Old West Tales - All 21 Tales

Here it is, all 21 chapters of Old West Tales, including 2 new, never before published, chapters.

You are looking at "The Old Well", a UNC Chapel Hill landmark. UNC Chapel Hill was the first state university, and the Old Well isn't the only thing in Chapel Hill that is old. Beside The Old Well is the first Dormitory at a state university, Old East Dorm. The building seen behind the Old Well in this photograph is Old West Dorm. Old West isn't as old as Old East, but I did live there for almost an entire school year. The result, Old West Tales.

Chapter 1 - Introduction

My freshman year I lived in Teague Dorm. I loved Teague so much that I signed up to live in a triple my sophomore year to increase my chances of getting back into Teague in the student housing lottery. It worked, and I even got my Teague room assignment for Sophomore year. Then, over the summer, I got the news that everyone (actually all but a handfull) had been kicked out of Teague and the all-male dorm was becoming co-ed. As fate would have it, the triple was re-assigned to Old West Dorm. At the center of Old West lay a stairwell leading up to two floors of 4 room suites. I lived in one of the top suites of the center stairwell, with windows facing some classrooms. My suite's bathroom window faced The Old Well, and is visible at the top center on the photo.

My roomates when I moved into Old West were Brian and Vic. Brian had landed a prized reporting position at the Daily Tar Heel, and Vic played bass in several rock bands. Little did I know when that year started that Brian would be replaced by another roomate and we would eventually get kicked out Old West, but those are other stories....

Chapter 2 - Hector's Express Sidewalk

Old West Dorm is in a great location, close to classes and also to Franklin Street. In fact, there was this one side walk that went from the door of Old West, all the way to Franklin Street, ending right in front of Hector's, one of my favorite resteraunts in Chapel Hill. Hector's was a grill that served "greek" food. You walked in, got in line, ordered your food, and by the time you got to the end of the counter, your food was ready. My favorite things at Hector's was greek grilled cheese (grilled cheese on pita bread) and Double cheeseburger on pita (self explanatory). Of course Hector's followed my tried and true formula of grease = taste. Most people considered Hectors late-night-drunk-food, and late-night was when the line was out the door, but I liked Hector's at all times of day. Many times I remember strolling the shops and boutiques of Franklin street waiting for 11:00 am so that Hector's would open and I could get lunch.

There were many mornings at Old West where I would wake up with a stomache ache, and due to my state of mind the night before, have no recollection of why my stomach hurt so bad. As soon as I got out of bed, mystery solved when I found partially crumbled sheets of aluminum foil with pools of mustard-tinged grease in them - The Hectors express sidewalk.

Chapter 3 - Turnip____

Diagonally across the suite from us in Old West was another triple room full of Teague refugees. They were mostly from Graham, North Carolina and were physically alot bigger than we were, although they were far from Jocks. They built a loft in their room and slept in the loft. The ground was reserved for the television and three full sized lazy-boy recliners. They sat in these recliners, in the dark, and watched television, mostly soap opras. They would watch Bold and the Beautiful and comment about having sex with "Brooke". These guys would not get out of the recliners, unless they had to pass gas, then they would make sure to come into our room first.

One thing that amazed me about these guys was an incredible sixth sense that they had. They could sense when we had girls in the room. No matter what time of day or night, if we brought, or even snuck,a girl into our room, even if their door was closed, within seconds they would come strolling into the room to openly check her out, usually wearing nothing but a towel.

These guys thought my last name, "Turnipseed" was funny, but they always put their own cursing spin on it. For example: "What's up Turnipshit?", or "Where you going, Turnipfuck?"

My all time favorite, and the other two looked at the one who said it like he was an idiot, was "What's up, Turnipdick?"

Chapter 4 - The Ballad of Brian and Whats-Her-Name

Brian started our Sophomore year with a girlfriend that he met over the summer. She was going to Western Carolina. Western Carolina is in Cullowhee, NC. I know this because that is what our phone bill said, line after line. Brian would stretch the telephone cord out the door, and sit out in the middle of the suite smoking cigarettes and talking to his girlfriend all night. He would also go to visit her in his "Wheel of Fortune" car.

That's right, when Brian was in highschool he won a small domestic car on "Wheel of Fortune". He didn't just win the car, he bought it with the money he won on the show. I have seen the tape. Brian spun $2,000 and guessed the letter "D". The puzzle was "Don't drink and drive". At the end of the show Brian won a trip to Hawaii by solving the puzzle "Born in the USA" with very few letters showing. Watching the tape, I wouldn't have gotten it.

Brian loved the Beatles, particularly John Lennon. Brian had based his hair style on a photo of John Lennon. This is ironic because Brian definitely got YOKO'd by his girlfriend. I don't remember the exact sequence, but it all started when he began dating this girl. Brian's parents got really freaked out about possible drug use and whatever was going on in that liberal hippie commune that is known as Chapel Hill. Brian was yanked out of school and never came back for the second semester. I thought that it was a bit of an overreaction because Brian was one of the few underclassmen writing for the Daily Tar Heel, had great grades, and really didn't do all that many drugs.

Although I was sad to see Brian go, our triple had become a double and Vic and I actually had a little elbow room. Student housing promised us that we would not get a new roomate. They lied.....

Chapter 5 - Excuse me, You're eating my foot.

Who else lived in Old West that you haven't told us about?

First the humans: Jamie lived in our suite. Jamie was a Clef-Hanger (all male UNC singing group) who played guitar. Because he was a poser, and not a real rocker, Vic changed Jamie's name to Hie-may and always called him Hie-may, even to his face.

There were a couple of other guys in the suite with a dart board. One time we were throwing darts from out the door and someone hit a can of deoderant. Deoderant started shooting out of the side of the can, which began spinning around and filling the room with a white mist, gagging all within.

Directly below our room were 3 frat boys, and boy were they A-holes. We would get drunk and see how loud we could be by jumping off the top bunk onto the floor. Despite my greater weight, Vic usually won because he had more hatred and the advantage of cowboy boots.

Also, at the bottom of our stairwell lived Dan, the RA. Dan was not at all cool and took his job and authority way too seriously. Vic was convinced that student housing had purposefully placed us under Dan's watchfull eye.

There were others in the dorm, like the hippie guy with the Black Sabbath Bootleg who I got photographed with for the Daily Tar Heel while Hacky-sacking one afternoon, but they aren't really important.

