When the 80's Roared

I am sharing some of the edited-out stories. This does not mean the people in these stories mean any less; it just means I could write an Encyclopedia Britannica about them, so I had to keep it short.

There is a song by K.T. Oslin called "Eighties Ladies," and when it comes up on my playlist, I always listen to it all the way through. It's a song that makes me lonesome, sad, happy, nostalgic, homesick, and so very grateful for the opportunity I had to meet Lori and Bridget. The lyrics have the words: "Three little girls from school, one was pretty, one was smart, and one was a borderline fool". The decades are wrong, but the sentiments are genuine.

To celebrate the arrival of a case of Author's copies of my book tonight, I am sharing a story about college in the eighties.

Lori and I met during the winter quarter of 1981 when she moved to Pine Hall, and we quickly became lifelong friends. Although we live far apart and rarely talk, Lori still manages to drop into my life as a reliable and cherished friend.

She attended my nursing school graduation and was there during my first week back at college to earn my psychology degree. She also visited me in Reno when Lilly came home from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Lori has been a better friend to me than I could ever be to her. She is tall, with long dark hair, an olive complexion, and an enviable figure. I say "is" because she looked like that in college and somehow has never seemed to age. I love her, but I have always been a bit jealous of her.

Lori and I bonded over sarcasm and our shared major. We were planning to become counselors. As two teenagers with little reason to like people, we somehow decided we wanted to help. Lori was an honor student, while I was the girl most likely to join “I Tappa Kegga” sorority.  

Completing our trio of cynical freshman girls was Bridget, who cannot attend Lori's and my reunions but is always present at our gatherings. Bridget was the wildest, most outspoken, and adventurous of the three of us.

Bridget was short and heavyset. Her hair was a wild, untamed tangle, and her eyelids drooped low because of an unpronounceable condition she sometimes mentioned trying to fix. She enjoyed immunity, thanks to her ability to confuse and bluff. No one, including the police, could tell if she was high, drunk, or actually had this rare medical condition only she could pronounce, whether she was high or sober.

One of the other things Bridget and Lori did shortly after the three of us became a trio was take me to the mall. 

“You need some good slutting clothes,” Bridget told me.

“This is not good. Did you get this from the dumpster behind Goodwill?” Lori added.

Bridget was my body type, heavyset but shorter, and her usual outfit was a t-shirt tucked into her belted jeans. Lori was tall and slim, with a more subdued and feminine appearance. I probably fall somewhere in the middle between the two friends.

To any risky experience, Bridget was always yes, Lori was most often no, and I was the maybe. 

For the first time, I was at a mall, not just tagging along with neighbors or relatives when they took their kids shopping. I was shopping for clothes with my own (financial aid) money. It was that golden week we called “Alco holidays” when the financial aid funds had been disbursed, and classes hadn’t started.

I didn't buy an entirely new wardrobe; I only bought a shirt and a pair of jeans. It was a regular pair of jeans, with a zipper and a snap, not an elastic waistband.  The jeans fit me off the rack; there was no need for Mom to sew strips of material down the sides to make them wider.  I was amazed to discover that retail stores did sell clothing in my size. 

I quickly learned that new jeans need to be rinsed before wearing them.  After my first day of classes, I came home to find my legs colored dark blue.  I didn’t care; I was in love with my new jeans.  

Most of my financial aid had been sent home to my parents. Dad needed a new (used) chopper box for silage. Dutifully, I sent the money home.  Dad then loaned the chopper box to the neighbor, who wrecked it irreparably within a week.

Needing money to survive, I took a job in the game room of Pine Hall, supervising the pinball players for a few hours a week.  It gave me money for pizza and other college necessities. Financial aid loans and grants covered classes, room and board, and a daily meal plan. I was wealthier than I had ever been.

Bridget, who came from East Grand Forks, a large city, seemed indifferent to many things as I adjusted to city life. Lori was from a small town in southern Minnesota, which she described as having just a few houses surrounded by cornfields.

However, in my eyes, Lori was near “the cities” (Minneapolis-St. Paul) and was very much a big-city person. Lori has a way of being nonchalant about anything, a skill I spent hours learning to copy. I am proud to say I was successful and maintained a straight face during some of the craziest crises of my life.

Bridget appeared unencumbered by familial rules of humility and deference to others. She had stories of her family that were alien to me: family vacations, camping, and unconditional love and support. Bridget loved her parents, idolized her big brother, and cherished her little sister. It was a glimpse of a family life that I had only seen on television.

Lori had a brother she rarely spoke about and said she had nothing in common with her family. Lori had been a loner in high school, not fitting in with the cool kids or the jocks, being a bit of a nerd. She and I understood each other from the perspective of looking in on a world that excluded us.

Bridget had a beat-up green car and was not scared of anything or anybody. Lori, Bridget, and I would pile into Bridget’s car through the windows “Dukes of Hazzard” style. With Bridget behind the wheel of her faded green car, we explored the countryside.  On one of the first adventures, we got stuck in a snowbank under the sign welcoming us to the Red Lake Indian Reservation. We screamed at each other in panic as we shoved the car out of the ditch. 

Often, Bridget was driving down the main street of Bemidji, Lori squished in the middle of the front seat, and I sat half out of the passenger window, singing along to Janis Joplin songs. We were young, had transportation, and life felt ours to take.

