Burton 3rd, home of the BTB & DTYD

floor fiction, MIT's Burton 3rd Bombers anonymous memories page

We are planning a reunion next year April 12-15, 2024, e-mail me at RSBeatty@gmail.com

The new site IS https://sites.google.com/view/burton3rdbombers.  

MIT Burton House 3rd floor, Burton Third Bombers (BTB) floor fiction.

Ron Beatty hereby annnounces his candidacy for the first (unofficial) Burton 3rd position of floor fictician for the years before 1970, (Burton in Exile at Hamilton House in Boston's Back Bay).

Please spread the word by telling any MIT BTB alumnus about this site and/or sending any e-address (or phone #) of any such alumnus to me. (Anyone resident on the floor any major part of a semester is considered an alumnus for this purpose.)

The first order of business is for Y'all to send me your stories and memories from our years on Burton Third.

And, yes, it would help if the long-winded among us provided an example (but I'm up to my ass in activities already). [The current residents have just sent me the older "histories" that Wisch and I wrote for DTYD XXV ... but I need to edit out incriminating names.]

If you would like to contact anyone who has sent me information, tell me to send your e-address to him. I cannot in good conscience give you his e-address.

These policies are intended to protect privacy and reputation ... while encouraging people to tell the most outrageous (but true) stories.

The best, quickest deal is for you to send me any or all of the following ...

1. the URL of your personal web site that you would like me to add here ... along with the verbage or icon to display. It would be appreciated if you linked to this site from yours. (I've heard that Google counts links while ranking it's results.)

2. permission (or NOT) to list your name and/or e-mail address on this page,

3. any story or escapade or memory that you'd like to see on this site. I reserve the editor's right to mess with the text to "improve" it, but promise to work out an agreeable compromise before posting the story to the site.

4. any story, escapade, memory that you want to share "privately" with me but not publicly over the web. (These too may "need" to be remembered and "shared." Be sure to tell me if I can share them with others members of the floor/class.)

Here is a map of the floor as best I can figure it out at the moment. I've been given improved details for the fire stairwell between 339 and 340, for the 40s end suite, and for the tutor's room/359 triple. More improvements & corrections are enthusiastically welcomed.

I'd really love to have an authentic map, but haven't delved into the archives yet.

If anyone wrote their room number into their books, that would be a big help in mapping the floor.

Next project is to add names per year to create 10 maps showing the occupancy of the residents of Burton Third from 1962 to 1970 (OK, eight). We have a 215+ name list of people and are collecting contact information from the "infinite connection." Gosh, I wonder if I can talk to Bos through that one.

Unfortunately those maps won't appear here (see caveat 1 above), but I believe that can e-mail (or mail) copies to any former resident.

If you'd like to see that list of names of former residents, I can e-mail it to any former resident. Any corrections or additions will be welcomed.

Since beginning this, one person informed me that he has the 1969 hall picture board with pictures, and another has a 1969 student directory which he will lend me. Thanks guys for helping.

Besides old stories, one correspondant suggested he would like to know "whatever happened to ... and how did you get to your current situation."

As a first step in that direction, here are links to web sites that Burton Third alumni have told me to post here (only mine at the moment):

Ron Beatty '69 (18) (graduated 1970)

I've been cautioned that web bots are scouring for e-addresses, so have cut them apart to thwart those pesky bots.

Hans Polzer has OKed placing his e-address here: hans.w.polzer is available @lmco.com

Paul Green gave me the caution and his e-address: paul_green at alum.mit.edu

There is room here for several more.

One day the current residents of Burton Third will again post a site that the public can visit. When they do, I will add a link to it here.

Originally I started asking about a Burton Third web site maintenance in order to find a place to create a memorial for my good buddy, Penn Clower who died last fall, Sept. 2003. Penn was pretty special, even among MIT people. His mastodon tooth, steam engine models, solar horse trough, reclaimed metal lathe, leaf pick-up strategy, and work testify to a uniquely inventive, resourceful, and energetic personality. I'll miss him a lot.

