Steel Chains

I wanted to be in a fraternity since I was a kid. There was something valiant about being initiated into a club, and I wanted to experience this right of passage. By 1991, hazing had become a catch phrase for something that was looked on with the same regard as prisoner of war torture, so fraternal initiations had gone underground. My search for a school that still had groups performing these tests of loyalty began early in my senior year of high school. On one campus visit, I asked the tour guide about their Greek organization.

It went like that for a while until I visited a perfect old school hidden in the hills of North Georgia. After asking around, I found that they did have fraternities and that they did haze, just not openly. I enrolled and started my journey at the mountain college in 1991. This new world had everything I had hoped for. The students were genuine, bright, and knew how to party. My first few months were spent being rushed by members of different Greeks. One group offered the companionship of southern gentlemen that enjoyed hunting, trucks, and camouflage (translation: the rednecks). Another supplied the dope. This fraternity managed to run a business supplying the weed and other mind altering experiences for the campus. There was another tight group of about four guys that loved Led Zeppelin and the pot provided by the drug business fraternity. These did not fit me, but one did. Upsilon Delta Sigma was the strongest group of souls on the small campus of 500. The Sigs were athletic, intelligent, and cocky; everything I wanted. They took to me and I took to them. By the fall I was drinking with the brothers and hearing their stories of sexual and physical conquest. The momento de verdad came in October 1991 at the fall toga party which was the event of the year. I had never seen so many kegs, so many trash cans of hunch punch, so many girls going wild, and so much brotherhood. The party consisted of dancing, hanging from the ceiling, togas made from school supplied bed sheets, and finally a gathering of the brothers. The Sigs grabbed my heart when they slowed the party down, gathered in a circle, put their arms around each other, and sang together.

“We will all go down together.” The words to the Billy Joel song echoed as the crowd went silent. Then they went into the cheer. “Who is number one?” yelled the pledge trainer. They all answered with excitement and commitment reserved for an army prepared for war. I knew right then that I wanted to become one of them. I wanted a team that I could back up and one that would do the same for me. I wanted to contribute to the success of something bigger than myself. I wanted to be a Sig.

The school had a policy on waiting until your second quarter to join a Greek, so I could not pledge until winter of 1992. On a cold night in January as the wind howled from off of the Double Knob Mountain, I waited anxiously for a knock. Finally it came and several brothers from Upsilon Delta Sigma fraternity presented me with a bid to join them. I accepted and my journey soon began.

There were ten freshmen in my pledge class. I knew most of them, but there were a few unknown to me that I soon would build a bond with that would last a lifetime. We met and began to organize. We had to act as a team and work together on everything from surviving pledge period to doing well on exams. My roommate Tony was in my pledge class. Tony was super funny and the type of person that everyone liked. We selected him to be our pledge class president. He would act as the go between for us and the big brothers. After we were organized we each had to select a big brother. Your big brother was the person that would ensure that you did everything correct, stayed out of trouble, and learned what you needed to learn to pass the weekly written fraternity history and fact tests. He was the one that encouraged you and kept you motivated when the pressure seemed to be too much. Your big brother had to be a sophomore and in a two year college that meant he possessed all the knowledge needed to be successful. I chose Pugsley as my big brother. When he was a freshman he weighed well over 300 pounds, but during that year he managed to slim down to a very healthy size. The nickname Pugsley was a compliment, and it was a name he carried with him proudly. In fact, few really knew his real name.

Before our first night we each had to go to a local hardware store and pick up a heavy steel chain with twenty links. During pledge activities, the chain would be wrapped around the right hand forming an X over the top. At one time each link represented a different brother in your pledge class and every time a pledge dropped out a link would be cut from each of the remaining pledges’ chains. A couple of years before they lost so many pledges that the chain became to short to wrap properly, so the chain was then set to twenty links since that was the best length for a tight hold.

The first night we met in the pledge trainer’s dorm room. Leland was without a doubt the meanest and toughest man I had ever seen. Only a year older his eyes had the look of a seasoned old drill sergeant. He carried around a two and a half foot paddle in one hand. In his other hand was a beer bottle and around his neck was a large ten foot chain comprised of links even heavier than the ones we had recently purchased.

Leland made commands to some of the other big brothers who immediately went into action. The plan was for a different big brother to take two to three of the pledges with them on the long trip from campus to a pre designated location. From there we would change into old clothes and leave together for the last leg of the trip in the back of an old Ford pickup truck. Pugsley took a couple of us to the meeting location in a parking lot of an empty fairground. As I changed, I shook from the cold, nerves, or a combination of the two. We all loaded into the truck, placed our blindfolds over our faces, and laid down for the trip. Eventually we found ourselves deep in the Appalachian Mountains. The air was frigid cold and an icy mist was falling. The blindfolds kept us from knowing where we were, but I don’t think that we would have known even without them. Eventually the truck stopped and the sounds of the big brothers became louder as they approached the truck. Through my blindfold I could tell a large fire was burning. A few feet behind that was the sound of a rushing stream.

The night had begun. My adrenaline was pumping, and I was ready to meet the challenge only a select few in history had faced. This was my moment. “Out of the truck, take off your blindfolds and rack ‘em in, get out of the damn truck. I aint got all night.” Leland was pacing back and forth yelling the commands. “Line up in alphabetical order, in two groups of five, facing each other; do it now. Don’t make me do it for ya. I suck at spelling.”

We lined up in something that resembled alphabetical order, but later I realized that our “spelling” skills were a little off too. On one side of me was my trusty friend Dawg, and to the other was Tommy; across from me was Tim. Dawg on my left was hard core and tough as nails. The big brothers loved his endurance and rock solid demeanor. Tommy to my right was another story. Tommy was a drama queen; he was flamboyant, overdramatic, and attracted negative attention from the big brothers who wanted to keep the Sigs pure and strong. He would have to prove himself more than the rest through extra pushups, sit ups, running, and other tests. This was a problem for me, because pledge period was not only designed to eliminate the weak, but also designed to build bonds with your pledge brothers. This meant that for every push up and sit up that Tommy could not complete, I endured two to make up weakness.

That first night started with Leland explaining what the fraternity meant to him, and to the brothers that had come before him. He made it clear that we were being invited to be a part of a hundred year old tradition, but it was not going to come easy. We had to prove ourselves physically and mentally. Leland leaned on the oak paddle as he slowly walked back and forth between the two rows. We looked straight ahead, but could still see each other. All of our senses were peaked. He began the physical training that would dominate the nightly sessions. We went from attention to push up position and pushed away while chanting the names of the founding brothers, dates, and other important facts. We went to our back and did sit ups, straining our guts and our minds while often forgetting the answers to questions. We crawled through the freezing stream while holding the chains tightly to keep the big brothers from stealing them from us – a game that would continue for the duration of pledge period. The night ended in a run up the mountain. The cold air burned my lungs while the acids filled the muscles in my legs. Soon we were back on the truck and then again at the parking lot of the fairgrounds. I changed and Pugsley asked me what I thought as we drove back to campus.

At 1:00 AM I crawled into bed bruised, sore, and exhausted. That night I had dreams of the darkness and the tall trees, the mountain mist and the mud, the sounds of the stream mixed with the war chants and songs of the big brothers. I had dreams of the fire reflecting on Tim’s face across from me, and the sound of my chain slamming into the earth each time I dropped to push up position. I slept hard that cold night, and I slept proud.