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3 Iowa Bob's Winning Season

In 1954 Frank joined the freshman class at the Dairy School -- an uneventful transition for him, it seemed, except that he spent even more time in his room, by himself. There was a vague homosexual incident, but a number of boys, all from the same dormitory, had been involved -- all older than Frank -- and the assumption was that Frank had been the victim of a rather common prep school joke. After all, he lived at home; it's not surprising that he was naive about dormitory life.

In 1955 Franny went to the Dairy School; that was the first year women went there, and the transition was not so smooth. Transitions would never be too smooth when Franny was involved, but in this case there were many unforeseen problems, ranging from discrimination in the classrooms to not enough showers in the wing of the gym they had partitioned for the women to use. Also, the sudden presence of women teachers on the faculty caused several tottering marriages to fall, and the fantasy life of the boys at Dairy was no doubt increased a thousand-fold.

In 1956 it was my turn. That was the year they bought an entire backfield and three linemen for Coach Bob; the school knew he was retiring, and he hadn't had a winning season since just after the war. They thought they'd do him a favour by stocking his football team with one-year postgraduate athletes from the toughest Boston high schools. For once Coach Bob not only had a backfield; he had some beef up front, for blocking, and although the old man disliked the idea of a 'bought' team -- of what (even in those days) we called 'ringers' -- he appreciated the gesture. The Dairy School, however, had more in mind than making Iowa Bob's last year a winning season. They were shooting every angle they could, to attract more alumni money and a new and younger football coach for the next year. One more losing season, Bob knew, and the Dairy School would drop football forever. Coach Bob would rather have gone out a winner with a team he built, over several years, but who wouldn't rather go out a winner almost any way possible.

'Besides,' said Coach Bob, 'even good talent needs a coach. These guys wouldn't be so hot without me. Everybody needs a game plan; everybody needs to be told what they're doing wrong.'

In those years, Iowa Bob had lots to say to my father on the subject of game plan and doing wrong. Coach Bob said that the restoration of the Thompson Female Seminary was 'a task akin to raping a rhinoceros.' It took a little longer than my father had expected.

He had no trouble selling Mother's family house -- it was a beauty, and we made a killing on it -- but the new owners were impatient to take possession and we paid them a stiff rent to live there for a full year after all the papers were signed.

I remember watching the old school desks being removed from what was going to be the Hotel New Hampshire -- hundreds of desks that had been screwed down to the floor. Hundreds of holes in the floor to fill, or else carpet the whole thing. That was 'one of the details Father had to deal with.

And the fourth-floor bathroom equipment was a surprise to him. My mother should have remembered: years before her time at the Thompson Female Seminary, the toilets and sinks for the top floor had been misordered. Instead of outfitting bathrooms for high school-sized students, the toilet and sink people delivered and installed miniatures -- they were meant for a kindergarten in the north of the state. Since the mistake cost less than the original order, the Thompson Female Seminary had let it pass. And so generations of high school girls had stooped and cracked their knees while trying to pee and wash -- the tiny child-sized toilets breaking the girls' backs if they sat down too fast, the little sinks hitting them a knee level, the mirrors staring straight at their breasts.

'Jesus God,' Father said. 'It's an outhouse for elves.' He had hoped simply to disperse the old bathroom equipment throughout the hotel; he had enough sense to know that the guests wouldn't want to share communal bathrooms, but he thought he could save a lot of money by using the toilets and sinks that were already there. After all, there wasn't much equipment that a high school and a hotel had in common.

'We can use the mirrors, anyway,' Mother said. 'We'll just mount them higher on the walls.'

'And we can use the sinks and toilets, too,' Father insisted.

'Who can use them?' Mother asked.

'Dwarfs?' said Coach Bob.

'Lilly and Egg, anyway,' Franny said. 'At least for a few more years.'

Then there were the screwed-down desk chairs that had matched the desks. Father wouldn't throw them out, either.

'They're perfectly good chairs,' Father said. 'They're very comfortable.'

'It's sort of quaint how they have names carved in them,' Frank said.

'Quaint, Frank?' Franny said.

'But they have to be screwed down to the floor,' Mother said. 'People won't be able to move them around.'

'Why should people have to move hotel furniture around?' Father asked. 'I mean, we set the rooms the way they should be, 'right? I don't want people moving the chairs, anyway,' he said. 'This way, they can't.'

'Even in the restaurant?' Mother asked.

'People like to shove back their chairs after a big meal,' said Iowa Bob.

'Well, they can't -- that's all,' Father said. 'We'll let them push the tables away from them instead.'

'Why not screw down the tables, too?' Frank suggested.

'That's a quaint idea,' Franny said. She would say, later, that Frank's insecurity was so vast that he would have preferred all of life screwed down to the floor.

Of course, the partitioning of rooms, with their own baths, took the longest. And the plumbing was as complex as a freight yard of tracks in a city railroad station; when someone flushed on the fourth floor, you could hear it coursing through the entire hotel -- trying to find a way down. And some of the rooms still had blackboards.

'So long as they're clean,' Father said, 'what's the harm?'

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'Sure,' said Iowa Bob. 'One guest can leave messages for the next guest.'