Ted Amann '87
Primary tabs
- Alenka FigaAlenka: Go ahead.
- Ted AmannTed: My name is Ted Amann. I currently live in Portland, Oregon, and I’m a member of the Grinnell College class of 1987.
- Ted AmannTed: So, let's see... Some of my best memories of Grinnell... One of my best memories, it’s sort of a series of memories, but it’s sort of a bittersweet thing. I was the Student Colle- or, Student Government President my senior year, and had a blast doing it. It was not something I intended to do. My junior year, there was only one person who was running for President and he was sort of the... well-known as the most Republican, conservative person on campus and I thought, “There’s no way that we can just let him run unopposed." It was like, "There’s gotta be some choice here.” So I decided, "All right, I’m going to run." I’d never been involved in student government, just sort of did it on, spur of the moment thing, and ended up getting elected and had a great time.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: I mean I loved getting involved with the Student Government that year, and I think I did it ‘cause, I’m sort of a people-person. I loved getting to know different crowds on campus. Y’know, I had sort of my main crowd that I hung with, but... I was sort of part of the South Campus hippie crowd.Alenka: Alright.Ted: Yeah, alright, but I could go and hang out with the football players, or go up to.. y’know, Norris- back when we had Norris. It was North Campus- and hang out with the study nerds or y’know, whatever, and so, I think that was why I was able to sort of connect with a lot of people, and...
- Ted AmannTed: The downside was though, that I ended up having so much fun just being President and going to events and hanging out with people and also had a lot of time hanging on the Forum beach smoking pot and playing Frisbee, and it turned out that they also wanted me to still study.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: And so, I’d forgotten that part and so, unfortunately, I don’t know if it ever happened to anyone else, I had to resign after fall semester because of academic reasons. 'Cause my GPA had dropped so much that they put me on suspension, and there’s rules that Student Government President can’t be on academic- er, not suspension.... was a warning or…Alenka: Probation, or something like that?Ted: Yeah. Yeah, something like that.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: So I mean, they sort of put me on notice, like, "You gotta do better," so I came back and had to resign, which was not fun but it was so touching to be- I’d made, like, such a connection with the rest of the Student Government that the first meeting spring semester, when I had to officially resign and turn it over to the Vice President, then they made a motion and voted me King for Life-Alenka: Aw.Ted: -of the Student Government. So, I’ve always been amused by that. It's like..Alenka: So you’re still King.Ted: Yeah, apparently. Yeah. I’m not sure it’s ever been recorded anywhere until now, but now I’ve got it sort of, yeah, documented somewhere that I am still King for Life. I’ve, yeah, never claimed any privileges from that... but that was- those were good times.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: And then, so that was back when we still had Relays as, y'know, the massive beer party that the Grinnell Relays were. I don’t know how much you know.Alenka: It’s still…Ted: Is it still that? OK.Alenka: Yeah. It's-Ted: I’m never sure like, how many traditions have stuck around.Alenka: There’s a- beer garden and people run and eat pie and stuff.Ted: Uh-huh.Alenka: There was a big pie fight this year actually. The pictures are kind of bloody looking.Ted: Oh wow.Alenka: Yeah. The students who did looked really interesting.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: That’s great. They still do, ah, like the... drink a beer, run around the bases kind of thing?Alenka: I’ve actually never been to the Relays. I don’t know. I mean, it’s too early in the morning. I can’t do it.Ted: Oh, OK.Alenka: But probably.Ted: Yeah, that was a crazy one- er, you had to run around a baseball diamond and drink a beer at each base.Alenka: Oh?Ted: So over the course- basically chugging four beers and then come back and tag the next person. It was crazy days.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: But Titular Head back then was like a live talent show, so I’ve come to realize since then, I guess now it’s more of like a short film competition?Alenka: Mhm.Ted: But back then you’d have people do skits or perform music or, y’know, whatever they wanted to do. So, again being part of the hippie partying crowd, we ended up with... There’s a song… oh, back from late 60s. I’m forgetting the guy’s name. It was somebody’s name "And the Lower East Side" was the name of the group and they were like some New York group, and they had a song called “Marijuana,” which basically it was just sort of, chanting “Marijuana” over and over again.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: But, so we ended up doing a skit out of that, and.... which was basically a whole bunch of us dancing around on stage to the song and smoking pot on stage, and... But, they tied in the whole King thing. The people that were doing this got me up there, and so they found- we went into the theater department in the costumes and we found like a big purple, like, robe kinda like, king-like cape thing and they found me a crown, and so we ended up dancing around on stage with bongs and joints and stuff.Alenka: Wow, so you were a very certain kind of king.Ted: Yes.Alenka: That's good.Ted: That was part of my notoriety.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: But we actually ended up with two faculty members coming up on stage and joining us.Alenka: Did they smoke?Ted: Yes.Alenka: Oh, great! Can you name names? Who were they?Ted: Sure, they’re all moved on now.Alenka: Statute of limitations has gotta have passed.Ted: Yeah, so, Frank Goodkin, who was one of our psychology professors, so he came up and did a bong hit, and then, Bob- or somebody Jensen, who was a piano player, great jazz pianist, who was in the music department. They actually had a jazz trio back then, that used to play here.Alenka: There’s still a jazz band, I think.Ted: Is there?Alenka: Yeah, and there’s actually, Bob’s does jazz nights on Monday nights now.Ted: Oh, cool.Alenka: Yeah.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: Yeah, so they both came up and clearly we were the most popular act, in terms of like, you know, audience reaction, but we totally felt gypped because we ended up not winning. They gave the- well, we figured it was just politics, yeah, didn’t wanna celebrate too much. A whole bunch of people running around smoking pot but y’know that was certainly a big part of the campus life when I was here.Alenka: And that was not- there was no problem with you like, smoking pot on stage with professors? There was no, like-Ted: Nobody said anything to me afterwards, so... I mean, there must have been...
