• The roadtrip to Newport to see the Tall Ships.
• Bloody Marys and the NYT crossword on Sunday mornings in the lab.
• Tom Schopf diving flat out on the beach to come up with some instant Ensis sushi.
• Cucumber and cream cheese on Portuguese bread.
• Being crazy enough to go up to Nobska Light in the middle of Hurricane Belle.
• Waking up and finding the Calypso in the harbor, and then Cousteau and the crew at the Leeside.
• Leslie and I sharpening Lucite rods with an electric pencil sharpener to grind up yet more critters
• Driving all around the Cape trying to catch as many towns’ fireworks displays as possible
• The Physiology people carrying wriggling sharks up the rear stairwell to their lab
• Mike Greenberg’s great stories, cigars and hats
• Elaine and I getting used to that little ripple of electricity between the sea tables and the Grass polygraph.
• Working late, late, late in the lab, crashing for a couple of hours, and dragging out for lectures
• New York egg crèmes at Mikes in Falmouth
• Being a bit awed listening to Tom Schopf and Steve Gould arguing with E.O. Wilson in the lab next to Tom’s.
• The great slabs of fresh-baked bread and hunks of cheese in the church basement “soup kitchen”
• Norman going fishing and then coming back and making us sushi in the lab
• Wendy’s sarcastically insightful comments on our fieldtrip reports
• Dick’s bibulously sonorous renditions of Wild Colonial Boy or Have Some Madeira My Dear
• Narragansetts at Cap’n Kidd’s, Black Russians at the Landfall, and whatever at the Leeside
• Lobster bakes on the beach
• Getting up early, grabbing some coffee, and sitting on the dock next to the Coast Guard building, and watching the fog start to clear over Buzzard’s Bay

The first really interesting, exciting, and demanding work I had ever done was under the guidance of Tom Schopf and Brian Bayne. It seems that, over the years, whatever I’ve been teaching – Zoology, Physiology, Animal Behavior – I always wind up using some example, describing some activity, or just relating some anecdote from that summer.

I kept in touch with Tom Schopf for a few years, mostly just holiday greetings, one of which I particularly remember. It was of a very seasonally-appropriate, ivy covered, red-brick wall, with a brass plaque. It was so sardonically like Tom that the plaque – which I imagined expressed some holiday message – was at the University of Chicago and commemorated the first sustainable nuclear chain reaction. I still have, and on rare occasions even wear, my BD, DH and H teeshirt.

Sometimes, when I’m feeling particularly nostalgic, I reread Lewis Thomas’s essay on the MBL beach from The Lives of a Cell, and think how accurately he captured the spirit of the place.