Bigfoot's Farewell
The Hash House Harriers became a part of my life in the fall of 1981. We had arrived in Taipei for a sabbatical year where I was doing some writing and some teaching. We were living in Tienmou, a district that once housed some of the American military personnel and was still a residential district favored by foreigners. I spotted a hand-made sign (in English) announcing the next run of the Taipei HHH. I asked someone about this group, and he said “Oh, those crazy guys. They go out and run around the hillsides and then drink a lot of beer.” This covered two of my interests so I went to their assembly point for their next run, and that was how it all began.
They gathered every Saturday afternoon on a side street conveniently near our apartment and from there carpooled to the location of the weekly run. It was different each week but it was usually within a half-hour’s driving distance up in the steep semi-tropical jungle-covered hillsides that surround Taipei. There were about fifty runners in al that day, of whom about half were Westerners living and working in Taiwan. While this group had been formed originally by Americans attached to the various U. S. Military Advisory Units in the early 1970s, the foreigners by this time were mostly Poms, Aussies, and Kiwis. But it was a very international gathering and the Grand Master was currently French (Le Generalle), and the Spiritual Advisor Indian (Guru). It is hash tradition, I discovered, that after three runs participants are given hash names and that is how they are addressed from that time on. Certain behavior sometimes calls for nicknames rather than real names. I also learned, for example, that when this hash still had a casual connection with the American military, they would get cheap PX beer, and use the Taipei American School bus to go off to their weekend runs. This latter privilege was quickly terminated when the hashers began mooning out the windows of the clearly marked school bus when passing young local girls. But I digress.
These expats were mostly business and professional people. After watching some of their post-run activities, I was delighted to learn that some of them held highly responsible positions in the consulates, banks, and major foreign firms and wore suits during the week. There were a few teachers as well so I was not the only academic among them.
The other half of the participants were local Chinese. Many were proprietors of small trading companies and others who worked with foreigners in various capacities. There were some serious runners among them but most were out for a good time with the exotic fun-loving foreign devils and practice some non-textbook English. Everyone was welcoming and cheerful. You signed up for each run using your hash name and paying a modest amount that covered the beer and snacks, typically peanuts and crackers, afterwards, and also the printing and mailing of the weekly newsletter which was written in a carelessly and curious poly-English.
That day we were driven up into the hillsides to the starting point. Two runners who had earlier set the trail by scattering torn-up paper along the route set out with a twelve-minute lead. Then the rest us followed and tried to catch them. This was the old British hounds and hares tradition from English public school days. The hares scattered checkmarks along the way from which some markings terminated in backtracks. Finding the correct route fell to the frontrunners thus neutralizing their speed advantage and keeping the hounds somewhat together, at least early in the run. There is no competitive advantage to being first and in fact hashing is decidedly non-competitive. Thus many “serious” runners don’t stay with it because timing is considered bad form. Also most runs finish in places not announced so you never know where you are going to end, nor how close you are to the finish. You can’t really pace yourself in this kind of run. Hashing is not racing.
But this isn’t to say the runs are not demanding. I found this run to be very tough even though I had been a daily jogger for at least ten years. We ran on footpaths that were constantly up and down, through thick vegetation, and the afternoon was typically hot and highly humid. This run lasted a bit over an hour and they are usually three to five miles, although you can be rudely surprised by killer runs of two hours or more.
At the end of this run was a beer wagon, a small dark green tow truck provided by an Englishman who owned (and still owns) a car rental company in Taipei. Like most hashers, he had an interesting life, having first come to Taiwan as an airline mechanic for Air America, the lightly disguised CIA operation that did many bad deeds around Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. On the back of the truck were large plastic containers full of ice and bottles of Taiwan Beer. There was much ritual drinking done to songs with lyrics that need not be revealed here. I was called upon for doing one for being a virgin, the hash name for a first-timer. Three runs later I did another one when being given the hash name of Bigfoot. It was assigned by the Grandmaster because he could relate Oregon only to the mythological creature. I was fortunate in my naming as many of the names are far less complimentary and not presentable in polite society.