- Alenka Figa & Ted AmannAlenka: That would not happen today.Ted: No, a little too out there?Alenka: I mean, I assume you would get arrested, or something.Ted: Yeah, actually I heard there were arrests on campus...Alenka: This year.Ted: -this year.Alenka: There were. Yeah.Ted: Just crazy, I mean....Alenka: Yeah. There’s been a crackdown, which is... y'know.Ted: Yeah.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: I mean, our understanding when we were here was that you step foot off campus, anything you do in town, y'know-Alenka: Off this property.Ted: Yeah, but if you’re in the dorms, you know, if nobody’s getting hurt then anything’s OK.Alenka: Yeah, that’s new this year. I should not be on this tape, but I guess the idea is that if Security can smell it that gives them right to come into your room.Ted: Oh man, that’s lame.
- Ted AmannTed: No, it was wide out there in the 80s. I was here ’83 to ’87 and... y’know we would sit on the Forum beach, what we called- yeah, the patio is outside there, and people would just be sitting there in the afternoon smoking joints and y'know, while we're- we’d be playing ultimate Frisbee out on the lawn and y'know, smoking while we’re playing or hanging out.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: I mean it was- I’d see faculty members come in and out of the Forum and yeah, one of the professors we're in class with would stop and talk to us and it was just,not a big deal-Alenka: Oh.Ted: -which, yeah, I actually liked, you know? It's- I mean, not that I’m recommending that everybody smoke pot all day, but y’know, the fact that it was just not that big a deal, y'know. If you’re keeping up on your schoolwork, you’re not creating problems for people that- what you do with your time and how you enjoy it is, y'know, OK.Alenka: That's really cool.Ted: Yeah.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: One of the things that really attracted me to Grinnell when I was coming here, I remember interviewing and I think it was the Dean, who made a comment to me about one of the things you’ll find here is that we work hard and we play hard. And I thought, "I like that," ‘cause y'know, I definitely came here to learn and learned a ton. But I also like to have fun, and yeah, really felt like we had a good balance of that, that we could, y'know, work hard during the day and then at night and on the weekends we could be as crazy as we wanted to be.Alenka: That sounds pretty similar except for the smoking pot with your professors part, but... yeah.Ted: That’s good.Alenka: Yeah.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: Let’s see, what other questions do I wanna do? Actually it’s sort of a question, one of my favorite things was hanging out on the South Campus loggia. I’m assuming people hang out on the loggia roofs, still?Alenka: I lived on Main 2nd my first year. Yes, they do.Ted: Great. That was- I totally lucked out, my freshman year I ended up in a double on Loose 2.Alenka: Nice.Ted: And I had a loggia room as a freshman, and so just totally fell in love with that, you know? Any time the weather was nice we were just hanging out on the roof. That was like my favorite place to study, was just hanging out on the loggia. So, we’d take our books out there, and it was just a great place to catch some sun.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: Even in the winter time. I remember, it seemed like every year in February there was always one week where it warmed up and the sun came out. So even though it had been like bitterly cold, the sun would come out and it was nice the way the Loose loggia is where you got the flat part. Then, when it transitions to the sloped part, if you went right up against that wall of the flat part it created a windbreak.Alenka: Oh.Ted: So, if the sun was out you could actually hang out on the loggia in just, like a sweatshirt and be perfectly comfortable. And so, we always looked forward to whenever that- and it always happened sometime in February but we always knew there was going to be that one, you know, week where the sun comes out and then we would all get our loggia fix in ‘till the weather turned good in the spring.Alenka: Nice. I don’t think that happens anymore.Ted: No?Alenka: Climate change.Ted: Yeah, that’s true.