was and is still to this day, a dry campus. So in pursuit of our daily liquid bread, beer, Billy and I took my 1969 Buick LeSabre down to High Street, the Ohio State University main artery for commerce, transportation, and liquid bread. So, upon our return to Scott Quad at midnight we piled out of the car near the basketball court and relieved our overburdened bladders. We were young, full of life, and a little less beer when Billy tossed his head back and began a long, strong howl to the high mid-summer moon. Little did we know that the levee had just cracked, and the cicada serenaded tranquility of a lazy, endless summer was about to end.
The Next Morning
The next morning Billy and I were sitting in the quiet and empty cafeteria when we saw Bob Pitts come in. Bob was obviously agitated and didn’t seem interested in getting any breakfast.
“Bob, what’s up?”
“I couldn’t sleep, dere was a wolfman outside! A WOLFMAN !”
Bob paused to let that sink in.
“Bob, come on, a wolfman?”
“Yeah, a WOLFMAN, didn’t ya hear him?”
I stared at Bob for a few seconds making sure he was serious. I could see the whites of his eyes completely around his irises.
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Bob apparently noted my doubt and emphatically responded, “I seen ‘em in the movies”!
I looked at Billy and Billy looked at me.
“We didn’t hear anything,” I said innocently.
The Howling Continues
Well, for the next few weeks Billy and I fell into a routine before lights out. We would turn off our 12 inch, black and white TVs, or radios, go to the shower room, wash up, brush our teeth and then step outside the dorm to howl. Some nights Billy would be out there, some nights I would be out there, and occasionally we discovered we were both out there. Billy was louder and his howl was more like a grey wolf. I felt my coyote call was approaching Shawnee Indian perfection.
One night Billy and I were on opposite sides of the dorm. Billy was in the cemetery and I was standing on a grass covered, 12 foot high dirt mound (which is now the site of the Rike Physical Ed Complex) when we heard a mysterious third call. It seemed to come from the direction of the main campus and didn’t seem to be human.
Needless to say the howling had its desired effect. One would often see Bob walking the halls at night gripping his baseball bat.
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Steve Rippy seemed unsure of the events, but since he was always up at 5:00 a.m. to run he often slept through the festivities, or said he did. Bob repeatedly reported his concerns to the two tag-team campus cops, Ralph and Earl.
Ralph was cool, and tried to talk some sense into Bob, whereas Earl, who was definitely ex-military, would be filing multiple complaints on his clipboard, urging Bob to protect himself as best as he could and not to go outside after dark. This routine just added fuel to the whole, self-developing comedy.
Look, it’s not that Billy and I were looking to create mischief, or that we were prejudice towards Bob, or we were sadistic in our nocturnal hobby, it was just that Bob made it so….rewarding.
The Mask
The endless summer came to a close with a whimper and we all went home for a couple weeks before the autumn trimester started. Gar Vance returned to Scott Quad to assume a more visible role as resident advisor. Steve Rippy moved to Davis Hall. Bob Pitts left about the time my yellow 10 speed disappeared at the end of the summer session and to my knowledge, Bob and the bicycle never returned to campus.
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Billy and I returned to Scott Quad and were slated to be roommates, but I had rented a $30 a week room on West Main Street and never really moved my stuff into Scott Quad. I was hoping for privacy and a sympathetic co-ed with which to share it. It turned out to be a good move for other reasons however. The house had a well-kept flower garden in back that was perfect for reading, and the room was incredibly quiet at night.
Billy had returned from break one week early before the trimester began as he was now into two-a-day football practice. We were sitting in his ‘private’ room in Scott Quad one evening after a trip out to the Ruckmoor, an infamous off campus saloon, when Billy said, “Close your eyes and check this out”. I humored him, not expecting much in the way of excitement. When I opened my eyes, I was truly startled. Billy was casually leaning against his chest of drawers, one hand and on his hip and the other elbow resting on top of the wooden chest. But it was and wasn’t Billy at the same time. Billy had transformed himself into an 80 plus year-old man.
