Cold. Rainy. Dreary. It’s a Friday afternoon in early March of 1965. Several of us were sitting around in Naifeh House of the Cross Center dormitories at OU playing penny ante poker and shooting the bull…bored. None of us were over 19, but all of us wanted to drink beer. That's just a natural male drive at that age. Oh, we had enough money; but no one knew anyone who would buy it for us. Dean just sat on one of the two beds in the room, thinking. Suddenly, he spoke. “Who wants beer? Who will help me get some beer? I have a plan.” We gathered around and listened. Three of us were “game”, even though it required some shoplifting. That doesn’t seem quite like robbery when you’re young. Dean disappeared for about twenty minutes. When he returned, he was smiling…sort of an evil smile…and said, “Put on your bulkiest coat or jacket and let’s go.” The three of us who had agreed to help complied quickly. Now, it had become a mission.
None of us were aware that Dean had gone to “acquire some insurance” during that twenty minutes he was away. You see, Dean drove a 1956 Ford Crown Victoria with a glass roof, salmon and white in color. Oh, the body style was common enough, as was the color combination; but the glass roof made it a very rare, very special and easy to identify....but only if you were up close. Strangely enough, one of the brothers of the local fraternity chapter of Kappa Alpha also had such a car; but it did not have the glass roof. Otherwise, it was visually identical. Unbeknownst to us, Dean had gone to the Kappa Alpha parking lot and stolen his license plate.
The four of us arrived at the Safeway on Main St. in Norman. We were all nervous as hell. Dean was not going to ask us to do anything he would not do. He went in and came back in just a bit with 3 quarts of beer and two 16 ounce cans hidden in his coat. He looked a little tense, but relieved. Then, he told the three of us to go in one at a time and, as discreetly as possible, load up our coats with any beer that would fit. He instructed us to go to the beer area at different times and to leave immediately when each coat was full. He told us to be casual about our departure, not to hurry and not to draw any attention to ourselves. Skip Holt was quite courageous and opted to go first. He had large inside pockets and grabbed four quarts. His exit was smooth and went unnoticed. Tony Ford, pumped by Skip's success, gathered his nerve and entered the store. He managed, incredibly, to get nine more 16 ounce canned beers stashed in his sleeves and pockets. He moved a little too quickly on the way out and, looking a little “lumpy”, may have unknowingly alerted a clerk. My nerves were on edge as I approached the beer section; but I stayed the course, unobtrusively grabbing another 4 quarts and two 16 ounce cans., As I was approaching the door, a clerk yelled, “Hey, you!” I moved quickly to the waiting car. We were driving away.
We saw the clerk writing down the tag number. Dean had counted on that; and he wasn’t driving straight back to the dorm. Instead, he quickly drove to the Kappa Alpha fraternity house. He was quite efficient as he performed his task in the rain, removing the “borrowed” license plate from his car and replacing it on its proper assignee, its cosmetic twin. He also reinstalled his license plate. We were all agog with the wisdom of his plan and the efficiency of execution.
We returned to the dorm and got drunk as hell on stolen beer, still marveling at the plan, We shared with the others from any floor of the dorm, reaping the glories of peer admiration. We all agreed Dean was a devious bastard who had a bright future. Yes, we wondered what happened to the poor fellow at the Kappa Alpha house. In retrospect, he may have been thrown out of school for shoplifting, then drafted, only to die in the “green gardens of the East.” Gosh, I hope not. Surely he had witnesses, corroborators of his innocence; but I’m pretty sure Dean had not thought that far ahead. The rest of us certainly didn’t. We were too busy patting ourselves on our backs for having the “nads” to steal beer in broad daylight. Henceforth, we dubbed our intramural teams as the “Naifeh Nads.” GO NADS!
Wonder what happened to Dean? I’ve always thought he had a gift, a gift that allowed him to escape the draft and go on to a successful life. None of could have planned that caper so well. Guess I’ll never know.
Wonder what happened to that Kappa?
Good beer.