The summer heat had once again caused our central air to roll over on its back and die. In desperation we decided to take drive to stay cool until the breezes of the West Texas evenings sifted in. We drove by the campus of Texas Tech University. The “Garage Mahal” stood with lights ablaze but only one or two cars inside. (It earned its name from the four million spent to provide a four level parking garage for faculty.) The few maintenance workers driving by seemed to be leaving for the day. Grounds workers were putting the finishing touches on the new graduate student housing building, as the huge star sculpture in the courtyard blinked its continuing changes of colors. The parking lots were vacant, with only a random car parked close to a sculpture, where someone had stopped to take pictures...all was quiet.
Fall brings amazing changes. The reprieve of cool breezes from the searing West Texas heat is one of the most anticipated. Dorm Move in Day though comes first. In the blink of an eye, every bike rack is full, and the parking lots have people circling for the closest spot. Then there are the freshmen. Freshmen girls travel in large herds..all too unsure of themselves to go anywhere alone….not three or four girls but rather six or eight. They are easy to spot, they all are carrying purses. Not yet having mastered the idea of minimalism, they are still trying to show off their latest designer treasure. They look around nervously to make sure they look like the other girls in the group, their newest best friends, ones they have know for perhaps a day. The boys are much the same in herds, only their herds tend to lean on walls and cars…..waiting for the girl herd to travel their way. In the end their is mingling.
The upperclassmen are visible too. They are taking their afternoon runs on campus….no purses of course….they have their debit card, IDs and phone stashed invisibly on their person. They veer irritably around the herds and mingling. College is a world of its own, a society of peers, an artificial environment that will never be experienced again in their lives…but always remembered as the best time of life.
On family vacations my parents were careful to point out all the universities. Depending on where we had traveled the summer before, that was the university I had chosen. Vanderbilt, U of Washington, U of Wyoming, U of Montana with the big M on the side of the mountain all looked inviting. We stayed in Lubbock each summer as we headed west. As I got closer to college, I realized seeing all the out of state universities had been nothing but a tease since my parents said I had to stay in the state. Texas Tech was as far away from home as I could get and stay in the state. I was happy with Tech as my choice…the ten hour drive from the coast made it seem plenty far away.
Senior Skip day I went with my friend Kay, to see Lamar University, where she planned to attend. We were going to stay in the dorm with her sister, Shelly. We were driving all the way from LaMarque to Beaumont alone which made the adventure seem that much more real.
We were welcomed aloofly by her sister and friends, we felt kind of lost, clutching our purses and looking for a friendlier herd to hang out with. When dinnertime came we headed with Shelly and her friends to a pizza place that was popular with the college crowd. As we talked, I became the subject of attention because I was not going to attend Lamar. One of the girls I had been a twirler with when she was in high school, Joy, asked where I was going to college. "Texas Tech University," I told her. Leaning her head back she roared with laughter,
“YOU are so spoiled, you will never make it!” she yowled. Everyone started laughing. She continued… “You have never been away from your parents, you have never had to share a bedroom, you have always had a car….you will never be able to stay away from home without all your perks. She will be home after one semester, don’t ya think?” she said as she threw the question to the crowd. There was laughing and agreement, being embarrassed, I decided to just leave it out there, and not comment.
When graduation was over my mom and I flew to Washington State to spend the summer with my grandfather who was dying of cancer. A summer at a nursing home, out of touch with my friends, was a good break from the old life to the new.
When we got back, my mom drove me to Lubbock…..a WEEK before dorm move in day. As was always with my mother, she didn’t want any distractions as she prepared for her school year, so I was dumped, at the empty dorm, Stangel Hall, with a closed cafeteria, no one there but the Resident Assistants and staff.
Not having a “herd” to roam with I spent the days looking out my sixth floor window, going to the snack machine for meals and feeling very homesick. I thought about what Joy had said and made up my mind to not be defeated.
Dorm move in day finally arrived. My door was closed, I heard a key slip into the slot. It swung open and a tiny girl stood in front of me and in the loudest voice I had ever heard screeched, “Hidy I’m Agnes Bean!!!” This was my roommate.
I was extremely apprehensive. Helping her move in were her boyfriend Angus, her sister Heidi, her mother, father and assorted other people. My mom had insisted that I bring only the bare necessities but Agnes had brought everything she had owned, probably from infancy. In a mere hour, her side of the room was so packed with stuff it looked like a state fair shooting booth with the prizes arranged along the wall. My side was empty except for the closet.
Our dorm rooms had a single phone connected by a wire by the window between out two desks. From that moment on the phone rang constantly with calls from Angus. If Angus wasn’t calling Agnes, Agnes was calling Angus. And since I knew no one else, when she was at the dorm, I was with her. We had no television, my parents had determined, a television, distinctly, would be a distraction. So, I listened to Agnes talk…and talk…and talk about Angus. She was from a tiny town in the Panhandle with about 6,000 people. To hear her talk, you would have thought she had come to Paris to study at the Sorbonne.
As people began to arrive, much relieved, I started making an effort to meet other people, all of them asking me if Agnes and I had gone to high school together. I made it very clear she was my “pot luck” roommate.