It took a second to register that he had to have put on a mask. A mask it was, but this was a damn good one. It fit perfectly. Billy was now a balding, age-spotted, toothless, shipwreck of a man. Billy could raise his eyebrows, fully move his eyes, and mouth, and when he stuck his tongue out it was seamless.
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The mask had fine grey hair on the sides which stuck out like Bozo the Clown, but not nearly as thickly, and it had a full, baggy, leathery creased neck that would tuck into a shirt leaving little impression that this was a prop. This was hand painted, Hollywood grade rubber magic.
“Whadda ya think?”, the old man asked.
It was incredible. Even from a few feet away it was spooky. Billy pealed the full head mask off and told me he got it from a friend who had gone to Disney World with his parents over the summer. It originally cost $50, a hefty sum for a novelty in 1973. Its potential, as I immediately calculated was priceless.
The Mask Makes Its Campus Debut
Billy was busy with morning classes and afternoon football practice. It would take Billy a while to wind down in the evening, and he would generally not fall asleep until one or two a.m. Since he had to wake early for an 8 o’clock class, he adopted a diurnal schedule of taking a siesta after his classes and before practice started. This created a gap in his weekday schedule from lights out in the dorm at 10:30 to when he could fall asleep. So, Billy one night, out of boredom, put on a grey sweatshirt, a pair of old work pants, and took the mask out for a walk.
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Billy would walk much like an orangutan. He would keep his distance from small groups. When he had caught their eye, he would turn his shoulders and head square towards them, and either shake his fist or grunt. He would then waddle off and make his unmasked way back to his dorm. Invariably the shocked witnesses would stand frozen, or slowly back away in astonishment.
Now this didn’t happen every night, but Billy kept it up on a fairly steady basis. The only other thing happening on campus was the Greek scene. About this time Billy and I went Greek and we each joined a frat. Billy pledged with Pi Kappa Phi, the jock frat, because of friends he had made on the football team. I pledged Pi Beta Sigma, a more progressive and erudite group. Actually, in all honesty, I pledged Pi Sig for two reasons. Firstly, it was the only frat that was nice to me, well Pi Sig and Zeta Phi both were. Secondly, and this was the clincher, Pi Sig had a soda pop machine in the basement that would give you a cold bottle of beer for a quarter. We called the quarters ‘gusto tokens’.
So late one night Billy is out with the mask on the lawn in front of Towers Hall and three unsuspecting students came walking by.
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There were two girls (one of the girls was an officer on the Student Council), and a God Squad, varsity basketball player who was acting as the girls’ escort. By the time this trio got a really good look, there was about 25 feet separating them from Billy. Billy took a couple ape-like steps forward, reached up with one arm and grabbed a branch of a tree. Billy then proceeded to execute several one-handed pull ups in front of the transfixed group.
Now, to a rational person like me, or you, we would think there was incongruency between an apparent 80 year-old man, who was built like a linebacker, and who was performing exotic gymnastics. We would doubt what we saw and wonder to ourselves, “What’s the deal?” However, to this particular Otterbein trio, what they thought they were witnessing was a hideously frightening demon cooked up in the depths of hell and polluting their reality with a reek of burning sulfur.
Unsettling Feelings Echo Across Campus
I was sitting in Towers Hall waiting for English class to start and I heard several students behind me talking about the latest old man sighting. I sat there with a silent contentment that came from knowing that the level of actual danger was enormously exceeded by the public concern.
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But the Towers Hall classroom was not the only place I heard the anxious gossip. You could hear it everywhere, the student center, the cafeteria, the football game, even between the stalls in the bathrooms. The ‘Old Man’ was the topic du jour. Talk was focused on the widespread speculation on the nature of “a crazy old man” who was prowling the campus at night. The leading theories were that he was a deranged janitor who was fired, or a demented townie, or possibly an escapee from Harding Hospital, the local Columbus funny farm.
