Classic Moments in Vermin History

"By Buoye"

The Club

Father Brad

Fieno's Drill

Another "Classic Moment in Vermin History." This was a bit of a toughie to post. The story is mainly told by Vermin James L. His initial tale was clarified and expanded by Vermin Keary Ryan. The main portion of this moment is written by James, while Keary's additions are in parenthesis. (I hope my editting hasn't butchered the fable too much.) This story was passed our way by Matthew Miller '94. The Classic Moment (I believe) occurred during the '91-'92 school year and it titled: "Grain Alcohol".....

My Sophmore year, myself and some of my co-horts from the fourth floor (Steve "Nappy" Tompkins, Pat Coleman, Chris Hesburgh, Brendan Quinn and Eric "Grainman" Kurowski were the ones that took the fall) decided to throw a party. To add a theme of sorts, we decided to make grain alcohol punch. While this may not have been the smartest move, drinking at the time WAS allowed in the dorm rooms so we did not feel we were breaking any rules.

Well, needless to say things got a little out of hand that night. Matters weren't helped by the fact that the "Duders" had a little gathering of their own across the hall. A mess was made of the hallway (by guest of the Duders I might add) so the RA's decided to put an end to the party. While we were disappointed, we asked everyone to leave and even helped clean up the hall.

The night turned interesting after that. Some freshman got so drunk that he curse the rector. (To top that he puked your home-made purple passion punch all over the 24-hour lounge.) Someone also took a sh!t in the sink of the Hall Kitchen. (After years of prodding, I think we finally got Stan Tuholski to admit that he was the masked bowel mover. Stan took a sh!t on a plate and placed it in the kitchen sink. A real practical joker, that Stanislaus.)

The result of our little gathering??? A $200 fine, letters home to all of our parents, "probation" for the rest of the year, and we were turned over to Student Affairs. Apparently the event could not be handled internally. Student affairs simply put a note on our files and made us take an alcohol awareness class together, but that is not the point. It could have been worse.

An interesting side note - beginning with 91-92 edition of Du Lac, the university officially baned the consumption or possession of grain alcohol on campus. All thanks to the fourth floor of Carroll Hall!

Posted on Jan. 21, 2001

Many of us remember nights at Carroll Hall in which a call to Domino's was the best solution for late night hunger. A few of us remember a night in which some creative criminal minds were better than that phone call. My story, which most certainly has some standard writer's embellishment, will be an attempt to give you an accurate retelling of the event that has become known as the Domino's raid. Names have been intentionally left out in order to protect the guilty. My sophomore year a group of mischievous Vermin were discussing the possibility of a Domino's raid. For those who are not familiar with such a raid a little background should be provided. After watching numerous pizza deliveries to Carroll Hall, someone discovered that the delivery guy, in an attempt to save time (at that time it was 30 minutes or free), rarely locked his door while he made his timely pizza delivery. Hearing a number of stories about successful raids by upperclass Vermin, a couple of my friends and I decided to estimate the time of the next delivery. I participated in the planning and coordination of the plan but actually did not take an active role in the "lifting" of the pizzas. The execution went smoothly, as the adolescent delivery boy had no idea that a group of hungry Vermin lurked in the bushes. As hoped, the doors of the truck were unlocked and the pizza was ours.

The criminals returned to the home base of the mission (205 Carroll) where we first viewed the fruit of our labor-two large pizzas in the standard Domino's delivery sleeve. Those too moral to participate in the thievery seemed to have no problem scarfing down the stolen pizzas. As we enjoyed our forbidden feast and shared some laughs about our success, the best idea of all then occurred to us. The pizza box had the dorm and room number of the poor saps who would never get their hot pizza. We called them up and asked, "Is this room 213 Holy Cross Hall? Did you order 2 large Domino's pizzas with sausage and pepperoni?" With an affirmative answer to each of these questions, the vicious Vermin voice said, "Well we're sitting here eating it right now! We stole it so don't expect a pizza tonight. And by the way, it was great!"

At this point we were very happy with ourselves and our heartless phone call. As productive as the night seemed to be, this wasn't the end of our eventful raid. At the end of the school year, while packing our things to leave for the summer, we found the vinyl sleeve Domino's used to keep the pizzas warm. Someone noticed that the sleeve contained a standard plea from the Domino's company: "If found please return for a reward."

We called the local Domino's and explained how we had found one of the delivery sleeves in a large field near our dorm (Yeah, right). The reward for our good will? Two more large pizzas! So who says crime doesn't pay? It paid off for us. Our eventful Domino's raid led to four free pizzas, many laughs, and an oft told story which has probably never been told the same way twice.

Here's one from, I believe, the late '80s. Notice the term "WASTER." As I was told, their were rival groups in the dorm known as WASTERS and DUDERS. Apparently they were the new school "West Side Story" Sharks and Jets sans rhythm. The author of this Classic Moment in Vermin History - entitled "H2O and The Revengers' Tale" - is Joseph Medel...

Ah yes, the ever popular water drop... While I never had the actual pleasure of partaking in our Vermin Baptism, this does remind me of the first snow storm I experienced while at ND. It was about 10 years ago just before October Break & the flakes began to fall around midnight during the middle of the week. The usual euphoria began to take place (I'm sure all of you can remember the first time you saw snow fall like napalm during your tenure at the lovely Dome) while my roommates & I were happily sawing logs in the fishbowl. We (being myself, Mick O'Connell, Chris Matz, & Toc Dan Ton) began to hear shuffling outside & much screaming. Paying no heed, we laughed it off and went back to bed. Suddenly, the dreaded sound of overly tired, freezing wet Vermin approached our door and with a loud kick, was flung open and we were bombarded with snowballs in our toasty beds by none other than those scoundrels from Dante's Inferno, the WASTERS. After we cleared the tundra from our hair, pillows, blankets & comforters we began to formulate a plan of revenge that would have made Shakespeare proud. The loveliest aspect of which was the shear simplicity. Housed somewhere near the now Ultramodern, sterile & barless TV lounge was the largest trash recepticle in Carroll hall. After having dumped the contents, Chris, Mick & I (Toc was planning a more devious martial arts- Titus Andronicus-meets- Rumplestiltskin-type revenge which would not take place until years after the snowballing) filled the 20 gallon trash can with cold water, leaned it very precariously against the WASTERS' door and finished our revenge with a simple coup de grace:

We knocked.

