The Day the D-B Chemistry Lab Exploded

 

Mr. Dickerson demonstrating "chemistry."

It was a normal day, just like today, except that in the basement of what we now call “the old D-B,” the chemistry lab exploded.

It didn't make the newspaper in 1964 because no one was killed or maimed or even burned. I think our teacher Mr. Dickerson may have had a coughing jag after going back in to extinguish the fire.

Uh, I was part of the lab group that caused the Little Bang.

I was reminded of this little episode from my past after reading about the NYU organic chemistry professor whose contract wasn’t renewed after students complained that his course was too hard.

Chemistry has always been hard.

Witness that 1964 explosion.

My Chemistry teacher was Mr. Dickerson, who left for a job in industry the next year. I may have had something to do with that.

That class got off to a bad start.

Mr. Dickerson was calling the roll: “Charles Garner.” Charlie Garner, president of the band, cool guy and well-known wag, raised his hand.

“Call me Charlie. Charles is a butler’s name.”

Mr. Dickerson peered back at Charlie, to get a good look at this fellow, then replied. “My name is Charles.”

It was the only time Charlie Garner was ever speechless.

Charles Dickerson in the 1965 D-B yearbook

Chemistry was taught in the basement of the old D-B, in what was at the time a brand-new lab. Even though Mr. Dickerson taught Chemistry as a math class - we balanced a lot of equations - we still got time experimenting with chemicals.

My lab partners were Jimmy Sams and David Coleman, both of whom apparently got chemistry sets for Christmas when they were little because they were both lab whizzes.

I was good at handing them stuff. I don’t remember what we were making on the day in question but I think it involved hydrochloric acid because we had a quantity of the stuff left over from our experiment.

Because Jimmy and David were good chemists, we got through with our experiment early that day. It was a recipe for disaster: a fully equipped chemistry lab, lighted Bunsen burners and free time.

I don’t know who suggested it - I’d like to think it wasn’t me - but a decision was made. Since we had some spare time and we were already apron-ed up, why not make another compound, why not whip up a batch of hydrogen sulfide.

For the layman, hydrogen sulfide is that stuff that smells like rotten eggs.  It was simple for chemistry whizzes like Jimmy and Dave; I think they added a little powdered zinc sulfide to the hydrochloric acid (don’t hold me to this formula; I would become a math major in college), stirred, then heated the stuff over the Bunsen burner.

Everything was going just swell until Jimmy dropped the test tube in the sink. There was a clink, then a poof, followed by a bang, a billow of smoke and an overwhelming nauseous smell.

Rotten eggs.

According to an old Chemistry text I found, you can smell that stuff at 2 ppb - that’s two parts per billion, which isn’t much. I’m sure we had a couple of thousand parts per billion, just judging by the aroma. But it wasn’t the aroma that first got Mr. Dickerson’s attention. It was the clink and the bang and the smoke.

Using the safety training that all Chemistry teachers must be forced to undergo, he immediately cleared the lab. We all stood outside waiting till he figured out what had happened.

Of course three of us already knew what had happened. It was a good thirty minutes before he managed to clear the smoke and stench from the lab.

It took him about thirty seconds to figure out what had happened and where it happened. He didn’t yell. He just announced in his “My-name-is-Charles” voice that the three unnamed culprits should report to his room after we had eaten lunch so we could do a little extra work.

The punishment could have been much worse. It could have gone on our permanent record. Instead we got to do chemistry problems during lunch hour for the rest of the week. And I think there was a lot left in the week.

If that happened on a Monday and I think it did, we got to do chemistry problems for five lunch periods, until we had learned our lesson.

Jimmy Sams and David Coleman might think the lesson we learned that day was: Don’t drop test tubes full of liquids that smell like rotten eggs. The lesson I took with me was: I should have taken Typing instead of Chemistry.

I never took another Chemistry class. In college I took Physics. Which is a story for another day. 

The Top Baby Names of 19___ (Fill in the blank)

 

Closest thing I have to a baby picture

Do You Know Anyone Named Elmer?

When Ken Jennings introduced the Jeopardy category “Baby Names: Top 25 of 1922” the other night, I immediately shouted “Elmer,” even though Jennings hadn’t yet revealed a clue.

I was sure “Elmer” had to be the answer to one of the five clues.

My response, which, unfortunately, wasn’t phrased in the form of a question, dates back to an event from 35 years ago.