I came to find out that in there was a precedent that had partially sensitized many of the students. The scholastic year before Billy and I arrived on campus, there had been several sightings of an alleged pervert, ‘Nick the Nude”. This character was reportedly a middle-aged, not-so-buff, bearded white guy, who replete with a raincoat (standard pervert gear) exposed himself to select college students on several occasions. Allegedly.
Nick the Nude’s presence on campus initiated a volunteer program of escorting female students in the evening, but as the Nick sightings dissipated the program became less popular. That was until the Old Man hit campus.
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The excitement was electric, and Billy was on a roll. You would have to know him as I did, as a friend, to appreciate his quick wit, his dry sense of humor, and his lifetime commitment to being a joker.
So it made perfect sense to me when Billy walked into dean Oldag’s office to voice his anxious concern about his nighttime safety. Billy actually pounded his big fist on the dean’s desk, “Dean, what are you going to do about this?” Oddly enough, what the dean elected to do was have a large stereo console moved from the student center into Billy’s room in Scott Quad. I am not kidding. A six foot long, 150 pound, walnut console stereo was sitting there in Billy’s dorm room. When Billy showed it to me he was beaming. He showed me how it had a built in record changer. The thing would actually play any one of twenty records with the touch of a button. Click, Led Zepplin, click, Frank Sinatra.
No Good Thing Lasts Forever
This was the high point for Billy. It all came apart within a couple weeks.
One night the old man made a mistake. Billy didn’t recognize a fellow jock who was acting as a volunteer escort for some young ladies going to King Hall. Something was shouted to Billy. Something like, “Clarksville, is that you?”
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Billy laid low for a while, but apparently he was starting to get comments from his Clubber frat brothers. Billy became concerned. He thought it over and came up with a solution. I think it was based on the ‘you never see Clark Kent and Superman at the same time’ premise.
I Make My Debut As The Old Man
I was truly flattered when Billy came to me with his proposal. Even though I was the only one he could trust with such an important mission, I felt it reinforced our friendship.
At 7:30 the next evening I was standing behind one of the two evergreen trees that stand sentry at the entrance to Old Cowan Hall, the campus theatre. Ironically, I was about to make my campus debut as The Old Man’s understudy.
I had looked through my wardrobe and had chosen an oversized dark blue hooded sweatshirt, a pair of dark green workpants, and my step-brother’s brown, square-toed, Dingo boots. In my opinion, all my other shoes were much too sporty and athletic for an octogenarian. I was giddy with excitement. I was feeling opening night jitters. I rolled down the mask, tucked the neck into the sweatshirt leaving the hood down, and lurched from stage left. It was show time.
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The mid-evening light was excellent for my purposes.
I was illuminated by the failing amber autumn sun as I headed south on Grove Street. I was walking on the opposite side of the street from the front of the Pi Kappa Phi house, the ‘Clubber’ house.
Across the street, on the front porch of the three-story, Victorian house conveniently sat my audience. It was Billy and several of his frat brother witnesses. As I had calculated, my audience had finished their suppers and were now working on their after dinner beverages. I lumbered along with an obviously arthritic, simian gait in order to attract their collective attention.
I was directly in front of the house about 30 or 40 yards away from the front porch when I stopped, turned my shoulders squarely towards the street and waddled from side to side a couple times. Quickly, I had gotten their attention. I then started to monkey-walk briskly away when my world stopped.
Over my shoulder I heard a shout coming from the direction of the frat house. I will never forget those exact words, “THERE HE IS, LET’S GO GET’EM!”
I sharply looked over my shoulder to see if they meant it.
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In turning my head so abruptly the neck of the mask snagged in the sweatshirt throwing off the alignment of the eye holes. Through half an eye opening I caught a glimpse of about a half-dozen crazed jocks charging across their frat house lawn. In the group I saw an upraised arm holding a baseball bat. They meant it all right.
There would be no negotiation. No amount of quick witted humor or desperate bullshit would change this mobs’ minds. They were…justified.
I sharply made an immediate left up West Plum Street at leaning at a 45 degree angle, and sprinted as fast as humanly possible in the pair of Dingo boots. I didn’t look back. I knew I could not outrun them, so I had to get out of sight as quickly as possible.