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: You guys get bad winters here?Alenka: This last one was surprisingly mild but the year before we had our first snow day in a really long time.Ted: Yeah.Alenka: It was awful.Ted: Yeah, we had one day where they canceled classes. I forget what year it was but we had a pretty bad blizzard. I was living- oh it must’ve been ’84 - ’85 ‘cause it was the year I was living off campus and I remember the snow drifts sort of coming all the way up the front steps onto the porch. The morning we got up we couldn’t actually open the front door, we had to go around the back door and come out so we could clear the snow out so we could use the front door.Alenka: That’s what happened to the loggias. The snow was up to about, um… "chooof" on me.Ted: Wow.Alenka: Yeah.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: Yeah, I really learned about snow drifts coming to Iowa. I’d come from the East coast so I knew snow, but I had never really experienced the wind. Yeah.Alenka: It’s the worst.Ted: Yeah, I mean, it just starts at the Rockies and there’s just nothing to stop it. It just keeps whipping across the Midwest, I guess.Alenka: Mhm.Ted: I remember the wind chills just being awful here.Alenka: Yeah, that’s the same.Ted: And then before you know it, it would be hot and muggy in the spring.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: So yeah, loggia was one of my favorite places on campus. The Pub was really nice.Alenka: And that wasn’t the pub in the JRC now, right? It’s a different pub.Ted: Yeah, so, in Main, in the basement. So now it’s somebody’s…Alenka: Oh, it’s Bob’s café now.Ted: Yeah, so that was where the Pub was, and it was a time where drinking age had just gone up. The year I got here the drinking age was 19 in Iowa, and so, typically, most of the freshman couldn’t drink, but everyone else could. And then, that year they raised the drinking age to 21- or, no it was the next year they raised it but everyone got grandfathered in if you were already 19, and so I’d turned 19 in time to get grandfathered in. But, that’s why they could, you know, just do a pub like that on campus ‘cause three quarters of the campus was of legal age.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: So, yeah, that was great. At the end of the day, especially if you lived on South campus, you could just walk down there and, you know, it was really nice to just go down and have a beer. We had a tradition- if you remember, ever heard of the TV show Hill Street Blues? It was a really big, sort of police-procedural drama kind of show, but it was like this huge hit in the mid-80s, and so that was the tradition on- whatever night it was on, Thursday nights or something, was normally the Pub would open at 10 or 9 but this TV show was on an hour before the normal opening time, so on that one night they would open the Pub an hour early so that everyone could come down there and watch that TV show.Alenka: Cool.
- Ted AmannTed: They had a jukebox in there and all of us from the same era, we all sort of have this list of songs that we all think of as “Pub Songs,” ‘cause those are the ones that were on the jukebox. And, so it was actually great, last night in the... where were we, the Langan Lounge, somebody had a tape of all the songs that had been on the jukebox and so- was playing that, those good memories.
- Alenka Figa & Ted AmannAlenka: What are some of the songs?Ted: Oh boy, “ABC,” by the Jackson Five.Alenka: OK.Ted: “Tangled up in Blue,” Bob Dylan, “Brown-eyed Girl,” “Take me to the River,” so quite a mix of stuff. Some of it was not music that I necessarily would’ve listened to otherwise but it was just the- the environment, the setting all made it just, y'know, so much fun. It was just the- sort of the background to that part of our lives, ans so... And now, it's- like, I was never a big Jackson Five fan, but I hear that one song and it’s like, “Oh, yeah, I remember that.”
- Alenka Figa & Ted AmannAlenka: Did they have Alice in the 80s?Ted: Oh yes.Alenka: OK, cool.Ted: Do they still do that?Alenka: Yeah, it’s sort of like going back to the 80s, or the 60s.Ted: Yeah. Yeah, for us it was like going back to the 60s ‘cause, y’know, that’s- we had sort of the counter movement to the preppy movement of the late 70s, early 80s; that and the whole disco thing, which was… God.Alenka: Regrettable?Ted: Disco sucked. Ugh, it was awful, so...
