Attaining the dubious distinction of old fart ain’t bad if it means putting in 37 years at an extraordinary workplace. So kudos to Lady Luck, karma or an omni-unpresent deity’s master plan. I started out with a typewriter and proofreader’s non-repro-blue pen. Now, just like any 21st-century office schmoe, I have a computer, but mine is loaded with photos of past, current and future Beaver Hunt models. “I hope to be in your magazine,” a bare-ass hottie scrawled on the pic that catches my eye whenever I start getting woozy staring at my Mac.
From what I reckon, adding HUSTLER to my life story wasn’t a matter of if, only when. Thumb through a copy of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, an indispensable tool in academia and journalism. It defines predestination as “the doctrine that God in consequence of his foreknowledge of all events infallibly guides those who are destined for salvation.”
My salvation—being a low-profile staffer at a high-profile publication—began sprouting in 1964 when I was a freshman at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Marijuana, LSD and hockey concussions—not to mention Father Time—ultimately rendered stretches of Memory Lane a tad foggy, but I’ll never forget a pep rally for SMU’s football team that morphed into a panty raid.
Talk about a humdinger in the annals of college pranks. Before the soon-to-bud sexual revolution and mixed dormitories, male students would gather outside the living quarters of female students to do something more macho than sing their school’s fight song or beg the girls to toss them intimate articles of clothing. The throng would attempt to storm the premises in order to plunder gals’ panties as trophies of a mission accomplished.