What followed was a sound similar to that of a herd of pigs being flung down the Niagra Falls in a small basket. The ensuing dank squeals of agony, pain & humiliation tore thru Carroll. It was as if someone had been watching Deliverance with the volume turned up to 11 (the tortured face of Ned Beatty comes to mind).

We simply laughed the hollow laugh of those who had been previously tortured in an all boys parochial high school.

While the WASTERS vowed revenge, they never did manage to match the sheer intensity of that preemptive strike. They retailiated with similar force (we never answered the door), they tried to force hydrodynamics on us (we plugged the doorway with rags & old towels) and they even tried petrochemical lubricants (we used gloves whenever we turned our doorknobs).

To this day, whenever you walk into that room on the first floor, you will probably notice that the floor is still a little damp, the room still a little humid and if you listen closely, you can hear...

...the stillness of pigs...

...squealing....

in the falls.

This is not just any Hall Notes, this the THE Hall Notes....

October 13th was the eight-year anniversary of the infamous "Hall Notes" scandal. Those of you who did not live in Carroll in 1994 most likely have no idea of what I am talking about. Those of you who did live in Carroll in 1994 know EXACTLY what I'm talking about.

The October 13, 1994 issue of The Observer ran a piece titled "Forum Addresses Adversities Today's Women Face." It was the third story on the cover, about mid-page. A portion of a Carroll Hall Note had been printed. This was highly surprising to all Vermin. Hall Notes had always been posted in bathrooms for all the Vermin to read. The only time they ever left the john was to go in the trash when the new notes got posted. Except this time instead of the trash receiving the notes, the trash up and TOOK the notes. The trash was in the form of a morrissey hall donkey. The weasel, who will remain nameless in favor of more descriptive nouns, stole notes out of Carroll and scurried off to The Observer. That particular edition of the Hall Notes included a joke. The Observer printed it in its entirety: "Question: What's the definition of a woman? Answer 1: The useless piece of flesh around the vagina. Answer 2: The attachment that you screw in the bed, that does the housework. Answer 3: A sheep who cooks." The weasel went on to munch some mushrooms and hallucinate that "this is violence" that was "posted in public areas." The humorless snitch went on to daydream: "If you're not sickened by this; there's something wrong."

Carroll came under fire by all of the politically correct. Hall presidents Dave Lillis '97 and Gary Girzadas '96 publicly apologized and explained the dorm's stance toward the offensive remarks: "The parties involved were reprimanded and notified such intolerable statements could result in dismissal."

In the October 14th Observer it was written that Farley was going to "boycott" Carroll. "Several Farley women approached their resident assistant at a meeting and demanded that the formal be held with a different men's dorm." I believe it was John Bender of "The Breakfast Club" who stated: "B-O-O....H-O-O."

So Carroll had a black eye the rest of the school year. Probably the most interesting item in the Hall Notes, though, was what never made headlines. Apparently the weasel was unfamiliar. You see, the notes were not just written on a blank piece of paper. The writer/artist had sketched a drawing before scribing. It was basically a poor man's watermark, if you will. This went unnoticed and undetailed in the school paper. Let's just say the "eagle" had landed unknowingly and, therefore, avoided a newspaper "spread."

Happy Hour

We have one WHALE of an email to share with y'all. There is a bit of an introduction so just go with it. "Happy Hour" is told by Vermin Earl Baker '86...

I arrived at Notre Dame and Carroll Hall in August of 1982, having come all the way from California, alone. The bus from O'Hare dropped me and my trunk at the main circle, and I needed some help to find out where Carroll Hall was. I had seen it on the campus map the University sent me, and it seemed like it was sort of far from the rest of the buildings on campus. I didn't know the half of it. I was literally living a dream being able to attend Notre Dame, but I was a little bummed with the dorm I got. No worries. I carried/dragged my trunk from the main circle all the way to Carroll, and the RA's greeted me and showed me to my room. It was a big cube of a room on the first floor, right across from the rector's office. My roommates were three New Yorkers (geeeeeez). John "Basil" Hayes and Jock Brody Mutschler were both from the Rochester area, and Scott Kiley was from Long Island. Basil, Jock, and myself were Navy, Army, and Air Force ROTC respectively. Scott was not the military type. Neither was Jock for that matter, but that's another story.

The most striking feature of our room was the plush wall-to-wall whorehouse-red carpet that we had inherited from the previous occupants. Those previous residents had dubbed the room "The Love Palace" and the name stuck, although I'm not sure we really deserved the tag. With four of us living there, and the rest of the Vermin wandering through because of our central location, it wasn't really a quiet place for getting to know that special someone. It might have been called the Insomnia Palace. I swear we never got a wink of sleep before 3:00 a.m. that whole year.

At any rate, I settled in with my new roomies. Before long, a couple of big bruisers came through the door and started demanding money from each of us. Turns out these were some seniors in the dorm, and they were collecting cash for the Happy Hour set for that Friday. I don't recall exactly, but they wanted $5 or $10 from each of us. At the time, that was a lot of money for me. My parents had me on a $50 per month allowance, and I hadn't been picked up on my ROTC scholarship yet. Plus, I wasn't much of a drinker, and I wasn't sure I wanted to go to some party. How naive I was. But these guys weren't taking "no" for an answer. After the shake down was over, some other dorm vets clued us in on what the Happy Hour was all about.

