My Feynman story

In my recollection of pleasant memories at Cal Tech below, I forgot to tell my Richard Feynman story. It's fall, 1957. I'm a freshman. I'm well aware of Feynman and all the other Nobel-winning scientists on the faculty, all of them very accessible to freshmen (!).

One day I enter the men's room, enter a stall, and sit down to do my business. After a moment someone in the stall next to me starts banging on the partition between us! I mean, banging big time, as if it were a drum. Or, as it turns out, a set of bongos. I finished as fast as I could and got the hell out of the stall, as the banging continued.

An upper classman at the wash basin was laughing at me. I must have looked a fright. "I see you met Feynman," he said.

Physics and bongos

Playing bongos, it turned out, was one of Feynman's great passions and he put in a little practice whenever he could, even on the partition of a bathroom stall.