Pud Meets His Maker

The common assumption of most Stickles readers is that Pud was related to me in some sort of way. And there may have been a small grain of truth to that. However, I did appear in one cartoon, dispensing beer at a Strat's Rat, the Student Center Committee's once-a-fortnight mixer. It was the only time Geoff Baskir was seen in cartoon form in Stickles or anywhere else. And probably the only time Chris Tracey (Class of '76, crew jock and also an SCC honcho) was seen in a cartoon, also. She's the lady next to me in the first frame.

One thing you'll notice is the goatee. I had hair on my face, dating from the time I slipped and fractured my ankle on the East Campus ice and decided I didn't have time to learn how to shave my face while standing on one leg. I also parted my hair down the middle - the better to impress record distributors (I wrote record and concert reviews for thursday, and all the major labels had representatives in the greater Boston area). Both of those affectations ended as soon as I entered the job market. Till then, my nickname on the intramural flag football gridiron was "The Weasel". Today, I am clean-shaven, and some in my family claim my hairline is receding.

The beer of choice at Strat's Rat was not Miller, but Tuborg Gold. Tuborg was imported - all the way from the Carling Brewery in Baltimore. There could have been worse beers on tap, but there couldn't have been anything cheaper. When the drinking age in Massachusetts was raised to 21 in 1979, Tuborg was off the menu, and Strat's Rats were no more. I'm not sure if many people were crying in their beers over that.