In room 515 Mifflin Hall there were two new fellows that third year at Penn State in September 1969.

One of them was from Frystown, which was a mere hop, skip, and a jump from Richland, but I no longer can recall that guy’s name. I’ve tried everything I can think of. I’ve even gone through the newspaper archives of the graduating classes for the years around that time in Frystown, and none of the names rings a bell. Which is very peculiar, because I spent a lot of time with that Frystown guy, talking about music and other things.

His parents owned and operated a bar, and I assume it was in Frystown as well, but even that hasn’t given me a clue to his name.

I remember talking to him about music one time, and this was a period when many musicians who had been part of groups were now coming out with solo albums. And Frystown Guy said that his favorite solo album was Jack Bruce’s Songs for a Tailor. I don’t recall anyone else ever professing even liking that album.

His roommate was Carl Gruber, who was from New Cumberland, just across the Susquehanna River from Harrisburg.

Carl was a biology major, and if my memory serves me correctly, I didn’t get to know him right away. It was probably a few weeks into the term before we became acquainted.

But once we did get to know each other we became good friends. How could we not? We were both atheists.

When I say that, I mean we each approached atheism from the same angle.

I’ve previously mentioned Jeff Harris, who was also new that year. He was an atheist as well, and a very outspoken one. He and I got along very well, but Jeff approached atheism from an intellectual standpoint. He had read Bertrand Russell and others, and that was all well and good, and I appreciated being introduced to Russell’s writings, but it wasn’t the way I approached my disbelief in gods.

Carl, on the other hand, was a biology major, and he approached it from a scientific perspective, which was closer to the way I viewed it, having come to my lack of faith through science writings, science fiction, and Isaac Asimov. And logic. Take the basic Christian belief that their god knocked up a teenage girl so she could give birth to a son who grew up to be put to death in order to atone for the sins of humanity. I mean wouldn’t it make more sense for this imaginary god to simply wave his magic wand (or whatever) and say you’re forgiven? Maybe put a sign in the sky that’s visible around the world in all languages to that effect? I mean if I were a god and I wanted to forgive everybody for something, that’s what I’d do.

Anyway Carl wasn’t as outspoken about his lack of belief as Jeff Harris was.

Plus Carl was an extremely easy-going kind of guy. He got along well with just about everybody.

Somewhere along the way he and I had a long conversation about biology and he started in on ecology and the environment. Now although I had liked biology, in both my high school and my college biology courses, the ecology portion, which was just a tiny snippet of the course, had seemed extremely uninteresting. Carl made it vivid and urgent. I suddenly understood the importance of how the various ecosystems worked together and what the consequences were if there was even the smallest disruption. Neither of my biology courses had made that clear to me.

I’ve mentioned Carl a couple times previously when I wrote about tubing and when I wrote about the Stones concert.

I remember Carl bought the Lord Sutch album when it was released.

I don’t think he had heard it before buying it, but he saw some familiar names on the cover: Jimmy Page, John Bonham, Jeff Beck, Nicky Hopkins, etc. So he must have assumed that it was worthwhile. It wasn’t. Sometime later when we were playing one of those games where you made a statement and the rest of the players had to judge whether you were telling the truth or not, Carl brought out that album and threatened to break it into bits. He was telling the truth.

Along with Mike Carr and Ed Stutz, Carl became the third person from my Penn State years who made a truly lasting impression on me. He and I had so much in common, I tend to think of him as my best friend, but then he was friendly with everyone, and he and I only knew each other for about two years. But of all the people I’ve known, he’s the closest person to a best friend I’ve ever had.