Ah, progress...
I never lived at this rental duplex near NC State's campus, though some Saturday nights I wanted nothing more to crawl up in a corner and sleep the spins away.
I almost died here, probably a couple of times. The most serious of which was when my Honda hatchback was T-boned not far from the front door as I was going from cookout to party. What did my college friends who lived here do? They moved the keg from the back patio to the front steps so they could watch me get a ticket for failure to yield.
It was not a place where yielding was encouraged.
I had to leave once for a quick trip to the Rex Hospital emergency room. Turns out, if you stand on a sturdy coffee table, let friends pick it up on both ends and shake it while you surf to the theme song of Hawaii Five-0, you are very likely to be thrown off and tear ligaments in your ankle. The next morning, when you try to jump off your ladderless bunk bed, you will be in great pain. And you will get no sympathy from your roommate, your girlfriend nor your parents.
On the same day in 1986 that NC State upset No. 16 Clemson in a nationally televised State Fair football game at Carter-Finley Stadium, I came back here and watched Bill Buckner of the Boston Red Sox boot an easy ground ball in Game 6 of the World Series. I never blamed Bill for not breaking the Curse of Bambino but no one is allowed to mention Calvin Schiraldi in my presence. Poor Bruce Hurst had to give back his MVP trophy.
I cried a little that night.
I watched countless beer shotguns, potato chip chugs and raw egg-eating (shells and all) contests. I'll never forget the horrified look on one of the roommates' face when friends fell into his two-story beer can collection.
Halloween there was frightful, up until someone made a Char-Grill run.
Ms. Wuf was almost murdered here, and would've been if a quick-witted soul hadn't grabbed all the knives from a kitchen drawer and hid with them under the bed in the basement until the howling ruckus subsided.
I found so much here. Lifelong friends, certainly. A writing career that I'm still plugging away at. A sense of belonging among the sub-3.0 GPA crowd. Music that neither I, nor anyone else, had ever heard before. The Cozell Rap is still my favorite.
There are pictures from 2616 Avent Ferry Rd. that will keep all its visitors from ever holding office, but that probably wasn't going to happen anyway.
It was a fun place, in a different time. The version we knew as students has been gone, really, for decades, occupied by no one I knew. But I drive by it every day I go to work, and always think about a Party Headquarters moment.
Now, a little piece of my soul is missing.