“Bad
Sneakers” from Steely Dan’s 1975 album “Katy Lied” is another song that always
takes me straight back to Blackburn College, because we played it so much,
singing the chorus…
Bad
sneakers and a Pina Colada, my friend,
Stompin’
on the avenue by Radio City with a
Transistor
radio and a large sum of money to spend…
It
reminds me of the first friend I made outside of my roommate, Big Al, Mike H.
He had “Katy Lied” and it was in his room that I first heard it. Forty years
on, I still try to keep in touch with him out in Washington State.
A huge,
6’3” red head with a wrestler’s build and am arm like a gun, which he used as
our QB on the dorm’s IM team. I don’t think he ever lost a game in 4 years, I
know he didn’t lose during the 2 years I was there.
BU was
too small to field a football team back then; soccer was the fall sport,
basketball in the winter, and a track team in the spring. 15 years later BU got
into college football and I was surprised one time when I ran across a ranking,
in Sports Illustrated, of the worst teams in all football and found BU second
to last.
Mike
lived in my dorm (Challacombe, known as North Hall) and was my boss at the first
job I had been assigned to (BU required 15 hrs/week, which goes toward your
room and board) as a janitor in the student union. For my first week I got up
every morning at 6AM and mopped and broomed the student union before it opened
at 8AM. After one week of that, I was reassigned to the Dining Hall (called
Ding Hall), where I spent the rest of the year as either a server on the food
line or as a “trotter”, who ran the trays of food from the kitchen to the
serving line; kept clean glasses on the floor for pop, juice, and milk; and
kept the “milk cows” full which entailed getting a 5 gallon bag of milk with a
rubber tube at one end, into the refrigerator, running the tube under the metal
ball that kept the tube clamped until you lifted up on it to let the milk flow.
The trotter also brought out the syrup canisters for the pop machine and connected
it to the dispenser that mixed it with the carbonated water.
Mike
was one of those larger than life guys you run across in your life, always up
for a prank (see#57 –Do Ya) or a party. He had a large scar on his right arm
from his freshman year when he punched through a door window, because, “It gave
me some lip!” He also gashed his head open goofing around in the “attic” space
of our dorm.
When I
came back to visit BU the fall after my graduation, I walked up to Mike to
greet him with right hand outstretched and a bottle of Wild Turkey in my left
hand, when he flipped me over his shoulder and flat onto my back in one smooth
move. He was gentle about it, the bottle was unbroken and I wasn’t hurt at all.
but it was indicative of his nature.
Through
Mike (and Randy Newman, see #5) I met Tom W., who had gone to high school
with him; and his roommate, Wes W. , and
through Tom I met my future roommate Kevin K(Tom had met Kevin in high school
as well, his father moved around a bit).
At one
point that first semester (my first, their second year) they all approached me
with an idea. We would somehow get my roommate, Big Al, to move in with another
guy who had a single, then with another set of roommates, Pete D. and Bob M.,
we would pool our three rooms together to create “The Swamp,” after Trapper
John and Hawkeye’s tents in M*A*S*H, then currently popular.
One
room would be used as a party room, one for sleeping (we would get three bunk
beds), and one for studying. I was flattered they wanted me to join them, because
I was new to the school. But we couldn’t get Big Al to move in with Hugh H. and
I think that’s when we sort of turned on him and began to “pimp” him (“pimp”
being our word for pranking.
The
first was during the first week as everyone in the dorm was initiated with the
ritual of the “Hundt”. To perform a “hundt”, a person was laid face-down on the
ground, then a series of 5, 6, 7 or 8 guys would pile up, in turn, flat on his
back, then bounce a little, while going, “Hundt! Hundt!” Somewhat homoerotic,
but aren’t most fraternities? (BU had no fraternities, each dorm of 50-60
guys/gals functioned as a fraternity/sorority. Only two dorms were coed. One had
girls in one wing, boys in the other; the second had boys on one floor, girls
on the other.)
That
first week there was a knock at the door and when I answered it, a guy said I
had a phone call downstairs (each dorm had only one phone with an outside line.
I know, it was the 70’s, no cell phones, if you can believe it!). As II entered
the common area where the phone was I noticed a bunch of guys just kinda
hanging out, watching me. I made a run for it and got outside before I slipped
and fell. Then, after 5 or 6 guys finished my hundt, they congratulated me and
said, “We need to get your roommate.” I said, “No problem.” I then took them to
my door and opened it to let them have their way with Big Al. Big Al was
sitting on his bed and never had a chance, they hundted him on his bed and
broke it. (They found another frame in a storage closet to replace it).
Big Al
was one of those guys who talked all the time, rarely saying anything of
interest. As I wrote in #5, his stories rarely panned out when the truth was
told. I had brought a 9” black and white TV with me and it was the only TV on
the floor. Big Al watched it more than me, because I was studying a lot, so
everyone thought it was Big Al’s.
When he
refused to move to allow the formation of the Swamp, the pimping began, with my
help, I must confess, since I opened the door for them.
The
first pimp was placing a smoke bomb in the room, and then locking the door from
the outside by tying a broom across the door, so it could not be opened inward.
I got out of the room and we ran outside to watch the second floor window as
Big Al stuck his head out, coughing as we laughed.
The
good part of Big Al was he lived in a nearby town and went home almost every
other weekend. Leading to pimp #2. One weekend he went home and I let Tom and
Wes in on Sunday afternoon to remove everything of his from the room: bed,
desk, and clothes. Then they set up his room on the tennis courts behind North
Hall directly across from our window. When Big Al came back, he walked in as
Wes was removing the bookcase from the wall.
Without
missing a beat, Wes went from unscrewing to screwing in the bookcase and he
said, “Al, I just stopped them from taking this. I was putting it back!” Al
would stand with fists clenched as he seethed theatrically, looking out the
window at his room reconstituted on the tennis court (as we laughed).
After
the first semester, a room opened up for a single and it was given to me for a
couple seconds, the RA believing I was a second semester senior, instead of a
second semester junior. I said no, give it to Big Al (I had gotten tired of his
pontificating and lack of hygiene, I had to lock him out of the room once until
he took a shower after playing basketball, because he would only spray deodorant
under his arms), I would room with Kevin K.
This
led to the worst pimp ever performed against Big Al. For several weeks, Kevin
and I saved our newspapers, I got the Chicago Tribune mailed daily, and he got
the Springfield Journal mailed to him. One weekend, when he went home, Tom,
with his set of master keys, opened Al’s door and we filled his room,
desktop-high, with crumpled newspapers. When Al returned, Wes and Tom were
there. Tom handed Al a squirt bottle with water as Wes jumped from desk to bed
to desk like a gorilla. Then Tom pulled out a book of matches and began to
light them and throw them into the paper-filled room as Al squirted them out.
After a while they gave up and left Al to drag the paper down to the fireplace
in the dorm common room and burned them up over the next several hours,
mumbling, “If I ever catch who gave them theses newspapers…” He never looked at
the mailing labels which had Kevin’s and my names.
On Big
Al’s last day at BU we dragged him into the shower when the RA came in to the
shower and asked, “Is this really necessary?” “Yes,” we replied, and he left us
to drench him. Then, as he got in his car, we jumped on his hood and windshield,
“Al, don’t leave us!” As he got madder and madder he got out (bad decision) and
got one more hundt. Then he was off to find a better school, where, “A “B” was
a “B””, since he was convinced he was under graded by all the BU teachers.
I’m not
proud of this, but it is what it is. When someone ran into Al at another
school, he had nothing but good things to say about his time at BU, which is a
better reflection on him than us, I think. He actually enjoyed the attention,
misguided as it was.
