Gathered

Evanston, Illinois, November 11, 1978. Some of my dorm mates assemble for the yearbook shot.

Workspace

Evanston, Illinois, April 28, 1978. Here's another view of my desk in the dorm room I occupied during my sophomore year. The framed photo is this one.

The Views from the Window

I wrote a bit today about the dorm in which I lived for about three years. The best space I occupied was the room with the big windows. Here is what I saw when I looked out of those windows:

Evanston, Illinois, April 20, 1978. My view to the left was of "University Place," the area that divided the two sorority quads. I wasn't in a sorority, but I had friends who lived in the house on the left, Gamma Phi Beta. The building behind University Place is Rebecca Crown Center, the university's administrative hub. That's the place where some official interviewed me after I'd applied to the university. It's also where we paid our tuition and visited the registrar.

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Evanston, Illinois, April 15, 1978. My view to the right was of the Chi Omega house.

The Window Incident, in Three Takes

I mentioned recently that I once fell out of a window. The incident occurred when I was in college, on a lovely spring Saturday. A friend and I had been listening to music and goofing around in my dorm room. We stepped outside and realized that the keys to the room were on my desk.

The dorm was not conventional; it did not house several hundred students. Instead, it was a converted apartment building in which about thirty-six students lived. When my friend and I realized we were locked out, we walked around the building to see if someone might help us because my studious roommate was at the library. No one responded.

The room stood above a garden level on an elevated first floor. It had French-door windows overlooking a narrow balcony. The windows were open that day. I decided to try to reenter the building by reaching for the railing and jumping onto the balcony—I planned to walk in through those windows. I did fine at first: I grabbed the railing and started to twist over it. But I lost my balance, and I fell about ten feet.

I didn't feel much pain initially; I walked around without incident for about thirty-six hours. The next day—early Sunday evening—I was studying at (another) friend's room for a midterm. I felt suddenly "green," and I fainted. My friend telephoned the campus police, and an officer drove us to an emergency room. There, the physician told me I had broken my ankle. I was in a cast for about eight weeks.

 
My Dad drove up to campus to inspect the window and determine how I could have fallen out of it.

Evanston, Illinois, April 7, 1978. The room's windows are right above the green van's hood.

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Evanston, Illinois, May 17, 1978. I model my cast at the site of the injury.

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Evanston, Illinois, October 2000. I return to the spot where I fell.

Dorm Room

Evanston, Illinois, October 29, 1977. This is my dorm-room desk. It's not the same room I occupied during freshman year. The Royal typewriter is on the floor.
 
(Visitors to our present-day home will recognize the coffee mug.)

They're off to class.

Evanston, Illinois, April 25, 1978. Two of my dormmates part company as they head to class. For those of you familiar with Evanston: this is the intersection of Emerson and Orrington, looking east toward Sheridan Road. On the left is Searle, the Student Health Service, where I worked as a switchboard operator. On the right is the sorority quad and Cahn Auditorium. I took this photo from the common room—the "Lounge"—in my dormitory.

A Wedding, in Three Takes

I was preparing a wedding-anniversary post today, and I realized I'd forgotten to extend our wishes to my friend Kris and her husband, who recently celebrated an anniversary. Their wedding was memorable because an historical blizzard hit that day. 

Evanston, Illinois, January 1979. I had no trouble getting to the wedding because I could walk from my dorm to Kris's apartment. Each bridesmaid sewed her dress. We used Ultrasuede fabric to make the garments. Do you remember Ultraseude?!

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Skokie, Illinois, January 1979. It took my Parents two hours to drive from our home to the wedding site. Normally, the trip took forty-five minutes. Mom sewed her dress in another 1970s synthetic fabric—Qiana. When I later moved to Italy, I took Mom's dress with me. I wore it one night to go dancing in a Roman disco. Sorry, but I don't have any photos from that night.

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Skokie, Illinois, January 1979. My Dad and—from left to right—Mr. John and Kris's maternal Grandfather raise glasses in honor of the newlyweds. This photo captures my Dad at his happiest.

A Sunday Visit with the College Kid

I focus primarily on old photos on this blog, and photos from the 1970s don't seem old to me. When I ran across the two photos I post here, however, I digested a different sense of "old."

These images record a Sunday afternoon when my Parents visited me in my college dorm room. Both Mom and Dad were younger than I am now. The "digital" clock—a high school graduation gift from an old boyfriend—records the time and date. I'm wearing a kilt that I picked up at a second-hand store in Evanston, Illinois. The store stood on a street that ran between the Marshall Field's and the "L" tracks. 

I shared the room with two other women. The "dorm" was a converted apartment building that housed about thirty-six students. Our space was an old living room, and my area occupied the alcove overlooking the street. The alcove was a cold spot, but it felt as though I had my own room within the bigger room.

Evanston, Illinois, November 21, 1976. I can't make out which photos I tacked to the wall area between the windows.

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Evanston, Illinois, November 21, 1976. Had Mom been looking at one of my textbooks? 

Dorm Room

Evanston, Illinois, October 1977. Dad photographs Mom and me when he and Mom visited me in my dorm room.

College Kid

Evanston, Illinois, April 1978. I don't know what I was thinking here, and I don't remember who took this photo. I'm sitting in my dorm room, wearing a red, embroidered tunic that I bought in Greece in 1976.