Then there were the “Beckies”, Small Becky, Tall Becky and Skinny Becky. Small Becky was like a Banny rooster. She was the youngest of eight kids and evidently had ruled the roost. Tall Becky was an upperclass transfer from a junior college, disgusted with all of us, and Skinny Becky was quiet and a lot like me. Within the week I met Leslie from Fort Worth. Each day I seemed to meet someone further down the hall. Leslie and I took off and explored the campus. She walking to all of her classes, then I walking to all of mine. The weekend consisted of hard partying. With girls running down the hall screaming, playing cards, teaching each other the newest Michael Jackson dance...all in the hall. Then at 1 a.m. those with boyfriends came in from dates, joining the chaos that continued on until 3 a.m. I spent the evening amazed at all that was going on, goofing off with Leslie and Little Becky.
It was while walking down the hall that I first heard the battle cry, “PANTY RAID.” All the doors flung open on the left side of the hall and girls ran like a fire drill to rooms on the right side of the hall. As I looked in the rooms, the windows were opened to their widest and out of the windows, all I could see were two rear ends in each window. There was screaming and yelling from inside and out. We were on the 6th floor so I couldn't imagine what on earth was happening. About that time I ran into Little Becky telling everyone what to do. “What is going on???? Why is everyone hanging out the windows?” To which Little Becky replied, handing me a pair of paper panties,
“Write you phone number on these and throw them out the window!”
“Whaaaat???? Why would I do that?
“Guys!! There are guys down there and one of them will get them and call you for a date.”
“Whaaaat? Who are they, I don’t even know them.”
“You don’t know anyone, so just do it.” So I wrote my phone number on the paper panties, and then squeezing my way into my window now filled with two girls I had yet to meet, I tossed them down…a really cute guy catching them….then hollering up as he looked at me, “Are these yours?” To which I smiled and waved.
Leslie had gotten a call from the panty raid too, so we secretly arranged to meet our panty raid dates at the same time in the same place. They were fun guys who lived in the adjoining dorm. They would become friends that we would meet in the cafeteria for meals.
Leslie had this whole dating in college thing down to an art. In the 1970s, the women’s dorms didn’t allow men in the rooms. When a guy came to call for a date he could not come to her room. He had to call from a bank of phones by the double doors downstairs in the lobby. Leslie told me, “Never tell a blind date what you are wearing, you ask him what he is wearing. That way if you walk through the doors, see they are too disgusting then you just keep on walking…go in the phone booth…fake a call and then go back through the doors. They will never know they have just been stood up.” The method worked fine for everyone except me, by the time I got back up to the room, Agnes had answered the 2nd phone call from my goofy blind date and told him that I had just walked back in. Busted.
When classes started on Monday, the strangest transformation took place. Where everyone had been dressed like models, make-up, hair, and glitz, on Monday morning everyone had transformed into clones of each other, blue jeans, Tech T-shirts, droopy hair, no make-up and stumbling to 7:30 am classes without speaking.
Since I had never owned a pair of jeans, and since Home Economic majors were required to “dress appropriately” I was dressed nicely and was distinctly, out of place. It was that morning that I saw another girl, dressed like me at the other end of the hall. She was gorgeous. Her hair was so thick and pretty that she had already acquired the name “The girl with the hair”. Her make-up was perfect, clothes everything was like a model. I observed her for several days, she was always beautiful and always looked like she was going out some place special. She looked kind of lost like me.
In the evenings though, I couldn’t find her. I went down towards that room but the girls inside neither fit that description. I met her one day, found out her name was Janis..spelled like mine. We finished our morning classes at the same time so we decided to meet for lunch...I was so happy to have someone besides Agnes to meet for lunch.
That evening, I was enjoying the quiet of my room with Agnes out with Angus, for the evening when a girl appeared at my door. She smiled, said hi, called me by name and sat down on my bed. I was thinking who is this??? When she referred to us eating lunch together that day. It dawned on my this was Janis!!!! Her hair was in curlers, a pink cap over them, she had on no make-up, no false eyelashes, no lipstick and was in a long pink nightgown. I couldn’t believe it was her. I had seen her on other evenings but had not realized this was “The girl with the hair.”
Janis’ roommate was a “shit kicker” name Gertrude. Gertrude was a lot like Agnes and also had a boyfriend she talked about constantly. She played her Charlie Pride records non-stop while talking about Johnny. This particular evening Janis had noticed Agnes was gone and had come to my room to escape from Gertrude. Our roommates were driving us nuts. Janis had more of a break than me because her boyfriend would come and pick her up some evenings. Before long Janis and I were meeting for every meal and walking to the Home Economics building plotting our revenge, trying to figure out how to ditch our roommates. Agnes was ready to bail as well but she wanted to me to move out and I had no where to go. Janis was experiencing the same scenario.
Finally we had made it to Thanksgiving, a much earned break for all. When we returned from Thanksgiving….the announcement was made. Agnes was getting married..she and Angus were expecting. There were only two weeks left until Christmas break….I had made it and I was coming back in the spring. Janis and Janis were going to be roommates. This was the beginning of a lifelong friendship, that would be the closest thing to having a sister I would ever have.
It wasn’t until a year later as I moved in for my sophomore
year that I realized just how homesick I had been the year before. I always had Joy’s words playing in the back of my head, “YOU are so spoiled you will never make it!”
I graduated four years later with a Bachelor of Science Degree from Texas Tech University.