Non-humans: Brian was gone, but how could we make sure that we wasn't forgotten? Easy enough - Name a goldfish after him. Vic had an aquarium in our Old West room. The only thing in the aquarium was Luther, Vic's newt. Luther was very special to Vic and they had been through a lot together. Our freshman year Luther had survived an incident where a pickle had been placed in his tank at a party.

I went to the pet store and bought the biggest, ugliest, speckeldy-looking fish that they had. We named him "Brian" and he went into the tank with Luther. All seemed well until we noticed that one of Luther's feet was gone and only a nub remained. We started watching the tank and noticed that Brian would take a quick nibble from Luther's foot whenever he got the chance.

Chapter 6 - Sane Guy and Others

You have already met Vic, Brian, The Graham boys, whats-her-name, Hie-May, Frat boy's below us, Dan, Hippe-guy with Black Sabbath bootleg, Luther, Brian the fish, and Tojo, but more introductions are needed:

Joe - Joe Perry, of Siler City not Aerosmith. My suite mate in Teague freshman year and best friend at UNC sophomore year. (Vic was close, but always up girlfriend's butt)

Robin - Good friend of mine from Kiiiiiiiin-stun, NC. I sort of dated Robin our freshman year for a short time but gave up because she smoked cigs and there was too much competition (40 to 50% of all males who know Robin are in love with her).

Sane Guy - Steve from Tabor city. Crazy as hell. Freshman year we introduced him to some things that we probably shouldn't have, and he really flipped out. As he was lifting me over his head and screaming "I feel so Alive!", Robin started calling him "Sane Guy" (sarcasm) and the name stuck.

JJ - Jennifer Jolly, the Jolly Red Giant. 5'10" redhead who I dated end of freshman, beginning of sophomore year. JJ was singer in Vic's band Sophomore year.

Bob - Rich kid from Bronxville, NY. Bob was a guitar player who discovered fried chicken when he arrived in the research triangle area and would drive 20 minutes to Durham for Bojangles in a heart-beat.

Sane Guy - The name of Vic's, Bob's and JJ's band. Named after Sane Guy, the person.

Sane Guy played quite a few gigs here and there in little bars on Franklin Street. Vic looked and acted the part of a rocker. Because she was bashfull, JJ would get drunk before singing. The tricky part was for JJ to keep her drunk level between courage and slurred lyrics (she had often reached the latter by the end of a gig). Bob could absolutely shred on the guitar, but while everyone else looked like rockers, Bob looked like the short, balding, redhead yankee kid with a brand new, stiff, baseball cap perched on his head.

One night, at Bob's insistence, we went to see Majosha, a white-boy-funk band comprised of music geeks like himself. Majosha's bass player is pictured at right.

Markland - My longtime soccer buddy from Irmo High School who went to Southern New Jersey University (Duke). He would come over to Chapel Hill every other month because of the pretty girl shortage in Durham.

Beattie - One of my best friends from Irmo, was at University of The South, in Sewanee, Tennessee.

Chapter 7 - Music Class

I finished My Freshman year at UNC with a 2.1 GPA. I had not yet decided a major, so while I lived in Old West, I worked on my liberal arts, General College requirements. First semester I decided to take an interesting class and chose an Introduction To Music class. We would learn to read music, compose our own song, and there was no pre-requisite, which meant that no music training was required and it would be easy. (NOT!)

The music class was impossible for me. Everyone else in the class could already read music and knew how to play piano or other instruments. (Somehow I "placed-out" of every introductory class in any subject that I knew anything about - thanks alot Irmo High School.)

Our grade would be based on a series of exams and also the final project, where we would be composing a song. The exams all had 2 parts, a written part taken in the classroom with everyone else, and a performance part taken one-on-one with the professor in a little room. For example: During our first classroom exam, the professor said, "OK, I am going to clap out a rhythm and you will take rythmic dictation." The second part of each exam was student, alone with the professor and a piano, in a small room. During my first one-on-one exam, the professor handed me a rhythmic dictation and I had to clap it out.

All of the exams had the same format, but got exponentially more difficult. I was Ok at the written tests. I could look at written music and tell you what all the parts were, and what the numbers and "cleffs" meant, but I could not hear the music in my head. Like wise, if I heard music, I could not imagine what it would look like on paper.

Of course everyone else in the class had no problems and were cruising through with a minimum of effort.

I was looking forward to the final exam. I made up what I thought was a nice little tune and got my friend Bob to write it out in the form of music for me. It just so happened to be my friend Robin's birthday the day I turned my song in, so I named it "Robin My Love". When I got "Robin My Love" back with a big fat "D" on it, Robin posted it on her Cobb dorm-room bulletin board. I tried to get Robin's roomate, Amelia, to play "Robin My Love" on the piano, but she said it was impossible.

I made a D+ in the class, I can't read music, and I have long since forgotten anything that I may have learned in the class. But guess what, I don't need no class to appreciate music, or a professor to tell me that John Coletrane is good and Kenny G sux. I learned all I need to know about music from the streets.

Accordingly, From the music class experience, I learned a valuble life lesson -

Sometimes easy is better than interesting.

I was not so great at the performance exams during music class, taken in the little room. One time, no crap, I walked into the little room, sat down, and the professor said, "Ok, to start with, sing any major scale." I had no clue and stood there for a moment. Then I remembered The Von Trapp children, and how Maria had taught them to sing a major scale with a catchy song about forest animals. I gathered my breath and went for it:

Chapter 8 - Lost, Found, Lost again.

One night, near the end of first semester in Old Well, one of my suite-mates, Bell (of the Graham Boys), lent me an ID. It was a NC Drivers License from one of his frat brothers who had recently turned 21. It was the perfect fake ID for me. Bell had thought to loan the ID to me because the photo looked just like me. Actually, the ID looked like me, but better. You could even say that the ID looked more like me than I do, ... You get the idea.

I lost the ID that night and told Bell, who was pissed. A week or so later, I found the ID under the ottoman in my room. I kept it and didn't tell Bell.

First semester ended and it was time to go home for winter break. I put Brian the gold fish in a milk jug with the top cut off full of tap water, and drove back to Columbia.

I had a two friends, Richard and Chip, who lived in a condo In Five Points. One night Raymond and I went down to five-points and went to Group Therapy (a bar). As we stumbled out of the bar with a large stream of people, there was a cop standing there hitting on the girl who worked at Group. The cop randomly plucked me from the stream of people and asked to see my ID. This cop was a huge smart-ass and was showing off for the girl, I confidently handed him my North Carolina ID.

The cop said, "This is a fake ID."

I said, "No its not, that is me."

The cop said "I know its you, but it is not a real ID."