The very first street intersecting Plum was Knox. I cut left across the front lawn of the corner house to shield myself from the hounds. I saw several cars parked on the far side of Knox just in front of the side of the Pi Sig house. The car at the corner was a small sedan and between it, and another larger sedan was a jacked up Toyota pickup truck. The Toyota had something under a tarp in its truck bed. I ran across the brick topped street and slid head first under the truck’s bed. I turned onto my back and frantically worked myself with my elbows and heels into the shadow beneath the truck.
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I straightened out the mask and through an opening in the wheel well, I saw several tanned and muscular pairs of legs cross Knox heading up Plum Street. Excited voices seemed to be calling farther down Plum, away from me.
After a bit, when I could hear no more activity. I crawled out from under the truck bed on the street side. I kept low and made for the back of the garage of the Pi Sig house. Behind the garage was a two foot high pile of moldy boards and fallen leaves. Absolutely no real cover. I rolled off the mask and actually poured my sweat out of it. I pulled off the sweatshirt leaving on a white t-shirt. I rolled the mask into the sweatshirt. The workpants and Dingo boots had to stay. I weighed my options and headed for the shelter of the Pi Sig house.
I slowly walked across the back yard and went up the three cement steps to find the back door was locked. Nobody was in the kitchen. I would have to brave walking out to the front entrance on Plum street. I had to, so I did.
Oddly, there were no Clubbers in the street and no Pi Siggers in the house. The door was wide open.
I went down to the basement and stuffed the sweatshirt with the mask out of sight behind a sofa.
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I kicked off the boots, dropped them behind the sofa and walked over to the soda machine. I went through my pockets to find I only had my apartment key, and no gusto tokens.
I sat down on the sofa to try to calm down and figure out my next move. After a good while I heard someone coming down the stairs. I was Wayne ‘Muzzy’ Muzzioli, my frat brother heading to his room, the only one that had been built in the basement. Muzzy was pretty much a local, having been raised in Columbus. He was a virtuoso violinist, but he was also incredibly strong. He had wrestled in high school and actually placed in a state tournament one year. He also had the biggest Afro I had ever seen on a white guy. Muzzy was not only my fraternity brother, but I considered him a good friend.
“Aaaaay, Dave.”
“Hey man, what’s up?”
“I was over at the library”.
“Muzzy, where is everybody?”
“Oh, I saw some of the guys on the way over here, they’re looking for somebody. They wanted me to help them, but I’ve got to finish this paper tonight”.
“Really?, Uh, I won’t bother you then, but can you do me a favor?”
“Yeah, sure.”
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Without batting an eye Muzzy was handing me a pair of sneakers, a gym bag, and a dollar worth of quarters. I couldn’t get my feet into the sneakers. You would think that a guy nearly six feet tall would have feet bigger than a size 8. It probably never occurred to Muzzy to ask me what I was doing alone in the basement without shoes on. Muzzy was that kind of guy.
I spent the next couple hours sitting in the darkened basement nursing my beers, and listening to Muzzy’s stereo that was leaking through the wall. Upstairs, things slowly returned to normal. The pool table was getting a good workout and there were periodic shouts and insults.
Just past 11 o’clock, when things got quiet, I pulled on the Dingo boots and stuffed the sweatshirt with the mask in it into the gym bag. I probably should have walked to my apartment and grabbed a jacket as it had turned cold outside, but instead I chose to march over to Scott Quad and get the damn mask back to Billy.
Ralph Gives Me ‘The Cop Eye’
I was walking down Home Street just in front of Clements Hall when I noticed a car pull up behind me on the wrong side of the street.
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I was the black campus police cruiser and it came to a stop right beside me. Ralph’s long arm stretched out of the car and beckoned me.
“Hey, Rogers, where are you goin’?”
“The Ruckmoor”.
“No, really where are you goin’?”
“Uh, back to my dorm”.
“Come on, I’ll give you a lift”.
I found this offer unusual. Ralph had always been friendly and good natured, but he was being a little too friendly, and besides Scott Quad was no more that 150 yards away.