My son was just a toddler when he befriended an old guy who was waiting for a plane in the Louisville airport. Soon they were playing peekaboo. The old guy asked, “What’s your name, little boy?”

Today that would get the old guy arrested but that, fortunately, was a different time. My son Will told him his name and the old fellow replied, “You'll never guess my name. They don't name kids it anymore.” Will guessed a couple of his friends’ names, Matt and Justin.

That’s when the old guy said, “It's Elmer! My name is Elmer!” And they both laughed.

I laughed too, watching this game.

By the mid-eighties Elmer was already an antique name.

I even thought I knew why: Elmer Fudd. Bugs Bunny’s cartoon nemesis couldn’t talk plain or shoot straight. Who would name a kid after Elmer Fudd?

So I did a little research to see if my thesis was right.

That’s when I found the government’s Popular Baby Names site (www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/index.html). Click here. 

You can search the most popular names by year of birth, by state and you can even check out your own name to see how it has fared over the years.

Elmer was a pretty popular name in 1900 – the year that I would guess our airport Elmer was born - ranking 38th, just behind Andrew and just ahead of Lee.

It ranked 47 in 1910, 45 in 1920, and in 1922, the year of the Jeopardy category, Elmer was 54. There were 3,738 Elmers born that year.

It was already slipping by 1940 when it was ranked 144. That was about the year that Elmer Fudd started appearing in cartoons.

By 1950, when most people knew who Elmer Fudd was, Elmer had fallen to 228, down with Tyrone, Nelson and Laurence.

By 1960 it had tumbled to 342. In 1970 it was 477, two slots above Abel. It was gone from the Top 500 baby name list by 1980. It actually lasted longer on the list than I would have suspected.

In 2007 Elmer ranked 866 in baby name popularity, behind Leandro and Rigeberto and just ahead of Jasiah.

By 2010 it had fallen off the Top 1,000 list. In 2009 there were only 224 Elmers born in the United States.

Having proved my thesis – sort of - I decided to play a little Fun With Names game.

I remembered that Shirley was once a boy’s name. In 1935 it was ranked 259 among boys. That same year it was the number 2 girl’s name. Wonder why? Oh yeah, Shirley Temple.

Shirley disappeared from the boy’s name list completely after 1957.

Of course you have to look up your own name.

I was named Vincent after my father. It was his middle name. He was named after philanthropist Vincent Astor (I don’t know why).

In 1915, the year my father was born, Vincent Astor was known as the “richest boy in the world,” having just inherited $200 million when his father went down on the Titanic. Vincent was the 65th most popular boys name that year.

On the baby name list Vincent has never been out of fashion mainly because it’s never been in fashion.

In 1900 it was ranked 129; in 1910, 99; in 1920, 73; in 1947, the year I was born, it was 105.

The highest Vincent has ever ranked was 1966 when it was 58. In 2008 it was 110, the same rank it was in 1977 and 1946 and 1945 and 1939 and 1938.

But just because you are named after a rich boy doesn’t mean you will grow up to be one.

 

The most popular boys’ names the year I was born were, in order, James, Robert, John, William and Richard. I knew lots of Jimmys and Bobbys and Johnnys and Billys and Dickies.

The most popular girls’ names that year were Linda, Mary, Patricia, Barbara and Sandra. They were all in my homeroom.

 

The Top Five Boys’ Names of 1922 (that was the Jeopardy category that got this musing started) were John, Robert, William, James and Charles.

The Top Five Girls’ Names of 1922 were Mary, Dorothy, Margaret, Helen and Ruth.

The First Time Tennessee Beat Alabama in Football

 

The 1904 University of Tennessee football team

Tennessee Vs. Alabama

My wife calls it the Charlie Brown Rivalry. And Tennessee football is Charlie Brown.

That means Alabama football is Lucy, always pulling the football away at the last minute, just when Charlie Brown thinks, at last, he is going to kick the ball.

At least it’s been that way for the last fifteen years.

Everyone knows the last time Tennessee beat Alabama in football was 15 years ago.

But do you know the first time Tennessee beat Alabama? And do you know how they did it? It was on an amazing play.

Pull up a chair and let me tell you about that first Tennessee victory over Alabama.

It was 1904. Football was a very different game. Helmets, when used, were more like aviator caps. Shoulder pads were minimal. Even the scoring was different.

