Earth Wind & Fire and Slugs in the Bathtub

I really shouldn't listen to music late at night. I start taking long, winding trips down memory lane and write about it. Verbosity gets the better of me.

Oh well, here goes.

Earth, Wind & Fire was on the radio tonight and it took me back in time to my freshman and sophomore years in college. I was dating Band Boy. Band geeks are weird enough in high school but at the college level they are semi-professional band geeks. Really strange bunch. They all lived in the rattiest, nastiest old houses.

Band Boy lived a block off campus in a ratty old house with 12 foot ceilings. Generations of music majors had lived there and as long as the monthly rent checks didn't bounce the landlord let them wreck the place. The floors were so bouncy the stereo turntable was suspended by chains from the ceiling. I thought this was a pretty inventive solution actually. Music majors didn't have much but they all had killer stereo systems with suspended turntables.

Unfortunately, BB didn't have a very good album collection. Lots of Holst, Rachmaninoff, Dvorak, and Sousa marches. The only popular music album he owned was Earth, Wind & Fire. Parties at his house had this lone album played over and over and over and over. I grew to hate it then but it brings back memories now.

BB lived in one bedroom and Two Guys, both music majors too but hated enemies of BB, lived in the other bedroom. I never quite understood the dynamic of living in a house with people you didn't like. I guess the rent was cheap and it was better than living in the dorm. They seemed to be able to avoid one another so it worked for them.

I liked the two guys a lot and hung out with them more than I ever hung out with BB. That right there should tell you something about BB.

Anyway, Two Guys graduated and Barracuda, the little sister of one of them, moved in to their old room. I really liked her too. Since Band Boy and Barracuda couldn't really afford the rent split two ways, they let a freshman move into what was the breakfast nook. It was maybe 6'x6' and had no heat and no door, but they charged him a full 1/3 rent anyway. Freshmen music majors aren't the sharpest tacks in the box. Once again, I guess it was better than the dorm.

The old house had hardwood floors but no subfloor. The hardwood was nailed directly to the joists. That meant about 3/4" of wood separated the occupants from the Great Underneath. During a toga conga line BB crashed through the dining room floor and squashed his manparts on the floor joist. They covered up the hole with a rug. Manparts got ice. I laughed and pointed.

The bathroom had an old clawfoot bathtub with a homemade wooden surround to turn it into a shower. It wasn't waterproof so water got on the floor underneath the tub and eventually the two back legs fell through the floor. The belly of the tub was sitting on a joist thank god or the whole thing would have gone under the house.

A two inch crack opened up between the tub rim and the trim, letting in an earthy smell from parts below. On warm mornings the tub was full of garden slugs swimming around and crawling up the shower curtain. Ewwwww. I don't know how those guys lived like that. It didn't bother them in the least. Men are such pigs. I felt sorry for Barracuda having to shower in that nastiness.

On Sunday mornings after a party the place was littered with bodies. We would all eventually come to (as opposed to wake up) and watch old black and white episodes of The Lone Ranger and The Cisco Kid. "Ohhhhhh Ciscooooo (smirk from Pancho), Ohhhhhh Panchoooooo (smirk from Cisco)" The Cisco Kid was not a very PC show come to think of it.

TV time ended around noon and we would load up en masse and go to Andy's for breakfast/lunch. We all stunk of old beer and cigarette smoke, and had smeared makeup (the girls did) and uncombed hair. My eight-hour-only contacts I had slept in were sticking to my eyeballs.

We would lurch into Andy's, get our food, and purposefully sit right next to the dressed up church people fresh out of church. We loudly discussed every nasty detail of the previous night's events and planned the next weekend's nasty festivities. Glaring looks from the church people.

I eventually broke up with Band Boy at the end of my sophomore year. Barracuda said, "Dang girl, what took you so long???? He's such an a**hole" I was just marking time until I found me a blue-eyed sweetie. Then Band Boy was toast.

Geez I had a lot of fun in college. I'm too old now to wake up in a nasty house reeking of old beer. But I sure miss those times. And I would like to see one more episode of The Cisco Kid.

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PHOTO GALLERY

Band Boy and I in the Summer of 1980



OMG! Lookit that tube top and mane of permed hair. All I needed was a Marlboro Red hanging off my lower lip and a dubblewide trailer in the background.

I realized not too long after this that I really don't like blondes who use more grooming products than me. I prefer my menfolk dark headed and naturally tousled.

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Barracuda and I in the Fall of 1982 at a western themed frat party. Whew! Ditched that permed hair look right after Band Boy.



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