My sweet old animal house

My freshman year, I moved into the Lambda Chi Alpha house in Franklin, Indiana. The fraternity house - which was once a stop on the Underground Railroad - was in a residential neighborhood, one block from the Franklin College campus.

The historic house had six bedrooms, two bathrooms, one sofa on the front porch, no kitchen and parking for 15. After one particularly wild party that spring, the neighbors wanted us gone. Can't blame them. The Franklin mayor said we acted like a bunch of animals. The reaction led to a front-page story in the campus newspaper with the headline "Animal house?"

That's me, third from the right.

The way I remember it (through a foggy haze of chemicals), the party swelled to crazy proportions - bigger than anything we had hosted. It felt like the whole college was there. Drunk college students packed the main room and shook the floor as the stereo piped Spice Girls and mid-90s hip-hop. Outside, people peed on the fence and smoked weed. The problems reached a peak when a fight broke out among drunk country boys. Next thing you know, nearly a dozen people were beating each other's asses on the back deck. The cops were called, people were arrested, etc.

A little more than a year later, we moved to a new house: a converted dorm on the campus edge, right next to Tau Kappa Epsilon ("Tekes"). Everyone had more space, and the new house was in much better condition. There was a front lawn with a sand volleyball pit. During our first year in the new house, the fraternity's numbers doubled.

By gaining a new house, we gave up a place with character - and a place that built character. I was part of a large class of new members, and spent my first two years at the old house. Seems like the fondest college memories came from that stretch. Aside from a few months in the freshman dorm on campus, the old house was the first place I had lived away from home.

That first year - the year we were dubbed "Animal House" - was fairly quiet at the start. Not long before the crazy party, a handful of us were sitting around, wasting time and watching TV. Somehow the boredom progressed to hitting an old couch with a miniature wooden Louisville Slugger baseball bat. The bat belonged to a former member named Thor, who had crossed out "Louisville" to make it say "Lambda Chi Slugger."

So we kept slugging the hell out of this old couch, sending dust plumes and laughter into the room with each whack. That progressed to a more exciting idea: throwing the couch off the roof. Maybe someone wanted a faster way to move it downstairs?

One of the rooms had a door that accessed a small porch on the rooftop. Many people had passed out on the roof during parties - myself included - and miraculously, no one ever rolled off the roof.

With someone each holding a corner, we swung the couch, counted to three while gaining momentum, and let it fly. The couch soared from the second story in slow motion. It smacked the gravel driveway below, all four legs at the same time, and settled with a bounce. We clutched our guts and cackled ourselves red.

When we left the old house, that couch was still inside, tucked in a corner on the first floor.