People are Strange; 1,747 words

“People are strange, when you’re a stranger…”

The Doors were playing their new hit song on the radio. It was raining, and I had just taken the Ashland, Oregon exit off of I-5.

“…strangers look ugly, when you’re alone.”

I was 18 and had just traveled up Highway 99 by myself from Stockton, California, to attend my first year of college at Southern Oregon College.

“Women seem wicked, when you’re unwanted, streets are uneven, when you’re down.”

Now I was approaching the campus. I was pretty excited. The rain was still falling, but I could see people through the foggy windshield and swiping wipers. They were walking along the street across from a college building next to a convenience store.

“When you’re strange, faces come out of the rain.”

I was having an epiphany about my situation. I was coming to a school where no one knew me.

“When you’re strange, no one remembers your name. When you’re strange, when you’re strange. When you’re strange.”

I could be whoever I wanted to be. No one had pre-conceived expectations as to who I should be. I could just be myself. I also didn’t need to be so shy and self-conscious. It was a great pep talk.

I found my dorm and moved into my room, after meeting my dorm mom. She was what I remember as being older. As I look back now, I am guessing she was probably in her late 50’s or early sixties. My room was mid-way down the first floor, which meant I didn’t have to go up and down the stairs. I soon discovered that about 85% of this dorm floor, was occupied by fellow freshmen swimmers. This was our coach’s second year as the swim coach. He came from Southern California and recruited from the rich pool of California high school swimmers to build his team. He was young and energetic and had some good ideas. This was one of them. It was mostly genius to have us all living together in one place. We had an instant group of friends to eat with, to compete with at swim practice, to pick out and attend classes together, and to go out on Friday and Saturday nights and drink great volumes of beer.

Our swim season was officially a winter sport and our swim coach also served as one of the college football coaches. This was a surprise to some of us water polo players. We had access to the swim pool to work out but the season hadn’t yet started. We were a group of 18 and 19 year-old guys living together and away from home for the first time. It seemed pretty natural for a group of about nine or ten of us to go out drinking on the weekend. Someone had a false ID and was able to get beer. The problem was finding a safe place to drink it. I should note, “safe” in terms of not getting caught, we had no thought of how unsafe it was for a group of teenagers to be driving on country roads after drinking a lot of beer. Ashland, in 1967, was a sleepy conservative little logging community that tolerated the college’s students for nine months of the year, and then the Shakespeare Festival for a few months in the summer. We were new to the area and were pretty naive. The first couple of times we went out, we went up Dead Indian Road, which took you out of town and up the side of the valley to an outcropping of rocks. We parked along the side of the road, and passed through a barbed wire fence. It was a short walk to a spot that looked down at the lights of Ashland. This turned out to be a good place for us to drink and make noise, but it was a ways out of town. The second time we were there, we heard that you could get drunk quicker if you drank your beer from a straw. I don’t know if it was the straws or the Colt 45’s, but we were feeling pretty good when we got back to the college. We were now a group of about six to nine guys feeling too good to just go back to our rooms. One of us said he had met a girl in a class and knew which dorm she lived in. Maybe she would come down with other girls to talk with us. We decided to go pay her a visit.

“Angie, Gary Smith and some other visitors are here to see you,” the desk clerk of the dorm announced through the 2^nd floor intercom. College dormitories were strictly men’s and women’s. The females were under strict sign-in and sign-out rules and had a 10:00 curfew. Angie was a cute girl who lived on the second floor of Aspen Hall. She had met a cute guy in class yesterday. She thought his name was Gary. Oh dear, she didn’t want to go down by herself. She quickly went from door to door to recruit other girls to fortify her ranks. Soon they all came down stairs, and met up with us in the lobby. I ended up talking with a cute redheaded girl. After a few awkward moments, the group ended up going downstairs to a larger gathering area that had vending machines and a large open floor. I noticed that the cute redhead didn’t follow us downstairs, and I soon came back upstairs and went out to the front of the dorm. Sitting on the top step was that very cute redheaded girl. There was no one sitting with her, so I sat down next to her and restarted our conversation. She was super easy to talk with, which wasn’t easy for me at that time of my self-conscious life. I asked her where she was from. She responded truthfully that she was from Toledo. “Toledo! Ohio?” Here she took a little diversion from the truth. She was tired of telling people that, no, she was from Toledo, Oregon. She would then have to explain where Toledo, Oregon was. She hadn’t thought out the fact that she was totally unprepared for the questions that followed. “Toledo, Ohio, wow, that is a long way from here. How did you hear of this place and why did you come to this college?” She didn’t know anything about Ohio and started to get caught up in this lie, but I didn’t notice too much with the Colt 45 still being processed in my liver. All I was thinking was, “Mary, Mary, Mary.” You see, I have a hard time remembering names and I didn’t want to forget this name! I finally found a piece of paper and pencil and wrote down her name. The next day, I called her and asked her out for the next Friday night dance.

This was a very fortunate turn of events for me on several fronts. On one front, I fulfilled my best friend’s prediction from high school. I wasn’t thinking of his prediction at the time, but he had predicted that I would end up marrying the first girl I met in college. On another front, I ended up not following my grandpa’s advice. He told me to not let “moss” grow on my back when he learned I was going to school in Oregon. Mary’s last name was Moss, and she would eventually become my wife. On a legal front, I dodged a bullet.

Next Friday arrived, and I was going out on a date! I was taking Mary (Lou) Moss to the Friday night dance! I was excited. However, I was going to miss out on the weekend drinking routine. They missed me, because I had a full-sized ‘61 Chevy Bel Air. This meant they all had to pile into Curt’s car. The thought of traveling all the way up Dead Indian Road didn’t appeal to Curt, and someone in the group thought that the upper part of Lithia Park would be a good place.

Lithia Park is a special place in the hearts of Ashland residents. It was designed by John McLaren, who also designed the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. The park borders the downtown plaza, just past the police station. It is a long park that winds up a hill, following a creek that eventually becomes the water system that supplies Ashland with its drinking water. There is a large pond at the bottom of the park that is home to a large black swan and several geese and ducks. This is the main part of the park and is where the majority of people visit. A road winds along the middle of the park and goes up a hill alongside Lithia Creek. Near the top is an upper pond that also houses ducks, geese, and a white swan. This is the spot that was chosen for the Friday night drinking party. This turned out to not be so remote as it had first seemed.

After the party was going for a bit, suddenly, out of nowhere, several Ashland Police cars pulled into the parking area of the pond. Guys were scattering everywhere, but were mostly being caught. My friend Paul thought he had a perfect hiding place. He lay down in the pond with just his large nose sticking out of the water. “OK, nose, get up out of there,” the policeman with a flashlight said to Paul. The only one who got away was Curt, the owner and driver of the car. He actually didn’t get away, because the police had his car. Everyone was charged with a Minor in Possession (MIP) and had to appear in court. This was pretty serious at the time. Everyone, except Curt, spent the night in jail. All of them were arrested and had to say so on future school and work applications. They all faced the possibility of being kicked out of school or off the swim team. They all had to face their parents and secure lawyers and appear in court. Luckily, no one was kicked out of school, and everyone remained on the team, but we didn’t know that at the time. I’ll always be indebted to Mary Lou, for if I hadn’t met her and gone on that first date, I would have faced the same fate as my teammates, not to mention sharing our lives.

• Back to Stories
  • Back to Swagerty/Moss Stories