The "In Memoriam" photo is honoring Mr. Charles E. Singley who had recently died after teaching chemistry at the College for 37 years. Notice Mr. Singley is working a Slide Rule* to make calculations as two other students watch a third student titrating liquid into a beaker. Larry isn't in this photo.
[* Since there were no electronic calculators at the time, Slide Rules made use of the fact that once numbers were converted to "logarithms" (powers of 10) , the numbers could be multiplied by simply adding the logarithms together. One could find the resulting product by taking the "anti-logarithm" (a number) of the addition. Numbers could similarly be divided by subtracting one logarithm from the other. All this was easy to do using the slide rule and the resulting calculations were surprisingly accurate.]
Over the course of the year, Larry and I were getting skilled in the practical art of using lab equipment to run our assigned experiments. One day Larry announced that he was going to make some moonshine. He had found a small, little used closet in the lab that was also vented. This would be the perfect place to to hide a fermenting glass jug because the yeasty, alcoholic odor would go up the stack and not be noticed by anyone in the lab. All one needed was sugar, water, yeast and yeast nutrient to get a brew going. Other ingredients such as barley or wheat could also be added. For Larry this would be just another non-required "extra credit" experiment.
I wasn't so hot on this idea for fear of the consequences if "we" got caught.
Larry assembled all the hardware and ingredients anyway and started his fermentation in a glass carboy in the vented closet. He showed me progress of the bubbling mash over the course of one week to 10 days at which time the carbon dioxide bubbles subsided because the yeast had used up all the sugar in producing a liquid containing 8% to 14% ethanol by volume. He let the mash settle for a week or two so he could siphon off the "wash" from the settled yeast dregs.
For several evenings, after school hours, Larry set up a glass retort still complete with a water-cooled condenser column, and proceeded to distill the "wash" . As the liquid was heated in the round bottom flask, ethanol, boiling at a lower temperature than water, was first to leave the flask. Its vapor traveled through the condenser column where is became liquid again and dripped into a receiving flask as concentrated ethanol.
Once all the "wash" was distilled, the resulting ethanol would be distilled again to purify it from the non-ethanol (higher molecular weight alcohols) components responsible for hangover headache. It was during this second distillations that the whole glass assembly caught fire! Fortunately, the lab was well equipped with fire extinguishers and Larry was able to quickly put out the fire, thus protecting the lab and minimizing his loss of distilled brew. I don't know how he later explained to the lab instructor that he had to use one of the CO2 extinguishers and that the lab would need a replacement for the next student's fire.
Larry called his brew "White Mule" ( because it kicked like a mule) and stored it in a couple flat, clear glass pint bottles he had carried from home.
On those mornings after the moonshine "experiment" when Larry and I met in the lab to brew tea, we occasionally added a shot of "White Mule" to the tea to get a good start on the day!
