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My
dorm roommate got a blue '71 Ford
Pinto station wagon. Man, what
a piece! But it ran good. I remember him hauling our coed rec
league broom ball team to the games. We finished second, I
think, in class "C". We lived in a quad room arrangement of
rooms at the
end of a hallway in Sanford hall. The quad was nicknamed "The
Mountain". Our floor, the 3rd floor of
the old building, was the only coed floor in the dorm where both
young men and women cohabitated by room. I mean to say that
on one side of the long hallway were rooms with female roommates
while the other was for male roommates. I kind of had an
unofficial woman roommate: she and Scott ended up getting married.
To free up space in our little room, Scott kept his desk outside the room
in the hall next to a window. The
desk was used as a place to throw discarded Playboy magazines, etc.
"The Sexy Secretary" is one tome I recall. Open our door
any time night or day and most likely somebody's sitting at Scott's
desk reading or looking at pictures.
The University of Minnesota campus is split into East Bank and
West bank campuses. The "bank" is the Mississippi river.
The double level Washington Avenue Bridge connects the two
halves.
It's a pretty long bridge. The bottom has
room for four lanes of traffic. Up on top is for pedestrians.
One quarter of the width across the top of the bridge - each edge - is
exposed to the elements. The center half is enclosed.
During a snowstorm one cold winter night
in 1980, a 1971 blue Ford Pinto station wagon ascended the
pedestrian ramp
along Smith Hall,
turned West, and proceeded to cross the
pedestrian level of the Washington Avenue Bridge. Once on
the West Bank, a left turn was made and several
wheel-cranked ovals were left in the fresh snow in
front of Wilson Library. Two roommates exchanged seats
and the Pinto retraced its tracks back across the Washington Avenue
Bridge Eastward. A left turn was executed and the Smith Hall
ramp was again made use of. Alcohol may have been involved.
In later years, I would often see University police cars driving
across the pedestrian level of the bridge. And as often, I thought
to myself,
"It's been done".
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