FanStory.com - Animal House Revisitedby Rick Gardner

I grew up in a small town in Western Colorado, farm land, ranch land. Pretty much a quiet city of about 25,000 people. Graduated in the early 1970s. Friends and I partied, drank beer, smoked some pot. Did the normal things most kids did then in those days.Not real interesting really but set the stage for the rest of this story. Decided to go somewhere out of state to go to college, picked Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. Had never been to the Pacific northwest before, as I just wanted to go somewhere different. Wanted to enter some field of medicine. Human or Veterinary medicine, it really didn't matter but needed to study hard. Get the grades needed to pursue any chance of getting accepted to any medical school or a school of veterinary medicine. Which I did with honors.

,Now to the crazy, wild environment of a fraternity I joined. A group of hard parting, unruly, wild individuals. Who fed upon the times and no controls by the school authorities. At least I was able to maintain my grades by studying at the library for long hours, advanced classes in organic chemistry, genetics, mathematics, evolutionary biology, physics all demanded that I studied hard, paid attention at what was necessary to advance in any field of medicine. Could stay late in the library, then return to the party back at the fraternity. The partying never ended. The fraternity belonged in the Sigma Chi fraternity system, and was nicknamed twelve o'clock high. As most were getting high by then, smoking pot, drinking beer, the occasional acid, qualudes, you get the idea. Loud music all the times, heck this was the early 70s. Fuck the establishment, party on dude. Quite popular with the sororities, girls like to party too. Their houses were on Sorority Row and the sorority mothers quite strict, so came on campus to party with us and with the other party fraternity, the Phi Delta. They mainly were into beer and hard liquor, no pot allowed there. Somewhat our competitors. The layout of this building on campus involved 4 fraternities, one connected dorm room for about 100 students. A common downstairs kitchen fed everyone, breakfast, lunch and dinner, then locked the doors to any acsess to the kitchen. This will one up later in this story. The two other fraternities in this building were Betas and Sigs. The Betas were totally straight faced, hated us party animals and sometimes confronted us, but smoking a joint, drinking beer outside and in front of them just made them shake their heads and go back home. The Sigs were the stuck up, with very rich, controlling, culturally rich families. Their parents visited frequently and were told to stay away from us. We named them the sleep and eats. What we did to them will come up later. I could join in with some of the craziness but had to maintain my grades. Now to the real Animal House behavior. Why we did not get disciplened is amazing, no security ever came to visit, the school authorities ignored us, we did what we wanted to do, now I am sad to say I was there and participated willingly. The partying was constant, had large parties in house with multiple kegs of beer, lots of pot, hallucinogens, downers, really everyone took what they wanted that night.

I didn't partake much, basically felt someone needed to remain mentally competent, help those headed for trouble, to at least slow them down. The parties became quite popular on the campus, every weekend was party night until finals week. We started charging to get in, 5 dollars per guy, girls free, even kids not attending the school came to party. We had multiple school athletes in house, many fraternity members. Some stars on their teams. They did not party much during their particular seasons, so some remained totally sober to not break team rules, off season was a different matter. One of the stars on the basketball team did break some rules and he was a mathematical genius. Before one game he dropped some acid, then broke the school scoring record. The sober ones were the obvious bouncers, intervening when necessary, sometimes showing the offenders the door. I was somewhat the sheriff and most listened to my advice. I was also the protector of the cash, took notes, kept records as some accounting was necessary. We had a safe, so deposited the cash intake frequently and never had a problem.

One room was available for any wanted intimate relations, which of course would happen, let's face this, the sexual revolution had just started and birth control available for free at the school hospital. Every one there respected what was going to happen, clean sheets were provided as were towels. Soap and water. The door was locked from the inside, the participants were left alone before and after. We were a respectful school at these times, Glad to say this did not happen that frequently and the room was downstairs away from the party on the second floor. Those events were just a blip in some of the other events that happened.

One day the Sigs were having an off campus lunch and sing along with one of the sororities, mistakenly they had the bus parked outside of our doors, basically in our territory. As they had gentlemanly lined up by the open doors, escorted the sorority girls to their seats, then came back out of the bus to load the lunches and lawn chairs, we could not stop ourselves. Brought out the fire hose, turned the water on and washed them down, laughing as they tried to escape. Could see the sorority girls laughing their heads off. The Sigs didn't retaliate in any way, they were above that, never parked a bus there again.

Another time before classes started in the fall semester we sponsored an outdoor beer party in the parking lot just outside our fraternity. I brought my stereo out, probably the best thing I ever bought. Powerful amp, big speakers, party music. The speaker were put on the roof. Attracted probably 70 some students ready to party before classes started. Some one shopped at a pizza restaurant on the way to another dorm, ordered 5 pizzas, paid and arranged delivery to the school, not knowing this party was happening. The pizzas were for a different party. Well the driver showed up at our party, drove into the crowd slowly and honking his horn. Brought unwanted attention to a hungry crowd of drunken students. Brought the pizzas out and shouted who ordered the pizzas. All hell broke out, a group grabbed the pizzas from him, then lifted his truck up and carried it out into the quad area. An area he could not drive out of, the restaurant would not make any deliveries there on campus No deliveries ever allowed for a year.

Going back to the kitchen raids.The kitchen prepared all the food, feeding meals to probably 100 students on a daily basis. Most of the cakes, pastries, stews, pasta dishes prepared the night before then refrigerated, locked the doors when leaving for the night, or so they thought. We picked the locks and would invade the kitchen for food. This happened fairly frequently, strangely no one came to investigate what was happening. Free food for a group of stoned boys, cake was the favorite.

Then the most illegal, frightening, almost deadly event occurred, not by our fraternity but by some members of the Phi Delts. Two of their members were taking flying lessons at the local airport, came up with a totally insane goal. One day after a flying class they stole some keys to a Cessna fixed wing in which they were training in. Broke in and stole the plane, took off and planned stupidly to land it on campus. As they approached the campus quad they realized their mistake. Barely missed a dormitory then crashed in downtown Salem. One lacerated his liver, both arrested at the hospital. Obviously thrown out of school. Hard to believe these events really happened but they did. I was there.