Making a run for it was out of the question, a frank admission of some type of guilt. The four beers were a concern, but I was far from being drunk enough for anyone to notice. I walked around the car and got into the front passenger seat. I put the gym bag down in front of me trying to hide the Dingo boots. Ralph eyed the gym bag and then gave me the long, finely crafted look that cops use to let suspects know that their not buying it and the heat is on.
I responded with the best idiotic, friendly smile I could muster. Maybe my upper lip twitched a little bit.
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Ralph slowly pulled away from the curb and headed down Home Street, not slowing for, or even acknowledging the right hand turn that would have taken me to Scott Quad, my alleged dormitory. Slowly we rode past the Hanby House and headed towards Alum Creek going off campus . About a quarter mile further we reached Africa Road, the limit of campus.
Ralph mashed the accelerator and spun the steering wheel. He executed a flawless 180 and we were headed back towards the main campus. I’m not sure what type of effect that was supposed to have had on me, but by not taking me off campus (possibly to rough me up) I knew he was going to play by the rules. Since I had not committed a crime, at least not any felonies, I did not feel particularly vulnerable.
I knew Ralph better than he knew me. I also knew that Ralph’s training, which probably consisted of a couple courses in a criminal justice associate’s degree, would pale in comparison to eighteen years of expert interrogation that I underwent during my childhood and adolescence. I had been raised by my father, a psychiatrist.
Ralph turned up Center Street and parked the cruiser on the edge of the Davis Hall parking lot.
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Ralph turned off the engine, and leaned back against the driver’s door making himself more comfortable. There was a long pregnant pause designed to heighten my level of anxiety and to see if I would volunteer any conversation. I stared directly ahead through the windshield into the cold night. It was also damp and hazy outside, and there were white haloes around the streetlamps.
Ralph broke the silence first.
“Where’s your jacket? It’s cold outside.”
“It’s not so bad Ralph, I just came from the gym”.
Ralph gave me the second dose of Cop Eye and he said, “Yeah, me too.”
At this point we both knew each other were lying. Ralph shifted his weight and either gave up, or switched over to his good cop routine. Ralph reached under the driver’s seat and pulled out a clear glass pint of whisky. I don’t remember what brand it was, but it had a cork top rather than a plastic screw top. Ralph took a big pull from the flask without making a sound. He checked my response and then extended his arm putting the whisky bottle six inches in front of my chest. I have always disliked whisky, but I took the bottle and tried to match Ralph as best as I could. I didn’t make a sound either, but my eyes did water up. I handed the bottle back to Ralph and genuinely said. “Thanks, man”.
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I knew Ralph wasn’t upset with me. What bothered him was that every night shift he had worked in the past month or two he would get a dozen calls to usher students to and fro on campus. It was part of the beefed-up security plan. Not all the calls were coming from young women either. This busy new routine had seriously cut into Ralph’s down time between his various security clock checks on campus. It ate up a good portion of the night when he would have much rather sat in his patrol car, listen to the radio and peacefully savored his liquor.
Ralph capped the bottle and slipped it under his seat. Ralph gave me one more long look, but this time there was no malice.
“Rogers, what is your first name?”
“Dave”
“Dave, if you hear anything about this old man, you come let me know.”
“Sure, Ralph.”
“Good night, Dave.”
I grabbed the gym bag and pulled the handle on the door, maybe a little too quickly. I stepped out into the cold, and bent down into the car looking at Ralph.
“Good night, Ralph.”
Ralph had no expression on his face when he said, “You take care.”
I let Ralph have the last word and I softly closed the door.
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Billy Debriefs His Understudy
Billy opened his dorm room door and comically exaggerated his relief. Billy was always the joker. I wasn’t angry at Billy, but I was definitely not in a good mood. I had not really enjoyed the evening’s theatrics. I just wanted to give Billy back the mask, borrow a jacket, and head back to the shelter of my hole-in-the-wall apartment. Billy was excited, he was animated, and he was pleased with the way things had gone.