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: But yeah, I was actually a big part of the Alice in Wonderland parties, ‘cause I was the- for a couple years I was the main supplier of psychedelic mushrooms on the campus.Alenka: Oh wow. OK.Ted: There was- actually several people remember this story and everyone has their own version of it, but the friend of mine who was sending me the mushrooms had FedExed them to me and we were expecting them to come Thursday or Friday, hadn’t come yet, and so then it’s Saturday morning and it’s Alice day. We’re like, “Where the heck’s this package?” And so, a whole bunch of people sort of spread out around campus looking for the FedEx truck and somebody spotted it and they were like, “Do you have a package for Ted Amann?” and the guy’s like, “Uh, yeah.” “Well, that’s me!” and grabbed the package, and so came running across campus with this big box over his head and he’s like, “Ted! Ted!” and came and found me, and...
- Alenka Figa & Ted AmannAlenka: I can’t believe you FedExed mushrooms.Ted: Yeah?Alenka: I don’t think you can do that anymore. Pretty sure that it wouldn’t fly.Ted: Yeah, I’m not quite sure how we got away with some of this stuff.Alenka: That's crazy.Ted: Yeah, you just stuffed it all into like, a Wheaties box or something like that.Alenka: OK, wow. I just- now it wouldn't be like that. Yeah. Sorry, I'm sorry. Back to you.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: So... yeah, so we ended up sort of quickly... let’s see, friends of mine were living in Cleveland, so it was just, you know, right inside from- ‘cause we always did Alice down on the…Alenka: Cleveland beach, yeah. It's still there.Ted: OK. So, yeah, we quickly went in there and started dividing it up, and everybody was high on mushrooms that year. That was… I think I got rid of- I think I sold about three quarters of a pound that day, which is amazing. I remember that night, walking across campus and there were still people just sort of hanging out on the lawn and just sort of wandering around, just tripping and having fun. It was... good time.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: What do they do at Alice now?Alenka: Uhm...Ted: Is it still hallucinogenic, or-?Alenka: I’ll tell you after when we're not recording.Ted: OK, that’s true. You’re still under the statute of limitations.Alenka: Or people I know.Ted: Right. Let's see... I guess that’s enough student life…
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: Favorite academic experiences. Got a couple; I loved some of my psychology classes.Alenka: Were you a Psychology major?Ted: Yeah, and there was one- y’know how every now and then the profs get to just sort of design a one-off course, something that’s not usually offered, but they just like, wanna teach something?Alenka: Yeah.Ted: And so one of the Cognitive Psych professors, Robert Kraft, who was also a huge Dead Head and I was a Dead Head- One of the things I loved about him; you’d go into his office and he had a framed picture of Jerry Garcia hanging behind his desk, so it’s like, “All right, I like this guy.”
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: Actually, I don’t know if you’re a Dead Head, or know any, but there’s a picture inside one of their live albums where it’s like a picture of the band on stage and you can see the backs of the heads of the audience members, and he was in the front row at this concert. And so he pointed out, it's like, y’know, “That’s the back of my head!” and he had like, sort of a, y'know, big bushy like, 70s afro thing kind of going.Alenka: So, this is Jerry Garcia was his name?Ted: So that was the lead guitarist in the Grateful Dead, but-Alenka: Oh, sorry. yeah.Ted: Bob Kraft was the- That's fine.Alenka: Bob Kraft?Ted: Yeah, Bob Kraft was the professor. I’m not sure whatever happened to him.Alenka: Yeah, I have friends who are really interested in that though. That's cool.Ted: Yeah.
- Ted AmannTed: But he designed this course on decision-making, and it was fascinating spending- a whole semester was looking at the, you know, sort of the cognitive science of how do people make decisions. I mean it looked at, how do people evaluate risk, how do people interpret odds, that kind of stuff, but it was just fascinating to me. And it’s actually served me really well since then because I sort of got this really good understanding early on about what that process is and how do you make rational decisions as opposed to just sort of gut, emotional decisions that aren’t always really the best ones. So, that’s served me very well in my career, since then.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: And the other class that really stood out for me was not something really connected to any work that I do or my major, but they did another one of these special courses where- it was actually several different professors got together and they did a course on nuclear weapons and arms control.Alenka: Oh wow.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: And so, it was the head of the Physics department, and he taught about, you know, the science of how nuclear weapons are made and how it works, you know, from a science point of view. The head of the History department, who talked about the historical aspects of how it came about and how it’s, you know, influenced history, and the head of the poly sci department talking about the whole political aspects of it, and it was just amazing. They would take turns sort of rotating and so, you know, each one of them, their sort of portion of the course had its own sort of arc but it was great ‘cause they were all intertwined and so each day we would go in and get another piece of it, and it was just fascinating.Alenka: That's awesome. There are still classes like that, with like, multiple professors teaching.Ted: Uh-huh.Alenka: That was really cool.
