One Thousand Indian
The picture above shows the house at 1000 Indian as it looks today. A nice coat of green paint to hide the nasty scars…
In the annuls of Washington college life this place is something of a legendary party house. I was stunned forty years later when my college-aged sons knew about it! I was amazed the place was even still standing, let alone still a place of reputed fame. They must have done some work to it, because it had been condemned for improvements long ago.
I was 19 and contemplating which college to try next. One of my best friends who lived down the beach, Bob Frampton, got me interested in photography. He was going to school at Western Washington University and said they had a good program in the Technology Dept. So, I went to Western the next two years, taking photo, technology and basic requirement classes while taking the winters off to pro ski patrol and make my flat $2.75/hour.
1000 Indian St. is on the lower, northern edge of campus. I only just found out it’s Indian Street anymore. In this era of political correctness and over-wrought sensitivities, it’s now Billy Frank, Jr. Street. Instead of being named after an ethnic group it’s named after an individual from that ethnicity. Sorry, but in the big scheme of things I really don’t see the difference. But, I guess nowadays it’s whatever makes you feel good and, God forbid, we should feel guilty about anything. Ohh, Bi-llll-yyyy….
The house sits on a northeast corner lot. Indian was the main street that wound up the hill into campus. Down the street a few blocks was the Glory Hole, another party house run by WWU rugby players, but their parties were not held in the same esteem as the parties at ‘Thou.’ Thou (short for thousand, not for a prayer; there was no prayer to help us) was a two-story, five-bedroom (six if you improvised) house, probably built in the early 1920s. Absolutely nothing special – in fact, the frat house in John Belushi’s movie Animal House was a déjà vu of Thousand Indian. It was painted a nondescript gray with a nice little sun porch facing west to the street. We had a side yard abutting a dead end street to the south where we all parked our cars. The upstairs was only heated through vents from the main floor ceiling, pretty typical for the day when it was built. The only heat was from a natural gas 2 x 3 x 3 foot tall space heater in the living room. Off the living room was a nice south facing set of windows with a sitting area. East of the living room was the kitchen with a bathroom and a small pantry next to it in the southeast corner. Across the living room and opposite the kitchen, a bedroom branched off west to face the street. Upstairs were four bedrooms of all different sizes and a sloping floor with an odd kink in the hallway as it worked its way to the back of the second floor, where a bizarre little room could be improvised for a sixth bedroom.
The place was furnished in the highest tradition of poor college student fashion, ala Goodwill and Salvation Army. A couple of couches and chairs, hand-me-down dishes and cooking utensils – you know, the usual high class trashy ambiance. To finish off the look, house matriarch Bill Jones (BJ, naturally) owned a blue 1946 Chevy Fleetmaster convertible. On sunny spring days, we would pile into that thing and tool around town as the usual group of unruly boys whom winter had cooped up for too long. Shouts of marginally inappropriate expressions like, “Hey, do you pump Ethyl?”, would routinely be directed at gas station attendants as we cruised by.
I had gotten into this desirable off-campus setting through two friends, Tim and Jeff Larsen, who had also gone to West Seattle High. Finding out I was going to Western, Jeff immediately had asked if I was interested in living with them. Of course! I had no other options on the table, so it was the path of least resistance and I figured I could live with Jeff just fine. Roommates would sort of rotate in and out during the year, but basically it was Tim, Jeff, Corey, Ken Hebert, goofy ol’ Don, big Bill Jones, and me. Don had been born with one leg shorter than the other so he walked with a limping-type gait, but his personality was stranger than his walk. He tried to be a know-it-all technology major but he wasn’t really smart enough to pull it off, especially in a house with guys as quick-witted as Jeff and Tim. So, he was unceremoniously relegated to the dreaded sixth bedroom. But his rent was cheaper as a result, so he really didn’t seem to mind.
Ken was a character and friend of BJ’s, and later became a Bellingham plumber. The thing I remember most about Kenny was the night he stabbed me.
It was Tuesday night and we were drinking our common house beverage, Schmidt, or ‘Animal Beer.’ It was so named because the cans had different birds and animals all over them and it was our favorite because it was 99 cents a six-pack. Our connoisseur beer was Budweiser when we could afford it, which wasn’t often. We had finished visiting our usual Tuesday haunt for dinner, the $1.99 all you can eat special at the local Pizza Hut about a mile down the hill. Back at home, Ken, beer in hand, had decided it was a good idea to have a game of darts. The dartboard was on the east wall of the sitting area, a good seven feet or so from the doorway into the kitchen. I figured the doorway was a good vantage point from which to observe. Kenny geared up and hucked his first dart. Hmm, okay, he made it on the board. Still, I had a strange feeling I probably shouldn’t be standing in this doorway. He wound up for his next one and suddenly made this awkward lurch in my direction – whomp! The dart came to rest all the way up to the knurling between the 2nd and 3rd knuckles of my right hand. I didn’t budge, looked down, saw the dart in my hand and slowly looked back at him. He freaked out. “Oh shit, oh shit! Are you okay?!” he screamed.
I started laughing. “Damn it! I knew I shouldn’t have stood here! What the hell, Kenny!”
“Oh God, man, I am so sorry! I’m going to take you down to emergency!”
