UC Garbage Pit Offers a Peek at 1920s Greeks

They sometimes ate cheap cuts of meat, probably smothered with catsup--and had the stomach medicines to show for it.

They lived in fear of being taken down to the basement and dunked in “the tub” and were punctilious about personal hygiene.

They drank beer--quite a lot of it, apparently--but also sipped coffee from dainty demitasse cups embellished with their house crest.

Meet the young men of Zeta Psi, circa 1920--fraternity brothers whose lives and times are being studied by archeology students combing through the contents of a garbage pit left by the not-so-ancient Greeks.

Does 70-year-old trash qualify as archeological research?

Yes, says Laurie Wilkie, the UC Berkeley assistant professor of anthropology directing the analysis.

“They’re part of the puzzle in terms of understanding how California came to be this . . . land of the dream,” Wilkie said.

The trove of trash came to light by accident. In the summer of 1995, Wilkie looked out of her office--which is in what was the Zeta Psi house until the fraternity moved to another building in 1957--and saw the garbage being unearthed by a construction crew clearing the way for a new building.

She sprang into action, stopping the bulldozers for a brief excavation.

During the next school year, her students studied the relics and dug up written and photographic records of the time as they tried to put together a picture of turn-of-the-century fraternity life.

“The sorts of things that we end up studying archeologically are things that don’t really get talked about in historical documents,” she said.

For instance, among the artifacts was formal china decorated with the fraternity crest, including demitasse cups.

The china indicates a since-lost dining formality as well as an effort to reinforce community spirit through the use of the crest, placed on the cups so it would face right-handed drinkers.

Wilkie notes those niceties clash with the modern stereotype of party-hearty “frat rats.”

“You have to remember that . . . these are individuals who are from the upper-middle and upper class, and part of the fraternity setting was these were young men getting ready to go out and start on their own,” she said.

Still, there was evidence the brothers weren’t averse to a party or two.

The trash pit yielded a number of alcohol-related bottles, most made between 1917 and 1925--despite Prohibition, which ran from 1919 to 1933.

Some of the beer may have been the “near-beer” legal under Prohibition, and at any rate, the cache amounts to only about 20 six-packs. But a diary, kept on a rotating basis by freshmen at one point, indicates that at least some members occasionally indulged.

A record of a quiet Sunday found that “most of the few fellows who are here were nursing a great, big, large, immense, huge, colossal, and stupendous head.”

Ninety-year-old John Thomas Beales, who served as manager of the Zeta Psi house before graduating in 1929 and who still lives in the East Bay, recalled those days with a chuckle.

“People would patronize the bootleggers down in Emeryville. Or even some of the doctors would issue prescriptions to buy prescription whiskey,” he said. “But not in the house. We never permitted it in the house.”

Drink may have flowed freely, but the food wasn’t always so choice.

Analysis of meat bones found showed several were from poorer cuts of meat. That--along with the abundance of flavor enhancer and sauce bottles--led Wilkie and her crew to theorize that school meals had the same reputation then that they enjoy now.

They also found a number of bottles that had contained medicines for upset stomach.

But Beales defended the frat fare.

“Catsup was a normal thing. We loved corned beef hash. What more do you want with corned beef hash than catsup?” he asked.

Also found in the pit were items of feminine dress, notably a hatpin and some beads. Those seemed anomalous in light of the strict prohibitions on women in the house, until researchers found old pictures of young men dressed up in women’s clothing, probably for skits or parties.

Beales trenchantly declared that he wasn’t aware of “any of that monkey business.” But Wilkie theorized that skits in skirts may have been one of the ways the young men bonded.

The fraternity’s initiation rites remain a secret, but Wilkie’s students did discover written records showing that new pledges feared being “tubbed,” dunked in a cast-iron wash tub in the basement.

They also found evidence of fastidious personal habits.

Tooth brushing was not common in urban areas until the 1930s or 1940s, but a toothbrush was found in the Zeta Psi garbage, along with a cleaning powder container. In keeping with the dental practices of the day, which focused on cosmetic effect, it had a handle too large to allow brushing the back teeth.

Empty bottles of mouthwash also were found. Wilkie points out that they might have served the dual purpose of killing bacteria and gin breath.

Grooming was key to the fraternity’s big social events.

“Every fall we had a . . . formal dance, that we invited girls in and they were chaperoned and we would have a good orchestra,” Beales recalled.

A diary entry for one such occasion rhapsodizes: “The formal finally rolled around and what a molten formal that was! Good orchestra, swell entertainers, red-hot twists, delicious food . . . .”

To Kira Blaisdell-Sloan, an archeology senior who is among those analyzing the trash, the pit is a window into a world that is far away, yet so near.

“It’s real concrete and imaginable,” she said. “These are like your grandparents and great-grandparents.”