One of the more popular exhibits at the early Engineering Shows was a metal fire-breathing dog named Woofus. The first iteration seems to have been produced for the 1928 show and this one was from 1932:
Woofus evolved a much fiercer look over time and we’ve always wondered what became of him, sort of hoping against hope that he’d turn up in a basement somewhere. Alas, this is not to be. I was looking at WWII era news clippings today and learned of his demise in the service of his country:
This clipping came from the Garcia family, about whom I’ve written before. Their father is one of the men standing on the pile of scrap metal.
Newsflash: Hold on to your hats. The Thresher now comes out on Wednesdays. Seriously.
One of the years I was at The Thresher, we published twice per week. That nearly killed us. It is easy to spot in the bound volumes, it is the thick one.
Do you remember why you decided to do that?
Why? Maybe we didn’t want to pass our classes, maybe it was editor hubris.
Checking the archives, we published Monday and Friday, starting with Vol. 64, No. 3, Monday, August 23, 1976. I also quickly checked the first couple of issues to see if there was an announcement about the increased frequency. Nope.
Really, there was enough news for two issues. Multiple basketball or baseball games per week, election excitement, pre-beer/bike, post-beer/bike, reviews of shows from the previous weekend, previews of shows for the upcoming weekend, before and after faculty meetings, …
As I remember, we could get more writers, so writing the paper wasn’t too bad, but getting it typeset, photos edited (my job), laid out, and so on twice weekly was tough on the editors. I ended the year with a raging case of mono, took two incompletes, and skipped fall semester. But the paper was fine.
You might ask Carla McFarland. Only kidding about the hubris, Carla.
This was in the post-flood RMC, and the early issues were probably done from the basement of Fondren (“Beam in a ‘Ffeine!”), as the campus recovered. There were lots of us doing the typesetting, but only one HAL (not counting whatever was used in Fondren).
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