Oh, dear, the Colonial Club gave Ted Cruz a cold shoulder!

thetab.com/us/princeton/2015/10/19/cruz-is-colonial-92-so-we-asked-members-what-they-think-about-him-375

What… you haven’t heard my story about the time that Debi, Hilary, Cecilia and I headed over to Princeton for a Colonial Club party? All  because Cecilia told us her new boyfriend looked exactly like James Taylor and she had promised to invite her Bryn Mawr pals to add to the fun!

I can’t remember how we got there.  I do remember  it was a Friday night in Spring, 1972 — weeks after getting a written warning for hitchhiking to the campus, where I had tackled some dusty volumes at their wonderful library. (Yes, I used to hitchhike back in the early 70’s, a few years before my pre-frontal cortex came of age.)  Hmm …1972 — that makes it exactly 20 years before Colonial Club resident Ted Cruz graduated from Princeton.

So then, sophomore year I was 19, and Debi and I thought it would be fun if we all wore the same Indian batiked mini-dresses.  Mine was a splashy medley of oranges and deep reds. Hilary’s was identical but in blues I think … and I can’t remember who wore the purple one and what the fourth looked like.

We probably took the Paoli local to 30th St and then a train to Princeton Junction, where Cecilia’s boyfriend (who incidentally didn’t look at all like James Taylor) escorted us to the eating club.  In the old days, Bryn Mawr  and Princeton had social ties of sorts, and I suppose a quartet of Mawrters carried a bit of weight at the party.  Although alcoholic beverages were perfectly illegal for minors at the time, whiskey sours were on tap. Maybe there were other choices, as well, but I’ll never forget my father’s disgust when I told him about what I drank.  “Whiskey sours?  And you were dancing on the table with someone you barely knew, Pamela? You know Dubonnet would have been far more suitable!”

So let’s see, Ted Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada on 12/22/70, a few months  after I started Bryn Mawr.  Ted wasn’t at the party, for sure. Was he still in Canada then; wasn’t that before his family moved to Houston?