Peter Brown Remembers

I believe that I enjoy a unique status in that I am perhaps the only member of my class to have lost not one, but two roommates junior year.

I occupied a room on the first floor of Crossley directly opposite Dale Conley’s office. I almost stormed across the hall to lodge a protest after losing my second roommate, but I decided Mr. Conley already had enough on this plate. Things were a lot more subdued, and indeed much saner senior year when I linked up with Dave Ericson and settled into DeWitt Wallace Hall.

My first roomie, L, was from the West Coast, and a devotee of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. L dabbled in stuff promoted by the “Timothy Leary / Better Living through Chemistry” crowd, and it was not unusual for me to come back to the room after soccer and find him under a bed. Two seniors next door shared a fire door with us, and I think one of them, RR, would enter abruptly at strategic moments when he knew he could spook my roommate, and perhaps RR spooked him a little too much. No proof of thus – just a theory of mine. Anyway, L was moved to another dorm before making his departure.

Flash forward to 2019 when a friend of mine here on the Cape pens a book about how the CIA played a pivotal role in the rise of LSD and Leary, and, describes how the CIA refined and applied the chemistry that ushered in the dawn of a new era. But, I digress.

Roomie #1 was replaced by a much more sociable character. J hung out with other guys who apparently specialized in the unauthorized transfer of goods from the student store to the area adjacent to the lower soccer fields after dark where the stash in question was concealed beneath tarps. I enjoyed his company and wonder what happened to him.

As the year progressed, the sense I had that a third roommate would materialize gradually vaporized, and I was left thinking that somehow I was jinxed. Just saying.