Memoirs of a Visual Man
(continued)
By R.S. Lindsay

IT'S NOT JUST A JOB…IT'S AN ADVENTURE

I quickly learned that anything could happen on this job, and usually did. One day, I was assigned to show three ten-minute films to a lecture class in 112 Moore. I came to this assignment with a cart loaded down with a projector, three films, speakers, take-up reels, patch cords, and extension cords, only to find myself standing alone in an empty classroom. I was afraid that I had been sent to the wrong classroom, so I found a phone and called Dan Schneider at the Audio-Visual offices to ask why the class hadn't shown up. He explained that the instructor who had ordered the film had probably cancelled the class and forgotten to notify the A/V department about it. He told me to put the films and equipment back in the Moore A/V cabinet, and not to worry about the work time. I would be paid an hour's wages for showing up at the class, even if I was the only person who showed up. This type of incident was to repeat itself no less than 16 times in my career as an A/V Student Operator.

As time went by, I became convinced that there was some mad practical joker on the University Park campus whose hobby was to phone the A/V offices and schedule prank assignments. I delivered a TV/VCR unit to 312 Sackett Building one afternoon, only to find that 312 Sackett was a telephone-booth-sized office. The professor inhabiting the office had not ordered a TV/VCR unit, and became understandably agitated when I suddenly shoved it through the door, forcing him to dive out the window to escape being crushed to death against his bookshelves. A few weeks later, I was assigned to show a film in 17 South Henderson Building--which turned out to be address for the janitor's closet. I called Dan to report this mistake. He told me to put the projector away, take an aspirin, and try to forget the whole thing.

Another day, I was assigned to show a film on fossil excavation in Room 006 Carpenter Building. When I arrived at Room 006, located in the basement of the building, I opened the door to find the room occupied by a huge mound of dirt. I later learned that when Carpenter was built, the University planned to put a classroom in Room 006, but construction funds ran out before this could be done. The giant mound of dirt that resided in Room 006 was the remnants of the hill on which Carpenter was built.

POULTRY SCI

Much later, I showed a film entitled "Egg Production and Ways To Increase It" in the Pennsylvania State University chicken coops. The coops are housed in a long, concrete barrack on the east side of the campus, near the agricultural research farms. My audience for the film was a Masters-level poultry research class, whose purpose was to monitor the health and behavior of the chickens in the coop, and to write a thesis based on their observations. Showing this film presented a logistical problem for me, since the class didn't meet in a regular classroom, but divided the class time between the chicken coops and meeting with their professor in his office. There was almost no place for me to show the film.

In the end, I had to set up a portable projection screen in the center aisle between the chicken coops. I covered the windows with cardboard (there were no curtains or shades) to achieve the necessary level of darkness for the film, and plugged in the projector using a chain of six extension cords that stretched down to the far end of the coops, out the door, and around the corner to the one available electrical outlet on the outside wall of the barracks. My audience for the film consisted of 12 agricultural science majors, huddled around the projector cart on folding chairs, and about 200 white, black, and red chickens, all watching from their nesting boxes, which were stacked against the walls on either side of the coop. Standing there on a white-splotched concrete floor, breathing in the odor of wet feathers and chicken droppings, I was strongly tempted to ask the chickens for a few samples of their offspring, which I might take back to the A/V office and chuck at the supervisors who had assigned me this job.

The Poultry Science students seemed bored by the movie about egg production. The chickens, on the other hand, were perfectly enthralled by it. Several times during the film, actual chickens appeared on the projection screen, delivering loud, chattering oratories in their native tongue. When this happened, their sisters, seated in their nest boxes on either side of me, cackled and cheered like partisans at a political rally, slapping their wings until a blizzard of feathers drifted across the projection light. Twice during the 20-minute film, I turned up the projector volume in an attempt to drown them out. But the cacophony of the film's narration only egged them on. Not knowing what sort of revolutionary propaganda the chickens in the movie were delivering to their peers ("Chickens of the world--UNITE!"), the human audience began to fear for its safety, and the professor later told me he’d even considered calling the riot police to quell the quarrelsome quail. Fortunately, the movie ended before a "coop d'état" could commence, and the boisterous quibble of clucks quickly subsided. When the film was over, I rewound the film and returned it to the professor, packed up the projector post haste, and swiftly and subtly flew the coop myself.

NO REST IN THE RESTROOMS

The ultimate in this series of crank assignments came one fine October day, when I was assigned to show a film in Patterson Building. I arrived at the appointed room, Room 128, and found the word "MEN" written on the door in big blue letters.

Obviously, there was some mistake here. Surely, they didn't expect me to show a film in the Mens' Room! I quickly found a phone and called the A/V office. A voice I didn't recognize answered the call.

"Is Jim there?" I asked.

"No, he's out right now."

"What about Dan? Is he in?"

"No, he's out, too."

I explained the situation. The man on the other end put me on hold. When he came back to the phone, he told me that he had checked the daily schedule and, yes, according to the computer, I was scheduled to show a film in the Men's Room in Patterson. And if the computer had it down, he said, it must be correct.

"Are you crazy?" I almost shouted. "Who's going to show up to see a film in the Men's Restroom?!"

"Go show the film and quit asking all these stupid questions!" barked the voice on the other end.

So I returned to the Men’s Restroom. Five minutes later, I had set up the projector and was showing "The Cave People of the Philippines" on the blank wall opposite the toilet stalls. I waited for an audience to arrive. Occasionally, someone--usually a fellow student--would come in, and come to a sudden halt when they saw me standing next to the running movie projector. In the silence that followed, I would turn and ask them the same question each time: "Problem?"

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