“Life is an experience,” Bridget would tell me, “Let’s get out and experience.”

We always rode with Bridget driving, Lori the skinny one, in the middle, and me in the passenger seat. On a road trip, we would sleep in the same position; we sat in classes the same way; and we drank at T-Bones in the same manner. 

Bridget had concert T-shirts signed by Harry Chapin and every one of his albums. She introduced me to her extensive vinyl collection, broadening my musical world. Most of the music I knew was country, since the local radio station at home played "rock" music only one night a week, on Saturdays, and its selection was limited. Bridget and Lori would tease me as we listened to the music that I had only heard other people talk about in high school.

Weekends were spent on the floor of Lori’s room. While drinking beer illegally in the dorms, the three of us planned our future. Smoking until the room was blue, getting progressively drunk, the conversation was interesting to say the least.

Playing penny poker on Lori's carpeted floor, we discussed traveling to Mexico to purchase a bale of marijuana. And by bale, I meant something the size of a ninety-pound hay bale.

I had experience with handling bales, and Bridget was a good swimmer. She would push the bale while Lori and I sat on it as we crossed the Rio Grande. Lori would navigate us to American soil (we agreed she had the most ability to follow a map), where we would sell the bale and become rich beyond our wildest dreams.  We lacked only money, ambition, transportation to Mexico, and the knowledge of where to purchase or sell this “bale.” Other than those trivial issues, it was a good plan.

I don’t know what Bridget’s major was; I’m not even sure she attended classes. I don’t recall her studying, but I do remember her yelling down the hall for Lori and me to hurry before Happy Hour ended.

Bridget wore a giant, floppy sombrero when she was in the mood to party. Maybe if Lori and I had some common sense, we would have known to hide when the sombrero was in play. But then again, I was always easily led by the promise of “it’s going to be fun.”

The local bar, run by a crew of handsome all-male college students, was called T-bones. The owner hung out on the edge of the college student crowd. His name was Tim, so naturally, he got the nickname T-bone. T-bones was a dive bar serving only 3.2 alcohol, which, if consumed in large enough amounts, did the trick. The drinking age was 19; the three of us were underage as freshmen, but T-bones never checked IDs. With a rocking jukebox in the corner, a pool table, and flowing beer, it was always packed with college students.

Several times a week, T-bones hosted a “Gumby night”.  The purpose was to drink enough beer to become flexible and rubber-legged, like Gumby.  We could drink all we could hold with three dollars and a stamped hand.  Other nights would be “Progressive” nights.  Glasses of keg beer started at 25 cents and rose by 25 cents each hour, ending at $1.25.  It was a college student’s binge-drinking dream.

Cartoon keggers were held early on Saturday mornings.  Still hungover from Friday night, our enlarging gang would find our way to T-Bones at seven in the morning.  We sat around wearing sweatpants and stocking caps, eating cereal, and watching Saturday Morning Cartoons. By now, the three of us were often joined by a large crowd of the usual partiers from Pine Hall. 

When the ice broke on the lake in spring, our friend Bergy got drunk at a Cartoon Kegger and announced, “Let’s go waterskiing!”  My level of intoxication was such that it made perfect sense to me. I couldn’t swim or water ski, so I could learn to do both at the same time. 

At least eight of us packed into Bergy’s car and drove to the lake.  By some divine providence, the lake was still so cold that no boat rentals were available.  But I can say, "Yes, I have gone waterskiing”; after all, it's not my fault that there was no boat when I went.

After the bars closed at one a.m., we would stumble home to the dorms to continue the party. The campus was a “dry campus,” but that didn’t bother us.  As soon as the bartender yelled, “Hotel, Motel, you don’t gotta go home, but you can’t stay here!”

Someone would announce they were hosting the after-party.

Frisbees were flung, and Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison were blasted on five-foot-tall speakers.  Massive amounts of alcohol, marijuana, and other drugs were consumed. Security never bothered to come down 1A of Pine Hall. 

The boys were handsome, the girls were pretty, and I was the funny one. Bridget helped me discover the person I had kept hidden from ridicule for so long. She broke down the walls I had built and created a safe space around me. Because of Bridget, I developed friendships that continue to this day. These were friends with no apparent ulterior motives, no hidden surprises or betrayals.

Lori honed my one-liners and sarcasm to a fine-edged sword in our duels. The two of us couldn’t play poker without insulting each other. 

“You deal like a horse’s ass.”

“Better than looking like one.”

“Remember the shapes matter too, not just the color.”

“Next week I can teach you what the numbers mean.”

Lori has a depth that few people ever truly knew, unless she chose to include you in her circle. She is timeless in her grace and beauty. Like a rose, she has thorns, but it's always worth getting to know her soft side. It is only in her photography that she lets down the wall.

Not long ago, Lori and her daughter came to Las Vegas, and we met for burgers at the Eighties Café. Her daughter, who is in her thirties, accompanied her while I was with my twenty-one-year-old daughter.

We shared stories with our girls and talked about Bridget. Bridget and her daughter did not meet up with us. I told Lori what I had learned through internet searches and by reaching out to her sister. Bridget had a daughter nearly the same age as Lori’s. However, Bridget couldn’t complete the trio because she died in 1994.

Maybe someday, our three daughters will meet up somewhere, have a beer, and play a round or two of penny poker, just for the memories.