These post-run festivities went on for about an hour and corrected our state of dehydration. This run was a sponsored one with free t-shirts given out by the Scottish owner of a trading company to celebrate his birthday. In those days many runs were sponsored with free t-shirts and all hashers had drawers full of them. I still do. Most runs were followed by a bash meaning standard Chinese food served family style with much more beer. Usually the venues were modest country restaurants where you could spill (or throw) the food on the dirt floor. This run ended at a hot spring resort where we first had a soak before an evening of especially riotous entertainment.
I now had a regular Saturday afternoon activity, and most Sunday afternoons as well. A few years back the Taipei HHH, a traditional all male hash, split. The smaller China HHH was co-ed with mostly expat guys and their local barmaid girlfriends. They met on Sunday afternoons and some hashers ran with both groups. Their Grandmaster was Jolly Good, an older Scottish physical therapist who once worked on Chiang Kai-Shek. But I don’t want to be a namedropper. I hared my first run with this group. They were a more informal group. The Taipei HHH, on the other hand, sponsored an annual half marathon open to the public, the first such run in Taiwan that drew a thousand or more runners and raised money for good causes. They also had a monthly family run in which children and wives were invited to participate and concluded with a most civilized family picnic.
Two hundred miles to the south in the second city of Kaohsiung, was another then-largely expat hash. One weekend a year the Taipei hashes would charter a bus and go there for a weekend of runs and festivities, and the Kaohsiung HHH would come up and run with us on another weekend. Groups of hashers from Hong Kong and elsewhere in Asia would sometimes come for a weekend of hashing, and once that year some Marines from the Okinawa Hash came down and ran with us. They were a bunch of sissies.
Every second year there was, and still is,an Interhash to which all hashers everywhere are invited. Locations vary. The last one was in Changmai, Thailand. These events draw several thousand hashers. In addition there are regional gatherings. I have never attended any of these, but would if the opportunity presented itself.
Mismanagement is the term given to all hashes and formalities are decidedly limited. The first rule is that there are no rules. The classic definition of a hash is “a drinking club with a running problem.” You frequently hear that “it only takes half a mind to hash.” Somehow, even with minimum organizational structure, no membership qualifications, and no overall governing authority, these hashes have spread worldwide. There are said to be over 2,000 clubs around the world. They thrive in multi-cultural environments. I like to say that if the United Nations were to be run like the hash, there would be peace throughout the world. And I am only half joking.
Expats attracted to hashes, especially those drifting around Asia, are characters worth entire novels in themselves. In the Taipei HHH there was Permanent Press, a sour, and cynical old British journalist who worked for years polishing the English language propaganda of various Taiwan government agencies. Up N Coming was the director of the Taiwan office of Tait, a major old British trading company in Asia. It had the contract for, among others, Guinness, Heineken, and other upmarket imported beers. A few years ago a typhoon damaged the roof of a warehouse where some of this beer was stored. Water leaked in soiling the packaging enclosing the beer. Being in cans, the beer itself was untouched, but it could not be sold. Insurance covered the loss with the instructions to take the beer to the landfill. It failed to reach its destination and instead found its way to the hash where it was greatly appreciated for several weeks. It pays to have friends in high places. There are lots of beer stories to be told. The previously mentioned Guru, a dark-skinned South Indian who owned a small trading company, became famous within the hash for having completed 1,000 runs, and later l,500 runs. Slobbo was an enormous American who washed up on the shores of Taiwan years ago as a merchant seaman and became an operator of an English language cram school. His accent was pure New Jersey. One time he turned up at the end of a run on the back of a motorcycle on which he had hitched a ride. You could hardly see the motorcycle beneath him.
Some of the local Chinese were also characters, but I knew them less well. Cargo worked in freight for China Airlines. Ink Pink owned a small printing company that did a hash wall calendar each year. Grandpa was a tiny wrinkled old man in 1980, and he was still running with the hash twenty years later, and giving a good account for himself.
In the days before the internet, both Taipei hashes published weekly newsletters which carried announcements of upcoming runs, humorously critical accounts of the run just completed including where it went and how it degenerated in the beer chuggings that followed, plus whatever tasteless jokes and cartoons that could be gleaned from hash newsletters exchanged with other hashes around Asia. I contributed a few write-ups of runs during the year when the assigned scribes failed to show up. I continue to keep a fair collection of these newsletters to this day. Several times the Taipei Hash also published an annual magazine. Today websites have replaced paper newsletters but the flavor remains.
