September 1979.  I lived at the University of Iowa's River City Housing Co-op when all three of their houses were just blocks east of Kinnick Stadium, where the University of Iowa competed in football.  Melrose Avenue, Iowa City.  Game days were nuts in the neighborhood.  There was very little dedicated parking next to the stadium so football fans parked in informal lots around the neighborhood.  Some places made serious money and used parking to raise funds for a variety of non-profits.  It also caused people, particularly late-comers, to park on the co-op’s lawn.

As a co-op, we considered the benefits of renting out parking on game days, but it was resoundingly defeated.  It was as much a vote against football culture was it was a vote against having to deal with strangers no matter the cost.

So the next question was, how do we keep the fans from driving on to our front lawn who thought that it was better to ask forgiveness than permission.  Of course the cops had better things to do than police parking trespass.

I came up with the winning idea.  We posted a sign, “Parking - $50  Take it or leave it.”  Someone had a 6’ column from an art project.  We put it in the front yard of middle house and never had a rogue parker again.

The following Thanksgiving dinner with my father’s extended family, Aunt Marg said that parking had gotten so bad around the Hawkeye’s football games that she had heard that someone was charging $50. 

These photos include Dan Daly, Ruth Burch, Martin Pearson, and a few others whose names I forget.  It was through the co-op and Dan and Ruth that I met my closest circle of friends – those who were somehow associated with 518 Ronalds.  Dan and Ruth lived in the co-op then.  Dan grew up in Iowa City.  He invited his townie friends over to co-op parties.  The co-op Hallowe’en party after I took this photographs, I met Mark Gauger and Dave Eifler.  Mark was dressed as an executioner.  He wore a Viking horned helmet – at first glance.  Looking closer, the horns were made from plastic bananas.  He was carrying a guitar case.  It didn’t hold a guitar but a two-bladed axe, a labrys.  The case had a variety of travel stickers plastered to it.  Devil’s Island.  Alcatraz.  Paris.  Dave Eifler was 6’7”.  That night he wore shoes with higher heels.  He had on what looked to be a bug mask.  His hair flowed down to his belt.  My first words to him were “Great costume!”  He looked down at me menacingly and said in a very deep voice, “What do you mean, costume?”

The photos are a good reflection on the gentle ease we had in the co-op.  We were just relaxing outside on our picnic tables while fans flowed by to the stadium.  Martin gives a backrub to Ruth.  Ruth loved backrubs.  Ruth later became one of my best friends.  She introduced me to Suby – Amelia’s mother and my second former wife.  The introduction occurred just before she married Jim Walden, Jill’s father, in the Deadwood Tavern.  After the introduction Ruth cautioned me not to get too interested in Suby because of the impending marriage. 

Martin got me interested in the study of rhetoric.  We were housemates in Small House.  My first wife Janet Paige (Kuller) had moved out to live separately in her own apartment for a while as she sorted through whether she wanted to remain married to me.  She didn’t quite explain it that way.  It was more, “I need some space.”  She wouldn’t let me tell anyone in our families that we were actually living separately.  We had married only two years prior.  (We would remain married only another year.)

While Janet got her space, I worked an x-ray darkroom for University Hospital’s orthopedics and emergency room to pay for our homes.  I processed x-rays in a machine.  I was responsible for the machine’s continued good performance and I actually worked about two minutes out of every twelve minutes.  I had time on my hands, though I was in a tiny closet of a darkroom.  I read a lot.  I read the Bible, and that accidentally ingratiated me with the director of the radiological unit, Dr. El Khoury.  I read through Janet’s reading list for her master’s of social work curriculum.  I read through Linda Tookey’s reading list for her master’s of education curriculum and gave her informal book reports so she didn’t have to read it all.  And for a while I ran out of things to read.

I asked my roommate Martin what he would recommend from his reading list for a graduate degree in rhetoric.  A Grammar of Motives by Kenneth Burke was his recommendation.  It was dense reading and it required a background in the history of philosophy, but I had a good basic philosophy education as my undergraduate major.  It was an excellent book.  It really changed how I understood things.  I told Martin I’d finished and he was surprised that I made it through.  He told me that he has suggested one of the most difficult books on his required reading list.

Jim Barfuss and Beth whatshername are in a set of photos.  Jim was extremely bright and had an excellent sense of humor.  He and his high school friend from Michigan (Lansing?) had created The Observation Club.  It was an organizing principle that led them to investigate the weird world around them, and a name to give others when asked what the heck they were doing.  Seymour B. Moore was their leader.  Much more insightful than Sam Schagnogleeack, my high school leader.  Cathy Nelles, my beloved, used to date Jim around this time.  Beth had a malevolent good humor.  I didn’t get to know her well.  I was still invested in my marriage.  I remember her comment after meeting Chris Dewey.  “He would bruise so well.”

The photos referenced in this essay can be seen in the “Photos by Number” section of the website in gallery “00057.