Whizzing Through America: Living Memories Tour, OSU Campus - Columbus

After we were married, we got a second floor apartment in a cute red brick building, very close to here. It was only a three-month deal because they were to be torn down for the parking lot for this hotel. As a result, the rent was very cheap, $90 month. We paid for the full three months. It was a good thing that we did because we existed on a lot of peanut butter. When there was a Whopper left over from my ending shift at the local Burger King, I would bring it home and Becky would have it her way--although I would have to wake her up for her to eat it.

One time we found some Campbells New England Clam Chowder mismarked at the local Big Bear, also torn down but for the Schottenstein Center, for $0.17. They were regularly over a dollar a can. We bought out the whole shelf and told them about it after we had. I think we spent all of our peanut butter, bread, and boysenberry jelly money on clam chowder.

Well, we did have some other money. We had to. We bought a refrigerator for $25. When we moved my grandmother, who had just gotten electricity, got the refrigerator and used it for years, initially as a refrigerator and then cranked down as an upright freezer. It was small.

Becky transferred to Ohio State this quarter and also majored in Computer Science. We even had one course together.

Prior to the above, I began the school year a little north of this spot, 10th and High, right where this building now is.. Becky and I weren't married yet but we were planning on it. Since I was working at Burger King and Becky was still going to school at Miami University at Oxford Ohio, I loaned her my car and she drove up to Columbus every weekend.

Across the street was the Souvlaki Palace. Great for loud music late into the night, the nights I wasn't working that is.

Amazingly, with all that was going on this quarter, including twenty hours of classes, I managed to get all A's.

For my first two years of college, I actually lived in the OSU football stadium in unit DD.

They've obviously changed a lot of things with the stadium, including that it is no longer a place for sleeping. I don't know exactly when it had the super structure built over it and with it removed the dorm.

Most of my Freshman memories are of staying up until midnight for the deadline inspiration to write my papers. Of course I had a paper due every week. Then there was the final papers. I now had two due on the same Friday. I did one a night, all night and day, for two days. I then proceeded to sleep through the night and all of the meals the following day.

While I was hungry, I didn't need them because, if there was one thing the SSD did right, it was feed the students. If the regular meals weren't enough, there was always the Sundae Sundays, about once a month in the hotter months.

My freshman year was the year of rising protests against the Vietnam War. I was a somewhat supporter (of the protests) but didn't do anything that got tear gas directed at me, although I breathed enough of it just walking to my classes and the library. It was kind of funny to see the National Guard march across the area in front of the library with the active protesters just slipping through and around and then the guard would turn around and march back with the same effect. I did see some female protesters putting flowers in the gun barrels when they weren't marching. I was playing intramural touch football and got back to the dorm to find out that the campus was shut down. The guard at Kent State had killed a protester. It wasn't funny anymore.

We came back to school but school life never was quite the same again. I no longer played intramural sports for one, probably because I got a job at Burger King, now a pharmacy. Then my sophomore year I also brought my car to school. I didn't really use it much but it did go on one road trip to Miami University at Oxford, Ohio, with a bunch of us because someone knew a girl there. There I met Becky and I made other trips on my own after that. (The rest of this story is in my next entry, Liberty.)

One night we didn't have much worthwhile to do, or too much of it, so we decided to adorn the pointed tops of the gates outside our section with soda cans. We scoured the whole dorm, partially filled them with water, and dropped them out of the window. We got quite good by the time we dropped the last can on the last spike--in front of the returning Dean. He made us take them all off. At least he didn't impose any other punishment. I guess he thought that no one seeing our handiwork would be punishment enough. It was.

Lots of memories were made here but one last one to recount: There were some rivalries between units. The unit below us used an M-80 to blow up a pigeon in our unit, out by the registers. It took us forever to clean up the micro-particles so it wouldn't stink. Some in our unit wanted to collect and poor urine over their registers. I don't know how many actually contributed to it but the unit leader made the collectors dispose of it properly. I do know it stank.