Here's the premise: On weeks of home football games, all during the week in classes, etc... you invited every desirable (or near-desirable, or at least breathing) girl you met to come on out to Carroll on Friday afternoon for our Happy Hour. Good music, free booze (and lots of it). A good time to be had by all. Chicks come, chicks drink, chicks get happy, maybe guys get lucky. The Carroll Happy Hour had a good reputation in some of the girls' dorms, and amazingly enough come Friday afternoon, the dorm was rocking! When you walked back up the drive to Carroll after Friday classes, the music was blasting across the lake. Inside (and often out on the front lawn as well) the kegs had been tapped and the beer was flowing. Inside, there were at least two bars set up. One was usually serving blender drinks (Sea Breezes made with ice, vodka, 7-up, and some sort of juice concentrate), the other was something else (I can't remember because I was usually working the Sea Breeze bar, and performed quality control as well.). These parties started at maybe 3:30 or 4:00 in the afternoon. They would die down a bit as dinner hour came, and then as people left for the pep rally. But they usually went on at least at a low level until about 2:00 a.m. on Saturday morning (I think Parietals kicked in at 2:00 a.m. on the weekends, so the ladies had to leave at that time). Although the first floor was the epicenter of the action, the Happy Hour really encompassed the entire dorm. Some partied in big groups downstairs, other partied in more intimate groups on floors two through four.

I remember vividly one scene from my first Happy Hour. I was standing in the party room on the first floor, just down the hall from my room, talking to one of the RA's. He was drunk off his ass, leaning against the wall to hold himself up. He was looking a little ragged, and was quite a bit overweight. And he was passing on a little bit of wisdom. "I used to be like you. In shape, great high school athlete. But before long, you'll look like this too." He was commenting on the crop of young, naive, fresh-faced, super-fit freshman that had just joined the Hall. We thought the guy was pathetic and crazy and bitter. Little did we know.

The Happy Hour was the focus of social life in Carroll Hall, and it gave us our identity. It wasn't always pretty. Lots of guys (specially the freshman) got way too drunk and out of control or sick. Hijinks were common (water drops? Pizza heists? Often post-Happy Hour entertainment). Nicknames were earned. The best example of this from my group of friends was Steve (Last name withheld to protect the sloppy drunk), who was from Texas. One Friday afternoon, during a particularly good Happy Hour, a group of us decided that we wanted to go to the pep rally, and Father Steve was going to take us over to Stepan Center in his van. At any rate, sometime between leaving the dorm for the rally, and returning afterwards, Steve got very sick and blew chunks everywhere. Chunks. And the name absolutely stuck. While people later meeting him might assume that "Chunks" got his name from being kind of chunky (he was a big guy), we all knew how he really got the name. Do you remember the show Cheers? When Norm walks in? "NORM" everyone shouts. Everywhere Steve went for four years, his fellow Vermin would greet him with a chorus of "CHUNKS!"

Many of the stories posted on VerminNet have some connection to the Happy Hour. Of course, nowadays the University would consider our behavior reprehensible. Well, they did then too, but we were pretty much out-of-sight, out-of-mind, and Father Steve was very lenient with us.

I believe it was in my Junior year (1984-85) (Father Steve's last year as rector) that the University killed the Happy Hour. New University policy that year essentially prohibited any alcohol consumption by students under 21 (although they would tolerate drinking in your room behind closed doors if you didn't draw attention to yourself). Alcohol consumption at dorm parties was limited to 21 and older, and was relatively strictly enforced.

It was the end of an era. We held a funeral for the Happy Hour. Father Steve let us borrow some vestments, candles, etc.. from the chapel. We had a last party, and then we laid the Happy Hour to rest. We had a funeral procession, some words were said. And a couple bottles of booze along with some mementos were buried in a hole out behind the dorm. We even had a headstone with "R.I.P." on it. I don't know if the headstone or the grave is still there. I doubt it. But I know there are people out there in cyberspace with pictures of the event, and I think I've got a commemorative button in my trunk somewhere (the same trunk after all these years).

Heatfest on Wheels

Okay, I thought of a Yuletide absurdity from Christmas 1990.

In the years before the "Pearl Harbor SYR" was invented to perk up our holiday spirits, early December was a time in which not a whole lot happened on a dorm-wide scale. So, somebody on Dorm Council got the incredible idea to organize a dorm excursion to the roller rink behind Grape Road, despite all the obvious potential for destruction. So it was that "Heatfest on Wheels" was born.

Needless to say, it was a zoo. Just about everybody was butt- wasted, and those who weren't dizzy enough from alcohol were soon dizzy from being crashed into at high speed by those who were. At any given time, within you field of view, somebody was either falling down or getting knocked on their ass. Tom Sullivan displayed his linebacker skills by tackling Tom Giblin at least 50 times. Giblin was such a feeble skater that he could never escape, even when he would hide behind innocent-bystander chicks. Sullivan would simply hunt him down, rocket toward him and annihilate him. Sullivan was charging Giblin so hard one time that he undercut a passing Matt Baumgarth, who achieved hang time that would shame must NFL punters before landing on his hip with a thud. Ask anybody who attended this thing: people had never been bruised so much in their life. We were like Vietnam vets afterward, comparing our wounds. Giblin was still limping in February, I swear to God.

Humanity wasn't the only thing getting abused, though. Mike Graf spent the entire time in the bathroom performing "roller-boot". I was skating desperately towards the bathroom in hopes of emptying a dangerously full bladder when I was struck, in succession, by Sullivan, Kirkwood and Jay Lubanski. Suddenly I was knuckleballing towards the wall outside the Men's room at about 55 mph. As I crashed into the wall I reflexively grasped for something to stop me, and I accidentally tore the gigantic wooden "E" in the word "MEN" right out of the wall. I still have the damn thing.

