Stories From Under A Bootheel (Rants, Laughs, and Tears)

Chapter 6 The Race to the Varsity Part 2 The Competition

If the Varsity was the moon, then the fourth floor of Smith Hall at Georgia Tech was ground zero for our space race. Smith Hall was traditionally occupied by incoming freshmen engineers. I had transferred to Tech as a sophomore, but because I was a transfer student and it was my first year at Tech, I was housed with the Freshmen. The following is what happens when you put a bunch of freshman engineering students together.  

Like the space race, it all began when a German built a rocket. Actually, I'm not sure he was German, but I do remember he was from Pennsylvania and since that state was mostly settled by Germans, it is a safe bet he had some German blood in him and since I can't remember his name, I'm going to call him Werner. And like his namesake, Werner didn't have a specific destination in mind when he built his first rocket. He just wanted to show the other guys what he could do. So, with a cigarette-sized cardboard tube, some make shift paper fins and a bunch of matchheads to fuel it, the race was on.

Two things can be said of most engineers. They like to experiment and they are by nature highly competitive. Eric from New York was the first to suggest it become a competition. Teams were formed and they each began building slightly bigger and better matchhead fueled rockets. When a rocket was finished, it was taken to Eric's room and launched out his window toward I-75.

The race became international when Paul(?) from Columbia joined in. The question mark is because I'm old and having trouble remembering names. What I do remember about Paul was when he washed his red shirt with his white underwear and ended up with pink underwear. Guys screwing-up their first-time doing laundry was a rather common occurrence, but a guy with pink underwear in an all-male dorm is very memorable.

It was inevitable the competition would quickly escalate into a race to land a homemade rocket onto the parking lot of the Varsity. While the competition was not as high tech as the space race between the U.S. and the Soviets, it was certainly equal in the competitive enthusiasm.

After several successful launches that made it to the edge of I-75, my roommate Tom came to me and said, "We have to get in on this. We can't let a bunch of aeronautical engineers get all the glory."

Traditionally, there was significant rivalry at Tech as to which major was the most challenging. One metric some used to determine this was the number of suicides at the school in each major. The suicides were typically foreign students under pressure from their families to excel academically in this foreign and difficult environment. Some took the easy way out laying their heads on the track in front of the freight train that ran near the campus every morning at 2. During my entire time at Tech, I would get shivers every time I'd hear that 2 A.M. train whistle. Yes, crap happens.

The academics at Tech were quite challenging, but so was the social environment. The dearth of female students just compounded the problems faced at that age. I had exactly one date while I was at Tech and it was horrible, but I've digressed enough.

At this time, the most challenging discipline was considered to be either electrical or aeronautical engineering, depending on who you asked. Tom and I were both electrical engineering majors. Tom and I had to defend the reputation of our major by winning the space race to the varsity.

The first thing we did was slap a sign on our door that said "Top Secret – No admittance." We hadn't actually begun work on a rocket. We just knew this would drive the others crazy wondering what we were up to.

We knew we couldn't compete on the aerodynamics of the rocket, so our only option would be to improve the fuel. Tom did eventually switch his major to Chemical Engineering. He is now a patent engineer somewhere in Colorado I believe. (If anyone out there knows Tom Pruit, he can verify this story and will know my true identity. Tell him to get in touch with me through Wattpad and the pseudonym I use here.)

Every engineer knows how to make crude gun powder from sugar and potassium nitrate. We got sugar from the cafeteria, we just needed to get some potassium nitrate. Meanwhile we were having too much fun keeping the others out of our room and in the dark about what we were up to. The real competition for the others now seemed to be finding out what we were doing since efforts to get beyond I-75 seemed to have stalled.

One afternoon, Tom and I returned from class and without thinking let Eric follow us into our room. We were talking about bird dogging or some other freshman activity and not thinking about our competition. Bird dogging is where Tech freshmen stand on the corner and point wishfully at any attractive females that drive by. Hence, like bird dogs, they are pointers.

Anyway, once in our room, Eric began snooping around for evidence of our rocket development. He found the sugar we had been crushing and immediately figured out what we were doing. He put some of the powder on his finger and tasted it.

"Sugar," he said knowingly. "You're making gun powder, aren't you?"

Tom and I looked at each other trying to decide whether or not to admit it.

Then I got an idea. I just looked in horror at Eric and said, "You didn't put that in your mouth, did you?".

"Yeah, I just put a taste in my mouth. It's sugar, right?" he questioned. I had him right where I wanted him.

"It is potassium nitrate. Maybe we should call poison control?" I suggested still feigning concern. The expression on Eric's face change from smug to oh-crap.

Compassionately, I lessened his distress saying, "Although, isn't potassium nitrate the same as salt peter, the stuff boarding schools would put in boys' food to keep them from getting erections?"

"Yeah," Tom joined in. "It lowers your blood pressure. But I believe they only used trace amounts. How much did you take, Eric?"

I could tell from Eric's face that the small fingerful of sugar had become in Eric's mind a massive dose of blood pressure lowering toxin.

"Maybe you should do something to get your blood pressure up?" I suggested.

Eric picked up one of Tom's weights and began doing curls, while saying, "I don't believe you. That was just sugar." Yet, he kept nonchalantly curling the weight. Eric's panic alone would have been enough to get his blood pressure well above normal; still we kept coming up with physical activities for him to engage in. Before we were done, we had him running laps around the dorm.

Perhaps we were a little hard on Eric, but like all Georgia Tech freshmen he was very full of himself and deserved it. Besides, Tom and I were both raised in the South, so picking on Yankees was our birth right. I actually liked Eric who did much to improve my opinion of New Yorkers.

As Eric completed a lap, the dorm's Resident Advisor asked him what was going on. Eric told him. As they were about to take Eric to the infirmary, we confessed that in fact it was just sugar. The R.A. scolded us thoroughly and told us we were not to make gun powder in the dorm and no more matchhead rockets either. Thus, our space race came to an abrupt end. I bet NASA never had to deal with problems like that.