Back in the days when Roger Maris crashed 61 homers, college girls did not show off tattoos, and American boys were getting killed in Vietnam, I was the sports editor of the Michigan Daily at my alma mater, University of Michigan.
I loved doing it. It paid for a round-trip flight and expenses to the 1965 NCAA Basketball Tournament, where Michigan lost to UCLA in the championship game and Bill Bradley scored 58 points for Princeton in the runner-up game.
I was declared the best college sportswriter in America in a contest of 200 writers and given an award of $200, which today would be worth over $2,000.
One of the pieces I submitted to the Larst Publishing, who judged the contest, was an interview I did with an astute commentator about campus life — Nutsy the Squirrel!
I believe you will find it relevant today, 60 years later.
***
In my four years in Ann Arbor I’ve made some memorable acquaintances: professors, kooks, rascals, jackals. But one of the most pleasant and articulate is a mousy-furred squirrel named Nutsy who habituates one of the fat oaks near the Diag.
We were conversing the other day when he told me he wanted to be interviewed and written up in The Daily. I replied that few people really care about what a squirrel thinks.
“And who cares about what Barry Bluestone, Gary Cunningham, or Lloyd Graff think, for that matter,” he retorted. Perceptive animal.
Nutsy made one stipulation about the article. “Put it on tape and then write it down verbatim. I don’t want to be misconstrued.”
“You mean like they do it in U.S. News and World Report,” I said.
“I mean like Playboy does it,” answered Nutsy emphatically.
Q: Mr. Squirrel, there’s been an almost endless series of articles recently on student activism, college rebellion, adolescent idealism, and stuff like that. In your opinion are college students substantially different than they were five, ten, or fifteen years ago?
A: Lloyd, I figured you’d start off with a trite question like that. I suppose you’d like me to answer in 25 words or less on the back of a box top. But to answer the question I’d say that college students are more goal-oriented and less likely to laugh than ever before. Most of the guys are here to learn a trade or hype their earning potential, while the majority of girls are trying to pick out a husband so they can live happily ever after. And they’re all so gruesomely serious about things.
Q: People used to toss me peanuts or pecans and then chortle as I entertained them with those cute vaudeville antics we perform. Now they just throw out their goodies and walk on to the library. Either they don’t have time or don’t care to enjoy their deeds. The nuts don’t taste as good.
A: And those activist people are the worst. I mean I respect them, I admire them, and they give me more walnuts per capita than other campus groups, but they are oppressive, aren’t they? They’re so caught up with themselves, with the sanctity of their mission, and so cocksure about the worthlessness of their opponents’ viewpoints.
Q: Do you distrust people who are sure of themselves?
A: Yes. Particularly when I’m positive they’re wrong.
Q: All right, Squirrel, let’s try something else, and don’t be so verbose. Are athletics too professionalized at Michigan?
A: There’s no doubt that football and basketball are the closed preserve of those on full rides. And it is a perversion of education to hire athletes by paying for their education. But the good which results from unifying the campus around a team probably compensates. It’s tough to argue against a football Saturday. And the fact is that most of the athletes at Michigan are hardly the mental slabs of granite that some would make them out to be.
Q: Some quickies. Who’s the most beautiful woman in the world?
A: Rita Tushingham or Thelma Ritter.
Q: That’s what happens when you ask a squirrel. What do you think of Paul Goodman?
A: I might agree with him if he was intelligible.
Q: How do you stand on draft deferments?
A: Everyone should be taken but squirrels.
Q: Be serious.
A: Look, if you thought seriously about war they’d say you were mad or a Commie pacifist. Frankly, the idea of killing a fellow squirrel to gain respect, prestige, and security is folly as far as I’m concerned.
Is Cazzie Russell a greater player than Bill Bradley?
A: Compare gold and platinum.
Do you like the Bond movies?
A: I go to the flicks for the cartoons. They’re more realistic. Love those Tom and Jerry documentaries.
Is your favorite composer Tchaikovsky because he wrote The Nutcracker Suite?
A: I go for Spector, McCartney and Lennon, and Bach, buddy. Make this the last. I’m hungry.
Who’s the fairest man of all?
A: Why, you Lloyd, of course.
Now I’m sure.
Nutsy.