But the coup de grace was yet to come. In the center of the rink, directly under the disco ball and with 90 drunken Vermin swirling around it, was a Christmas tree. Not a Charlie Brown deal, but a pretty big one. All night I had heard buzz that Jay Lubanski and Mike Canz were sowing the seeds of its destruction, but I saw nothing but occasional evil stares at the doomed fir. Finally, around 30 minutes before the end of the session, it happened. Lubanski and Canz were wrestling each other as they rounded the turn in front of it, and then, suddenly, Lubanski pushed Canz so hard that he went hurtling towards the tree. Canz hit the thing so flush that it appeared about to spill over right into the crowd, but some conscientious employee had tied the tree to the disco ball with wire. And so, under the force of Canz's impact, the tree simply swung up into the air like a pendulum, with tinsel falling everywhere.

Amazingly, the same rink let us come back the next year, but I think the relationship ended when one Vermin over-heated and had to go to the hospital. But it was fun while it lasted.

This short Classic Moment in Vermin History centers around the greatest carnivore to ever set foot in Carroll. Ryan "O-Dogg" O'Leary '96 tells a tale about his Puerto Rican classmate, Cris "Pimpi" Diaz. It's called "I Didn't Eat the Whole Cow"....

We were f*cking with Pimpi as usual, and all of a sudden we decided to figure out (based on a rough estimate of his lifetime burger consumption) how many cows he had gone through. So (Dan) Dykens ('96) called Colorado Steakhouse and asked them how many burgers they can get from the average cow. We figured it came to around 3 1/2 cows or so...so we find Pimpi and told him he killed 4 cows...he says "I didn't eat the whole cow"...at which point (John) Donovan ('96) comes up with the now classic "Well I guess they don't kill 'em then."

Iceberg Debates

*Freshman year (Room 204). Stan Tuholski ('94). Drunk off his ass on a Wednesday (I think) night. Iceberg debates going on downstairs on first floor. Stan begins a tirade about how much he HATES iceberg debates, stomping on the floor and throwing beer cans. Several beers later, there's a knock at our door. It's Father Sullivan (Rector). Stan (shirtless) opens the door with beer in hand.

Stan: "Hey, Father, what's going on?"
Fr. Sullivan (horns showing): "Stan, what the hell are you doing?"
Stan (slurring heavily): "I'm ruining Iceberg debates!"
Fr. Sullivan (dumbfounded): "I know you are, so shut up!"
Stan: "Yes sir"

Stan pulls KP for a week, whatever that means. You'll be happy to know that Stan now builds buildings and bridges in Northern California.

Vermin Unite, or , rearranged, Vermin untie

SINcerley, Kevin Coskren

This is a Classic Moment in Vermin History from back in the day. It was passed our way by old school alum Abiud Amaro. It occurred way back in the early '80s, the grandest of all decades...

Given the recent going ons (or other typs of ons) in Notre Dame recently (can you say Catholic Girls in Trouble) perhaps this tale has ceased to be of interest. I mean with all the insinuations of guys and gals playing Bill and Monica games around campus maybe this tale will not suffice. But maybe it will because as we all know every guy can get lucky, even the quiet ones.

Not so long ago in a tattered little hall called Carroll a man name John Carrone used to live, study and play. I was his roomate for two years. Now John is a quiet fellow. A guy that is Domer to the core. An accounting major for Pete's sake. He was a manager in the football team. His job included painting all the helmets of the football players before the game. Working hard to make those shiny helmets pure gold (Did you know that the helmets are painted with paint that has Gold in it? John told me that. And I believe him. That is your tuition money at work.)

Now we had a dance, a fall dance, which we called Screw Your Roomate. The objective of this dance was to call a Notre Dame woman to a party on behalf of your roomate. Sometimes the roomate would get a really beautiful woman. At other times... Well... Let's just say that some pictures do lie. Now trust me on this. The University has gone a LONG, LONG WAY in the recruitment of women on campus. When I came in (1980) I could have swore that the University went out of his way to recruit less than appealing women. I would not have put it pass them. Better to prevent copulation.

At any rate we were planning the party, making the party tapes and all. I was making the tapes with a great guy named Joe, who I heard went on to Med School. Now I remember that I wanted some slamming music and we got all kinds of music from Reggae to ballads to Rock to Soul.

I took the prettiest girl I have ever taken to these dances. So I was pumped. I was very happy to see that John had a date too. So I go dancing and dance a nice slow dance with this girl. John and his date finally get the nerve to dance. I might have instigated them a bit. (poetic license) Now the ballad is done and I want to talk to my girl, get some drinks and mingle. John and his date will have NONE of that nonsense. They continue to dance slowly to EVERYTHING THAT WE PUT ON. Reggae, Rock, Soul. It don't matter. John and his date are quite happy where they are at. Thank you very much. I swear thet were dancing on the same spot for the three hours that the dance lasted. No drinks. No chatting. No walking out of the dance room. NONE OF THAT. Just hold together tight. Very tight. I know this to be true. I checked. I could not believe it.

Now I won't tell what happened after the dance. Frankly I don't remember when or if John slept in our room that night. But Joe Morris and I on the next Hall Meeting decided that what John did was worthy of recognition. I mean, first date and all you do is dance slowly with your partner. The man makes all of us look like chumps. He went from "Hi, my name is John" to "You are mine now and I don't care who is looking" in less than half an hour. Who can top that? Who?

So I ask, I plead that we do not forget the less carnal encounters in Carroll Hall, for what John Carrone did that night has been unmatched. He has never told us what the secret words were. But hopefully he will pass his wisdom on.

