Iowa State, December 1985

Way back yonder before there was the internet…or even class registration by phone…I was in college. I lived in the residence hall equivalent of Animal House. If you know Iowa State pre-21 drinking age, you would know I’m talking about the Towers. Among the bizarreness I saw in my semester there before moving to a kindler, gentler place (the Olympus of Residence Halls: Foster House), I got to see people try and play aerobee across buildings…while on the 5th/6th floors. I got to hear someone call a phone sex line and play it through there 6-ft high speakers into the courtyard between all four buildings.

Wallace Hall’s east side today. I lived on the western side, 7th floor, 3rd window from the right, 7312, Lancelot.

On Halloween, the guys up on the top floor had a rowdy party and…proceeded to drop pumpkins out the windows on the north side of the building onto the concrete below. When I say Animal House–I’m really not exaggerating…and I haven’t even mentioned the ‘floor parties’ (which I am told are *nothing* compared to the ones held in the 1970s…).

There’s a lot of crap going on in the world that’s serious and it’s bad–and for some reason, an amusing thought came to my mind. Why not share it? We can’t forget the good in the world or the majority of people who truly are good.

In any event, it was December and it was the second real snow of the year. There’d been an ice storm/blizzard over Thanksgiving, a snow the weekend after that (I walked to a concert from Towers to Hilton in that one), and then the ‘Big One’. The Big One dropped something like 8″ of snow on Ames starting in the afternoon and going right on to the next morning. I skipped class the next day, by the way…’

Well, at the time, Domino’s had a policy of 30-minute delivery or it’s free–no conditions. You can see where this is going. I’m not stupid. The other 62 guys I live with weren’t morons, nor were the 550 other people in the building or the 560 in the other three buildings at Towers. The roads weren’t great, no one wanted to go out, so everyone called Domino’s. No one was getting their pizzas in 30 minutes. This was free food. Now, I ordered a pizza, got it 90 minute later, and I took my free pizza happily. That was my participation in it. Other people? Nope…they’d order more than once, they’d order multiple pizzas. 4-5 rooms on my floor, guys with refrigerators, they stocked up on enough pizza to last a week or more. I’ve never seen that many Domino’s Pizzas in my life.

And…that was the last week ever for free pizza from Domino’s in 30 minutes. They also stopped taking orders at 11pm or so. I can’t imagine why.

The revelry continued though–found that out in the school paper the next morning. There was a police report of a truck that was trashed. It wasn’t stolen or anything. Nope…this is Animal House. Many people went out late that evening to see if they could create ‘the world’s greatest snowball.’ They made that bad boy 8-10 feet tall and Mr. Truck Driver…well, that ball’s nothing but snow, so driving a truck full speed through it OUGHT to look cool…or not. Driver only suffered bruises, etc., getting off easy compared to his truck.

Life out at Towers was interesting, that’s for sure. I could’ve survived there, but moved in January to Foster, Land of the Gods. I’m glad I can say I lived at Towers in its heyday. It’s a badge of honor…sort of.