I know my last post promised to be very long.  But as I approached the reunion part of our trip, I realized that I was going to need to dedicate an entire blog just to this topic alone.  So I apologize.

As you should totally know by now, we are a Michigan State University household.

Scott and I met working for a MSU TV group called Telecasters and at the PBS station, WKAR.  He lived in this off-campus house on Alton Street.  The house was a duplex and he had friends living on both sides of the house.  This is the house today – and it looks exactly the same as it did years ago:

The reason we were in town was totally due to this house.  It was the 20th anniversary of the first group of people living in the house.  So someone, (maybe Brian who was the ‘dad’ of the group) threw out the idea that we should all get together reunion-style since we all live far apart.  It was too great to pass up so we made a vacation around it and had an amazing time.

The Alton House

The duplex has two sides.  Each side has three bedrooms upstairs and a basement.  So on each side, 4 people could ‘legally’ live.  That’s 8 people in all.  But there are times when that number was much higher.  Often times, two people would be renting out each of the basements.  Plus, the house had a thing for couches.  You see, this was where couches came to die.  Each side would have at least two-to-four couches, which also doubled as beds for many.  It would be a totally common sight to come into the house to find the TV on…normally on SpaceGhost…with a few people passed out on couches, open pizza boxes, garbage everywhere and Buck looking on (he was the stuffed dear hanging on the wall).

The People

Most of the members of the house lived there before I did.  I just hung out often as Scott and I first started dating and I started becoming friends with everyone.  I didn’t move in until almost the end of the house.  The house was started by a bunch of the guys who all lived in Case Hall – that’s one of the dorms on the MSU campus.  Case Hall is where you lived if you were a) a student athlete or b) in the James Madison College.  This group was in the strong B category.  Although I’ve recently found out that one of them lived in Case because he wrote ‘student athlete’ on his application – so that’s where they put him.  He was NOT a student athlete.

So they all decided to move off-campus together.  As people moved out, they basically found someone else to move in so the house pretty much remained in the group of friends.  When I started hanging out there – one side of the house was basically grad students or seniors (that also had really cool technology and networked computers where I could play Quake ALL THE TIME)…and the other side of the house was mostly TV people.  At least that’s how I remember it.

The greatest thing about this group of guys is that they were fun, caring, genuine, smart but think they’re not and non-threatening.  I met them during a rough time for me at college and they were exactly the non-judgmental type of people I wanted to hang out with.  Here are just some pictures to give you an idea of the shenanigans inside this house:

There was always something happening at the house.  If felt like someone was ALWAYS home.  I don’t think a door was ever locked and certainly no one had a key.  It was always a mess.  However, there was always someone to hang with, someone to drink with, someone to play croquet with and someone to watch cartoons with.  There were some great parties, some great bands that played in the basements and a lot of beer.   But at the core, it was a great group of people who were really like a family.  A really dirty family.  If you think that one picture above showing the messy table and touch is bad, you should have seen the bathroom.

The Reunion

So we decided to meet back up at the big park that was just down the street from the house.  Not everyone could make it to the event, but so many did.  There was nothing better then sitting around telling old stories about the house…

• “Remember bowling for 40’s? We would line up 40s of beer at the end of the hall and roll a bowling ball towards then until they all broke.”
• “Remember when we were at the pizza place and ordered a pizza to be delivered to our house in hopes the driver would drive us back?”
• “Remember Dave’s 5 different alarm clocks going off in the early morning so he could get to work?”
• “Remember when we finally got new carpet and then one of the guys changed their bike chain on the new carpet and got grease all over it?”

and on and on and on…

So we had this reunion of sorts.  Friday night we all got into town and hung out at our hotel where we had a group room block (nice planning Brian!!).  It was great because everyone was kind of tired from traveling and just wanted to catch up with each other.  Kids swam in the pool, adults ate and talked, and it was just like old times.  Except now we had money to pay for food and beer.  We even drank wine, which never happened back then!

Saturday morning we all kind of did our own thing and all met up at the park in the afternoon for some picnic fun!  We had the grill going, Scott made Long Island Ice Tea’s (which used to be our favorite drink at our favorite East Lansing hangout, Bilbo’s- now closed), John manhandled the meat on the grill and we taught the kids how to play croquet.

 

The highlight of the day really came when we decided to walk down the street and knock on the door of the old house.  We came prepared with a 12 pack of PBR and started ringing the doorbell.  What happened next was pretty perfect.

We rang the doorbell a few times before someone answered.  It was a youngish looking guy who was on the phone.  He looked scared. Someone started explaining to him that we used to live there and would love to come inside and look around.  He told the person he was talking to, “I’ve got to call you back…” and then dealt with us.  We started telling him about living there and asking him questions if he just lived on one side or both.

After awhile of talking, we weren’t sure it was going to happen.  Until Darcy (who A- never lived in the house. B-just met all of us. and C- is awesome.) finally just said, “let’s cut to the chase – can we come in or not?”  And it happened.  We all walked back into the house where no one has been for about 15 years or so.

The very first thing…it smelled EXACTLY THE SAME.  A lovely odor of rotting garbage and stale cigarette smoke.  It’s literally a smell that transported me back in time.  It wasn’t much cleaner then when we lived there.  It seemed a bit smaller.  But looked exactly the same.  After talking to Jackson for awhile (we quickly made friends) he explained that he was a grad student working on something really smart at MSU and we all basically agreed he would have been too smart to live with us.  He also confessed that when we saw us all standing on the front stoop he was convinced that we were a religious group.  Far from it dude.

 

We took lots of pictures inside and out of the house.  I’m waiting for the pictures Rich took with his fancy camera.  Some of those were amazing and really do tell the story of the Alton House.

Had to get a picture with some of the guys inside the old house:

And that my friends, is the Alton House.  It was perfect.  And thankfully my kids had already gone to their sleepover before they had to see where we lived in college.  I wouldn’t want to give them any ideas!

We cleaned up our picnic mess and hit the town to relieve the glory days! Many of the bars are still around and we hit them all, including the one I would never go to as a student, The Landshark.  Not sure why, but I was afraid of that place.  Perhaps it because it looks like it’s violating about 2000 fire codes.  But the shark bowl was delicious (even if I was burping up gummy sharks the next day!)

One more stop Sunday morning to our favorite breakfast place, Theo’s to get the Southern Scramble and then we hit the road back to Florida.

The ride home was fine – no major drama expect for the anxiety attack I nearly had while Scott was driving in the Tennessee mountains, at night, in the fog, while it was raining.  We had a great time playing the license plate game – only missing FOUR states!?!?!

And now, we get ready to go back to school.  And I’m missing the mid-west….