Strips 38-42 of the popular comic strip Molarity, which previewed in The Observer in 1977.
38 I had conceived Chuck as a typical campus radical who was a decade late. During that period the USA was not involved in any wars — except the War against Disco. (I lost many friends to that one. You think you know a guy and then one night you see him in a white suit.) The rear sports page of The Observer featured an article on Notre Dame’s Cotton Bowl check setting a record of $1,008,371.92.
39 The cover of the April 18, 1978, Observer featured Holy Cross residents (there was a dorm along the road to St. Mary’s) throwing a few guys into the lake to test the water temperature. The sports headlines included the start of the Bookstore Basketball Tournament.
40 At the current location of Domehenge there was in the 1970s the old Fieldhouse. It was the basketball arena until the JACC (then simply called the ACC) was opened in 1968. It was a yellow brick building with long span bow trusses and quite unique. But the Administration had a plan to knock it down and so stopped doing any maintenance on it. They also put the art class studios in the building — the first step to condemnation.
41 The above-the-banner headline on The Observer: “Seven Students Arrested For Party.” The off-campus students were charging admission to a party, effectively selling beer though they claimed they were selling cups. The sports headline was “TILCS Survive near Bookstore Upset.” In the 40-degree weather “P.F. and the Flyers” ran up 18 points but lost when TILCS Dave Batton and Joe Montana turned on the offense and defense.
42 This was an era before cell phones and social media, so the endless pieces of paper on bulletin boards were the primary means of publicity. That and The Observer advertisements and classifieds. I hope I don’t need to explain what a happy hour is. Kubiak’s was a bar, but you figured that out.
See the first five classic strips. Check back monthly for more classic Molarity strips. Molarity Redux, the updated, continuing adventures of Jim Mole and friends, also is posted monthly. For those new strips, check out the cartoon archives.