Fire drills were a regular feature of the dorms, probably a monthly occurrence, and everybody hated them. When the fire alarm went off you were expected to drop whatever you were doing and head to the nearest stairwell and proceed in an orderly manner down to the ground floor and out onto the courtyard, rain or shine, regardless of the temperature. There was no hiding in the dorm room, as someone was designated on each floor to inspect every room to make sure there were no malingerers.

Once everyone was down on the ground, we waited for the all clear signal, and then we were allowed to travel back up the stairwells to our respective floors again. Unless you figured out somewhere else to go for perhaps 15 minutes, in which case you could return to the dorm and take the elevator back up.

Naturally, most folks preferred going down the stairwells and hated climbing back up to the fifth floor. Most folks except Terry Carroll, that is. He was the exception to the rule. He always claimed he preferred climbing up the stairs rather than going down.  Something about he could keep his balance better going up.

Meanwhile, Jeff did have a habit that mildly annoyed me. He had a tendency to sing the first line a song as he jumped up from his chair and headed out the door. Thankfully, it was usually just the first line or so of a song, so I only found it a little annoying, but perhaps that was what drove Jerry and Terry to seek the solo room. And thankfully he sang rather than whistled. Now if he had whistled, that would have been a deal breaker, as I can not stand the sound of whistling. I swear there have been times when if I had had a loaded gun in my hand, there are persons who would be dead now simply because they broke out whistling when I was trying to concentrate. 

Anyway, one of the songs that Jeff tended to sing was the first line of the Linda Ronstadt tune “Different Drum”, but he always sang it as “You and I coddle to the beat of a different drum” and I was certain the word should be “travel” not “coddle”. I didn’t know what cooking eggs had to do in that song. I never said anything to Jeff, but eventually I did look it up and I was right, it is “travel”. So take that, Jeff!

That first year that I was on the fifth floor of Mifflin Hall was the second and final year for the Resident Assistant (RA). The RA’s were, I think, grad students who could make a little extra money by living in the dorms and taking charge of two floors. I’ve long since forgotten the name of the RA from that year, but he was well liked by everyone.

Not least because one Saturday evening he declared it a porn night. He had obtained a couple of silent porn movies that he was showing in the lounge that the fifth and sixth floors shared. And these were genuine, 100%, hard core, I-know-it-when-I see-it, pornographic movies. They were classics from the 1930s.

In fact one of them had been featured in Playboy’s “The History of Sex in Cinema” series, so I was especially eager to finally see a print of the whole movie. For purely research purposes, you understand. I had taken a course on the history of the cinema the previous year so I was quite knowledgable about camera angles, editing, and the like. And the movie was eye-opening in several ways. As I said it was genuine hard core pornography, the first I had ever actually viewed, and the images from it that had appeared in Playboy had been strictly of the soft core variety. Plus, it had a plot! Fairly rudimentary, but still a plot. I didn’t realize that hard core pornographic films had plots. Probably not enough of a plot to give it socially redeeming value in some people’s eyes.

When the movies were over and the lights came up, all the guys returned to their rooms, presumably to meditate on what they had just seen.

After porn night, the RA was even more popular with the guys than ever.

I wanted to include a pic or two from that classic porn film, but I’ve been unable to find it on the web, and the Playboy archives require the purchase of a year’s membership in order to view them, so I’m afraid you’re out of luck. You’ll have to make do with this video of Linda Ronstadt singing her hit with the Stone Poneys: