Uninight
When Rich's Department store closed last winter, the members of Cabin & Trail faced Losing More than just a crazy annual ritual.
TOWN NEVER MET GOWN in stranger fashion than this. Every fall for the past 20 years, a few days before Halloween, members of the Cabin & Trail division of the Outing Club trooped to Rich's department store to prepare for a competitive costume party known as Rich's Uni Night. Alone or in packs of five or , six, students strolled the aisles on a shopping spree guaranteed not to excite the West Lebanon Chamber of Commerce the whole point was to spend as little as possible. At C&T's next Monday-night meeting, contestants displayed the unis, or uniforms, they had fashioned from items purchased at
That is, they wore only what they had purchased for five dollars or less.
Since its now-forgotten origins in the mid-'70s, C&T's Halloween celebration has centered on Rich's, a mainstream discount ount store that presented many students' first New Hampshire shopping experience outside the boutiques of Hanover. Locals often appeared bemused at the hilarity in the aisles, as students pieced together their costumes. Ann Lasala '87 once asked a Rich's employee to break up a three-pack of men's underwear so she could stay under the five-dollar limit. The cashier balked, so Ann called out to Martha Green '87, three aisles away, "They won't let me buy men's underwear. Can I use some of your aluminum foil?" Ed Lowney '85 observed this entire exchange. "The looks on the cashiers' faces were priceless," he says.
On the big night, contestants entered the C&T meeting room one by one, presented their receipts to the chair for verification of the purchase price, then paraded down the runway (a battered wooden conference table) to the hoots of the assembly. Prize categories usually included the best costume and the least expensive costume. One year, J.B. Friday '82 won the latter with a strip of cloth that set him back only nine cents. "It wasn't pretty, but it was the cheapest," he says. Sometimes there was a booby prize for the worst costume. "I won that freshman year," recalls Ed McNierney 'BO. "I had to bring beer to the next meeting. Unfortunately, I wasn't old enough to buy beer, so I brought root beer instead. I got showered for that." (Throwing fellow members into the Ski Team locker room shower in the basement of Robinson Hall was a ritual cleansing in C&T, sometimes to honor birthdays, sometimes to acknowledge indiscretion.) The most sartorial uni designs
derived from Rich's garish velours and fake furs, for which we, in our 100-percent-cotton world, could imagine no purpose other than a throw-away costume. But clothing can be made from more than cloth. Robert Rigby '84 wore "For Rent" and "Exit" signs, front and back one year. Jake Lowenstern '85 somehow attached a plug-in electric candle to a pair of Pilgrim-themed place mats. Several contestants over the years have sported sandpaper, with bonus points for wearing the grit side in. Jamie Trowbridge '82 and Diana Wright '83 controversially bent the rules by splitting the cost of an eight-dollar brown throw rug between them. They then split the rug to make cool cave-person outfits.
To preserve some modesty, if not dignity, the Rich's shopping bag and receipt could be included as part of one's costume. In truth, however, modesty usually lost out to the sure winning gambit of nudity or at least as much skin as C&T decorum would allow, which is to say nearly all of it.
As Louis Reard discovered when he designed the first bikini, it's remarkable how little is required to cover the human naughty bits. Peter Alden '77 once wore only a white hostess apron in front and the letters "C" and "T" painted strategically on his (lower) cheeks with lipstick. Every year, it seemed, someone would brave the room of howling students wearing only shaving cream. Men found all manner of implements to cover themselves, from Christmas stockings to funnels. One of the most memorable of these was employed by Rick Lathrop '81, who tied a plastic Santa Claus around his waist with Christmas ribbon. When he plugged in the contraption, Santa flashed merrily. Ho-ho-ho!
Women faced a greater challenge on Uni Night, having more square footage to cover, but the bold still prevailed. Kathy Gelhar '87 somehow secured three dish towels with strands of licorice to create a delicious ensemble. And no man of the era seems to forget the tall, striking Holley Allen '79 dressed like Venus on the half-shell in nothing but a tinsel Christmas tree garland.
Such displays may have shocked the underclassmen perhaps were designed to do so—but they also affirmed the success of C&T's confidently co-ed fraternity. Scanty attire seemed routine in the context of outdoor life, where the powder room was the nearest bush and skiers lounged in overheated cabins in their underwear albeit L.L. Bean polypropylene, not Victoria's Secret lace. As silly as those costumes were, Rich's Uni Night was one of several rituals, from initiation to mid-winter Moosilauke ascents, that forged a powerful esprit de corps among C&T men and women an essential quality when it came time to volunteer for digging privy holes along the Appalachian Trail or brushing creosote on DOC cabins.
Sometime in the late 'Bos, however, the Rich's tradition began to wane. "This was the beginning of the p.c., warmand-fuzzy days of C&T," laments Tim Burdick '89. "Showering at birthdays was practically eliminated. The pack of Parodi cigars hidden in the magazine rack vanished. When I brought in a box of cigars in 1988,1 was banished in solitude to the front steps. My freshman year, I watched a chubber named Alex Tait '86 parade around Room 17 with a rag mop tied indiscreetly around his waist. After that year, the event still happened, but the spirit was never the same while I was there."
Contestants also have been challenged by the diminishing purchasing power of the dollar. The volume of wax paper available for five bucks in 1975 had shrunken considerably by 1997, yet there has been no movement to index Rich's Uni Night to inflation.
And in what might have been a final blow to the contest, last winter the 29-year-old Rich's department store went out of business. Rich's declasse ambiance and kitschy holiday merchandise had perfectly matched C&T's spirit. In my day, many chubbers had proudly defied the unwritten but decidedly preppy campus dress code by wearing "dump coats," which were tatty, moth-eaten wool overcoats picked up for a dollar or two at thrift shops. With Rich's closed, would Brooks Brothers finally conquer Robinson Hall?
Happily, the old tradition has not failed. Chris Saccardi '97, C&T chair, says Uni Night continues to hold the popularity it regained in the early '90s. With Rich's gone, though, he says, the group will have to choose another venue for this fall's preHalloween shopping trip perhaps Kmart or the planned Wal-Mart in West Lebanon. Dan and Whit's Uni Night also has a nice ring to it, though the " higher prices there might discourage creativity. In any case, future Uni Night memories seem assured.
Perhaps mercifully, memorie of one's own Uni Night costumes seem to fade over time. I can only say, paraphrasing Oliver North, that I have no recollection of my Rich's costumes. Though something about crepe paper does stick in my mind.
Dougald Macdonald '82 writes from Boulder, Colorado, where he frequently dons climbing togs.