Raymond had stumbled past the cop, but came back when he heard the cop being such an idiot about the ID, "That is a North Carolina ID."

The cop got annoyed with Raymond and walked him over to his police car and put him in the back seat.

Then he walked back over to me, "Where are you staying?"

"Right There." I said, pointing to the condo.

"I tell you what," said the cop, "If you admit this is a fake ID, then you will not get in trouble, but I am going to take the ID and drive you and your friend home and I don't want to ever catch you using a fake ID again."

I didn't know if I could trust the cop or not so I looked at the girl working the door, who I knew somehow. She nodded that the cop would be true to his word, so I fessed up.

"Go get in the car with your friend." said the cop, turning his attentions back to the girl that he was hitting on.

I walked over to the patrol car and opened the back door to get in with Raymond. Raymond jumped out of the car ... said "I'm getting out of here!" ... and started running.

I just stood there dumbfounded. The cop saw Raymond running and ran up to me...

The cop yelled as he ran toward me "Why did your friend run?"

Then, without waiting for an answer, "You should have run too ... get in the car!"

I got in the front seat, next to the cop. The blue light went on, and we took off with high beams on, looking for Raymond who had fled the scene on foot. The cop sped around the five-points area for about ten minutes, all the while with blue lights and high beams on, disregarding stop signs. He was really starting to get pissed and I knew that he was going to take it out on me.

Then, as we rounded a corner in a residential area, Raymond came, trotting and huffing, obviously winded, from behind two houses. We were only about two blocks from Group Therapy.

The cop sped toward Raymond, who froze and put his hands up in the air.

The cop cuffed him and stuffed him, all the while asking "Why did you run?" The cop decided to charge us with under-age drinking, a fine and ticket. As we were driving to the station for processing the cop kept saying "You shouldn't have run."

As I was getting finger-printed, the cop looked at my information and said:

"Turnipseed ... isn't your dad some kind of communist?" Then, without waiting for an answer, "Well he isn't going to get you out of this one!"

So I lost the perfect ID twice. At least I wouldn't be lying to Bell anymore.

Chapter 9 - Enter TPYG

I put Brian, the goldfish, in some sort of container of tapwater and headed back to Chapel Hill for second semester. One morning, early in the semester, a guy walks into our room with a laundry basket full of stuff, and starts unloading it.

What are you doing?

My name is Richard King, I am your roomate....

Sure enough, the student housing conspiracy continued and we had been assigned a new roomate in the middle of the year.

Let's just say that Rich didn't fit in with Vic and me. Rich was tall and thin and frail looking. He had wispy white hair and lilly white skin. I immediately nicknamed him The Pale Young Gentleman, after a character that tried to fight Pip in the Great Expectations Cliff Notes.

Rich claimed to be from Raliegh, but he was originally from Chicago and had yankee dorkiness. Rich said "Basically...." and "Alls I'm Saying ..." alot. Rich wore bright colored windbreakers like royal blue with orange piping.

Rich didn't drink or party at all, he was into Japan.

Rich was an extremely quiet person. Which isn't to say that he never talked, just that he could move around and go about his business without making a sound. You would often forget that he was even in the room. Rich wore pajamas. At night or while napping, I would often catch a glimpse of a thin figure gliding silently across the room like an apparition.

Rich had a hard time getting up in the morning and had about 4 or 5 different alarms that would go off.

Rich hardly ever ate. He didn't seem to like food. He would buy a sub sandwich from the student union and live off of it for days. He would occasionally pull the sub out of the mini-fridge, un-wrap it, and then carefully carve off a translucent sliver and eat it, all without making a sound.

Rich was a spectator who was entertained by our personalities and antics. He liked to eavesdrop on other conversations but rarely participated. Rich seemed to have no friends at all, at least none ever came by our room. I am sure that the only time he ever spoke to girls is when our friends or girlfriends would come over. The girls thought it was funny to watch Rich grin and blush when they asked him something about Japan.

Don't get me wrong, guys liked to come by and make fun of Rich also. We always encouraged even marginal smokers to light-up when they swung by the room; the fun was to see if Rich had the balls to protest.

Rich had expensive Paul Mitchell hair styling products that we liked to hide around the room.

Vic and I liked to play loud music and Rich didn't care for devil music. Strangely, AC/DC and Black Sabbath became my favorite bands that semester

Vic and Rich did not get along at all. They were constantly arguing. The ongoing disagreement went something like this:

Rich = "Vic, your problem is, you decide right away that people are either cool or a pussy --- cool, or a pussy. And that's it."

Vic = "That's right Rich."

This infuriated Rich as he fell on the wrong side of Vic's first impression. Rich tried all semester to gain our acceptance, and when he ultimately failed ....

Chapter 10 - Gumby's

While living in Old West I had a job delivering Pizzas for Gumby's Pizza. Gumby's was actually located in Carrboro, a town adjacent to Chapel Hill, on the non-Durham side. Gumby's was started by some frat boys at University of Florida and was in the process of spreading to other college towns.

At the time, the UNC Gumby's was second in sales only to the Ohio State Gumby's. Gumby's pizza was good and cheap, a favorite of students and locals. It was a good job and I already knew how to make pizzas from my days at Showbiz Pizza back in Columbia, SC.

Half the drivers were students, the other half were professional pizza delivery guys who might also drive a cab and who might own 2 cars, one crappy one reserved for pizza delivery.Drivers either worked morning or night shifts. Morning shift you had to help open the store and do alot of prep work, but you got free lunch and had your evening free. Night shift you made the most money, but didn't get home until about 2 or 3 a.m.

One night while working, I heard that student tickets vouchers to the Final 4 were being distributed the next morning at the Smith Center. When I got off work at 3 a.m., I only had to wait a few hours in line to get the voucher for 2 tickets. I sold it for $100.

Pizza delivery is very rough on a car. Especially in Chapel Hill where there are a lot of low stone walls in odd locations. Luckily, my father had given me his hand-me-down Accord. That car took a beating.

Drivers got paid a small hourly wage, plus tips, plus 50 cents a pie (industry jargon for pizza), or 75 cents a pie if you averaged over 4 pie deliveries an hour. Whoever delivered the most pies on a night shift got a $10 bonus. One night I was all set to win the bonus (one of the managers had been setting me up with killer runs) until I locked my keys in my car. We got paid in cash, tax free, at the end of the shift.

Tips were usually a dollar, but sometimes more. A pizza delivery trick is to carry a huge wad of one dollar bills. When counting out change, you pull out the wad of 1's (your 5's and 10's are hidden) and start slowly and laboriously counting out the change, one bill at a time, until the customer tells you to keep the rest of the change. It is also perfectly acceptable to tell the customer that you have no coin change (huge lie).

