EAC, Part 1

I had to copy Amy and Summer's blogs about college! Who knows how long this will be, so hang on...

EAC (Eastern Arizona College) August 1994 - May 1996

Thatcher, Arizona
Colors: Purple & gold
Mascot: Gila Monster (hey, at least it's not an artichoke)

There wasn't an abundance of "official" housing at EAC, so lots of kids rented old run-down houses or trailers around town. Howard's Trailer Park may as well have been a dorm.

We lived in a house that was past being called "run-down". It has since been demolished and I believe an A&W sits atop its grave now. Many of the college houses were named. There was Val Halla, the Peach Pit, etc. Ours was the Passion Palace! Lucky us.

My first year, I was one of ten girls living there. Roommates are great because you sort of get automatic friends. Having nine is good because you don't get tired of the same person all the time. It takes nine times as long to get tired of them.

There were certainly not nine bedrooms in the house. Five bedrooms had been created over the years, and at least three of them also served as hallways to get to other parts of the house. Mine was an add-on to the back of the house. The old "outside" of the house had never been painted or drywalled - it was weathered gray siding, and the porch light was still attached by the former back door. (The window on the back door had been painted white, and this was now a door to the next bedroom) My room had two doors to the outside, and it served as a passageway to one of the bathrooms and the laundry room. The laundry room was also an add-on, and while doing laundry, you could look through the old kitchen window at whoever was doing the dishes. From certain angles, you could even see into the bathroom from the kitchen window. Awesome!

There were two bathrooms which were almost always in use. They set the stage for the infamous "bathroom wars" my second year. Lots of pranks going back and forth. Old brownies rolled into logs and placed lovingly on the toilet seat, traffic barricades left mysteriously next to the tub... etc. Oh yes, and if someone was doing laundry when you took a shower, you had to get out before the rinse cycle or all the laundry water would come up the drain up over your ankles.

The kitchen had two fridges, and if you didn't put your name on your stuff, too bad! At one point, there were only two saucepans in the house, so we quickly adopted the rule that saucepans had to be washed as soon as you were done cooking in them. Otherwise, how could we all make our macaroni & cheese?? The dish calendar was a source of unquestioned justice. We got a calendar, wrote all the names on there in order, and you had to do all the dishes on your day. If you missed your day, the dishes were still yours until you got them done! Ten girls can generate a lot of dirty dishes by the end of the day. But the calendar reigned supreme, and it actually worked.

A working television sat atop a non-working television in the living room. The legless couches had cinder blocks under the corners to lift them off the floor. The floor which was covered in matted olive-green shag carpet. Our decor was eclectic, but I think the best description is "Early American Landfill". For some period of time, the TV only worked for movies and not TV. I watched The Fugitive about a thousand times that year.

Near the floor in my room was a light switch. Nobody knew what it was for, but we liked to turn it on and off. Later on, we learned that there was a cellar, and at the end of every school year, the roommates would go down there and sign their names. We finally knew what the light switch was for! We fully expected to find Jimmy Hoffa in there. But no, just a basement and a bunch of writing.

Other highlights of the house:

Home of the longest phone cord known to man. This cord could stretch through each of the bedrooms and then back to its home in the hallway. It was the cause of many near-death experiences.

We lived about 15 feet off the highway and directly across the street from Mark Allen Hall (dorm). The dorm residents would be locked out after midnight, so lots of times they would end up at our house. In the mornings, you could wander out and find a handful of people sleeping on the couches and the floor. Sometimes you knew them, sometimes you just figured one of the roommates knew them. No big deal.

I remember after complaining to our landlord about a wasp problem, she sent her teenage son over with a can of Raid. After an especially rainy and leaky season, we complained about the nineteen bowls we had to scatter around the house to catch the rain, so during spring break, they painted the roof. The next time it rained, we had nineteen bowls filled with milky-white water. Much better!

We taped an especially small roommate to the wall once. She was actually a couple inches off the ground. I've blacked out her eyes to protect her identity. Is that okay, Monica?



We used a lot of duct tape. One of our chairs was held together solely with duct tape. We also did a fine drywall patch with duct tape and paint after our good friend Chris fell through one of the walls.

I'm sure there's more I'm leaving out! It was a wonderful place.