What do you say to an orangutan? (01/30/08)

What do you say to an orangutan after all these years?

That was the question I pondered as I tried to compose an e-mail.

It wasn't a real orangutan, of course.

But that was his nickname more than 35 years ago. He lived on my hall at Earlham College, the center section of the second floor of Barrett Hall.

There were, as I recall, 18 guys in our section, and many of them had nicknames: Eby, Ram, Don-Don, Cheetah, and, of course, The Orangutan, Orie for short.

We were thrown together freshman year, completely at random, it seemed. Most of us were freshmen, with only four upperclassmen.

Many were football players. Ram was a guard from Ashtabula, Ohio. But Don-Don ran track, and Cheetah was a wrestler. (He could also climb like a monkey, scaling up the side of our dorm on more than one occasion, which led to the nickname.) Eby, one of the upperclassmen, played great jazz piano, while Orie was bigger than most of the football team but had decided not to play in order to concentrate on his studies.

Nicknames weren't required in those days, but they were commonplace in our dorm. Just for the record, I was known as Jocko in those days. And to a handful of folks, I'll always be Jocko, just as Orie will always be The Orangutan to me.

Maybe it was the gray start to a new year that started me wondering about all those old friends this month. I'd run into a few of them at an Earlham football game about 12 years ago, but most of them had vanished into the mists. College reunions have never had the pull of high school reunions, so I'd lost track of almost everyone.

The last time I saw Orie, for example, was back in maybe 1973 or 1974. Connie and I had made the trip up to Knox, Ind., to his wedding. We were delighted that he'd found the right girl, since he did almost no dating during our college years.

On any given Saturday night after midnight, I always knew where I could find The Orangutan. Coming back from a date with the girl who would become my wife, I'd find Orie in the basement TV lounge of Barrett Hall.

There, sprawled on one of the beaten-up sofas amid the litter that's part of the décor of any men's dormitory, Orie would be watching the all-night movies on Cincinnati TV.

Bob Shreve, without doubt the corniest host in the history of television, would stand behind a fake bar, dressed as a bartender, and sing the show's theme song: "Schoenling, Schoenling, that is the beer for me!" The Cincy brewer was the show's sole sponsor, as I recall.

The movies were terrible, but it was a great way to unwind, tell bad jokes, and cope with a world that seemed to be changing so quickly we couldn't understand it.

This month, I did the logical 21st century thing and Googled Orie. I used his real name, of course, and I plugged in a couple of key words that might help track him down.

At first, I wasn't having any luck. Then I got a lead that sent me to the site of a university. The next thing I knew, The Orangutan was staring back at me from my computer screen.

He was older, of course, and way more distinguished than I ever remembered him. He looked dapper in coat and tie and even seemed to have some professional gravitas about him.

That made sense when I read the site.

Turns out, The Orangutan is head law librarian at the university's law school.

The best thing was the fact that the site led me to an e-mail address.

"Dear Orie," I wrote, "I wonder how long it's been since anyone addressed you with that moniker."

In the event, the e-mail was easy to write. It was like renewing an interrupted conversation, and when Orie wrote back we promised to keep in touch.

Now if only I could track down Cheetah or Eby or the rest of the guys.

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