The Problem with College - Part 1

I lasted in the college dormitories at Shippensburg University for exactly one semester. The dormitories are jail cells with cement block walls and weird kids running the hallways all night long.

Yep, take a couple hundred 18-year-olds who are all away from home for the first time and stick them in a five-story cement block building together. Well at least they were smart enough to make it out of cement.

I moved to the "Soccer House" a couple blocks off campus. An alumnus of ELCO High School, who was a senior soccer player at Ship, ran the house like a tight ship. Everyone shared cleaning duties, a couple lineman from the football team served as bouncers during parties, the TV show MASH HAD to be on the television every night at dinner time - there were no exceptions.

The Soccer House was a two-story double house, very simple and identical on both sides - a kitchen and living area on both first floors, three bedrooms and a bathroom on both second floors. Apparently the Soccer House was made of toothpicks and kleenex the way the winter winds blew through that thing.

We threw parties at the Soccer House, three Saturdays each month, to pay our electric bill. The house had baseboard electric heating that had to be kept blasting for even the slightest hint of heat. Our electric bill would be outrageous.

Somehow we would get more than a hundred people in that house, charging two dollars each. We would get four or five kegs of Knickerbocker, the cheapest beer the distributor had for $19 a keg.

We had two bars. All the furniture was moved to the walls opening up the house for dancing. We had a killer sound system that fed up to my room.

After awhile the parties really do become work, more of a necessary evil, young free entrepeneurs at work.

After awhile I stayed upstairs and just played music for the masses below. Just as anxious to get the party over more than anything else.

Everyone always walked to our parties, and stumbled back home. Once we had an Amish Buggy out back, and I was told the owner was inside. (shrugging shoulders)

One party I was sitting upstairs, playing music. It was pretty late and I expected everyone to clear out pretty soon.

All of a sudden I heard this ruckus downstairs and the increasing volume of a chant, "GO! GO! GO! GO! GO!"

Oh, now what, I thought.

I went downstairs and peaked around the corner. There were two even rows of revelers. They stretched from the back door of the Soccer House to the front door. All were chanting with one hand in the air and one hand splashing their beers across our floor.

"WHAT?!?"

"Hey! Stop that! Don't do that. I have to clean that tomorrow," I pleaded.

I was invisible.

I had a roomate named "Rope Man." Now he was named "Rope Man" after an old cartoon character who was part of a foursome of bumbling super heroes. He looked just like him.

He was ultra-skinny with a pure white mop of hair on top of his head. His torso was longer than his legs, and he always had a sideways grin on his face.

Just then Rope Man came running through the back door of the house, beginning through the two-lines of party goers, then he dove head first into all of the splashed beer, sliding on his belly nearly the entire length of the house of the front door.

"Oh Jeesh."

I went back upstairs.