Current mood:old.
When I was just a verdant college freshman, not even yet a WADling, I moved into my first dorm. Laborde. Located on the corner of Sumter and Blossom. It was one block away from the USC Bandhall, and across the street from Stuffy's. I'm trying to think of other amenities...
Still thinking.... I'm sure something will come to me...
The building's interior walls were pink and green.
Let me say that again.
Pink and Green. Yea. My thoughts as well...
The roaches in LaBorde spoke with a marked French accent. The honeycombed concrete facade was hip in the Eisenhower era. It had communal bathrooms, but not the fun kind where you could stop up the door with a piece of plywood, and create a swimming room. They were just... communal. If it were not specifically disallowed by the RA, you'd do well to disinfect the floors by setting off a low-yield tactical nuclear device before each shower. Flipflops, just wouldn't cut it.
The hallway floors would end up with puke on them at some point during each and every week. On more than one occasion, a floor's water fountain would take a ride on the elevator. The favorite game of the the drunk-stoned-maggot-infested-FM-types was "Pull the fire alarm". Extra points were given for alarms getting pulled between the hours of 2am and ass-crack-of-dawn, apparently. Double those points if the weather outside was frightful.
Chances were good that the view from your dorm was..... another dorm building. The loft beds left little in the way of furniture arrangement versatility. Sleeping 5 feet above the ground created some genuine safety concerns. Just ask Mike Knight.
Did I mention the walls inside were pink and green? Just wanted to reiterate that point.
The place was a hole. For those of you who lived in one of the towers at some point during your USC career, you know I'm preaching to the choir.
Still, it was *MY* hole. It was not the little house on West Fredericks St. It was not Anderson, SC. It was nothing I had ever known before. It was heaven. It was hell. It was da crib.
Whatup.
LaBorde (specifically) and The Towers (generally) were a symbol of the freshman year experience for thousands of USC students.
I use the past tense here because "The Towers" are soon to be an Ex-Dormatory. According to this story in The State The Vogons are coming to a Blossom St. near you...assuming you live near downtown Columbia, SC
In retrospect, it seems that many of my pleasant recollections from this time were set among ramshackle scenery. Field "F", LaBorde, and Rockafella's, are just a few of the shabby stomping grounds that now exist solely in my own quickly fading, albeit happy memories....
And, part of me. The part that was less heavy, had more hair (in both density, and length), and chose to wear a black felt beret damn-near-constantly is sad to see those scenes get struck from the stage to set a different act
