My plan to gather my little gang of friends, find the perfect cool party pad and let the good times roll!
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Oh and did I find the perfect house!
Doing a little searching before starting this story, I found this article in the Rochester Post Bulletin archives about the house where me and my little motley crew of rapscallions and ragamuffins made our first “home”.
Historic indeed.
I can’t remember where I found the listing, but as soon as Melvin and I saw the place we snatched it up and began preparations for moving in. We had the entire upper level, including the loft bedroom on the third floor. I found the place so I got the loft. Melvin called “dibs” on the big bedroom adjacent from what would be the living room (more like “party room”) and Mark would get the small bedroom. Mark would be starting school at Carlton College in the fall so he didn’t mind. His contribution to the rent was thus agreed to be smaller too.
Rent… who was responsible, and how it got paid was always an issue at this house. Melvin and I had a good jobs so we were the ones to always be sure it got paid, but Mark proved to be anything but dependable in that area. Actually he depended on everyone understanding that he contributed in other ways so he didn’t have to actually pay rent.
Other ways…
At John Marshal High School in my home town of Rochester, Minnesota… Mark had been (in the eyes of many) the coolest guy in school. He was like our version of “The Fonz” from “Happy Days”. In a previous post about my early excursions into the world of feminine attention, I mention how I was a kind of “sidekick” to Mark O’Malley. I’d become such good friends with one of the girls in his entourage (Patty) that she’d arranged for me to use her Dad’s new car to take my date to the prom.
By the time we got the apartment together, I no longer saw my relationship with Mark that way but I certainly didn’t see us as equals when it came to “coolness”. Melvin and I were a bit on the “geeky” side so we were glad to have a cool guy like Mark ensuring the attendance of other cool people for the epic parties we envisioned.
Epic parties.
Yea, there were a few. Not as many as I’d imagined though. I guess social coolness wasn’t as big a priority as I’d imagined it to be because I can’t remember putting much effort into it. I mostly remember focusing on doing cool stuff with the small group of people who became regulars at our historic house.
Cool (and not so cool) people, things n stuff were a bit random and now exist in my memory of those days in a bit of a blur so…
My next few posts will probably be a bit out of sequence since it’s hard to get such things straight now as the stories will have to be…
To be continued…
