Issue link: http://ihouse.uberflip.com/i/703833
32 Vernetti's Town House was in Emeryville; it is still there, but it is not called Vernetti's anymore. It has gotten quite upscale. I have no idea of its specific location. I did not have a car — I just got to these places with friends. Also, there was a lot of singing. I wasn't part of the singing scene. I listened in any key, but did not make any noise. The singing took place on the stairwell or the entry hall where the acoustics were good, or by the mailboxes. People would gather around or stop and listen, or sit on the stairs and listen for a while. Elliott Castello and Bob Brewer were part of that, and Joe Connell. Joe was a great character — he was very, very funny! He was a zoologist — he trapped rabbits in Strawberry Canyon and tagged them and let them go and caught them again. Later on, after I-House days, he was interested in populations, but in his specific case populations of barnacles, and the spread of barnacle populations. At that time there was one whaling station still extant in the US. Joe would come to Berkeley when he knew a whale would be brought in, and he collected barnacles off the whale because this was a particular kind of barnacle in whose distribution he was interested. He would put them in a jar and store them in a refrigerator in the lab or in his friends' – such as the Brewer's – kitchens. He ate the whale meat. He gave us some once, and I did make a stew out of it. Several years after I was out of graduate school, I took a French course in extension at Cal. I never had any French, and Joe Connell was in that class. Most of us were pretty staid people who just wanted a little bit of French. Joe was hilarious; he essentially took over the class. The teacher didn't know what to do with him. She thought he was amazing, but she couldn't contain him, and he taught the whole class really very disreputable French songs. I don't know whether I understood all of them, but I could tell they were disreputable! You want to know about the marriages? A lot of the people married right after I-House; I don't know how many married during their stay. I-House has lists, and for a while there was a Valentine's party every year for everybody who had met his or her spouse at the I-House. Many, many people: the Rushes, of course, Joan and Rollo, the Castellos, the Brewers, the Horwitzes. Was leisure time and socializing mostly with the people from I-House? Yes, pretty much. I knew Galen from outside, but I kind of dragged him into the I-House group. Some people had moved out of the House, either because they were not registered at school any more, or they could not afford it, and they wanted to double up on rents and share an apartment. Bill Knox had an apartment in Emeryville with a couple of other fellows. It was on a top of a factory, and there was nobody there at night. The factory ran during the day, but in the evenings it was quiet, and they could make as much noise as they wanted. There was a flat roof outside of the apartment — it was like a deck — and Joan Rush painted a swimming pool on a big piece of canvas. So we