My second year at Penn State I moved from Pinchot Hall down to the somewhat more centrally located Mifflin Hall.

Although my roommate from my first year, Dave DeTullio, and I had gotten along just fine, he had joined a fraternity, so there was no question of rooming together a second year, and while overall I was able to tolerate the icy cold winter of Centre County well enough, I had found that walking to classes from the Siberia of East Halls, which is where Pinchot Hall had been located, was just a bit too much for me to handle.

So I decided to move to Mifflin Hall, which is where some high school classmates of mine, Allen Maurer and Steve Sattazahn, were rooming on the fifth floor. But I didn’t know anyone else there, so I had to roll the dice and take whomever the Penn State computers would randomly assign.

I ended up on the third floor, and while there were a bunch of good guys on that floor, my roommate was not one of them. Happily, I no longer recall his name, so there’s no danger of my slandering him, and in any case, perhaps he was an ok guy, but we just never hit it off.

As a result, I spent a lot of time on the fifth floor, visiting Allen and Steve, and getting to know some of the other guys there.

One of the guys was Jerry Goode in room 520, which was the only single room on the floor.

As the fall term went on, it developed that Jerry had decided to take some time off from his studies for a year or so, meaning that his single room was going to be vacant.

The previous year he had roomed with Jeff Schrader in room 517. This year Jeff’s roommate was Terry Carroll, and I got to know both of them pretty well.

As soon as it became known that Jerry Goode was vacating his single room, Terry jumped at the chance and put in to transfer to it.

That meant that Jeff was going to need a new roommate.

As it happened, Jeff and I seemed to hit it off OK, so we talked about it, and come winter term, Jeff and I were roommates.

Somewhere along the line Terry told me, in strictest confidence, of course, that he had moved to the single room because he couldn’t stand rooming with Jeff. Now that they were no longer roommates, they got along fine, and Jeff was under the impression that Terry had simply wanted a single room because he wanted to be by himself. As I said, Terry swore me to secrecy; he didn’t want to hurt Jeff’s feelings by letting him know the truth.

A year later, Jerry Goode returned to school, but he was living in an apartment off campus now. Still he was a frequent visitor, and he and Jeff were good friends. He told me he was glad that Jeff had found me as a roommate. He also told me that the reason he had moved to the single room was that he couldn’t stand to live with Jeff.

So there I was with secrets from two guys who couldn’t stand to live with Jeff although otherwise they were good friends. 

Me? I lived with Jeff for two years without a problem. Yes, he had a few habits that got on my nerves, but nothing major, and I’m sure it was vice versa. I never knew exactly what it was that bothered the other two about Jeff though.