Time: Spring of '95
Setting: A first round Bookstore game behind the old Bookstore
Vermin storyteller: Mike "Rangers" Reider '97

Being a Notre Dame student, I wanted to get involved in a few of the traditions of the University. One of these traditions was the annual Bookstore Basketball tournament. The problem was I have NO basketball skill. My basketball career has been highlighted by my annual injuring of Fumai (I rock) and the one day I owned Ben Herrig (He never received love as a child) by making 3 shots over him in one game and the non fight he wanted to start. Eye! (My previous high point total was one) Anyways, I decided that I could best serve bookstore basketball as a joke team, since I could pretend that the people were laughing because I was funny, not bad. My concept was simple - replace the sport I sucked at with the one that was a part of me, hockey and injure my opponents to win by default. The Lone Ranger was born. So after signing up, fellow Vermin Pimpi, Bill Edwards, Ryan O'Leary and I headed to the JACC to pick up the brackets and team names. Edwards received his list first and started busting out laughing and saying something to the effect of buster or cizzut, or some other words used in combinations that usually left me confused. The Lone Ranger was to face Nothing But Trouble II, the sequal to the previous seasons bookstore champion NBT! Well, my odds of winning had dropped significantly, since the university would be pissed if I injured football players. I started my extensive training regiment of shooting with my stick at the Carroll court, playing video games, watching Putnins dance in bikini underwear (Argghhh!! MY EYES ARE BLEEDING!!!) and drinking alcoholic beverages.

I decided that making a fool of myself in front of a few people wasn't enough. I needed to make a fool out of myself in front of a crowd. Vermin Chris Lee was being interviewed by famed associate sports editor Tim Seymour and I decided to steal some of the limelight. After whining like a little bitch, I was able to grab a small blurb in The Observer. It is below:

"I'm guaranteeing victory, because I won't miss a shot," stated a confident Rieder, who will enlist the aid only of an inbounder, and plans to play in full hockey gear, complete with stick. "I won't play unless all five of them show up, because I want to give them a fair chance."

While such bravado is admirable for its naivete, most teams up against seeds realize that they face a quick exit.

You can see the obvious support that The Observer has in my abilities. I was ready for victory.

I woke up that day with a slight hangover, but none the less ready for victory. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had NBT covering the spread, so the bitch made it with the wind. The wind was so strong that any shots I took from the free throw line would fly over the backboard. So I resorted to shooting from half court. I did hit one beautiful warm-up shot and the crowd erupted.

The day was not to be mine. The foul weather conditions combined with ineptly poor officiating and a complete lack of inbounding skills from Putnins led to the early demise of the Lone Ranger. NBT did bring their best and eventually pulled out a squeaker with the 21-0 victory despite my shattering of the all-time blocks record. The game ended like a GLND/SMC kegger, with two sweaty men grappling and pulling each others shirts over their heads.

So the story of The Lone Ranger ends on a sad homoerotic note.

I believe it was DMX who stated, "Party Up." Here's an ever-so-quick Vermin quote from back in the day. "The Men's Room" is told by Tom Donohue '89....

My favorite story however was Tim Samon standing among several girls at a party at Randals.... He excused himself to go to the men's room - one of the girls says, "Don't you mean the little boy's room?".... Tim drops his pants in the middle on the party and exclaims "NO, I MEAN THE MEN'S ROOM". You just can't buy that kind of entertainment.

Midnight Laundry

The current Vermin have no idea that old school Vermin used to have to go to the Rock to do laundry. Vermin would stuff their laundry bags and make the hike. I'd have two giant bags each weekend. And forget about ironing because the cleaned items had to return in those same bags. I had more wrinkles than the Rolling Stones. That trek was a tad more challenging in the winter.

Well that got old real quick. Luckily my roommate, Dean Busack, had a sporty little Honda and a penchant for disobeying the rules. "Midnight Laundry" at Badin was born. It's not very easy to get past the security gates with an excuse at midnight. So we had to be more proactive. Across from St. Mary's main drive was an unguarded gate. First we would travel up and down U.S. 31 to be sure no security cars were in the area. Then we cut the headlights and snuck up to the gate. The Honda was nice and low so the hood slid under the gate arm almost to the windshield. I pulled a "Dukes of Hazzard" and leaned out the window. I reached forward, got an arm under the gate, and lifted it up. Those gates have a sweet pressure guage. Apply enough force and those suckers will go up the whole way before coming back down. I curled it like a dumbbell. It went up. Dean hit the gas. We got on campus more than football players get on jersey chasers.

After raising the gate to get the car initially on campus, Dean and I still had to proceed with caution. We weren't worried about cars behind us but in front of us. (Unlike donkeys I know who tried to lift the gate but never looked behind them only to have a security vehicle show up on their back bumper.) From the gate to the Grotto was a long and winding road. The headlights were off and we were in stealth-Honda mode. Never once did we run across security. Why? Because I'm 1/8th Irish and I'm one lucky son of a beotch. We were able to pull the car right up to the laundry room doors. We had a shorter distance than people in a house who have to cart clothes from the hamper to the washing machine.

The bonus came if we did laundry at the end of the week. We'd keep the car on campus all weekend. Security never really checked additional cars parked out at Carroll, especially on the weekends. So we drove to the dining hall for brunch and dinner while the windchill was subzero. Vermin are crafty, crafty mammals.

This is a story from Andres "Big Country" Arredondo '00. A rollicking good time. And the names have been RADICALLY changed to protect the guilty.....

When CJ Howard, Jim Blaum, and I (Andres) lived in Rm #310 our sophomore year where many random things happened....one in particular...

A certain Golf Team Captain (let's call him Drian Bonahoe) slept walked into our room, ASS-NAKED, and pissed all over our desk/entertainment center which held our TV, all of CJ's notes from class, and.....not to mention our POTATO CHIPS..... I recall CJ waking up (after hearing me cuss my brains out) and asking Drian "Hey, Drian, can you use the bathroom down the hall?" In his sleeping state, Drian replied, "Just a minute buddy, just a minute buddy." After he was done pissing, he proceeded out towards the door and wiped his feet on a blank sheet of paper on the floor. That was frightening, but we all tried to look at the bright side......WE SAW A NAKED GUY!!!!! Oh, Jim slept through the entire ordeal.

