Off campus at Ohio State

My first run at living in Chicago went from February of 1990 to August of 1999 (when I moved to Brooklyn, NY). I moved around a lot, first living on Briar Place and Broadway in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood. Next, I lived on Aldine near Broadway.  I spent a summer living in Naperville before renting a studio at Melrose and Broadway. After that, I rented a one bedroom at Barry and Clark. Then I was back on Briar Place.

Somewhere along the line, with friends helping me move, someone (I’ve never begun to figure out who’s to blame) inadvertently threw out a huge black Hefty lawn bag packed full of clippings of my newspaper writings—everything from Ohio State (including my internships at the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Cleveland Plain Dealer) and then everything from my first job at the Elmira Star-Gazette and almost everything from my second job at the Naperville Sun.

I remember being super upset when I first learned that all my life’s work was tossed into the garbage. This would be something I’d lament on and off through the years, telling myself, “Oh, well, get over it.”

The fact that I never quit being a "rolling stone" made it easier to deal with. After living in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood, I moved into a studio in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood.

When I left NYC after seven years, I took an offer from a friend in Arab, Ala. (30 minutes south of Huntsville) to live in a trailer on their property that had just become vacant. This led to me moving back to Chicago six months later, finding a studio in the Lincoln Square neighborhood just off of Wilson Avenue near Lincoln Avenue.

From there, in the midst of severe depression, I moved in with a Grace Believer who was living in a trailer out in the boonies near Lufkin, Texas. I came back to Chicago and moved in with someone looking for a roommate. I had just met her through a non-profit organization that I was volunteering with (H.O.M.E.). She lived on the 17^th floor of Beach Point Tower at the corner of Sheridan and Ardmore in the Edgewater neighborhood.

After that I lived at Rosemont and Clark, followed by the 7000 block of Sheridan Road between Sherwin and Chase. Then I moved in with my mother in Fairlawn, OH, followed by a move back to Chicago, this time in the suburb of Palatine on Helen Road near Plum Grove. Now I live with my mother in Dayton, OH.

*****

This is all to say, I can only go by memory--there are no documents to place me with anything or anywhere.

So, just today, thinking about what I should tackle next in my “testimony,” knowing I couldn’t leave all these loose ends regarding my time at Ohio State, I heard the old Paul McCartney and Wings song “Band on the Run” play for the first time in the selected playlist for the retail chain store where I work.

I was so delighted because I suddenly recalled how my opinion column began at Ohio State—the one that put me on the map and led to me being so well-read across campus, with a constant flow of letters, both pro and con, coming into the editorial department.

It was a piece about me moving into a rental house with two roommates after living in the dorms for two years. I started by saying dorm life was like the song’s lyrics: “Stuck inside these four walls, sent inside forever” and then dreaming, “If I ever get outta here.”

Our house had some major issues that weren’t addressed by our landlord, Al Desantis, who owned a tremendous amount of properties around campus at the time. I wrote about our plumbing problems and leaking roof, among other things. I quoted my roommate, Marilyn, who said our place was “held together with spit and paper mache.” I said our landlord looked like “Earle Bruce before the Cotton Bowl.”

This was a reference to Ohio State’s football coach at the time and how his OSU sweater would inch up on him to reveal his big protruding belly live on national TV.

I never thought anything about the repercussions, and I guess the Lantern staff didn’t either, but I got into some real hot water with DeSantis, who had a big estate in Columbus with a moat in his front yard!

Anyway, to make a long story short, at the same time this column was making the rounds, DeSantis was preparing to sue me personally!!!

Once I told my parents of his threats, they had to take any financial investments out of my name. As part of appeasing DeSantis, I was ordered to meet with him at the Lantern offices along with the faculty instructor who oversaw the paper. Desantis actually reached across the conference table at one point to where I sat and clenched his fist, saying, “I could just . . .”

He was upset, in part, that I made fun of his weight. Thankfully, and my life was rattled for a solid month or more over this, he decided against filing a lawsuit. I remember learning a lot of lessons, but it did not stop me from being a controversial columnist--in fact, it marked the beginning!

(to be continued)