The activities following the runs are known as on-ins and also called religion or circles. The ritual assigned drinkings are down-downs. What isn’t consumed within a few seconds of singing or chanting must be poured over your head. Almost everyone ends up doing at least one down-down for one usually contrived reason or another. The Taipei HHH had a beaten up old bugle that was assigned to be carried on the next run by someone for an alleged screw-up on this run. The bugle would be tooted at checkpoints to keep the runners on course. Other hashes have had toilet seats and crutches to be carried on runs for similar offenses. Speaking of crutches, one of our most remarkable members was Mr.Guts, an American who had come to Taiwan from Harvard to do graduate research, and ended up as an English teacher at a local university. He had suffered from a childhood illness that had impeded the development of his legs. But his arms and shoulders were very strong in compensation and he did the runs (well, part way at least) on crutches. And he was a very nice guy as well.
Every run was chronologically numbered and records were kept on how many had been done by each member. Embroidered patches were handed out for the 25th, 50th, and 100th run, and for special runs. Some runners sewed these on vests that they wore at the on-ins. I treasure my collection of a dozen or so of these patches from several hashes around the world.
There is a rich lore of hashing that has been collected in several books (some are listed at the end). While hashing is light-hearted, it can also be hazardous and serious injuries from falls and getting lost are not uncommon. There have been a few deaths as well. The Taipei HHH had one in the 1970s when a runner slipped on a wet rock crossing a stream, and fell hitting head on another rock. Either the impact killed him, or he drowned, depending on who told the story. Like most hash lore, you can never be quite sure of the dividing line between fact and fiction, but there have been at least a couple of documented deaths on hash runs. I later ran with a hash in Thailand that had one just a year previously. The first-timer wasn’t a runner and didn’t know what he was getting into. He was in his forties and overweight. He suffered a heart attack and died midway in the run.
Southeast Asia, including Taiwan, is a region of poisonous snakes, and there are many accounts of near-misses with them. That is good reason to never be a front-runner on jungle runs. Always let someone else go first. I only came upon snakes once, and that was in Indonesia. Crossing a rice paddy irrigation ditch I spotted two water snakes. I don’t know if they were poisonous, and didn’t linger to find out. Rabid dogs may be even more of a hazard out in the countryside.
There are man-made perils as well. Once in Taiwan while on a hillside run, we came upon a clearing that was a practice shooting range for the ROC Army. The soldiers stopped firing and looked on in amazement as we hurriedly ran through. We also stopped play when we ran across a golf course at Tamsui. Crossing heavily traveled roads was much more dangerous. Garbage dumps and pig farms were the worst when it came to odors.
So my weekends in Taiwan were a welcome change of pace from my more responsible obligations. I got to know many interesting people both local and foreigners that I certainly wouldn’t have otherwise met. On visits to Taiwan since that year I have continued to do runs with these groups. They have evolved. The Taipei HHH has grown considerably. On the last run I did with them a couple years ago there were almost three hundred participants. There were only six of us foreigners among them on that day. The language of the hash is no longer English, but rather the Taiwan dialect, and the website is in Chinese characters. Yet there are still a few participants, both Chinese and expats, whom I knew in 1980 and who remember and welcome me today. I am always called upon to do a down-down as a returning hasher. Everyone seems to have a car now and the big problem is finding a starting point out in the countryside where all the vehicles can be parked. Usually they use temple grounds, and it is right in front of the temples themselves where the beer is consumed afterwards. This is apparently OK if the temple is Buddhist. Buddha must have been a hasher.
The Sunday China HHH has remained largely an expat group, but much smaller in numbers. They charter a bus to take the poorer foreigners (many are English teachers) without their own vehicles out to the run sites. I still have friends among this group as well, and look forward to doing runs with them. Today there are additional hashes around Taiwan, perhaps six in all.
When I returned from my sabbatical year I thought I would like to start a hash in Ashland. But I wasn’t sure there would be interest. Americans run out of a sense of guilt, and to achieve beautiful bodies and long life. They are too serious and competitive by nature. The hash concept is foreign to most of them. So I did nothing.
