The delightful student production of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth made me enjoy a play I probably wouldn't have liked otherwise. I was turned off Wilder by a high-school reading of Our Town (in a high school everyone reads Our Town, Silas Marner, Macbeth, and a cleaned-up Reader's Digest). My second encounter with Wilder was a part in The Happy Journey that some of us presented at a church in Savanna. Although I enjoyed the Titus-Moody part I had, I came away from the reading more convinced than ever that Wilder is as Midcult as Dwight Macdonald says he is. That is, Wilder is often good--some of his techniques must have been revolutionary when the plays were first performed--but he has a second-rate mind. I'm sure a good Freudian would have lots of fun with the dominant Norman Rockwell, salt-of-the-earth Backbone of the Family mother who appears in all the Wilder plays I have mentioned.

His second item is far more humorous and Bellairsian in nature, a tongue-in-cheek review for, of all things, the Shimer student catalog. Going as far to describe the flowchart-like interaction of classes as a LSD molecule, the article is reminiscent of his writings back at Notre Dame.

The 1967-68 Shimer College Bulletin, while not a work of enduring importance, is at least substantial. The bricks on the front cover (some of them flawed, as are all human things) give a sense of solidity, while the Wordworthian foliage on the inside front and back covers leads us along forest paths to Dionysiac enchantments. The Table of Contents calls us back from unruly ecstasy, and ressures us with its serried dots, regular margins, and orderly progression of page numbers. Haunting questions are raised by some of the mysterious features of the book: why is Mr. Weiser, in the picture on p.27, talking with students in a basement, his face ghoulishly lit by what must be a railroad flare?

Part of the agreement Bellairs signed when coming to Shimer was to serve as Faculty Counselor in one of the men's dormitories; to him was assigned McKee Hall, an elegant old building that his former students remember as, of all things, quite the fire trap. Built in 1922, McKee Hall was constructed with funds from the Baptist Board of Educators and named for William Parker McKee in honor of his completion of twenty-five years of service as college president. McKee and Hostetter Halls are joined by a two-story structure referred to as Hostetter Annex. At the time the upper story was used for storage by the housekeepers, and the lower story included the main entrance to the dining room, the student government office, and the phone exchange, which was put in during the fall term of either 1965 or 1966. Today, as part of the Campbell Center for Historic Preservation Studies, McKee is unoccupied and used as storage.

The student population was never incredibly large at Shimer College - maybe 500 at most during Bellairs' time - and most of those in attendance lived in the dormitories. Exceptions to the on-campus rule were married students or whose lived in the Mount Carroll area. The half-dozen or so dormitories on the grounds could hold upwards of 100 students, with McKee taking on an additional 50-or-so more

Bellairs, as resident head, replaced Harry Golding, who had served in that role since the fall 1964 semester. Affectionately known as Harry Golding's Good Guys, the McKee students were sad to see Golding move on. "Two years of being a den-mother for at least fifty young males of the ages 15 to at least 21 was more than any human should suffer," Johnston says of Golding, though Bellairs was more than acceptable substitute. "He was more of a friend than supervisor. On at least one occasion he helped me smuggle a young lady out of my room, an offense that at the time could mean expulsion, although residents of McKee had (very unofficially) a lot more leeway than other dorms did." John lived in the headmaster apartment, two connected rooms containing a bedroom, a private bath, an assemblage of furniture and a wall taken up entirely with shelving. Former student George Tanty remembers the room, though more from his first year on campus and how Golding's vast classical record collection was replaced by Bellairs' numerous stacks of books.