Zooting Among the New Professionals: Class of '70 Alumni Hold 5th Reunion

"If you're going to make a revolution, you're got to advertise," one alumnus said, choking slightly as he addressed a former classmate who now works on. Madison Ave. It was hard to tell if his difficulty speaking was the result of an excess of tongue in his cheek, or whether he was merely gagging on the rather dry sand, wiches that had been provided for the occasion.

In any case, Time and Newsweek would have been ecstatle. A random savesdropping of the chatter of Harvard Class of 1970's fifth reunion gave doubles evidence to the notion that yesterday's revolutionaries have beaten their awards into scalpels and traded their red books for writ books. These is attendance were primarily lawyers and law students, with a smattering of doctors, academics, and other professionals, and one unemployed moot-suiter.

I fiddled with my watch chain, adjusted my Grand Canyon lapels, and forged into a gaggle of tweeds. The sallow faces above the collars were debating the relative merits of the various Supreme Court justices they had clerked for. At the next awkward power is the conversion, one of them turned is me. "I'll, you're Andy Klein, aren't you? I was in your freshman dorm. I'm Alex Forbush. What have you been doing with your life?" My mind reeled. Can I tell him I've been washing dishes, driving delivery vans, waiting on tables. How can I counter William O. Dougles with Tommy's Lunch?

May be I could convince him I was a hit man working for a large olive oil concern out of Newark. Maybe I could claim to be making book on the upcoming Belmont Stakes. I don't remember what I said. I quickly exceed myself and beclined it to the bar.

I felt worfully out of place. The seens was surround enough that no one had noticed my suit. I looked around and saw that people's hairlines were receding their faces were wrinkling up as they stood there. It took a few more doses of spirits (at a buck a shot) to bring reality back within certain acceptable tolerances.

Is this what has become of my class, I wondered? We had formed the vanguard of the Harvard strike of '69, had rallied around the war and racism, issues that are still far from dead, Where were all the revolutionaries?

Out of town, I realized, without the money or inclination to attend a Harvard reunion. By most estimates, attendance here was unusually poor, at best 75 out of a class of 1200. These were not the people who had been in University Hall. Any conclusions would be spurious.

Andy Klein '70, a former Crimson music critic, clerked for Tommy Stephanian upon graduation and is currently looking for a publisher for his best-selling novel.