He told me that his frat brothers had been completely duped by the charade. He told me that my performance was so flawless that they were convinced there was a deranged old man “on speed or something” running around campus. He told me that at one point there were probably fifty people scouring the streets for the ‘Old Man’.
It’s funny how people can have different perspectives on the same event. I decided to let Billy know I did not share his view of the evening’s activities by giving him a detailed account of my long and horrible night, including Ralph’s interrogation.
As I went through the course of my story, Billy’s excitement leaked out him. When I was finished, I told Billy I wasn’t upset with him, or angry about what had happened, I was just plain exhausted.
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Billy put his giant hand on my shoulder and gave me a strangely serious look.
“I’m sorry, Dave.”
Billy Tries To Atone For His Transgressions
To this day I really don’t know what went through Billy’s mind when I left his dorm room, or what drove Billy to make his next, bold, old man move. The next day, after his classes were over, Billy made his second visit that semester to Dean Oldag’s office.
Billy sat deep in a leather chair in front of the dean’s walnut desk. The dean sat quietly with his elbows on the desk and his fingers of both hands pressed together pointing towards the ceiling. He calmly listened to Billy tell how things got out of control.
Since Billy thought that no real crimes had been committed, no one had been injured, and that he was voluntarily offering a resolution to the crisis that was gripping the campus, he would be offered some degree of leniency.
When Billy finished his lengthy confession, Dean Oldag put his palms on the desk, leaned forward, and asked a question that sent a chill through Billy.
The question immediately dissolved any hope of an amiable resolution.
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“Now, Mr. Clarksville, how many times have you exposed yourself?”
It was at this point that Billy’s world stopped. Billy instantly knew what was going on. The dean was now trying to pin Billy with the ‘Nick the Nude’ rap. Billy’s tongue-in-cheek confession to the dean had now backfired. Words like humiliation, prosecution, and expulsion rattled around Billy’s brain.
A Veneer Of Methodist Tranquility
The old man sightings stopped and slowly things relaxed. A veneer of Methodist tranquility returned to the Otterbein campus.
In retrospect it was probably a combination of factors that diffused the explosive situation.
Perhaps it was the sheer pleasure of Dean Oldag’s ‘Colombo’ moment. The moment when he dropped the bomb on Billy and the dean was rewarded by Billy’s frantic and humiliating plea of innocence that provided the dean with satisfaction after a half a year of aggravation. Perhaps football coach, Moe Agler, intervened on Billy’s behalf. Perhaps it was the simple fact that ‘Nick the Nude’ had made his last campus appearance long before Billy ever applied as a student to Otterbein.Regardless of the factors, Billy was not expelled, or even censured. No punishment whatsoever was dealt out. Not even an appearance before the sham Student Council was demanded of Billy.
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The dean was pleased that he could go on to other matters, and he was also quite proud of himself in taking credit for solving the mystery. Earl and Ralph were happy, as they could return to their normal degree of lassitude. More importantly, the collective psyche of campus relaxed, as no further sightings of any abnormal creatures were reported.
Epilogue
Some years later when Billy had moved away from childhood home after having taken a job as a parole officer, his Mother decided to do some spring cleaning. In the very back of the top drawer of Billy’s bureau she found a hairy, flesh colored blob of rubber. Using her apron, Billy’s mother cautiously pulled the object free from the back of the drawer. It had partially stuck to the wood, but it came away in one piece. On closer inspection Billy’s mother could see a nose sticking forth from the side of the blob. Once she saw the nose she was relieved to know that it was the remnants of the mask, and not something much more alarming.
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She dropped the object into a trash can and within days the mask was forever lost in the depths of a massive urban landfill.
What was once a state of the art, professional Hollywood grade, hand-painted, Dan Kelley signature masterpiece, ‘Old Man’ full-headed mask, having been exposed to heat and oxidation, had become a partially congealed, disfigured mass.
After a string of brilliant performances, and an ephemeral but legendary career on campus, the “Old Man’ mask had succumbed to the ravages of the inevitable trauma of time, and dry rot, as rubber masks are want to do.
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