Indiana University Bloomington Circa 1982: My Second Year Room Mate

Another IU story. My roommate the second year. His name was Randy, and he was from Evansville Indiana. 

We had set up the 2nd year roommate situation at the end of the first year. The first year in the dorm was when I met him, and we both had roommates that first year that weren't good matches.

Randy and I were GREAT matches. Studying was secondary. Partying like mad dogs came first. Our musical tastes were very similar too, which was of paramount importance. 

Anyoo...Randy was a little rough around the edges, which was fine, but he had a heart of gold.

What he didn't have, was two hands! I can't remember which one was missing, but it was gone...and it departed the end of his arm in the most gruesome and traumatic of fashions.

Evansville, where he grew up and his folks still lived, is coal mining country.

Seems one fine day in his youth, he found what was either blasting caps or some other explosive used for coal mining...just laying around waiting for some poor, dumb, unsuspecting bastard to pick it up and fuck around with it. 

Randy was that poor dumb bastard. 

His hand was gone at the wrist. 

He had two prosthetic attachments he could use. 

One was a double-hook type thing with pincers that he could manipulate by flexing his shoulder. 

The other was some kinda fake, plastic, flesh colored bullshit that looked like his lower arm and hand. 

He usually wore the hook thing. 

The other thing was for dressing up, formal pictures, etc. 

He was skilled in the use of the hook. It attached to his body via a couple of straps, similar to how a handgun shoulder holster fits onto one's body.

He could tie his shoes, use buttons effectively, drive...pretty much everything a two handed dude can do, Randy could do too. 

There was one thing Randy could do that I couldn't. 

He could detach his hook from his arm, expertly insert a joint between the tips of his hooks, and pass a joint around! 

Motherfucker! I loved this guy! A built-in roach clip! Genius! 

He did so at an Aerosmith concert at Market Square Arena. 

The people around us lost their shit. It was spectacular!

Randy could also open beer bottles with his hook, but...of course he could! 

I invited him back to Indy for a weekend to spend time at my folks house. 

He invited me to Evansville to do the same. 

He was a perfect guest and host. 

My father REALLY liked him. 

My father was basically handicapped after getting his legs crushed by a car as a youth, but he never let it stop him from doing incredible shit. 

I'm guessing Dad saw some of himself in Randy, and respected him for it. 

By the end of my first semester second year, I was beginning to realize that Bloomington specifically, and university, in general, were not the place for me...and were a colossal waste of time and money. 

I would leave IU/Bloomington and Randy for the satellite campus in Indy for one more semester. 

Then I would bailout and surrender. 

I was a college dropout, and I was so proud. 

I never saw or heard from Randy again.

Indiana University Bloomington Journalism School Circa 1982: It Was Not Meant To Be, And A Brief Visit To The Campus And Town 44 Years Later

My writing style, my dabbling in university, the "professors." (gag) 

I couldn't count how many times I had red ink on my essays/assignments saying shit basically like, "WTF is this? Why is this here? Irrelevant." 

Fuck off, cunt. It's there because I put it there. Die already. 

One time a prof was reading out loud one of my screeds to the entire class. She didn't identify the author (me), but she slogged thru the first few pages, stopped, and said to the class, "Does anybody in the room wanna hear anymore of this?" 

In other words, "This shit is ponderous, man. Ponderous!  Somebody rescue me from this lunatic and his bullshit before I eat a shotgun!"

I'll admit it was the text of an interview I did with another student who rambled on for hours about how the fraternity system sucked because he couldn't get into it. 

I'll also admit I was instigating some shit about a system I thought was stupid...Greek life, but dammit, the assignment was to interview and report. That's what I did, so fuck off bitch.

I'll finally also admit that I was getting tired of hearing my own boring bullshit.  It was fucking embarrassing how bad it was!

Uni and I didn't coexist very well.

###  

 

The journalism school at Indiana University Bloomington is named Ernie Pyle Hall.

Ernie Pyle was one of my father's heroes, and my father's style with the Vietnam dispatches were very similar to Pyle's. 

I knew who Pyle was back in the early 80s when I was at IU. He was a hero of mine as well. 

Pyle probably would have hated what the profs in that building are regurgitating currently. 

God only knows what that journo school is like now. 

It's probably a horror.

What the fuck am I talking about?

I know exactly what it's like now.  I've seen and heard what they do. It's a train wreck of supersensitive PC bullshit, and it ain't for me. 

I recently visited Bloomington during the "off season"...the summer...when classes are not in session. It's much different than I remember from the 80s. 

Claustrophobic, dirty greasy streets and sidewalks, panhandlers, crackheads, homeless bums everywhere. 

The entire experience was. "Ick. Get me the fuck outta this shithole."

Socialism.

Catch it...and some kinda horrifying, debilitating disease in the process.

###

Kirk

Another IU journo story...still interviewing a student, but this essay got overall favorable responses from the prof. 

I lived in a dorm.  

The RA, resident assistant, was an older student who was supposed to guide us younger idiots and keep us from burning the place down. 

I'll call my interview subject Kirk. He seemed like a cool cat, so I chose him as my next victim. 

Kirk was from Louisville Kentucky, and he adored absolutely EVERYTHING about Louisville...especially the University of Louisville athletics program...football and basketball. 

I thought it a tad strange that a guy attending Indiana University was such Louisville fan. 

It became so prominent that I teased him constantly about Ewe uv Ell (U of L). 

He knew I was fucking with him, and he seemed to like it. 

Anyhoo...I interviewed him in his dorm room. 

RA's got the privilege of not having to share a room, so everything in that room was his, and his alone. 

Hell, I was sharing a room with another dude, and I brought 2 vehicles...a full sized van and a station wagon...completely stuffed with useless bullshit that would contribute exactly nothing to further my education. 

Kirk was a different story. 

He had his university-supplied bed, a couple of plastic milk crates filled with personal possessions, and a crappy stereo system that one could have packed into a footlocker. 

I noted all of this in my essay, and said that Kirk could be packed up and gone from the place in 5 minutes...and nobody would have known he was ever there. 

The prof who graded it complimented me on my powers of observation, and that the fact that Kirk could have easily left the place without much effort was an interesting aside. 

I didn't tell the bitch that we were smoking joints during the entire interview, and that Kirk turned me on to Tom Petty's debut album. 

I think of Kirk every time I hear a cut from that LP. 

I recorded my interviews on a portable cassette player. 

I distinctly remember my exact words as this interview ended. 

"Great! Now let's get high!"