Yes, I got plenty of beer and "other stuff" as tips.

There was a lot of turn-over of drivers. If you didn't show up for your shift, you were fired. I got fired 3 times. The managers liked me and always told me to wait a month or so and they would hire me back.

Sometimes you would go to deliver a pizza to a dorm room and no-one would be there. If that happened, you would call Gumby's and they would tell you to sell the pizza for 5 bucks or bring it back. If you sold it for more than $5, you got to keep the difference. One time I delivered to a dorm room and the guy was passed out in his bed. I could not get him to wake up, but a wallet was sitting right there on the desk. I called Gumby's and they told me to take the money and a tip and leave the pizza. It was a good tip.

Pizza tip = If your pizza is late and you call the pizza place and the manager says that the driver "just left" with your pizza, they didn't. They forgot about you and will start making your pizza when you hang up.

Chapter 11 - TPYG Questions Answered

We want to hear more about Rich, TPYG.

You describe Rich as The Pale Young Gentleman, tall and thin and frail looking with wispy white hair and lilly white skin, but I still can't muster a visual image.

Let me help you. Picture Def Leppard Guitarist Steve (photos at right). Now, imagine that instead of dying in 1991 from a mixture of alchohol and pain killers, Steve quit the band, cut his hair, and developed a creepy fascination with Japanese culture. That is what Rich looked like.

Ok, I will now answer 3 questions about Rich.

Question #1. = Rich really never drank?

A = Rich did drink on one, and only one, occasion.

Question #2. = Did Rich ever make a sound other than through the use of his own vocal cords?

A = Yes, Rich did make a sound on one, and only one, occasion. It just so happened to be the one, and only one, occasion that he consumed alcohol.

At some point during the semester, Rich started taking an interest in student politics (yawn). Rich told us that he was backing a guy named Trey for student body president. Rich talked about Trey all the time and had Trey campaign stuff. Basically, Rich wanted to be Trey.

Well the big election night came and Trey didn't do so well.

Rich was devastated and started drinking a 4 pack of wine coolers (I swear this is true) out of a coffee mug. Soon Rich was slurring his speech,

"Alsssss I"m SSSSSaying..."

Rich's anger over the election swelled up inside him over the course of the evening and erupted as he slammed the empty coffee mug down on our bar, and for the first time since I had known him, Rich's physical interaction with matter produced an audible sound.

Question #3. = Did Rich ever do anything remotely cool?

A = Yes, on one, and only one, occasion, Rich said something funny.

I was sitting on my bed scraping a pipe when Rich started speaking. (As usual, I had forgotten that Rich was even in the room).

"Your parents must be proud."

I'll bite. "What do you mean Rich?"

"If your parents knew how much heavy metal music you had to listen to and how much you had to party to be cool, they would have to be proud."

This was actually pretty funny, but I couldn't let Rich know that. Without batting an eye or looking up,

"Yeah Rich, I guess you are right."

Chapter 12 - Road Trips

Old West Tales focuses on events that occurred in Old West dorm, but I did occasionally get out of Chapel Hill the year that I lived in Old West. Each road trip could be an entire post, but after Sinbad-ing(link) each story, only a paragraph remained.

Once a week Joe Perry and I would drive to his Momma's house in Siler City to do laundry. It was a nice 30 minute drive through the country. This trip would usually be on Friday so that we could watch The Young & The Restless (for those not familiar with Soap Operas, stuff happens on Friday). We would then get a cheesburger at Johnson's or Chris's.


Freshman year Joe had been was my suitemate and Joe's roomate, also from Siler City, had been Lon Griffin. Lon transferred to Elon College Sophomore year to play baseball. Lon was a good pitcher. Every month or so, Joe and I would drive about 45 minutes to Elon to see Lon. Not much happening in Elon.

My best Elon memory = We were partying in a dorm room in Elon when a very young, very drunk, very NC country sounding girl came stumbling into the room in a panick asking "Is it true? Is it true? Have ya'll heard?...

... Axle Rose Is Dead."

Joe and Lon and I would go camping every few months, either at Jordan Lake or at a place called Major Hill that Lon said was an Indian burial ground. Lon also said that these indians were buried standing up and a circle of rocks would be around their heads. One time at Major Hill, we parked and hiked all the way to where we wanted to camp. When we arrived at the campsite, at dusk, Lon bent over, and the half-gallon of "Triple A" (Ancient Ancient Age bourbon) slipped out of Lon's back-pack and busted onto the ground. Of course we unspokenly agreed and hiked back to the car and drove to the liquor store where we only had enough money for "Double A" (Ancient Age bourbon). By the time we set up our tents, it was pitch black.

I would occasionally go home to Columbia, SC where many of my friends were at USC. When I went home for Thanksgiving dinner my Sophomore year, my parents had become vegetarians and served Thanksgiving Shrimp Scampi for the first time.

Twice while at Old West I made a road trip, with some of the old Irmo gang, all the way to Sewanee, Tennesse to Fall and Spring Party Weekend at University of The South where Beattie was in school. These parties were pretty fun and you had to try really hard to get in trouble in Sewanee. I wouldn't call the students Southern Snobs, but they have a tradition of tapping the roof of the car when entering Sewanee to let the Angel know they don't need him/her anymore. Beattie was a gownsman and wore a robe around to class. There was a little bus that drove around Sewanee at night that would pick up drunk students and drive them wherever they wanted to go.

Joe and I went to "Bud Fest" in Myrtle Beach over Easter weekend. This was a huge party and the beach would get so crowded with college kids that you couldn't see the sand. What more need I say other than that Budweiser sponsored the event. One interesting phenomena that I observed at Bud Fest was what I called a "wrestling circle". There was a huge circle of guys and two of roughly the same size would step into the circle and wrestle in the sand. It was brutal. A lot of football players squared off but by far the best wrestler was someone that I knew. My friend Tony Maas' older brother David, who was at the time a wrestler at Appalachain State University, got into the circle and could not be beaten by like five or six guys until a much larger guy finally beat him.



