I can’t remember the last time I looked at my 1980-81 diary, but I did the other day, just a few samplings. I don’t have any memory of the following day, though it sounds like a good one, except for the bomb scare (you’d think I’d remember that, but no). It would have been a good week anyway, since even though classes were in session and tests still being taken, it was the week ahead of spring break. Pretty soon I was off to North Carolina with Neal and Stuart.
In early 1981 I lived, with many other VU sophomores, in a dorm on the Peabody campus. George Peabody College for Teachers had been a longstanding independent institution, but in 1979 Vanderbilt absorbed it. A couple of well-known alumna of that school, though I didn’t know it then: Bettie Page and Tipper Gore.
Wednesday, February 25, 1981
The day started at 8, roused from a near-conscious dream about trying to remember the license plate number of a truck, though I can’t say why. Shower. Class. To Sarratt [Student Center] afterward, read some Herodotus, napped in the chair. At around noon some kind of bomb scare was going on over at Stevenson [Science Center], but my early afternoon class wasn’t affected.
Later in the afternoon, returned to Peabody, sat outside on the lawn in near summer-like conditions, with Neal and Cynthia at first. By and by, Jim, Kathy, Julie, Layne, Mary and Donna wandered by and all sat on the lawn with us. Best part of the day.
About an hour before sunset, we went out separate ways. Neal and I took a walk around Peabody, and ended up on the far end of campus, at the Mayborn Building. By means of various prohibited fire escapes, climbed to the roof. Nice view from up there. Returning to East Hall, we stopped for a while at the Social-Religious Building, where we crawled through and around enough small holes to get under the dome on top of the building, but we couldn’t get outside on top.
Returned to room, chicken dinner later at the cafeteria, studied Latin for a while. Late in the evening, hung out with Neal and Stuart and ate some small pizzas. Stuart asked me all kinds of questions on post-WWII U.S. foreign policy, as if I were an expert. He has a test on it tomorrow. Before I left, he lent me Night by Elie Wiesel, which I spent time reading before bed. Not a happy book. Bed 1:30.