I’m going to act on the assumption that you’ve all read part one of this piece, and not belabor the intro. If not, with just a few clicks you can read last week’s and be brought up to speed. Go ahead, I’ll wait…and now back to our story.
This is about where and when it all began. You’ve read the set-up story and now have a mental visual of the setting where most of the following stories from that first summer took place. Now I’ll introduce the cast of characters…Da Da Duum!
We were a band of seven recently graduated misfits hailing from two different neighboring high schools. We now found ourselves living on “the island of misfit toys” which is ironic, because in the years that would follow, I’ve often felt like the “choo-choo with square wheels.
We consisted of four males and three females, all recently turned eighteen. Of the six roommates, I remain dear friends with four of them to this day. Two of the girls I would never see again after that summer. One of them only made it the first month with us before she moved out. She found herself with “poached eggs;” the result of a weekend visit from her boyfriend. She moved back home to get married, and is presumed to be doing well…twenty years later, also presumedly with multiple kids.
As is the case in any group coexisting together, there were various dynamics amongst us and various roles to be filled. Some of the following roles were filled by more than one of us, and some of us occupied more than one role. We had the alcoholic and the workaholic. We had the kleptomaniac and the nymphomaniac. We had the pot-head and the Dead Head. We had the neat freak and the just plain freak. We had the loner, the stoner, and the perpetual boner. We had the energetic and the borderline narcoleptic.
Energy and motivation levels ranged from part sloth, to part hummingbird. We had the classy and the gassy, the snob and the slob. Pretty much every spot on the spectrum was represented among this bizarre conglomerate. The one thing we all had in common was our desire to spend the next four months of our lives having as much fun as humanly possible and at whatever cost necessary. And fun is exactly what we had and had it in abundance. Throughout this article, I won’t mention names or even tell who was in what role. They know who they are, and the rest of the details are like a CSI episode—you will have to keep tuning in each week to just keep guessing—Man I am ratings glory with all the sequels!
Even the vehicles we each drove were unique. One of my male roommates drove a 1976 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. He obtained it from his Grandmother by purchase, inheritance, or gift, I don’t really recall. I also don’t recall the exact dimensions of this behemoth of a car, but I think it was approximately 22 feet in length and about ten feet in width. This car could be parked nowhere easily but it was always easy to find in a parking lot. It seated ten comfortably and slept five. It was the perfect car for road trips when we all traveled together except for the fact that it got roughly twelve miles to the gallon. It was sort of like a Winnebago minus the amenities. My friend, being of Hebrew descent affectionately nicknamed it “the Jew Canoe”. We think the car was white but could never tell for certain because I don’t believe it was ever washed. Which brings us to the first of many stories from that summer. My friend who owned this car and whom I remain very close to even now, was not exactly what you would call, “self motivated.” Hence the reason his car was never clean. As I recall, we were very fortunate with the weather that summer. We got very little rain.
One particular day though we had a storm rolling in. My roommate who was as clever and crafty as he was unmotivated saw an opportunity and he seized it. A fool proof and simple way to get his beloved car clean. He walked into our kitchen and grabbed a bottle of liquid dish soap. He then went out to the street and applied a very generous helping of Palmolive to the roof, trunk, and hood of his massive car.
He walked proudly back into the condo and waited for Mother Nature to do his dirty work. He was clearly impressed with his own idea and had a sheepish grin as if he were Tom Sawyer getting someone else to paint the fence for him. Almost immediately upon his return indoors the rains came, and came hard. To say it was a deluge would not be overstating. We all sat and watched through the front window with great intrigue. The problem is, the storm only lasted about five minutes then the sun came back out. It was not enough time to clean and rinse the car, but it was just enough time to envelope it in a massive pile of bubbles. And I mean a MASSIVE PILE OF BUBBLES. You couldn’t even see the car beneath them. This sight remains to this day one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Needless to say, he ended up having to scrub and wash the car taking about 5 times the amount of time it would have conventionally. Our entire street looked as if all of the scrubbing bubble guys from those commercials had gotten together for a giant orgy. But the side splitting laugh was so worth it.
Another one of my male roommates drove a small Subaru hatchback, which we nicknamed the “Sub”. I don’t recall the year or model of it but I do remember vividly the God-awful shade of beige. I’m pretty sure they discontinued that color after only one year. This is the car we had all driven to and from school in together for the past year or two. Often times after school, if I were the last one to the car and we were short of space, I would ride the entire way home squatting on the back bumper while holding on to the luggage rack. I don’t know what’s funnier, the sight of an idiot hanging on to the back of a car going 40 miles an hour, or the fact that this tiny little piece of crap car actually had a luggage rack. I stopped this practice the day my friend, my BEST friend at that, discovered that if he applied the rear window washer he could hit me directly in the face with both the cleaning chemical and the wiper itself. Evidently this was a whole lot funnier from inside the vehicle. We did have a lot of great times in that car.
Which brings us to my car. I described it in graphic detail in an earlier article so I won’t bore you with a repeat. There have been very few non-living things I’ve come across in my life that I can honestly say that I loved. My 1979 Olds Cutlass Supreme was one of them. We all knew it as “The Beast”, and if that car could speak it would most certainly be in the witness protection program. I’m not sure what became of it after I beat it up for nearly 400 thousand miles. I figure it’s either been made into hundreds of cans holding really cheap beer, it’s being displayed at the Smithsonian, or it’s in a vault somewhere completely wrapped in crime scene tape. That car housed enough different DNA and contraband to have a show based solely on it for the massively appealing CSI series. When I finally parted with my beloved vessel which miraculously, I sold, I filled three, fifty-five gallon garbage cans with the contents; most of which I’m not permitted to describe here. This is why I was never called upon to drive us anywhere. See, I’m not nearly as dumb as I look.
I believe one of my other roommates drove a Volkswagen but I can’t say with certainty. I don’t remember anyone else having their own car. To say that summer was a blur would be a gross understatement so my powers of recollection are being greatly challenged as I write this.
Well, you’ve met the cast, their vehicles, and the dwelling itself and sadly, but true to form, I’ve run out of time and space. I haven’t even gotten into the great stories from this summer of debauchery. So it looks like you’re going to have to check back next week for part 3 of this series. I promise it’ll be worth checking out once I delve into the actual parties, and the various contests we had. So thanks for playing along.
Until next week,
Syd Nichols
