This summer, Eliot Hall-the South 40′s tower of power-will at long last be smashed to skitter; Liggett Hall (along with Koenig) is the next dorm slated for the wrecking ball in subsequent years. There is nostalgia attached to these two buildings, my homes for half of my college career: the odor of bathrooms that would lead one to believe that Liggett 2 was home to a circus freak who took elephantine dumps; the widespread power outages that occurred each time Andrew used his microwave; hallway rides in a boosted Schnucks shopping cart; the Pre-Frosh who got so drunk on his weekend visit that he mistook a beanbag chair for a urinal; and if I added up all the time I puzzled through the Hexagon City level of Snood and exploded people to bloody bits playing Quake 3 on my computer, those hours would inexplicably be a larger sum than the number of hours I’ve been on this planet since 1981.

As for Eliot, I have no love for the building, its seasonal ladybug infestations, or the building’s heating system where I could either choose to 1) freeze; 2) turn my single into an Easy Bake Oven and cook brownies in my window box while I asphyxiated; or 3) leave my heat on over winter break and return to find the heat had melted the adhesive that held my posters to the wall. And half-floors? Fishbowls? Elevators filled with stagnant air smelling of Bear’s Den burps? I shed no tears for Eliot Hall. Very few people remember Eliot’s twin, Shepley Hall (d. summer 1998); I remember it only because I was taking a campus tour the day the wrecking ball smacked it, the highlight of any campus tour in the history of campus tours; in fact, it beat out the tour I took at University of Richmond where two dogs started having sex while the guide was talking about Greek Life-I kid you not.

By the time I was living in Eliot my sophomore year, I was ready to not be living in a dorm. One freshman experience was enough, thank you. But life in a dormitory during freshman year is an integral part of the college experience. It’s the place where you make friends during that first month when everybody wants to make friends. It’s where going to bed before midnight is considered early. And if you want to smoke pot for the first time, it’s where you’ll meet the people who will help you realize your dream, introduce you to Dark Side of the Moon, and turn you on to the psychedelic visualization option of your Windows Media Player; this may or may not correlate with the first time you eat an entire jar of peanut butter with your fingers.

Dorm life for me was a huge learning experience when I met people who embodied all that is wrong with the world. When boys played basketball in the hallway at 3 AM, I learned to suppress my urge to flog them with a desk lamp and, instead, engage in the diplomacy of idle threats. And here’s a question: why is it that the one guy on the floor who listens to music at a level louder than a Boeing engine always listens to crap? Is there a scientific correlation between inconsiderate assholes and poor taste in music?

I’m seriously all for the construction of suite-style student housing with paper-thin walls and retina-busting fluorescent lighting, but there is something to be said for the design of the old-school dorms like Liggett, Koenig, Ruby, Beau, Lee, Umrath, and-okay, fine, twist my arm-Eliot. The hallways of these buildings are the common rooms, the social veins, the gathering fields. It’s where you have a philosophical argument about Fruit Roll-Ups and ask important questions like: was the Care Bears battle cry “Care Bears CARE!” or “Care Bears STARE!”? This is the stuff of freshman year.

It’s all nostalgia now. When I was living in the dorms, I won’t say I enjoyed it: the lack of privacy, the lack of quiet; shower shoes, filthy shower floors. Dorm life is dirty. I can only compare it to how I always feel after a day of riding roller coasters with the white trash at Six Flags. I spent a lot of time at the library to stay away from Liggett, and it’s no coincidence that I got my best grades during my freshman year. I don’t have an adequate thesis to encapsulate my South 40 experience other than it was a love/hate, yin/yang, Indiana Jones/Marion Ravenwood kinda thing.

But Liggett Hall will be no more in a few years; I probably won’t be in St. Louis to bid it an appropriate adieu, but I may still be loitering around town to see Eliot go bye-bye. When the wrecking ball putters onto the 40 this summer, I invite you to join me on the IM baseball field to watch Eliot bite the big one. I’ll bring a blanket, a case of Natty Light, and some sparklers. We’ll make a day of it. And if a baseball game is going on, bring a helmet because we’ll be camped out in left field, lest you enjoy being concussed by a triple.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2003 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Cadenza. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.