Spring Break, Joe and I made a week long road trip to Florida. I financed the entire trip by delivering pizzas for Gumby's on both Friday and Saturday night the weekend before Spring Break. It snowed all weekend and everyone was ordering pizzas and giving huge tips. There was a private dorm called Granville Towers and for some reason Gumby's managers made the kids at Granville meet the delivery guy in the lobby. One night that weekend I walked into the lobby of Granville South with 6 different orders and the kids walked up and got their pizzas and tipped me, one by one. I made $100 each night. To start Spring Break, we drove to Jacksonville and stayed with the very nice family of our friend Scott Bain for a few days. Then we drove on down to Daytona and crashed at the Thunderbird hotel on the floor of the hotel room of some friends. The friends were cool girls with boyfriends. We payed nothing for the room except buying the maid a hot dog across the street at T.C.'s Top Dog in exchange for not reporting us to management. I have never seen so many cars. At least two people got killed every night crossing the main street. Every week was biker week. They let cars drive on the beach during the day and the cars would just cruise back and forth, up and down the beach. MTV was there. I watched it in the Hotel room even though it was only a few blocks away.

Chapter 13 - The Big Boot

I admit that I have been friends with some people who went to Duke. One of my long-time friends and soccer buddies from Irmo, Kevin, went to Duke while I lived in Old West. Kevin was enemies with my friend Beattie. I would often go visit Kevin in Durham because it was such a happening place...

... just kidding, Kevin would come over to Chapel Hill every month or so and hang out because there were very few pretty girls at Duke.

Kevin was snobby even before he went to Duke and when he came to visit he would dress up and wear a sports coat. My roomate Vic didn't think very highly of Kevin. Kevin would come over and be really nice to Vic's girlfriend, Kristi, holding the door for her and stuff like that. When Vic would make fun of Kevin, Kristi would say, "Well, I like him - He is a gentleman." This infuriated Vic, which was the intent.

Burn-Out was a huge party at UNC out on the golf course at the Pi Kappa Phi house. There were bands, beer, and an official Haiwian Tropics Bikini Contest. Beattie came up for the weekend, arriving Thursday night. We were excited because a band that we liked, The Waxing Poetics, was playing Burnout.

Friday morning I got up and went off to class, with Vic, Beattie, and Joe Perry already starting to drink beer in Old West.

When I returned to the room a few a hours later, Beattie was pacing back and forth, downing beer, clenching his fists and repeating "I am going to kick his ass."

"What is going on?", I asked.

Apparently, Kevin had called from Duke and wanted to come over for Burnout. Vic had answered the phone and told Kevin to "Come on Over", while suppressing a giggle, since Vic knew full well that Kevin and Beattie hated each other.

Ever since the phone call, Vic and Joe (who also didn't like Kevin or his Duke attitude) had been pumping up Beattie, telling him all of the things that Kevin had been saying about him behind his back.

When I heard Kevin coming up the stairwell, I rushed out into the suite to meet him.

Beattie lept out of the room, pointed back down the stairs, and told Kevin to leave.

Kevin was speechless and stood looking at me like a wounded puppy. I just shrugged my shoulders. Kevin knew that he and Beattie could not co-exist at Burnout, and Durham was a lot shorter drive home than Sewannee or Columbia, so Kevin turned to leave. As he did so, Beattie put the sole of his shoe on Kevin's butt and nudged him down the stairs.

Out of my window, I watched Kevin emerge from the stairwell wearing cut off camos and Sambas, head hung low.

"I'll call you!" I shouted. Kevin raised a hand in acknowledgement and sulked away. Behind me, I could hear Vic and Joe laughing as Beattie boasted "I kicked Markland in the Ass."

I felt kind of bad, but it was pretty funny.

Chapter 14 - "Ku-ba-say"

Turning Japanese
I think I'm turning Japanese
I really think so
Turning Japanese
I think I'm turning Japanese
I really think so

No sex, no drugs, no wine, no women
No fun, no sin, no you, no wonder it's dark
Everyone around me is a total stranger
Everyone avoids me like a Psyclone Ranger
Everyone

(From Turning Japanese by The Vapours)

Rich loved Japan. He always talked about Japan.

Rich planned to travel to Japan.

My theory was that Rich thought he would somehow be cool and accepted in Japan, maybe based on his stealth.

According to Rich, the Japanese were fascinated by certain American things that could be sold in Japan at a great profit. Rich's plan was to fill a 57 Chevy with grapefruit, pack a suitcase full of blue jeans, and go to Japan.

Rich was taking a Japanese class and he would practice his Japanese by listening to tapes on a walkman. I never heard the tapes, but Rich would walk around listening to them and praticing his Japanese. The entire semester he seemed to only practice one word...

"Ku - ba - say".

He would repeat the word over and over while listening to his tapes, "Ku - ba - say", Ku - ba - say", Ku - ba - say"

Again, this time putting varying emphasis on the 3 syllables. "Ku - ba - say", Ku - ba - say", Ku - ba - say"

"Ku - ba - say", Ku - ba - say", Ku - ba - say"

It was late one night in Old West. Vic and I were up doing something and Rich was practicing "Kubasay" with his tapes. Mike Bell, one of our physically imposing suitemates, came stumbling up the steps, wasted. Bell had been drinking all night at some frat function. Bell saw that our door was open and came into the room looking for Rich to pick on, obviously still high on some sort of hazing buzz.

Rich was sitting at a desk practicing,

"Ku - ba - say",

Bell walked over to Rich and leaned over him, menacingly.

"Ku - ba - say"

Rich was ignoring Bell with his eyes closed,

"Ku - ba - say", Ku - ba - say",

"Rich!, Rich!"

"Ku - ba - say", As if he couldn't hear.

Bell noticed that we were laughing,

"Ku - ba - say",

"Rich, why are you such a pussy?"

"Ku - ba - say", Ku - ba - say", Ku - ba - say"

The entire time, Bell looming over Rich,

Rich, Rich, You're a pussy.

"Ku - ba - say", Ku - ba - say".

It was as if the word brought him comfort and made him feel safe.

"Ku - ba - say",

"Why are you a pussy Rich?"

"Ku - ba - say", Ku - ba - say", Ku - ba - say"

If Rich said the word, just right, maybe Rich would be magically transported back to feudal Japan.

"Ku - ba - say",

"Why are you such a fucking pussy Rich"

"Ku - ba - say",

If Rich uttered the elusive, Perfect Kubasay, would a Samuri Warrior drop from the sky and lop off Bell's head?

"Ku - ba - say", Ku - ba - say", Ku - ba - say" ...

I never did find out how Rich did on his Japanese exams.

Chapter 15 - Why Humans Rule

Every semester at UNC I had to meet with my student advisor, a professor, to pre-register for classes for the next semester. These were the only times I ever met with my student advisor.

