The Secret History of the Mad Streaker

“This Stupid College is too backward to do anything!”

David was always frustrated that he had chosen to go to a college in the Bible Belt – even though he was a regular member of a local Baptist church.

“The rest of the world is doing all this cool stuff and we just sit here doing nothing!”

He was right. College students in the spring of 1974 were dropping their clothes and running around naked except where we lived at Valdosta State College. David was a Speech Major who really, really wanted to either be a political demagogue, a third world dictator, or a Baptist Preacher.

He stewed for several days and then, at the weekly fraternity meeting, he sprang a bizarre idea on us:  The Delta Sigma Phi Book of Records

“It’s like the 50’s out there. Students are doing things like swallowing goldfish and stuffing phone booths and setting stupid records. We can get a column in the VSC Spectator and publicize anyone who sets a record. People will call us and we’ll send someone over to observe them. It will be great publicity!”

There really wasn’t a lot of discussion. David was always going off on weird trips and he had enough followers (they thought they were his friends) to do the hard work. The rest of us could watch and enjoy the scene. We told him to go ahead.

Later that week, I came on one of those weird scenes. Some of my frat brothers were sitting on the steps of Georgia Hall watching some dweeb ride a bike around the Langdale Hall Circle in his quest to get the record for most trips around while riding with no hands. As no one had ever recorded such a feat, one or two trips should have done it, but he was after an impressive number that would discourage competitors. They sat there watching him, counting the laps, and cursing David.

Besides this guy, David had someone get the record for number of laps in the fountain, and another sang the entire 99 Bottles of Beer song while standing on one leg. He rejected the guy who said he’d shat a 10 inch turd and saved it in a jar.

Several of us gave him heck for suddenly having standards, but, really, we just wanted to watch David have to hold that jar.

His hidden agenda burst out Saturday night when he jumped out of a car in a back parking lot and then took off buck naked between Georgia Hall and Langdale Hall. David was tall, skinny, and had a head full of white blond hair. He covered his head in a variety of things including a ski mask, a visor, and a scarf. He crossed the circle and then took off heck for leather for a second car that was idling in front of Ashley Hall.

Along the way he shocked some Alpha Zee’s sober and almost knocked over a completely drunk ROTC guy who didn’t see it coming.

Enough people did see him to start a buzz. He turned up the volume in the newspaper column that week when he revealed that he had been contacted by a mysterious “Mad Streaker” and had observed the run across the Circle.  He even had a small interview with himself.  The Mad Streaker had a hallowed place in the Delta Sigma Phi Book of Records, which, by the way, David never bothered to publish.

David and his crew were hauled into the Dean of Student’s office and grilled. They stuck to their story of an anonymous caller. David got so wound up that he delivered a fatuous speech on the rights of the press and his right to observe anything he wanted without calling the Dean ahead of time. They all refused to fink on the next streaker.

We heard later that the Alpha Zee’s and the ROTC Guy were also hauled in to the inquisition. The guy  admitted that he was so drunk that later that same evening he saw God on the radio. Actually, he heard Canadian Commentator Gordon Sinclair and his Top 40 Hit “The Americans“. I understand he stood in front of the radio, crying, and holding a salute while his friends kept looking at the speaker trying to see if God was really in there.

Next Saturday, we took a call from some TKE’s who were just drunk enough to want to streak across Langdale Circle. A crew took off and parked and waited. Sure enough, three TKE’s in head gear came a running. So did the Campus Security Cop who had been posted to watch for copycats. He should have just watched. There was no way a 50 year old man was going to run down athletes in their early 20’s running out a massive adrenaline wave that propelled them to super human speed.

Their feat went down in the fictitious “Book of Records” as the first group streak and the running really started. People were calling us every night. Some were even streaking without calling us. Every time anyone streaked, fraternity brothers were hauled into the Office of the Dean for more grilling. They even started putting guys in second rooms for interrogation and trying to trip up their stories.

David was completely disgusted because no one was streaking during the day. He would erupt from time to time shouting, ” Bunch of wimps!”, to no one in particular. He was wanting to see spontaneous chaos and the world was letting him down.

As the novelty wore off and it became safer to walk around the campus at night without fear of being run down by naked aggression, David made his move.

It was eight fifty-five in the morning during the change of classes: one of the busiest times on campus. The Mad Streaker jumps out of a dark Green Chevy Nova in front of the College Union and starts running in his union suit in a long mad dash that took him in front of the Library, by Nevins Hall, down by Brown Hall, to end up running into the basement of Patterson Hall. Actually they called it S-21 in those days as Mr. Patterson wasn’t dead, yet.

It was like an unexpected punch. No one was ready for a naked man running by them for what was, for many, the first class of the day. Especially not the girl in David’s nine fifteen class who recognized him. I don’t know how she knew and I don’t want to know. In class, she kept looking over at him in a fetching mixture of embarrassment, excitement, and pure lust. Every time she looked, David became more agitated and would whisper at me:

“She knows it’s me! She knows it’s me! Oh My God, she saw me naked and she wants me! She’s such a skinny little bitch. Gross! She had never paid attention to me until today when she saw my weenie. She stared at it when I ran by. Oh my God, she’s looking again!”