One day in 1988 I saw an announcement of a recently-formed hash in Ashland. With great curiosity and expectation I showed up for their next run. There were only about six of them turned out for this run and they still seemed to be finding their way. The leader was Sherpa, an emergency room doctor who first hashed with a group in West Virginia, of all places, and the Barber (later Butcher) of Seville, a medical technician who had hashed in San Diego, which has been a hotbed of hashing in America. It was a co-ed group from the beginning and there were several nurses. Over the almost next twenty years I have been a regular participant in this hash. It meets every other week. But more of that later.
We have traveled to Asia frequently in the last twenty years and I always try to hook up with the hashes wherever we go. Now with the internet it is easier to make contact and determine the place, day and time of the run.
The hash was begun by Brits in Kuala Lumpur (now Malaysia) in 1938. Hash refers to the name they gave their eating place. I have never known the other type of hash to be involved in any run. Malaysia is the hearth of hashing and every town has at least one hash. The Kuala Lumpur area has at least eight hash groups. Four years ago I was fortunate to do a run with the original Mother Hash. They are still primarily an expat group, male only, and they run on Monday evenings. They put on a fine run an hour’s drive outside of the city in a hilly area of oil palm plantations, followed a very raucous circle and dinner. My most treasured souvenir hash t-shirt is from this group. Another excellent hash is in Penang where I did a run through abandoned rubber plantations. Here you do you down-downs sitting with your pants down on a block of ice. It feels good in the tropical heat of Penang. On the less-visited east coast I enjoyed an evening with the Kuantan HHH, an all-Chinese group who last had a round-eye visitor over a year previously. That run was in the rain through a very muddy recently planted rubber estate. I can also recommend runs with the Taiping HHH which has a number of Indian members as well as Chinese, and Malacca on the west coast where there are three hashes. Everywhere you go in this part of the world you will find hashes. Special mention must be made of those on the island of Borneo in the Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah.
A run with the Kuching HHH in Sarawak in 2001 was almost the end of me. It was jungle run that lasted over two hours and well into the night. Everyone but me had a flashlight It was on narrow paths up and down steep hills and through thick vegetation. At one point I slipped into a stream. I had no idea where I was. We finally ended in a village without streetlights. The hare was a German engineer working on a waste management project in the area. He had arranged for an open garbage truck to take us all back to the start where the vehicles were parked. We then drove back to the edge of Kuching where we had a riotous dinner in a Chinese restaurant. Someone pointed out that I had blood running out of my foot. It was my first leech. I am sure that leech got very drunk, as I certainly did and we shared the same blood.
That run convinced me to give up hashing. I was sixty-three years old and runs like this could be life-threatening. But a few days later in the neighboring country of Brunei, I was talked into doing a run with one of the three hashes in Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital and only city. I was told this would be a more conventional run of only an hour or so, and we would finish well before dark. We did, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. So much for my promises. The next year in Kota Kinabalu (formerly Jesselton), the capital of Sabah, also on Borneo, I enjoyed very much a family run with a Hakka Chinese hash. Loretta joined the group afterwards for a meal. So, each hash is different and the first-timer can never know exactly what to expect. Other than friends, food, and beer.
The Singapore HHH is the second oldest hash, and it remains a traditional all-male hash. It is the only one I know of with membership limits and a waiting list. I have not run with them but there are half a dozen other hashes in Singapore and I have run most of them. Of particular note is a harriettes group in which all the officers and hares are women. Men can run with them and they do. The only requirement is that if any man gets out ahead of the pack, he is decorated with lipstick that he must wear for the rest of the evening. Some of the women in this hash, especially the Australians and Germans, are very strong runners and it is unlikely that I could ever get ahead of them. Singapore also has a unique dog hash. Once a month runners for all the hashes gather with their dogs for a run, usually through the jungle-like Bukit Timor Nature Reserve. When you sign in you give the name of your dog. I put down “Virtual” for mine.