A few weeks after pre-registration I would get a schedule of my classes in the mail. Prior to the invention of telephone and computer registration, when you didn't get the classes that you wanted through pre-registration, you had to go to "drop/add". UNC had drop/add in the old Gymnasium.

While I lived in Old West, I attended the last drop/add before telephone registration took over. The line of students waiting just to get in to drop/add that day was out of the gym, out of the building, and wrapped around the building.

Inside the gym it was Chaos. Students everywhere. Only a fraction of them actively participating in drop/add. There were tables all around the room and as I remember, you would go to the table of a particular department and try to add a class that you wanted. Once you added a class, you would drop the old class and then someone else might add the class that you dropped.

As my friend Tim once explained, "Girls are like classes, you have got to add before you drop." Good advice, except for the times when you are the one who gets dropped.

It was very overwhelming and by the time I stumbled out of drop/add I was enrolled in an upper level sociology class that sounded interesting -

Primate Social Behavior

I learned and remember more from this class than any other class that I took in all of my college career, law school included. Sure, I memorized much more for various classes over the years, and wrote many papers where I did research, but that stuff was short term memory and has long been pushed out by Wiggles lyrics and Dr. Suess books. I learned alot of useless trivia in Primate Social Behavior, and I learned alot about myself.

This is off the top of my head:

Humans are primates. There are many other primates; apes, monkeys, lemurs, loris, marmosetts, just to name a few.

Many primates have highly evolved social groupings. Gorillas are led by the silverback male and sleep in nests.

Coco the gorilla knows sign language. Coco once sat on a sink fixture which tore from the wall. Coco then used sign language to lie and tell her keepers that a 100 lbs. woman broke the sink.

Baboons are territorial and one group may raid the other group's territory and practice infantacide.

Looking another primate in the eyes and showing your teeth is a sign of aggression (try this at the Zoo).

Study Group

In many classes I would join a Study Group. Studying in a group doesn't really work, but a study group is made of attractive sorority girls with boyfriends. I never hit on my study group, but I got inside many girl dorms and even sorority houses and met a lot of roomates through study groups. I made friends with a cute girl in Primate Social Behavior who was dating a guy on the tennis team. I was supposed to ride with her to the Duke Primate Center for a field trip, but I overslept and missed out.

Why do humans rule the earth?

Humans are intelligent mammals with convoluted brain tissue. But, intelligence alone doesn't explain why Humans rule the earth. Dolphins are smart mammals.

What humans have that dolphins do not is opposable thumbs with which we can manipulate the environment.

But wait, many primates are intelligent mammals with opposable thumbs. Why do humans rule the earth as opposed to Gorillas or Chimps?

Chimpanzees are the closest relative to the human. Chimps can smile, kiss, have sex face-to-face, act in movies and television, have pets, and make tools.

Apart from some body hair, only 1 thing seperates us from the other primates ...

... the thing that allows us to dominate the earth, build the pyramids, and fly to the moon, while other primates live in zoos and throw feces at each other ...

... a social prohibition against public masterbation!

That's right, other primates spend a large majority of their waking hours touching themselves. Time that could otherwise be spent evolving. Don't believe me, go to the zoo. They just have no problem with it. If little baby monkey-boy cries, momma touches his tee-tee. Want to show that other monkey that you are dominant, go rub your manhood on him.

I propose to you that if it suddenly became acceptable to touch one's-self in public, we would all get hairier and we would stand around on our knuckles picking fleas off of each other.

Chapter 16 - Seed Snaps

Rich had trouble waking up in the morning.

Rich had alarm clocks all over the room and they would go off in succession every morning. Most of the alarms beeped, others buzzed or clanged.

When an alarm would go off, Rich would turn it off (or hit snooze and then turn it off 9 minutes later) and then get back into bed.

Then the next alarm would go off a few minutes later, and he would do the same thing.

The sequence of the alarms was always changing, so Rich must have reset the alarms every night.

The worst alarm of all was The Buzzer. The Buzzer would start humming ever so quietly about a minute or two before it actually went off. The humming would get louder and louder and finally cresindo into a full blown, very loud, buzz when the alarm actually went off.

One morning we were all three asleep in the room, which was rare because Vic often stayed at his girlfriend's room. Rich's alarms started going off as usual. I can sleep through alarms, but I do wake up for a moment when they first go off.

Rich went through his morning ritual - snoozing and turning off alarms, it went on for quite some time.

After a while, it started getting ridiculous, but I would never let Rich make me lose my cool. It was amusing.

I tried, but I could not go back to sleep because I was counting how many alarms were going to go off before Rich finally got up and stayed up...

Eventually, The Buzzer started humming. As the humming grew louder and louder, I got madder and madder, to the point that when The Buzzer finally started buzzing, I lept out of my bed and stood above Rich.

Rich was lying there like a japanese vampire, grinning, with his hands folded over the top of the comforter, which was pulled up to his chin.

I started pulling on the comforter. By this time, Vic was watching and laughing from the top bunk above Rich.

Rich clenched both the comforter, and his eyes closed, as hard as he could.

Finally, I yanked the comforter, and Rich along with it, completely out of the bed, and onto cold hard dorm-room foor.

Looking back, I think Rich saw it as some odd sort of victory.

Chapter 17 - The Blanket Toss

For most of my life, when I heard the words "blanket toss", I pictured the "blanket toss" that Jonie got from the hunks at the beach on the 70's sitcom Happy Days when the gang went to Hollywood for a 3 part episode.

It is very difficult for UNC students to get basketball tickets. I only got tickets once while at UNC and my back was against the wall at the very top of the Dean Dome, on the last row.

For many years the Tarheels played in an annual tournament in Charlotte, The Tournament of Champions. From its inception, the Tournament of Champions featured UNC, South Carolina, and two other teams. There were 2 games Friday night and then a consolation and championship game on Saturday night.

The Tournament of Champions doesn't exist any more, but while I was at UNC, and for many years afterward, it was my only chance to see UNC play basketball in person.

On the Tournament of Champions weekend in question, I left Old West, met my dad in Charlotte, and went to the Friday night game where UNC played South Carolina.

At that time, I could not have cared less about USC basketball because they were not very good. UNC's team was packed with All-Americans and contended for an ACC and national Championship every year, while USC stunk and had a white guy from my high school named Carey Evans. I suppose maybe Carey could dunk, but I remembered him as the little skinny dude who had gone out on a few dates with my younger sister, Jeny.