I’ve already told you the outcome: Tennessee won. The score was 5-0. But it wasn’t a field goal and a safety. In 1904 a touchdown was worth five points.

The amazing part is how Tennessee scored. It wasn’t even a regular who scored the winning touchdown. It was the substitute fullback (Tennessee only took two substitutes to the game in Birmingham.)

The unlikely hero was Sam McAlister, a wiry 150-pound player whom the Birmingham News called the “Human Grasshopper.”

The winning – and only – touchdown was scored in what would today be against the rules.

 So what was the amazing play that resulted in McAlister’s day in the sunshine?

He would take a handoff from quarterback T.R. Watkins and run toward the line, planting his foot on the back of a lineman and leaping in the air at the last minute. And then the halfbacks, the Caldwell brothers, would grab handles sewn onto his specially-designed wide leather belt, and literally toss him over the line.

It was called “hurdling” and the Knoxville Sentinel described it this way:

“The hurdling manipulation is one of the most difficult as well as the most dangerous plays in football ethics. On account of that fact, it is seldom used by players. It means simply that the one who hurdles permits his companions to pitch him as far into the air and over as great a distance as possible. The University of Tennessee on account of the danger had not made the play this season.”

McAllister was a reluctant participant. The Sentinel noted he was “a good runner, but not much on defensive work. On account of that fact, he refused to play in many of the games.”

It was team captain Roscoe Word who talked him into the “hurdling maneuver.”

Record of UT football team in 1904

(from the 1905 yearbook)

Tennessee had won only one game that season. The Sentinel wrote, “The boys were desperate. No headway was being made against Alabama. ‘We must do something,’ said Word. ‘McAlister we've got to hurdle you toward the goal.’ McAlister, although he knew the danger, readily agreed, according to Captain Word who told how the work was done.

“The boys got in line to play. The center pushed back the ball to the quarterback, who seized it and gave it to McAlister. McAlister took the ball and ran to the left end of the line, followed by the halfback. When the line was reached, they seized him by the belt and pitched him for a half dozen feet over the two lines. This they did time and again, and won the game.”

The first time UT beat Alabama it was by throwing the fullback over the line!

 

Tennessee was not supposed to win the 1904 contest. In their 1903 meeting Alabama had won handily 24-0. The Knoxville Sentinel reported on Tuesday before the Thanksgiving Day game that Tennessee was a decided underdog:

“Birmingham newspapers predict that the University of Alabama will win out by two touchdowns and possibly by three. The predictions are based on games played by each team with the Nashville University. The score of the game played on local ground between the local school and Nashville resulted in a tie, neither side having scored. The University of Alabama defeated Nashville University by a score of 17 to 0.”

(The University of Nashville was chartered by the state in 1826. It closed in 1909.)

And even after the win the Alabama sportswriters grudgingly noted that Tennessee’s victory was “due entirely” to an injury suffered in the first half by Alabama’s star halfback Auxford Burks.

 

Who Was This Substitute Player?

The Knoxville Sentinel profiled him after the victory.

“Sam McAlister, the fullback for the University of Tennessee football team, who starred in the game with the University of Alabama on Thanksgiving Day, is a Chattanooga boy and a nephew of Judge McAlister of the supreme court. McAlister is about 20 years old, and has been at the University of Tennessee four years. He played with the University team in several games as a substitute player. He weighs 150 pounds and is tall.”

 

McAlister (his name is spelled variously with one “l” and two and as McAllester in his obituary) was also on the basketball team and sang in the Glee Club. He graduated in 1905 and returned to Chattanooga where he coached football at Chattanooga High and private schools McCallie and Baylor. He graduated from Chattanooga College of Law in 1912, working as an attorney in his hometown for the rest of his career. When he died in 1957 at the age of 73, his obituary was featured on the front page of the Chattanooga Daily Times with the headline “Attorney Was Leader in Education and Legal Fields.” The obituary noted “he rose to the top of the legal profession and for many years had the distinction of being the leading lawyer at the Tennessee bar.” The obituary said when he was appointed to the University of Tennessee Board of Trustees in 1948 “he took more pride in that one appointment than any other public service assignment during his long career.”

He was the original VFL – Vol For Life.