By: Big Joe Schenher '98

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has a Pat Belton story, but this is my personal favorite. It was around 9:30 on a Sunday night my freshman year. My roomates Todd Kuczaj and Brian Buoye and myself were preparing our thoughts (mostly dirty) for church in about a half hour. I go down the hall and push the door open as is the usual custom when entering the lavoratory in Carroll Hall. I didn't realize this was the night you were supposed to knock before you entered. Face down on the ground I see Pat Belton, doing pushups in front of the shower. That in and of itself would have been unusual in Carroll Hall. The really disconcerting part about it was that Belton was naked as the day he was born. Completely nude. I was shocked, stunned. I wanted to say so much yet couldn't say anything. So the only words out of my mouth were "Pat, put some f***ing clothes on!" With that I turned and left. I will say for a while after that I thought about knocking before entering the mens room of Carroll Hall.

Halloween has just passed so it seems fitting we give a Haunted House story. This is less a tale of a specific skit and more a tale of Vermin post-House debauchery. It was a relatively warm and misting evening in the October of 1994. That's a strong footnote for the following Classic Moment. Ryan "O-Dogg" O'Leary '96 recounts most of "The Naked Slip n Slide" (while Dan "Del" Delgado '97 chimes in with some additions)....

As the lights come on and we begin to clean out the crackhouse (addition: "crackhouse" = the skit), Dykens strolls in and asks what the postgame plan is. Mid-sentence, he stops to note the large roll of window plastic remaining on the ground. Light bulb on, and Slip-N-Slide is born.

With several people still in the dorm, we eventually garnered a considerable audience...and everyone's having a generally clean ol' time until someone - Festa, if I'm not mistaken - decides that you'll slide faster if you don't have clothes holding you back. So his boxers disappear, and within minutes about half of the 10 or so among us were buck booty ass naked. Much to Sullivan's chagrin, I was not one of them.

From that point, it's a bit cloudy. At some point, the rector makes his appearance to a few catcalls from the gallery above. Hearing, "Hey Father," Mr. Edwards replies, unit out and all, "Yeah, that's right, I'm your father." The man of the cloth approached just as Festa reaches the top of the hill, spouting something. (Addition: I believe one of the comments made by Father was something to the effect of "John, I see you. You can come out now." As I recall that was directed toward John Beeler '98 who was trying to hide his naked ass behind a tree. How exactly he planned to escape sans clothes is beyond me.)

Needless to say, we were all rustled in to Mikey's lair by week's end with the RAs in attendance, including Matt Ryan, who was ON HIS WAY OUT TO JOIN US. Those who stripped got 45 hours community service; those who didn't got five. For what, I still don't know.

By: Duane Cobain '97 (additions by Dan Delgado '97)

It was right after Booker (Bobby of '98 fame) and Fumai took over the helm of Carroll and they were trying to decide who was going to be on their cabinet. Being a finance major, I of course wanted to bolster my resume by being the dorm treasurer. Booker put in the word for me but Fumai would have no part in me having control of dorm finances; he insisted that Jaskunas (Jeremy of '97 fame) be named to the position. So Booker relented and Jaskunas was put in place. Anyway, it was some time later that there was a hall government meeting in progress and I came up with the idea of doing something to Fumai's room. I wasn't too sure what it would be until I actually got the keys. I can't remember if it was Booker or Fumai that was on crutches at the time (if I remember it was Fumai), but Booker came up with the idea to say that the printer was out of paper and since Fumai kept the extra paper in his room Booker convinced Fumai to give him his keys during the hall meeting 'cause Fumai was running it. So Booker made the handoff to me and I plastered his room with as much newspaper as time allowed. I guess it was just a little payback for Fumai blacklisting me from being hall treasurer.

This is an all-time classic. It is written by Harry Pepper.

One week after I had graduated I had returned for a football weekend. Other than the usual festivities of drinking beer, ribbing Tom, staying out late, ribbing Tom, being bitter towards ND women, and ribbing Tom there was an additional story from this weekend. We were hanging out in the dorm....yes I still knew people there at the time. Rob Hruskovic and Swope-Dog come running into the room claiming that they have Paul Hornung's car. I thought to myself the guy has had it bad enough not to have some Vermnin go and steal his car. Of course this was not the case and Rob proceeded to tell yet another story which will live in Verminlore forever. They described how they were shooting pool at the Linebacker (I loved that table that took a quater and a dime) and in walks the "Golden Boy" himself having had one two many "Mich Goldens". He strikes up a convesation with the friendly Vermin and starts playing pool with the guys (as far as I know NO BETTING took place). After many more amber colored beverages Hornung realizes he is way to "heated" (a word I know he came to appreciate) to drive. He asks Rob and Mike to drive him to his hotel. They willingly help out the former legend salivating at the story potential. As the guys drop Paul off he is very clear that he needs to have his car back at a certain time in order to make it to campus in time for some publicity stuff prior to game time. So Rob and Mike drive Paul Hornung's car to D6 where it stays overnight (on display to doubting Vermin who did not believe the tale). The best part of the story takes place the next day when they return the car to find Paul Hornung with a very worried look on his face. He had not remembered how he had arrived back at the hotel or the whereabouts of his car. He was just about to call the police as the Vermin arrived with the keys.....oh yeah and then we went on to rib Tom some more that weekend.

Mr. Ryan "O-Dogg" O'Leary '96 has provided a story on his first Bookstore team. Vermin are well known for their Bookstore highs as well as high jinks. It seems "The Pimp Clinic" is amongst the latter....