Before the game, I made a bet with my friend and USC student, Richard Flake. Richard and Chip Burn had an apartment on Green Street in Columbia. Flake's apartment was the hangout for all my Columbia friends. The bet was that if USC beat UNC, I would drive down to Columbia and let Richard and Chip give me a "Blanket Toss". I was so confident that I got absolutely nothing if UNC won.

I drank a good bit of beer at the game and near the end the score was really close. With about a minute left, USC was actually winning. I was getting a little scared, but then I looked down at the bench and saw Carey. No way a team with Carey Evans could beat The Tarheels...

They did, and I drove down to Columbia instead of going back to Chapel Hill.

When I got to Flake's apartment, it was packed with drunk people. They were very suprised when I showed up and had not expected me to honor the bet, but they had stuck around the apartment, drinking, just in case.

A sturdy blanket was selected and we went outside into the courtyard. There were about seven guys holding the blanket and I got in the middle. Things started slowly as the blanket's strength was tested and everyone practiced going up and down in unison.

What followed was not anything like the "blanket toss" that Jonie got on Happy Days.

Not only did my "friends" throw me as high as they possibly could (alarmingly high), but they also let me smack the ground after every "toss" before heaving me back up into the Columbia sky.

Toss - "Five Points looks crowded"

Thud - "My ass is going to have a bruise"

Toss - "Wow, I can see Williams Brice Stadium"

Thud - I think I dislocated my Shoulder"

Toss - "Is that Lake Murry?"

Thud - "I can't feel my legs"

Toss...

Now, when I hear "blanket toss", I don't think of Jonie, I think of me.

Chapter 18 - Pretty Funny Line

I'm not much of a fighter. I have never really been in a fight.

Actually, maybe I have.

Is it a fight if only one person fights, or only an ass-kicking?

One night, near the end of second semester, Vic and I had a PJ party in our Old West dorm room.

How to make PJ =

1. Cut up a bunch of fruit and put it in a cooler. (We used grapes, bananas, and apples.)

2. Pour a bottle of 180 proof grain alchohol (such as everclear) over the fruit.

3. Once the fruit has soaked up a lot of the alchohol, add red fruity beverages such as fruit juices and red colored kool aid.

4. Serve the PJ by leaving a plastic cup floating in the cooler which is used to dip into the PJ to fill people's cups.

Why do they call it PJ?

A = Because you wear it in bed. PJ tastes so good and is so potent (especially the fruit), that people always get drunker than they had planned and someone usually throws up bright red at some point during the night.

I don't remember much about our PJ party except that we had a lot of PJ left over the next day. That is when this particular Old West Tale took place.

The day after our PJ party, Joe Perry and I started drinking PJ again. Some parts and details of this story are a little fuzzy, others I can remember clearly, as if yesterday.

My roomates, Vic and Rich King were absent during this story, Vic was probably at his girlfriend's dorm and Rich must have gone home to yankee/vampire-ville for the weekend.

Joe and I left Old West with PJ and walked to Morrison dorm to see Mike Pike. Pike was one of Joe's friends from Siler City and was a freshman at UNC. Pike always wore a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes and he mumbled something awful. I could almost never understand what Pike was saying. I don't remember exactly why we went to see Pike, but I have a pretty good idea.

We didn't stay at Pike's room for long because he was with a girl. It was really quite amazing. Here was this mumbly freshman who was shacking up with a beautiful, upperclassman, sorority girl. I didn't quite understand it, but good for Pike.

Joe and I walked back to Old West for more PJ. At this point the PJ had been sitting in the cooler for over 24 hours, fermenting. The fruit at the bottom of the cooler had turned to mush. At some point, we were joined by Steve, aka "Sane Guy".

For some reason, Steve and I started wrestling. I was actually getting the better of Steve, momentarily, until he turned into Sane Guy, tapped into some beserker strength, and started tossing me around pretty roughly in a non-friendly manner.

Joe pulled Sane Guy off and sort of shoved him out the door and shut and locked the door.

I regained my composure and decided to go and try to talk to Sane Guy.

I opened the door, stepped out into the suite, and was immediately met with a fist to the face. It was sort of like a pop. Not a roundhouse punch or anything, just a quick jab, right between the eyes. My head went back for a moment.

Why was Steve hitting me, it didn't make any sense. I tried to talk to him.

"Steve...", Whap! another quick punch, right between the eyes. My head went back again.

"What is he doing." I thought to myself. "Since my arms are at my side and I am not threatening him in any way, surely he will not hit me again."

I continued to walk towards Steve, trying to talk to him.

"Steve, what the..." Whap!

He did hit me again, and possibly one more time, Whap!

I eventually put my arms up in front of my face. At that point Sane Guy flung me across the suite and I landed in a heap, against the wall. Steve ran up to me and delivered another flurry of punches (these were harmless, as I was balled up with my arms covereing my face) and then fled down the stairwell, out of site.

As Steve was fleeing, Joe came out of the bathroom and Mike Bose came out of his room. I sat up and at that point and blood started streaming out of my nose.

Then one of the Ass frat boys that lived below us came up the stairwell. These guys usually did not confront us face-to-face when we were making noise, but would instead bang on the ceiling with something. This, of course, would make us put on boots and leap from the top bunk onto the floor, but I digress...

The Ass from the second floor stopped at the top of the stairwell and said "What in the F--- is going on?"

"He broke my F---ing nose!" I yelled, as I lifted my cupped hands, now overflowing with streaming blood, and showed him.

"I wish he would have broken your F---ing Mouth!" the Ass replied and then turned and went back down the stairs.

As I sat there waiting for my nose to stop bleeding I thought to myself, "I hate that frat-boy Ass, but that was a pretty funny line."

Chapter 19 - We Call The Cops

ZZZZZZZ

"Jeff"

"Jeff"

"Jeff"

"What!"

Rich had woken me from a deep sleep, in the middle of the night in our Old West dorm room, by calling from his bed. Vic was staying at his girlfriend's room.

"Did you hear something?"

"No"

ZZZZZZZZZ

"Jeff"

"What?"

"There it is again."

"I don't hear it?"

"There is something in our room."

"So what."

It this point I did hear it, but I didn't care enough to get out of bed.

Cearly, Rich was very disturbed by this noise. Maybe because he had developed keen ninja hearing from always gliding about silently.

Finally Rich became convinced that something was hiding behind the bar we had in the room. Seeing as how Rich was cowering under his comforter and he wasn't going to let me go back to sleep until I investigated, I got out of bed, found a flashlight, and looked behind the bar.

It was a opossum, possibly a baby opussum, with a dark colored body and a white face. I couldn't see its legs. It was just sitting there being very still, as if I might not see it if it didn't move, even though I was shining a flashlight directly on it.