You would think David would have realized that when you run naked across campus in the broad daylight people are going to see your prurient parts and some are going to admire them.

Back at the dorm, two of our original three TKE’s were on the phone and they had a newbie who wanted in on the action. A time was set and a rendezvous was agreed on — the Mad Streaker was down for his first group run. Calls were made to all the Frat houses and to the local media.

In no time, there was a mob at the College Union.  David had either been canny enough or lucky enough to pick the day that our Illustrious President, Dr. S Walter Martin, was in Atlanta for meetings. The Dean of Students had to make a decision on his own authority: should he try and break up a mob or let it run its course?

He knew Dr. Martin would go for the National Guard, clubs, and tear gas. S Walter was a very conservative Methodist Minister who meant business. He would want the National Guard, the guys who did at Kent State what many a rural southerner had said should have been done all along: shoot down hippie protesters like rabid dogs. Which is why no major anti-war riots were never held in the Old Confederacy. Luckily, S Walter was not in town and no one had to die for T &A.

The Dean knew that infuriating a mob would be a PR disaster. The word went out to the Campus Cops to do crowd control, keep people from getting hurt, and let the naked people run.

I became the Press Officer for the Mad Streaker, an item I have always taken care to omit from my resume. There was a balcony on the College Union overlooking the street and it was loaded up with TV and Radio guys. My job was to watch for the Green Chevy Nova and warn them so they could go live on the radio and get those old 16mm film cameras up to speed.

In the interim, some people drove a car down the drive hanging their bottoms out of the windows. They got some polite applause, but really, American Graffiti, was so last year. Bunch of wimps.

Finally, the Nova hove into view. Four guys left the car and began their run into history. Really. The same picture of their bottoms has graced our local newspaper more than once and was picked up by the Associated Press. The shot was taken by Joey Ivansco who is now an award winning photographer for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. I wonder why he doesn’t feature it on his website so I could rip it off?

Instead, I have had to do manual labor and scan a copy of this shot from the staff photographer of the VSC Yearbook, The Pine Cone.  David is on the far left. No, I did not bother to crop out his butt:

One place the picture was not welcome was on the television in Dr. S Walter Martin’s Atlanta hotel room. The one he was staying in because someone had stolen his car and kept him from driving back to Valdosta that very day. Conspiracy theorists are welcome to make of this what they wish.

After the historic run, the phones heated up and a major streak was scheduled for Langdale Circle that night. The Dean called the Georgia State Patrol and had them seal off the campus to anyone not carrying a VSC Student or Faculty ID.  They had plenty of customers to turn away, too.

The night was a smashing success. People just ran naked wild and most of them didn’t even bother with masks. At one point, David and his henchmen ran through in a perfect single file line. The Mad Streaker still had his mask on, but now it looked silly and out of place.

Only one person was hurt and that was a girl who was  hypnotized by the metronomic swing of the pendulum that belonged to my frat brother “Horse Hung” Cooper. Maybe she assumed he would swerve at the last moment. Brother Cooper was half blinded by his mask, running hard, did not see her, and did not know what he had hit.

The collision cold cocked her. She awoke to find Brother Cooper bent over her apologizing while all her friends bent over to get a better look at Brother Cooper. In the picture nearby, she is holding her injured arm while waiting for the EMT’s to take her away. Notice the curlers on her room mate. I say they are curlers, but they are the size of beer cans.

The crowd began to peter out around midnight because there were classes the next day.

Dr S Walter Martin returned in a white heat and ordered security to catch a streaker and charge him with crimes.  Being unable to run down anyone, they got a faculty member who wasn’t even there to sign the charges against some guy who streaked a baseball game that Sunday. The kid’s dad was wealthy, the frame-up job was quickly unmasked by his lawyers, and VSC quietly paid them all off. No matter. The arrest cooled jets that were already cooling.

After one last hurrah in the next edition of the paper, the Delta Sigma Phi Book of Records was laid to rest, unpublished, and only exists in the microfiche stack of the Spectator holdings at the VSU library. One guy continued to dutifully call in his records including being the first streaker to make a pit stop at the library fountain. Whoopee.

David went on to become a Baptist Preacher as he was too young to be a political demagogue and lacked the army that was required to stage a Third World Coup. He not only denies ever having run naked, he has even been known to pretend he does not even know his own fraternity brothers.

Wimp!

Yes, I did streak. I was on crutches at the time from a basketball injury so I was too slow to outrun 50 year old cops. I hopped naked around the circle at Lowndes Hall the next day when there weren’t any cops to chase me and not too many people to watch should I fall over and hurt my ego. I managed, barely, to avoid clinching the record for being the first streaker to skin the knee of his middle leg.

David is not is real name, but he is a Baptist Minister, and he does shun people from his past to the point of pretending he’s never met them.

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This week also saw my winning the Caption Contest over at The Soccer Mom Files. My award is posted somewhere to the left for now.  My thanks to Colonel Ray Hammel for the inspiration.

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Tagged as: Human Comedy, Radio, Valdosta State College, Valdosta State University, VSC, VSU