STEVENSON HALL HHH HASH # 134 Date: July 5, 1987 Weather: torpid Set by: The Geezer Beer: Rolling Rock Runners: Quackenbush, MJ, III, Kaufman, Effross, Smith, Rookie: Gross "First to Cooler" Joe Burns, Gross/Smith Description, comments: The Few, The Strong, The Proud, The Stupid, The Gonzo, became The Tired, The Dirty, and, for some, The Lost. This Hash began in a squalid nest of condos along Meadow Road in West Windsor. The overconfident Kaufman led the veteran pack into a cornfield, while only MJ III had the wit to make for the the obvious road trail. While MJ overran a check, Kaufman led the remaining four through the thorn break onto the road, meeting MJ coming back. At last into the darkening overgrowth they ran, heading straight for the West Windsor Heart of Darkness. Cries of On Argggh! and Argggh On! along with less savory screams cut through the insect-laden air. Thorn and brush led to a sylvan creek in which the water tentatively trickeled through the tenuous tendrils of trembling trees, while deer and tortoise lapped lasciviously at the lanquid lakes of limpid liquid. No problem, it seemed to the pack--too wide to leap, but shallow, and what's a couple of wet feet on a day like this one? They didn't know. They simply didn't know. This was--dare I say it?...Can it be told? This was... I can't .... it's too horrible. It was... The... The Ditch...where... It's so obscene... It was....The Ditch where the Dinosaurs Died. In plunged MJ, followed by Smith. No sandy bottom here; no thin veneer of mud, but a bottom so foul as to defy the telling. A quicksand of slime, a cesspool of decomposing saurians into which poor Smith and Jones sank without a trace. Their last exhalations mingled with noxious methane as the ooze belched forth its loathsome gases. Somehow the luckless two were rescued, no one knows by whom. Perhaps one of the Great Lizards heaved them out of the horrible muck in a last convulsion. Kaufman, attempting to ease his bloated body along a fallen tree descended into the effluvium when the 8" log cracked under the strain. Luckily he was thrust out as a huge methane bubble burst beneath him. Effross, gathering dino bones as he went, scarcely noticed the reptilian necropolis as the Departed Dinos accepted him as one of their own, and granted him safe passage. Gross? He tunnelled through this barrier and passed unscathed to the further reaches of thorn forest. At last the rejuvenated Jones emerged into the light, skirted another cornfield and ran onto a check. With unerring instinct he ran directly for the first of a series of long false trails as the rest of the pack, cursing and gasping for air emerged from the rank forest. A sequence of EFM's now led the nearly desperate group back to the road, and a long straight heading for the train station. MJ,III, unaccountably took this moment to head in another direction and was a good bet to join the forever lost Joe Bernstein. Kaufman led the rest along an obvious false trail towards a set of leering statues, who broke into metallic jeers as the pathetic remnants of this once haughty pack ran out of marks. Gross, too much of a tyro to fall for any of the wiley Geezer's feints was far in the lead at this point, as the pack at last staggered across the bridge to the station. Along the platform they ran, terrifying mommies and their children and sending the feint hearted scrambling into the path of the 5:10 Trenton-New Brunswick Cannonball. Off the platform, through the tunnel, past the Dinky ran Effross, now crazed with pain and fatigue (but who could tell?). He missed the path by standing on the mark and sent the group off across the tarmac wastes of the Princeton Junction parking lots where they found Gross, wandering aimlessly in circles peering myopically at piles of sand. Quackenbush at last took the lead, spotted the Geezervan and, for reasons best known to him, ran directly away from it, leaving Gross and Smith to find the beer in the Good Friends parking lot. Rarely was Rolling Rock so appreciated as the survivors emptied bottle after frosty green bottle. A Black and White scattered the crowd, but he was only showing up for his weekly baksheesh, and was uninterested in the scruffy group. MJ was found at last, deeply in Rolling Rock debt, thrashing about in one of the parking lots, doing an excellent imitation of a lobotomized Stegosaurus. Next Hashes: #135, Sunday, July 12th, Stevenson 91, 4 PM. MJ, III sets. It is rumored that Ned Jaqqsin and Poison Evy will be there, tofu in hand. NOTE: The hash will be followed by a feed at the Geezers, so bring something to eat and be there!