My First Day at University--Inspired by a request from NPR

First off I’m from Ontario Canada and listen to Weekend America via enhanced podcast. My first day at University began a few days earlier with my first trip away from home in the back seat of a neighbour’s push button automatic stationwagon on the way from rural Lunenburg County Nova Scotia the 103 miles to Halifax where I was dropped off at the Nova Scotian Hotel to catch the Ocean Limited to Montreal. It was also the first time I’d ever been in a car doing 90 miles per hour. On that train in a coach seat I met my first French Canadians who drunkenly and loudly played cards all night. After a transfer in Gare Central in Montreal I caught the Rapido to Toronto passing by Man and His World, Expo 67 on the way out of town. In Toronto I had a six hour layover during which I managed to enter the women’s washroom in error. The trip from Toronto to Kitchener was via a milk-run coach which did not take checked luggage. My trunk had been loaded in Bridgewater a week earlier so that it would arrive close to when I did. In Kitchener I hired my first taxi for the ride to the campus where after a lot of walking with heavy bags I finally found my room assignment.

What followed were a lot more firsts. A roommate, my first shower, strange water, the noise of fluorescent lights in the corridor at night, my first experience with keys and locked doors, and a ground floor bedroom. I quickly learned of the need to draw the curtains before changing. Registration was quite another deal. Long line-ups in the main auditorium and decisions that would govern my next eight months. Frosh week or initiation was relatively painless. When confronted with a sophomore one had to lie on the ground with four limbs in the air and repeat, “I am a dead horse, I stink.” And carry matches to light a hero’s cigarette while inveighing about the evils of smoking. As initiations go this was relatively mild. A year earlier a student had actually been killed in one prank. Someone managed to climb to the top of the Waterloo Water Tower and paint “BEER” in 10 foot lettering.

My experience with Dining Hall food persuaded me that I couldn’t do worse living off campus the next year. The food fights were reason enough to move to the balcony. That first week I experienced my first dance, roller skating, and a trip to the movies with a fellow student who was the son of English Ambassadors to Spain. The movie we saw was the St. Valentines Massacre. I also experienced my first and last ride on the back of a motorcycle. We hit every manhole cover in our trip to Waterloo Music Company on Weber St. I also remember that gasoline on Weber St was 39¢ a gallon at a time when it was 53¢ back home. This was also the height of the Viet Nam War era and among the handbooks handed out was a guide for draft dodgers living in Canada—I still have that booklet somewhere in my trunk. In one of my neighbour’s rooms masking tape ran from the common desk at the window right to the entrance door marked “Mason Dixon Line” with arrows marking Rebs and Yanks.

Waterloo may not be most people’s idea of a big city but for me Waterloo Lutheran University Campus was my world for the next 8 months.