I told Rich it was a opossum and got back into bed.

"What are you going to do?"

"Go back to sleep."

Rich called the campus police and I went back to sleep. It was clear that Rich was going to remain wide awake, staring at the bar, listening with his ninja hearing, and chewing his fingernails nervously, until the police arrived.

Finally the animal rescue and release team arrived and took care of the problem.

By that I mean 2 campus cops showed up at our dorm room and used our broom to shoo the baby opposum out from behind our bar and then out our door.

When Rich later told the story to Vic, he thought Rich made it up. The fact that I went along with Rich's story infuriated Vic, to the delight of Rich.

I still remember Rich, standing behind the bar where the opossum had been, slicing a sliver from a submarine sandwich and then putting it back in the mini-fridge, talking about the opossum to Vic, all the while looking over at me and grinning.

Chapter 20 - Another Dorm, Another Eviction

From Dickens' Great Expectations,

"Well!" said the pale young gentleman, reaching out his hand goodhumouredly, "it's all over now, I hope, and it will be magnanimous in you if you'll forgive me for having knocked you about so."

In Great Expectations, Pip took Herbert Pocket's hand and the two became best friends.

In Old West something different happened.

It was one week before spring finals my sophomore year.

Vic and I got notices one day in our Old West dorm room that we were summoned before a big-shot housing official. This was different from getting a note from Dan, the graduate student RA (Resident Assistant) jerk who lived in our dorm.

This housing guy wore a suit and sat at a desk in a nice administration building. Vic and I walked over together. We sat outside the guy's office waiting to be called in. I assumed we were waiting on Rich. When the housing guy started the meeting without any sign of Rich, I started to get an uneasy feeling.

The rest of the story is rather blurry, so I have called upon a special guest Old West Tales storyteller, Vic Simpson, to finish the story in bold below.

You may recall, at that point, the Rich King saga had also come to a head. Our loud, fairly agreeable redneck suitemates Alan and Bowes had even joined in tormenting that idiot.

Poor "Kubasai" Rich had only one ally -- HyMAE - otherwise known as Jamie.

If you recall, Jamie had some objection to the goings on in our room and expressed it in a pussified manner at the wrong time. During the night in question, one remark I made was that anyone who squealed on us would get their just desserts or something to that effect. I am sure it was just the longnecks or Old Mr. Boston talking.

Anyway, that comment was used against the two of us, along with a litany of complaints from Rich and other "anonymous" people, including those crybabies who lived below us.

And of course, our "violations." These violations included numerous alcohol infractions and noise infractions, an opossum that allegedly fell into the room via the ceiling, the presence of a hot plate, girls spending the night, the sane guy/joe perry fight and a general "felony" reputation for the prior year in Teague.

We got caught raising hell one time too many and the fuzz had had enough of our hyjinx.

After listening to the charges against us, and stammering out a bunch of nonapologetic, lame excuses before the housing official -- Collin Rustin was his name, I believe -- you, Mr. Turnipseed, normally the reasonable one, could not resist goading the authority figure by saying,

"Hey, it's a week before finals. I mean, what can you REALLY do to us?"

Well, as it turned out Mr. Rustin remembered you and I very well from the prior year. Specifically, we had been key suspects in the mysterious trashing of the Teague Lobby during the whacked-out week that climaxed with the great frisbee incident and the "shutting down" of Teague.

I recall Rustin's face turning red when you asked that question. Then I remember him saying,

"I'll TELL you what I'm going to do."

Then he gave us 48 hours to get the hell out.

Yep, that sounds about right. Thank you Vic.

Why had Rich King waited so long to strike back and tell on us?

Had he been biding his time, building evidence against us?

Was he holding out, hoping that he might be able to shake his "pussy" status and some how gain the acceptance he so craved?

Or was he just making sure that we didn't have time to hunt him down and kick his ass, what with the having to move-out a few days before exams and all?

Whatever the reason, Rich had waited to play his trumph card the last week of class. The irony is that we were all three kicked out of Old West, so that Rich received the same "punishment" as we did, but only after enduring our torment for an entire semester.

I was to "relocate" from the third floor of Old West, the second oldest dorm at UNC, in the middle of campus, to the 8th floor of Hinton James, a high-rise dorm full of freshman, which was near the Dean Dome, a good hike from class.

Vic got moved to Craige Dorm, a far from campus Graduate Student dorm.

Vic and I inquired but were never told where Rich King had been relocated to. In exchange for his testimony, Rich had entered some sort of UNC Housing Administration Roomate Protection Program.

I borrowed a truck and moved most of my stuff to Mike Pike's parents' garage and/or basement in Siler City. Then I moved into the 8th floor of Hinton James.

Chapter 21 - Epilogue

I moved into an empty room at Hinton James on the 8th floor. I still had slightly black eyes from having gotten my nose broken by Sane Guy.

It really worked out great. I was able to study quietly in my own private room with spartan furnishings.

Across the hall from my room in Hinton James lived UNC freshman Rob Curtis, from Topsail Beach, NC. I only got to know Rob for about a week before we went home for the summer.

At that time, Rob was a surfer dude, who I remember saying, about surfing:

"Yeah, on the west coast they have really big waves, but on the east coast we do more cutting and ripping."

Rob was sort of nervous and fidgitty. In mixed company Rob would often get self conscious and try to discreetly turn to me while looking up and ask "Any Boogs?", so that I would tell him if there were and visible boogers that he needed to deal with. I endeared myself to Rob by teaching him a little trick that I learned from Irmo friend Jeff Caldwell. In mixed company Jeff would often get self conscious and discreetly turn to me while looking up and ask "Do You Know Me?", so that I would tell him "Yes" if the coast was clear and "No" if there were and visible boogers that he needed to deal with.

Rob and I would later become good friends.

I made my best exam grades yet while living that week and a half in Hinton James, in classes such as Primate Social Behavior and Weather and Climate.

I had recently been on a road trip to Sewanee for Spring Party Weekend where my friend John Scoff had stolen a cassette tape from some frat house.

This tape had an album on each side, both by bands that I had never listened to before; Whisper Tames The Lion, by Driving and Crying and Space Wrangler, by Widespread Panic. These two bands would become two of my favorites and I have since seen both bands many times in concert. I listened to that cassette over and over while studying for finals. I was probably listening to Widespread when I figured out that the "Noah" that my Weather and Climate professor had been rambling on about was not the old guy in the Bible who built the Arc, but was actually the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Well, that is the end of Old West Tales, hope you enjoyed it.