I have practically no memory of Terry Carroll during that Fall term when he was Jeff’s roommate. Perhaps that’s because he was usually at a class whenever I would stop in to visit Jeff.

As I’ve previously mentioned, Terry moved into the solo room 520 of Mifflin Hall when Jerry Good vacated it, which allowed me to move in with Jeff, thus ridding me of my horrible roommate on the third floor. Terry told me in confidence that although he liked Jeff, he found him maddening to room with, but he never told me why.

I only really had one problem with Jeff. I liked to keep the curtains open over night so that the morning sun would gradually light up the room; that’s how I was used to sleeping at home. But Jeff preferred to wake up in darkness. After my first term at East Halls where I had a first period class and had to walk across the frigid parking lot with the winds blowing, I had resolved never to take a first period class ever again. Thus Jeff always got up before I did, so he got to control the curtains. And when he got up, he would give the curtains a jolt to open them, which always gave me a rude awakening. I never got used to that, though I was usually able to fall back to sleep for the remaining hour or so before I had to get up.

But I was talking about Terry.

I found a high school pic of Terry:

The problem is that doesn’t look very much like the Terry Carroll that I knew. The Terry Carroll that I knew had sandy hair and always wore glasses. And, of course, I never saw him in a coat and tie, at least not that I recall. Perhaps once or twice.

Anyway, once Terry got ensconced in the private room 520, he pretty much made it his own. But visitors were always welcome, as he was a pretty sociable guy.

His major was economics, so you know he was smart. He used to say that we had learned enough about how things worked so that we could prevent another depression from happening. I assume he was a Keynesian, although I didn’t know the term at the time.

And he was witty. He usually had a clever line for just about any occasion.

He had a pair of high power binoculars. As it happened there was a girls’ dormitory, Shulze Hall, directly across a courtyard, and when it grew dark, Terry would pull his chair up to the window, close his curtain, and bury his head under it with the binocs, hoping to catch a glimpse of a co-ed in a state of déshabillé. He apparently could do this for hours on end. It became a running joke on the floor. How he managed to keep up his grades, and apparently he did, and get his sleep, remained a mystery.

Terry was from Falls Church, VA, so as an out-of-stater he paid a substantially higher tuition than the in-staters did. I believe his room and board fee in the dormitory was also higher. But Falls Church being relatively near to Washington, D.C., Terry was a frequenter of the bar scene there, the drinking age in those days being 18 years of age. And apparently he had a favorite hangout and a regular bartender. His favorite drink was Johnny Walker Red and Coke, and there was some sort of agreement, or perhaps a bet, with his bartender; if he graduated from college, the bartender would give him a bottle of Johnny Walker Red.