Freshman year (spring of 1993), with Bookstore approaching. On a spring break trip back home to Cape Cod, I had a friend do up some jerseys for our squad, Tha Pimp Clinic. The shirts had names and numbers (I wore #187), with the message "Stop Rape...Say Yes" on the bottom of the shirt backs. While my father had caught me on the way out and made me paint over the phrase in black, it was still visible when the 2nd Floor Residence Nazi spotted them. I was sent down to Mr. Sullivan, who promptly threatened confiscation if they weren't altered. Obviously, we couldn't "represent Carroll" in that way. So we blacked out the black and added customized messages in gold (my new cry of "Free Dahmer" was much cleaner). The story is ruined by the fact that we lost in round one...how humiliating.

Posted on Jan. 14, 2001

The fall of '93, during that dead time the week before finals where classes end on, like, a Wednesday and everyone screws around and possibly goes out during the two "study days", served as the setting for yet another instance of Vermin taking advantage of some poor slob who had to deliver pizza to Carroll Hall.

After tremendous success at the Halloween Haunted House, a few of us had stashed away some of the key props as souveniers to be cherished and possibly used at a later date. For a good five weeks, Pat Coleman had hidden the inseparable "mask" and "chainsaw" first made famous in the basement of the dorm and later ripped off by cheap Hollywood producers for use in a film called "Friday the 13th". ANYWAY, we ordered some Papa John's pizza late one night and Pat, feeling saucy, pulled out his prized possessions and waited in the stairwell, just one-half level above the 3rd floor (where the pizza was being delivered to Dave Regnier). As the delivery yahoo emerged from the 3rd floor onto the stairwell, he was too busy counting his SOLID $1 tip to notice a masked and chainsaw-laden Coleman just ten yards away (nor the ten or so Vermin "casually" hanging out near/around the stairwell. RRRRRRRIIIIIPPPPP-run-nun-nun-un went the chainsaw, the pizza dude's eyes went as big as saucers and as Pat Coleman moved toward him with chainsaw roaring and mask hiding his face, the pizza guy hopped the next flight of stairs and SPRINTED out of the dorm and to his car, started it up and PEELED OUT trying to get the f*ck out of dodge before Jason cut him into little pieces.

We all laughed for a solid hour.

Classic moment in Vermin history (as I was told)...Setting: O'Leary and Pimpi's room. Scenario: We are losing to Boston College. Q, a native of Massachusetts, is in disgust. (We all know how anti-ND that region of the country is, especially for those Domers born and raised there.) Q states, "I can't go home." Pimpi, who is from the B.C. mecca of Puerto Rico and never one to miss an opportunity to play himself, counters that with... "YOU can't go home! I can't go HOME!" Yeah, Puerto Ricans, when they aren't combatting devastating hurricanes, are known for taking to the streets exhibiting vast displays of golden eagle pride.

Our freshman year, I hooked CJ up with a random "Dog Book" girl who got TANKED before the Carroll SYR. I recall her and CJ going nuts on the "dance floor" aka basement then CJ sitting by himself in the 24 hour lounge. CJ apparently was spooked by his date. As the SYR was coming to a close I ran upstairs to find his date who had HUGE gash on her forehead and her dress hiked up all the way to her face....WOW!!! She claimed that she got into a fight in the bathroom. The truth was that she slipped on her own puke and hit her head on our porcelan god in the girls bathroom. Not only was that a surprise, but she also puked all over the couch. We couldn't remember her name after she left, but we all called her PUKIE. MEMORIES.... At the end of the year when it was time to move out, we stumbled on a HUGE dried up pile of PUKE under one of the wardrobes..... I guess, in a way, PUKIE never left Carroll. We always wondered why that room (206) always STANK.....

---- Andres "Big Country" Arredondo '00

The only Christmas story that comes to mind right now involves Carroll Hall's Christmas decorations. (Sullivan) thought it would be good for morale to get a fake Christmas tree, holly, tinsel, and (for some unexplained reason) an inflatible Santa to decorate the 24 hour lounge. So after a Sunday night mass, some of us got together to trim the tree. The ornaments were the standard ball variety, but blue and gold instead of red. I distinctly remember Matt Caito, Paul Sughrue, and myself hanging them from the tree. All the while Paul echoed Mrs. Claus from CBS's Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, "Eat, Papa. Eat." Then in a flash of holiday inspiration, we decided that the inflatible Santa deserved some Christmas cheer of his own by making him anatomically correct. We promptly hung a pair of the golden balls from the hem of Santa's coat, allowing them to dangle just below--well you get the idea.

For some reason this struck us as hysterical. Santa's "endowment" was not immediately noticeable but to the keen observer. In fact the three of us had our picture taken with the newly-masculated St. Nick and an oblivious (Sullivan).

I still crack up just thinking about it. God, I need a life.

This was passed our way by Slim. It concerns the origin of a Vermin nickname and was written by Joseph "Smoothy Joe" Medel. The tales is entitled...."SCOOP"

Place: Carroll Hall
Time: 1:00ish am mid to late September 1985
Event: The first SYR of Vermin Class of '89 (otherwise known as THE BIRTH OF SCOOP ANDRES)

So rarely in life do any of us get to see defining moments in other peoples lives. I mean wouldn't it have been great to see Michael Jordan pick up a basketball and slam for the first time? Or see Wayne Gretsky score his first NHL goal? Or even see Neil go into his first Jekyll and Hyde routine whenever his girlfriend (now wife) came to visit him in Carroll? Fortunately, I count myself as one of the few, the lucky few who witnessed such an event in Carroll lore, and I am sure that those of you who were not there hold your manhoods cheap by comparison.

