Skinny Lennie

Skinny Lennie drove the van to New York that fateful summer. Lennie was somewhat of a campus exhibitionist. During performances by the Backdoormen in Assembly Hall or the Spouter Inn, he was wont to show up dressed in a trench coat and a jock strap and during the band's performances of "Evil" or "Rainy Day Women" he would rush onto stage and fling wide his trench coat to reveal the word "EROS", painted on his bony chest with red lipstick. The band tolerated his performance but it always looked like the dour frontman, Stevie Stoltzfus, was ready to boot him off the stage, sort of like what happened at Woodstock a year later when Pete Townshend of the Who kicked Abbie Hoffman, another irritating skinny performance artist, into the crowd.

The Backdoormen was a blues group comprised of Goshen College students including the son and nephew of Dean Stoltzfus. By virtue of their frequent visits to South Side bars in Chicago they had perfected a pretty decent imitation of the Chicago blues sound popularized in those years by artists like Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf. Stevie played an impressive blues harmonica, or "harp", and did the vocals, while Mark played lead guitar. (Mark later wound up in New York as a studio musician whose claim to fame was that he once played in sessions with John Lennon.) They cut a single single record. The A side was "Evil" by Howling Wolf and the B side was "Corrina, Corrina" by Big Joe Turner (popularized by Bob Dylan). Stevie dedicated the band's rendition of the latter to a popular Goshen College cheerleader.

The more formal concerts by the Backdoormen were staged in Assembly Hall in the old Ad Building, and even the Dean was wont to attend his son's performances. The faculty and administration at the time were something of a family affair -- Dean Stoltzfus' brother Robert was the Business Administrator while his son, a Harvard grad, was Professor of History. His daughter was married to a Boston architect who subsequently got the contract to design the Umble Center. When the new President, J. Lawrence Burkholder, replaced Ho Chi Miniger in 1970, Dean Stoltzus had to resign as Dean, since the new President was his brother-in-law.

But the wildest performances were held in Spouter Inn, a venerable old dormitory across College Avenue. This venue was set up as a "coffee house", a performance space much in vogue in the late sixties. It was dark and smoky from the candles inserted in old wine bottles that decorated the tables. In 1969 it burned to the ground in a mysterious fire. Some said it was a case of arson by disgruntled Trustees who had gotten wind of the shameless contemporary musical performances staged there to corrupt the Youth.