“Kenny, it’s ok. It doesn’t even hurt. I’ve had a tetanus shot. I don’t need to go to emergency.” I pulled the dart out from between the knuckles. He winced. I was thinking I was pretty damn lucky it hit me there.
Kenny was insisting about emergency though and he wouldn’t let go of it. So, to make him feel better, I relented and off we went the mile or so to the local hospital. It was only about 9 o’clock and it wasn’t busy yet. Of course, they asked me about the tetanus, didn’t do anything about the wound and sent me home. My hand was fine, but it still took poor Kenny a few days to get over that one.
The thing Thou was most known for was epically huge parties. We used to have a campus-wide party once a quarter to pay for our telephone and cable TV. The biggest party was always fall quarter. We would have at least 500 people where we charged $1 for guys and 50¢ for girls, all the beer you could drink. We had a special $19 deal for kegs with one of the taverns downtown, and a deal with the cops they wouldn’t bust us if we stayed on property and didn’t allow any drugs. We always had two kegs going at once. One fall night we went through 24 kegs and still made a couple hundred bucks. Let’s see, $19 X 24 + $200… that’s a lot of people drinking a helluva lot of beer!
Typical party prep included invites posted around campus, “No Drugs” signs on the house walls, rolling back all the carpets, roping off the upstairs and putting padlocks on all the bedrooms. Residents were stationed at strategic spots and we kept watch for drugs or trouble. BJ’s favorite band, The Rolling Stones, was always playing on the stereo. As the night progressed that would lead to people dancing on the three-foot tall gas space heater in the living room. After a couple years, the sheet metal on that poor space heater was a mangled mess. But, the heater miraculously still worked. Clean up took a good portion of the next day. Beer & mud cow pies littered the kitchen floor. It took awhile to clean and mop that. Sweeping, rolling back carpets, vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom – that was always interesting – all the usual college domestic stuff (right).
Inevitably, there were a few tussles. Cory was a good-sized guy at about 6’-1,” 220 lb. and Tim was about 6’-3,” but BJ was our major enforcer. He was pretty imposing at 6’-3” and 250 lb. He had a heart of gold and was slow to anger, but no one ever wanted to be stupid enough to get him there. As a former college wrestler he was tremendously strong. He could lift a full keg of beer under each arm and carry them from the street through the house to the kitchen in back and put them on the counter without setting them down. I saw him punch a wall once (rather than a guy’s face) and push the 2×4 stud out the other side. Didn’t hurt his hand at all. I also saw a guy hassling his girlfriend at one of our parties. BJ warned the guy nicely to back off. The guy told BJ to fuck off. BJ picked the guy up, dragged him to the porch and threw him 15 feet out into the back yard. We never saw him again.
There were also the girls. Somehow, the place was something of a chick magnet – I really have no idea why. Maybe it was the bad boy reputation the place exuded. Anyway, they would show up and just start hanging out. Inevitably, that would result in girls wanting extended stays. We rarely ever turned that down. The whole subject of girls brings me to a situation all of us guys remember with pronounced envy. Jeff and I had a friend who had changed high schools his Junior year, and we had reconnected with him at Western. He had a living situation every young man dreams of – he shared a house with three beautiful women who openly engaged his nightly services on a rotating basis in exchange for his living there rent-free. I was dumbfounded and incredibly envious. At first I didn’t believe it, but it was confirmed by one of the girls involved. He always walked around with a very satisfied look on his face… bastard.
Our house also had its own intramural flag football team. We had our 5 housemates plus BJ going around campus recruiting ex-football buddies. We were pretty much universally despised. Our quarterback was Western’s former starting QB. The fields were natural grass over hardpan. Once the rains came, those fields turned into a quagmire. After games, we’d get into the gym showers, cleats and all, to try and get all the mud off. Then, we’d peel off our clothes and take a regular shower. I heard the janitor was always complaining about clogged shower drains.
The games themselves were every bit as physical as tackle football. It was a 15-yard penalty if you tackled someone, but if you grabbed the flag on the way down it wasn’t a tackle. So, we almost always tackled the guy and then reached for the flag. BJ was frequently triple teamed at the line, but his strength, wild-eyed look and war howl was usually enough to make it a fair fight. Pound for pound he was probably the strongest man I ever met.
As you might expect, it wasn’t the greatest environment to promote study. Surprisingly though, all these guys were pretty serious about school. Having to pay your own way sort of makes you want to make it worth something. Still, we were not the greatest at studying all the time. As a result, there were black out periods to partying and goofing off we called catch up weeks. No messing around, just going to the library every night, reading and studying at home to catch up on our classes. The place was pretty quiet those days.
After two years at Western I moved on to finish my photo degree at Everett College. Then I finished up a four-year degree at the University of Washington in General Studies. Thank goodness they had just started that make-up-your-own major. I’d already changed majors 3 times; not sure what I would have done without that. Somehow it felt like cheating, but it was a degree and I seem to have done all right.
While I remember a lot of those days fondly, I also remember the growing pains. I’m glad I don’t have to do the same thing over again. My dad would probably say, “Well, that’s why you do and learn those things – so you know what you don’t want to do again.” Thanks, Dad. For better or worse, except for Jeff I never saw any of those guys again. Still, just like everyone it was an experience I needed to grow up. And it makes for some good stories to tell…
