Issue link: http://ihouse.uberflip.com/i/703833
75 I have some funny memories of Elliott Castello. Some of the I-Housers went on these skiing trips. Elliott showed me where to buy these WWII ski troop skis. They were these big wooden ones, with great, big, cumbersome clamps for your shoes. And he wore, for a long time, the old WWII ski boots. It was really funny because the rest of us somehow found some cash to buy Bass ski boots, or some kind of upgrades, but Elliott still wanted to wear these. He actually gave Rollo [Rush] and me old WWII skis which we crossed and put on the side of our cabin in the mountains. And we had them up there for many years, until the ranger said we couldn't decorate the cabin, so we had to take them down. But there were many stores in Berkeley down on Shattuck which had WWII things – Army, Navy stores. My first skis were wood, and they were very difficult to ski on. But Elliott insisted that they were good enough for him and so were the boots – we used to laugh about it. How did Elliott ski in those heavy WWII Army-surplus skis? He wasn't a great skier, as I recall, but neither was I, and neither were a lot of other people who chose to buy those wooden skis because they were so inexpensive.... But we all had fun. We stayed at the Cal Ski Lodge up at Norden. There was dancing, and I remember a very popular professor, something Hildebrand, was part of the nighttime dancing. I remember having taken a class with him, and he was dancing – so there must have been professors who would come and dance... I remember also that we would take our skis and wait for the trains to come through Norden, through the wooden tunnels. We would wait for them in the morning, with our skis on our shoulder, and our ski poles. Then, we would jump on a train and go with the train, on the side, just hanging on, until we came to Sugar Bowl, and then we would jump off and ski to Sugar Bowl. So that was just a simple way to get to Sugar Bowl! There were a lot of people from the Cal Ski Lodge who would do that, and I wouldn't dare do it now, and if any of my kids suggested it, I would tell them, "No, you can't do it!" Who else would hang on the train like that with their skis? Bob Brewer, maybe. He might have been on the same trip. And Julian Huebscher, and Stretch [Homer] Conzett, Stan Nichols-Roy, that group, all of them used to go up and ski and stay in the Lodge – they probably all did it. Stan used to sing – he was the bass, along with Bob Brewer. After I graduated, I worked for Miss [Eugenie] Carneiro. I was with her for at least two of the Spring Festivals. Those were kind of exciting days, the Festivals. I was Miss Carneiro's assistant. She was in charge of the annual Festivals, which meant pulling a lot of resources together because they were given in the auditorium. Rafael Rodriguez helped me with one project that I remember very well – it was for a prom. It was all orchids. He was a botany major, and he knew orchids backwards and forwards, and he helped to paint these beautiful things, twelve feet high. Once, we had to put an orchestra together. Such a nice thing! I recall that Miss Carneiro asked me to go and