 

 

 

That 1904 game wasn’t on the radio. Because there wasn’t any radio. It would be almost two decades before the first radio stations signed on. (The first Tennessee football game on radio wasn’t until 1949. Lindsay Nelson was the announcer.)

But Dobyns-Bennett football games were broadcast live on WKPT-AM starting in 1940.

The station’s first program director Bob Poole and later sports announcer Lannie Lancaster called the action. Eventually Martin Karant would take over announcing duties from Lancaster.

Which brings me to my favorite football-on-the-electric-radio story.

There was one D-B game in the early days called by WKPT’s morning announcer, the late, beloved Charlie Deming, normally host of the “Gloom Chaser” show. George DeVault, long-time general manager of WKPT, told me about that event. “An old story around here is that Charlie Deming, who knew very little about sports, was called upon to stand in and do play-by-play on a game when the regular play-by-play guy was sick. Supposedly he said, ‘There he goes. He’s to the 30-yard line, the 40, the 50, the 60, the 70, the 80…..’”

NyQuil Is In The News!

 

My NyQuil Challenge

(Getting Paid for a Story I Wrote About It)

It’s one of the most famous advertising slogans ever: “The nighttime sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy head, fever, so you can rest medicine.”

Nowhere in that string of adjectives is “chicken frying.”

But that didn’t stop a few folk with too much time on their hands from creating the TikTok NyQuil Challenge. At least it gave local TV stations something to fill their newscasts: Warning, do not fry chicken in NyQuil.

If you think that was a stupid idea, that no one would actually try, then you don’t remember a few years ago when Dawn mailed out free samples of lemon dishwashing detergent, only to have to issue a warning not to use it as cooking oil.

Years ago I wrote a story about the alcohol content of NyQuil for Icon magazine.

When I told my wife, she didn’t ask about the alcohol content. She wanted to know: What is Icon magazine?

Same thing I wondered when the Icon editor called me back in 1998 to talk about the assignment. But I thought that might sabotage the deal so I didn’t ask what Icon was. .

I asked what angle they wanted me to pursue, how many words and the deadline.

And in the back of my head I kept wondering the most important question – and not what is Icon – how much does it pay?

At the time my agent told me that I should get a dollar a word for magazine articles. She didn’t represent me, or any of her clients, to magazines. Literary agents once did, back in the golden age of magazines, when there were scores of well-paying magazines who kept F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway afloat between novels.

By the nineties it wasn’t worth an agent’s time to send out multiple submissions to a group of magazines and wait to hear back.

Ten percent of, say, $2,000 is only $200. And that wouldn’t pay one day’s rent on a Manhattan office.

The Icon editor explained it was a short piece for the front of the magazine, 500 words, with a due date in a couple of months. She also told me it would pay $500.

That was good enough for me: $500 for 500 words, a dollar a word.

I did have one more question – in addition to what is Icon – but I didn’t ask it.

I wanted – needed – to know if Icon paid on acceptance or on publication. I learned a long, long time ago in journalism school at UT that you don’t want to write for magazines that pay on publication. Because that can be months. Or years. Or never.

I had experiences, bad experiences, with the later. And even the former can be dicey.

The first magazine piece I ever sold was in 1973. I had sent a story idea to Saturday Review, then a popular literary magazine: it was about the 130-game - and counting - losing streak of the high school basketball team at Friendsville Academy. I had forgotten about the query letter when the phone rang one night. It was Richard Levine who said he was an editor at Saturday Review. They wanted my story. 2,000 words. By March 15. And then he said, and I’ll never forget, “We can only pay $250. I know it’s not much but it’s a good way to break into the magazine.”

That’s okay, I assured him, all the while thinking in the back of my head: I pay $90 a month rent, I have a roommate, that should last me six months!

That was the good part of the experience.

The magazine was published in April with my story up front. I bought every copy in Knoxville, which was ten.

And then I read the bad news in the newspaper: Saturday Review had filed for bankruptcy. I would not be getting my $250. At least not any time soon.

I learned a lot about bankruptcy court that year. I was an unsecured creditor. I was last in line.

A year or so later I got a check for $25 and change. I have it framed as a reminder of the perils of being a free-lance writer.

To make a short Icon story short, I wrote the story about NyQuil, they published it, I waited, and waited, and waited.

Two months after the story was published, I called my editor.

She was shocked that I hadn’t been paid.

At least she said she was shocked.

She also said she would check on it and get back to me.