Hong Kong is also a hotbed of hashing. You can hash any day of the week there. A blackboard announcing all the runs is kept at The Wanch, a landmark expat bar in the Wanchai District on Hong Kong Island. I did a Hong Kong Interhash once out in the New Territories that involved a ferry ride to an outlying island. Our boat was intercepted and boarded by the immigration police, this still being the days as a British colony. Few of us had our papers with us on this run but some of our hashers were British police officers in their other lives so they vouched for the group. And we kept on drinking. Ah, the good old days of Empire!
I have also had some memorable runs in Indonesia where you will also find hashes in the larger cities. Yogyakarta is said to have nine hashes. I particularly enjoyed running with two hashes in the east Java town of Malang, and on the islands of Lombok and Sulawesi. While most Indonesian hashers are locals, primarily Chinese businessmen as the Moslems are not permitted to enjoy beer. The Bali hashes, of which there are two, are predominantly expat. In Ubud I met the legendary hasher Victor “Night Jar” Mason, a Cambridge graduate who long operated the Beggars Bush (this is a Chaucer allusion, for you illiterates) a very British pub overlooking lush hillside rice paddy terraces. I happened to be in Bali in 1995 for a major joint run celebrating the 200th run of the Bali HHH. It was a huge party as many of the hashers were resort and bar owners. Their beer wagon, provided on an annual basis by Bintang, Indonesia’s major brewer, arrived and began dispensing an hour before the start of the run. Loretta joined me for the bash that followed the run, held at an upscale resort. It included dinner and one of those truly awful bartender drink-mixing contests. There were drawings for lots of prizes and I was bitterly disappointed to not win the free bungy jump. I still treasure the tasteless souvenir t-shirt of this run.
Other memorable runs include Phnom Penh Cambodia HHH that runs out in the countryside where landmines are still being cleared today, and the Vientiane Laos HHH. Both of these are primarily expat hashes with many participants working for NGOs. This is also true of the Rangoon Burma (Myammar) HHH which has both a run for the runners, and a walk for the walkers, ending at the same spot. Loretta did the latter. On this one we went through some of the worst urban slums I have ever seen, and I have seen more than a few.
In South Korea the hashes are mostly U.S. military. The Yongsan HHH, assembles outside of the headquarters of the Eighth Army in the center of Seoul. After the sign-up and a demonstration of how to do down-downs (totally unnecessary but this is the military and you should never over-estimate their retention skills) we ran down the steps into the subway station. Tickets were handed out along with instructions as to which line to change to reach the real start of the run. It could be anywhere in the vast sprawling urban mess of Seoul served by eight interlinking subway lines. If this wasn’t confusing enough, vodka Jello shooters were handed out along the way. I have run with two other and more conventional hashes in Korea. The original Seoul HHH, comprised mostly of expat businessmen, runs out in the countryside, and in the winter the hares must bring the firewood for the circle activities that follow. The fire is put out at the end of the evening with kidney-recycled beer. It is their tradition. At the time I ran with this hash they discouraged Korean members, but this changed soon after. I have never known of another hash ever to exclude anyone based on race or nationality. Or IQ.
In Japan I recently did a Red Dress Run with the Nagoya HHH. These runs in which everyone wears a red dress regardless of gender, have become popular spring events in hashes around the world. This hash is almost all Japanese although it was started many years ago by expats business people.
I have also run with hashes in the Philippines, including the annual spring joint Interhash held in the mountain resort city of Bagio in northern Luzon. These hashes are comprised mostly of dissipated former G.I.s who neglected to leave the country when the U.S. withdrew its forces in 1991. I have yet to do a hash run in Vietnam or China but would eagerly do so if the opportunity arose.
Australia is also a hotbed of hashing, but my visits there have not coincided conveniently with runs there. Australians are great hashers and many of them began while living and working around Asia. I did one run with the Wellington Geriatrics HHH in New Zealand. It was more of a walk and a pub crawl, but a scenic one along the harbor.
An ever more geriatric hash is the Ajijic HHH in the gringo retirement community alongside Lake Chapala an hour south of Guadalajara, Mexico. Few of these participants were ever genuine hashers. Each Saturday morning they gather to WALK out alongside the dried out lakebed. When they soon tire they turn around and walk back to a restaurant where they all have breakfast and read jokes to each other that they have culled off the internet. As we all age, this may be the hash of the future. Latin America is not a hotbed of hashing and the hashes are few and far between. The only other one I have done was in Costa Rica. The San Jose HHH is a combination of locals and expats. The run I did with them included three American Embassy Marine guards and a World Bank economist. This was the only hash I have ever known in which you must bring your own beer. They just don’t get it.