Unfortunately my web space is nearly full with genealogy stuffs, so I don't have room for pictures. Regardless, I think I'll route all first time visiters through a "memorial hall" on the way to the stories.

For now, this is one file, so I'll be also memorializing Peter Bos who died in the Mojave of a bad trip about 1969. Remember how he could "snap" a bottlecap the length of the hall ... and how it would issue an alarming WHIZZ as it flew by after 20 feet? He was the quintesciential bridge & computer hacker, and a mild, considerate, pleasant person (except when irritated and vocal).

Vern Rusk died before graduation.

Bill Patterson died before 1995. He always seemed so happy go lucky to me.

How many of the following can you identify?

The Double was great, what you show as a "closet" between that and 340 was actually a back door to a fire stair and a connection into 340, so we both kept the back doors open and formed a mini-suite with a refrigerator in the connecting passage, and a fast exit into the front court and out to the river.

He was the guy who sent his laundry home to his mom in Brooklyn until someone enclosed a playboy centerfold in the package. The next week I remember him coming back from the coop and smugly displaying a term's supply of socks and underwear.

Do you remember the Japanese student who put up all or most of the money for Tuna's hair shaving after his famous statement, "I'll do it for forty!"

Somewhere I have a photo of the dragon that Scott and Joan painted on our wall that year that earned her her nickname.

Do you remember anyone clambering around on the exterior walls of Baker House, three or four flights up?

Remember a handstand athlete who could walk to the elevators on his hands? or another who could do handstand pushups?

Anyone remember the two freshmen who would wrestle in the halls for hours? Didn't they ever get tired?

Do you remember which freshman class won the glove fight (when it really was a fight) - or which freshman excaped freshman shower night for several weeks?

What did you do during the Great Northeastern Blackout? I played GO under the emergency lights.

I'm told that there was a "Screaming Tools" campaign to elect one favorite Burton Third resident to Dorm president.

Anyone remember the icicle, grown from a resident's windowsill one winter by judicous application of water, which the campus fuzz asked him to remove after it had grown dangerously tall?

Remember who was heard to be giving away all his money on a street corner?

Anyone remember who sang "Yesterday" at 7 every morning on his way to the shower, obnoxiously loud and horribly out of tune?

Do you remember the roommates in a front double who flew the Israeli and Union Jack flags above the main entrance to Burton House?

How many of you can remember the two birthdays (and snowstorm) that resulted in the first DTYD party?

Whose car appeared in the Burton lobby one evening while he napped? The same person once pulled to the side of the road at exactly 5000 miles to rotate tires. Continuing, the same person aligned the bodywork screw heads to minimize aerodynamic drag.

Who had to see a magistrate at 2am for exceeding the allowable roadway width & thereafter had to cancel the ski trip? Extra points for which town & which car.

Whose brother Gill left two coop Crates? Hint More & More.

The first reported "unsanctioned activity": a dim memory of Mike swinging on a rope past the end-corridor window, and the development of Hall Bowling in '63, using a heavy metal gear to roll down the length of Burton 3 and smash into the end radiator, the goal being to send off sparks = strike.

Anyone remember who got censured by the campus police for lurking in the parking lot with a bow & arrow prepared to deal direct justice to car thieves?

Do you remember the spotlight shooting? ... or worse the cannon that hit a school three miles away?

In our freshman year, we accidently shot the Brookwater school in Framingham with a makeshift cannon!

Does anyone have an elephant in captivity, or a picture of one? Personally I doubt that even one elephant survived although I know the proud owner of several indestructible green-topped bookcases.

I bet no more than five people know where to find one of the original big black Burton lounge chairs (not quite in pristine condition since it has seen daily use since 1970). 

Click here to return to Ron Beatty's home page, 

The following links are of personal interest:

Eve's Garden Organic Bed and Breakfast, a wonderful, eclectic, artistic papercrete alternative living learning mecca in Marathon, Texas

Rambo family genealogy,  Bankston & Bankson family genealogy,  the Camblin family genealogy,  the Dorsey Overturff family,  cousin Jean's Schenck and Hageman genealogy, and 

Eric's RPM coins.