- Ted AmannTed: I love it when they do that ‘cause, yeah, it’s just such a great experience, 'cause I always had trouble choosing classes ‘cause there were so many things I wanted to learn about, and it never seemed like there was enough time to take them all, always a challenge trying to whittle them down. So, I loved that kind of thing where you could get a lot of, sort of, different pieces of y'know, learning about something all in one course.
- Ted AmannTed: But the other thing about that course which, I was actually just recently talking with some friends of mine back in Portland who are about ten years younger than me and didn’t realize how for them, nuclear war was just sort of like an abstract thing and never really worried about it. And I mean, I think for everyone since- I think we were probably the last generation that, we actually really worried about that.
- Ted AmannTed: I mean, it was something that, you know, you actually wondered like, especially because Reagan had recently been elected and it’s interesting how Reagan’s perceived now, but at the time he was like, this total war-monger. He was, y’know, saber-rattling and all this, y'know, hard-line stuff, and people say it, y'know, would’ve eventually broke down the Soviet Union, y'know, but...
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: I mean, he started this huge escalation on the arms race, which basically bankrupted the Soviet Union ‘cause they couldn’t keep up, but we were producing all sorts of new weapons and nuclear missiles, and we always wonder, like, what’s going to happen if somebody says the wrong thing, hits the wrong button? And it just hadn’t occurred to me that that wasn’t part of everyone’s childhood, that-Alenka: I mean, I can’t say it was part of mine.Ted: Yeah.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: There’s a movie. I think it’s called The Day After, that came out in-Alenka: Oh, that? I was gonna say-Ted: '84...Alenka: The Peter Sellers one? It's the one that pops into my head. Dr. Strangelove?Ted: Oh, Dr. Strangelove! Yeah, that was great. They would always show that every year.Alenka: Really?Ted: Yeah.Alenka: That's great.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: Actually, here- that’s another weird thing. Here in ARH, I guess where we are now, this used to be the campus theater.Alenka: Yeah a couple people have said that. Now our- the auditorium’s upstairs and Harr- there’s other stuff in the Harris Center.Ted: Yeah, so we had like this two-level one so, this would’ve been the main floor and then there was a balcony up above and the balcony was always where the partiers hung out. For some movies, like Animal House, people would take little quarter kegs up there, and lots of partying going on up there.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: But no, this movie The Day After was actually a movie about what would happen if there was a nuclear war, and y'know, missiles hitting Kansas, like it was set around Kansas City so like, not that far away, and I mean, really just made the whole thing very real. It was kind of a scary thing at times.Alenka: Geez.Ted: Yeah. So, I’m glad that kind of went away although now it seems like it’s a different version, but now people- I know there's fear about North Korea, Iran, places like that getting a lot of weapons. But, I see that as more of a danger of a regional thing. I mean, we don't really have this fear of, you know, 100 missiles flying in.Alenka: Hm. Interesting.Ted: Yeah.
- Alenka Figa & Ted AmannAlenka: You’re not obligated to answer all of the questions on there, by any means.Ted: Yeah, that’s fine. I remember a couple of them like, caught my eye when I was looking at things earlier and now I’m trying to remember which ones they were.... One of the things I was talking with somebody earlier today about, and I think it’s changed over time, is the type of people getting admitted to the College, 'cause I think as the College has gotten more popular and well-known, the standards keep going up-Alenka: Yeah.Ted: And one of the things that a lot of us really liked was it seemed that they took chances on people that.. you know, like, someone like me, I did not have a 4.0 GPA. I had good test scores, but y'know, a lot of it was the admission interview, the type of person you were, how well you were going to be, you know, part of the Grinnell culture, how well they thought you were gonna carry on that tradition after you left college, and it wasn’t just, you know, bringing in the highest academic achievers.
- Ted Amann & Alenka FigaTed: And I think it added a real rich sort of diversity to the campus, because you had a lot of different, you know, sort of perspectives and personality types, and so.. I don’t know to what extent that’s changed, but I hear it’s much more- sort of higher levels of academic achievement to get in.Alenka: Yeah, it’s hard to say, especially because I think enrollment has been up a lot, so I think even in my four years here- Like, I’m not sure if I applied now instead of applying four years ago, if I would’ve gotten in.Ted: Yeah. I don’t know. A lot of my classmates say that, so... I don’t know how much is reality and how much is, as we look back we think, “Oh, they wouldn’t have taken us.” And it makes me wonder if they really would’ve or not.Alenka: Yeah. Too late.Ted: Yeah, exactly. Well, I think we’ve done a decent job of carrying on the traditions.Alenka: Mhm. That's good. Well, yeah, thank you.Ted: Yeah.
Alumni oral history interview with Ted Amann '87. Recorded June 2, 2012.