In Europe I have only done one hash run. That was with the Tallin HHH in Estonia three years ago. It was a small struggling group of homesick expats. We ran through a large park area on a not very demanding course. In the U.S. I have run with hashes in Atlanta, San Diego, San Francisco, and Portland, as well as Ashland.
Which brings me back to the Ashland HHH. In its almost twenty years it has evolved (and sometimes regressed) but is still basically the same. We run every other week. While there were some lean times where fewer than a dozen runners showed up, currently most runs draw at least thirty hashers. At first our on-ins were at taverns and pizza places but soon we ended up at the homes of the hares where our revelry was not on public display.
The Ashland HHH has always had a large contingent of people from the medical field, followed by educators. Over the years a dozen or so Southern Oregon University faculty have run at one time or another, and we always attract a few elementary and high school teachers. We are people who need a biweekly release. Probably a third of our participants are women. Long ago we had a couple of genuine Oregon millworkers, but most of us have been professional people, or at least try to be. Those of us who are reaching our twilight years of running are gradually dropping out and are being replaced by younger members. We still have at least two long-time members who are now in their early seventies, so hashing must somehow contribute to long life.
The culture, or lack of culture, of each hash reflects its locale and the community on which it draws. The Ashland HHH has become a bit more uninhibited over the years, and certainly more so than the hashes I began with in Asia. We have more theme runs and these always produce the biggest turn-outs. In addition to the annual Red Dress Run, which replaced our previous Spring Formal, I can recall hippie runs, toga runs, Hawaiian shirt runs, and Mardi Gras runs. Our Halloween runs are among our most popular, and the costumes can be outrageous. These dress runs often begin on the Plaza where they compete favorably with the pageantry the Shakespeare Festival for attention.
Over the twenty years of the Ashland HHH there have been several hundred participants, and to cite a few who have been particularly important to keep the hash going is to unfairly omit others. But this is my remembrance I will name a few who have especially brightened my years in Ashland. But only by hash name.
Among the old-timers, in addition to Sherpa, the founding father and the only original hasher still regularly running, there is Da Beave (now retired high school teacher) and his wife Pecker Checker (now retired public health nurse – the name suggests what she did) who long hosted the annual Christmas hash and dinner at their home and have hared many (usually screwed up) runs. Just to show that hashing doesn’t always break up marriages, there is also B-B-On (obsessive ultra-marathoner and community do-gooder) and his wife Humpback (now retired SOU professor and tennis coach). And Second Cuming (now retired SOU physics professor) who died and was resurrected on the infamous Easter run in Medford in 1991. Previously his hash name had been Exlax. He is still running with us sixteen years later following his triple bypass operation. Family Jewels (special education teacher) has been a delightful companion runner over the years. Most of us mentioned in this paragraph celebrated our hundredth runs about the same time in 1994, and to make it memorable we set a special run through the railroad tunnel at Siskiyou Summit. Fortunately no train passed through at that time. At least I don’t think it did.
Other memorable runs from the past included annual weekend outings at Takelma, then still a hippy commune beyond Cave Junction. This area was rife with poison oak and many of us suffered from it. Swimming in the Illinois River after the run was no cure. We also had annual summer runs from Kojak’s (accountant) cabin at Lake of the Woods. These usually included boat rides. Many runs during the hot summers are up in the mountains. In the winters we stay in the valley. The more varied the course, the better the run. We especially favor railroad tracks, shiggy (mud), property posted “no trespassing,” irrigation ditches, abandoned logging roads, orchards, construction sites, and bridges. We once hashed across the runway of the Ashland Airport. These are not your usual running venues.
