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R.E. Whitmore
Over. But how in the world had it all begun?
I guess that was the third year I'd been caving. Let's see. it was November 1964. I started in September 1962, so I'd been caving for two years, and was in my third year and really felt like I knew it all. Of course, in 1964 there wasn't much to know. For example, just about everybody used a single brake bar for rappelling, except for some fruits at UVAwho had just found out about the spool and couldn't decide if it was better than a body rappel. But hell, I'd done Schoolhousethat summer and thought it was easy, although when I lead a trip in there a year later and did all the lead climbs myself I was scared shitless. But in the meantime I had to endure this phase of ego-inflated ignorance without busting my fool neck. So where was I?
Oh yes. I had not been to Cass. I had planned a trip for the summer of '64, but it fell through because I planned it for the weekend before exams and everyone finked out on me, which was probably a good thing because if I'd gone I would have probably flunked out and be digging ditches today instead of breaking rocks. So anyhow a lot of young punks were starting to join the grotto, and most of them had already been to Cass, and I hated that because they considered guys like me, Ed Bauer, Rick Nolting, Sam Dunaway, Gary McCutchenand Ed Dayto be a sort of over-the-hill gang that couldn't really hump it any longer. (Who were the punks? Let's see, there was Tom Vigour, Mike Hamilton, Mallory Hightowerand Doug Bradford, Dixon Hoyleand Allen Amstrongand Carol Noble, just to mention a few). And this made me decide not to put off the Casstrip any longer. Well, Ed Bauerand Rick Noltingand I decided to go and Ed was going to drive. He had a crisp new black VW beetle that his sister bought for him so he could tool around and drum up support for Goldwater. We were heavy into politics back then. Yeah, but I mean real politics. Nolting was grotto chairman and I was vice-chairman, and cave politics weren't around yet as far as we knew. Or maybe communications were poor and cave politics did exist but we weren't aware of them. The question soon became academic anyway because by December 5 of that year, Ed Bauer, the only real latent cave politician in our midst at that time, had. managed to plunge the rest of the grotto kicking and screaming forever into the mire of VARpolitics. But in the meantime, where was I?
Right! We had planned this trip to Cass, so the first thing we did was broadcast it as much as possible. I mean, why not? One of those punks I referred to earlier had the unmitigated gall to stand up at his first grotto meeting and bitch about the quality of the caves to witch we had offered to take new people the following day. It was an affront to his prowess as a NatCap bred caver to suggest he go to Tawneys and rub elbows with those nasty novices. Where, I asked myself, do you suppose these guys get off? It didn't take long to find out. A few hours after we placed. the rumor of our Cass trip into general circulation, a delegation consisting of Mike Hamilton, Mal Hightowerand Tom Vigourappeared in my dorm room. They were disturbed by our announced plan of attack, which was simply to drive up, do the cave, and drive back. There would be no room in Ed's VW for a pesky punk to chaperone us as the fourth seat would be occupied by a beer cooler. Mike would have had us modify our itinerary to provide for a Friday afternoon departure instead of Saturday afternoon, spend Friday night at the Sugar Shack at Marlinton, do the cave on Saturday, go to the Fieldhouse at Riverton, call Bill Karrasand reassure him we're OK, and return to Blacksburg on Sunday. Oh yes, and forget the case of beer. Later that evening I slipped over to Ed's room and we had a good laugh over it. He had also found out that none of these guys had ever been through the Cat Crawl. Imagine them. Telling us. They who...
"What? What? Where?"
"Oh! Whew! I thought you were going to hit that guy standing by the road back there.if
"Huh? There wasn't anyone back there. That was a mail box. Besides, I missed it a mile."
"Sorry. I guess I'm seeing things again. My depth perception gets screwed up and a juniper shrub can look like a nightmare out of H.P. Lovecraft."
"Yeah. It's starting to get to me. I think I'll pull over and sleep for a few minutes.''
Ed's contact lenses bother him a lot when he's worn them for a long time. By now he's going on twenty hours and the limit is something like eight for comfort, he says. But I don't know; two months later when we got trapped in Crookshanks he wore them for upwards of forty hours, but the ill effects were obvious.
continued
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