Neither thing ever happened. She never got back to me (or returned any future phone calls). And I never got paid.

I’m not much of a bill collector but I did give it a try. I talked to a junior editor who was also shocked and actually transferred me to accounting, where the people were also shocked.

And ever since then I have called it my Shocking NyQuil story.

And Icon? I never did figure out what it was about. And apparently neither did the editors. It went out of business shortly after publishing my $500 story. But before sending me that check.

 

By the time it ran in the magazine it had gone back and forth between the editor and me and had swollen to 695 words. So technically they owed me $695. If they don’t pay you, I guess it doesn’t matter how much they owe you.  

Here’s my NyQuil story that Icon magazine published in April 1999:

 

In Troy, Michigan a 19-year-old man who was stopped by police after they noticed his car weaving, at first claimed he had downed five or six shots of NyQuil to fight off the flu. He later admitted he had consumed the entire bottle. His blood alcohol level registered 0.04, twice Michigan's legal limit for teens. He's now facing a ninety-day sentence and a hundred dollar fine.

What? You don't think people really drink the stuff for the alcohol? Think again. Maybe they don't talk about it in those terms - unless the police stop them - but why do you think model Cindy Crawford packs NyQuil in her overnight bag? It helps her sleep on airplanes. That's why David Letterman could use it as kicker to a Top Ten "Good Things About Having the Flu" List: "Number one, getting gooned on NyQuil!" And in 1995 NBA basketball player Roy Tarpley didn't hesitate to claim, with a straight face, that his breathalyzer results were the result of the green bottle, this despite the fact that he had been booted out of the league once already for drinking.

The International Olympic Committee doesn't worry about the alcohol content. It bans NyQuil for the same reason that Orange County, California tried to limit purchasers to one bottle a day in July 1998: NyQuil contains ephedrine, a stimulant the IOC claims can enhance an athlete's performance and Orange County claims is used by drug dealers in the manufacture of methamphetamine. But don't worry, normal NyQuil users. It's not going to cause you to dig out your old gym clothes. Only a large dose of ephedrine would mimic adrenaline by increasing the heart rate and blood pressure. In fact Cornell University Medical College professors Gary Wadler and Brian Hainline, authors of "Drugs and the Athlete," say banning Nyqul for athletes, is senseless regardless of the dose.

That's a lot of controversy for a little green bottle. But NyQuil has been making noise since it first started jumping off pharmacy shelves thirty years ago.

It owes part of that early success to a great name. NyQuil just whispers "nighttime tranquility." And also to some great commercials - for years Nathan Lane lent his voice to the ads. Great name, great commercials. Plus it knocked you on your ass. Kentucky pharmacist Alan Simon says the original formula was 40 percent alcohol. "In dry counties [counties which don't allow the sale of alcoholic beverages] it was the best-selling item in the drug store." Dry counties aren't a thing of the past. In Kentucky, oddly enough, Bourbon County is dry. But there are more automobiles today, making it easier, and cheaper, to drive to the next county and buy some alcohol that doesn't taste like medicine.   

The NyQuil story is pretty impressive considering that Nyquil almost didn't make it out of the laboratory three decades ago. It began life as a triumph of marketing over science. A Vicks company researcher had formulated a new liquid remedy that cleared up scratchy throats and dried up running eyes. The problem was, it put you to sleep. A crafty marketing person, whose name has been lost, saw the potential: It relieves cough symptoms but it puts you to sleeps. Hmmm. Let's sell it as a nighttime cold remedy!

It immediately became the most successful product in Vick's history. And remember, these are the people who invented Vapo-Rub, not exactly chopped liver in the cough remedy category. One reason it put people to sleep was its alcohol content. The original product was 80 proof, right up there with vodka and gin. As recently as five years ago NyQuil was fifty proof (25 percent alcohol). You could drink three glasses of wine or one glass of NyQuil. Plus it unstuffed your head.

That's when the NyQuil folks, yielding to pressure from the industry's Non-Prescription Drug Association and also from parents who weren't thrilled about little Johnny getting drunk on his cough syrup, cut the alcohol level. Today it's only, oh, 17 percent alcohol.

All this from an innocuous-looking green liquid. Of course it's not really green either. That's the FD&C Yellow No. 10 and the FD&C Blue No. 1 at work.

 

 

There have been at least two other magazines that used the name Icon.