As for the hashers, there are more to note. Special mention must be made of Tasty Pasties (beer and wine distributor). While not running much with us today, his imprint on the hash has been unsurpassed. The reason is obvious. As a result of his connections, he upgraded our beverages to top-of-the-line Oregon craft beers. Much of it was outdated seasonal brews pulled from store shelves.that we got for $5 a case. And for about a year he arranged with Full Sail Brewery of Hood River to get their over- and under-filled bottles of Amber Ale for FREE! In addition the meals he cooked at his on-ins were of a gourmet level that embarrassed the rest of us into upgrading our attempts. Thus both the beverages and food of the Ashland HHH has been the best of any hash I have encountered anywhere. But it hasn’t ended here. Tasty is an accomplished winemaker and he has generously donated his lesser vintages to some of our hashes over the years. His disappointments are far better than the cheap wine we usually consume. We owe a lot to him for keeping us mellow and well-fed.
Coming into the Ashland HHH a bit later and playing key parts in keeping it going must be mentioned Swamp Dick (physician) who has been an off-and-on Religious Advisor. He must be humored for his Southern upbringing and accent. Speak to him slowly.
Wonder Down Under (computer entrepreneur) has designed and maintained one of the best websites in all of hashdom. We take it for granted, but this website has been critical in keeping our hash connected and going. Llama Licker (contractor) picked up the Trailmaster job at a much-needed time and bridged the generations of hashers coming and going. He is also justly famous for his annual Crab Hash in which he brings fresh crab from the coast the day before for the on-in. No one in their right half-mind misses the Crab Hash.
Other long-timers I have enjoyed numerous runs with include (but are not limited to) Tongue-in-Cheek, Dopple Floppin’, Open Wide, and Microhard. My former colleagues at Southern Oregon University include Soft Balls, Analicktical, Lion Lizard, and Wet Spot.
And extra special mention must be made of Baggy Organ (retired all-purpose utility teacher) and committed hasher who had a run-ending accident while hiking (not hashing) with some hashers one weekend three years ago. He is still a key hash member and we treasure him, especially now that he is no longer playing the bagpipes.
This leaves out many worthy misfits who have contributed to the Ashland HHH over the years, but I have already exhausted the attention span of my handful of barely literate readers.
Recently the Ashland HHH celebrated its 500th run. Pioneer Hall was rented along with a band. Over a hundred current and former hashers attended this riotous event.
As I write this today I am wearing a hash t-shirt. Most of what I wear in retirement is hash memorabilia. I must have thirty t-shirts from all over the world, hash sarongs, hash hats, hash swimming suits, and a hash jacket. In addition I have hash whistles, beer openers, beer wraps, and decals. This is not normal behavior, and a cause for alarm. I will probably die wearing a hash t-shirt.
I am now approaching my 300th run with the Ashland HHH (and probably close to 500 in total among forty-eight hashes in fourteen countries over the last twenty-seven years). Conservatively calculating four beers per run and you end up with 2,000 beers, and that is 24,000 ounces. For those of you who don’t do arithmetic, that is about 750 quarts. And that is over 180 gallons. Visualize almost three oil drums of beer. Or better yet, don’t. But if you must, that is approximately three-quarters of a ton of beer.
I am now in my sixty-ninth year. It has been a long childhood, and it is time to limp on to other things before something terrible happens to me and I must call upon my hash friends in the medical community. I have long wanted to leave adolescence and become a real adult in my leisure time. My 300th will be my last run with the Ashland HHH. I will miss the many fascinating (read warped and dysfunctional) hashers I have met, and the runs and places they have taken me. A new generation of hashers is moving into the mismanagement as us old-timers fall by the wayside. It is time for me to say on-in.
Bigfoot
Hughes, Tim “Magic.” ON ON; THE HASH HOUSE HARRIERS 1938-1988; A GOLDEN JUBILEE. Bangkok: Harrier International, 1989.
Lloyd, Stu. HARE OF THE DOG; HISTORY, HUMOUR AND HELL-RAISING FROM THE HASH HOUSE HARRIERS. Sydney, Australia: Barking Mad Press, 2002. (“Limited edition: only 1,800,000 copies lovingly handcrafted by virgin typesetters and bookbinder in the misty highland of Malaysia...Purveyors of low-brow literature to the gentry since late last century.”)
Mason, Victor. BALI HASH. Bali, Indonesia: Bali Hash House Harriers, 1988.