After a night of much joyance and debauchery at this inaugural SYR, I had the pleasure/disgust of witnessing the birth of Scoop. The scene goes something like this:

Scoop had been drinking far more than his 135lb frame could handle at that time of his life (I should know because I actually weighed less than Greg for much of my time under the dome). It involved much Old Swill, Jim Jones Guyana Juice and an assortment of other confections being force fed into his wiry frame. Basically, he was trying to impress his newfound smoothy friends: Scott Tomsik, Paul Salvaty, Todd Maus & Mike Cimino. Late into the dance, Greg decides to go to the first floor bathrooms and remains there for some time. After exiting, Tomsik begins to berate him by screaming, "Dudes, he puked, he puked!" Greg (again under the guise of trying to ingratiate himself to these smoothies) begins to deny it vehemently. He concluded his denial with the following statement which became his eventual downfall: "Wait a sec, I'll prove it to you." At this point, most of you know the rest of the story, but for those of you who weren't there, Greg returns to the lobby with a handful of his own shit and holds it out for all to see and proudly proclaimed, "Seeeeee! I didn't puke!" At this point, my date practically did hurl while the rest of us were on the floor screaming with laughter. I am not sure when Greg figured out that this was clearly a defining moment in his life, but I believe that it must have occurred the next morning when Tomsik printed out a Macintosh illustration of a hand with a pile of shit and posted it on Greg's door with the now infamous "Scoop Andres' residence" noted on it.

And that's all I've got to say about that.

Smoothy Joe

This story was passed our way by Matthew Miller '94 and it was written by Jack Hay. The tale will go by the title of "The Sculpture."

One night, very late, I was coming back from the bars in the spring of ' 93. I was getting out of a car in the D6 parking lot with a few other people and was EXTREMELY drunk... I don't recall who was driving but thank god it wasn't me... To make matters worse, we had made a late night run to Bill's, which meant I had loaded up with the Biscuits n' Gravy (double order for just $1.50), the proper name of which is "Jack Daniel's Biscuits and Gravy" due to the fact that after eating them you are ten times more drunk than when you showed up at the place.

Suffice to say I was liquored-up (I don't mean to ramble on like Dave Regnier about how drunk I was "I was the drunkest EVER... yeah...")) quite proper, and as I approached the front of the dorm I noticed a ruckus - Rob Leatherman and Grain Man were standing around the new sculpture in front of the dorm arguing about who thought it was uglier and who hated it more. I couldn't resist such a great forum for discourse and put in my two cents. Within minutes, we had worked ourselves up so much that we decided the only way to rid the dorm of this unsightly addition of "culture" was to do the job ourselves. Eric and Rob took turns trying to push the thing down, to no avail. Since, in those days, I was as bloated as Jim Morrison in his final years and clocking in at a solid 6'1", 210 lbs. (yes, I can now admit I ballooned up to 210 lbs. of solid gut) I backed up, took a good run at the sculpture, and laid into it with all of my mass.

The sculpture cracked at the attachment point to its foundation and the stupid little head came rolling off of the piece at the top that looked like an oversized version of those sticks the indians use to find water in the deserts of Arizona.

Triumphant in our exploits, we celebrated by dancing and singing and finally, by placing the round "head" in front of Fr. Sullivan's door. Luckily for me, my roommate (himself no ballerina) had the presence of mind to return to the first floor and return the head to the outside.

A bounty for our heads was put out by Fr. S, and before Boba Fett could capture us, we admitted to Fr. S our "bad judgment". We were lucky not to be expelled.

It ended up costing me nothing but one hour in Fr. Sullivan's office.

So it seems back in the day a certain Vermin, who will remain nameless (Pimpi), disclosed a juicy piece of gossip to some chumleys. A certain young lady, who will also remain nameless (Analese), was reported to have...well...maybe I should quote the nameless (Diaz) Don Juan, "She missed." And the non-named (Cris) Casanova insinuated that HE was the one whose boys could swim. I DON'T THINK SO. When he finally admitted the truth, one Ryan O'Leary was heard to have stated, "Yeah, then he unf***ed the beotch."

The Sign Graveyard

What is the allure of having a traffic sign hanging on the wall of your dorm room? Is it the sense of triumph of getting one over on "the Man"? Is it a nice addition to the decor of the room? Or is it the chance to get to tell a good story? Because as we know, when someone walks into your room and sees a perfectly good stop sign on the wall, their first question is, "How did you get that?!?!"

Well, here is the answer.

It was a cold and snowy night in January 1994, our freshman year. The walls of 211 Carroll were in need of some sprucing up. Not that they weren't adorned with pictures of cars, girls, beer paraphernalia, and gargoyles (that's another story), but they needed something more--a street sign would do nicely. Ever since I noticed all the temporary stop signs placed around campus during my sister's 1992 graduation, I had thought "Boy, that would be a great way to get a hold of a stop sign without putting many lives in danger." You see, if one removes a stop sign from a permanent location, serious injury could result. I didn't want that. What I did want was a victimless stop sign theft.

On our many trips back and forth to campus from Carroll, we always walked past the back side of the security building. In a little nook of the building, we noticed that there were various temporary traffic signs piled up--the type with bases made out of 2x4's. At last, my dream of a victimless stop sign theft could become a reality. This area became known as the "sign graveyard," because we thought this was where NDSP put old signs when they were no longer needed. (It was probably more aptly named the "sign storage area" because the signs were perfectly good and usable, but "sign graveyard" sounds better.)

So like any good thief, my accomplice (we'll call him "Dan") and I cased the joint for several days, observing patterns of behavior, looking for any surveillance devices, defeating any security measures, until finally, we were ready to make our move...

Back to the cold and snowy night. After dinner at SDH, three of us (my accomplice "Dan", our friend, we'll call him "Bob", and "myself") went to the Rock to lift. We were HUGE back in the day. After we finished, "Bob," who was a true Boy Scout back then (not so much now), went on back to the dorm because he wanted "no part of such blatantly illegal activity." "Dan" and I proceeded to the library to spend some constructive hours studying before our plunder.

At the midnight hour, we left the 'brare and made our way to the back of the security building...the "sign graveyard." Armed with a camcorder to capture the theft (and perhaps the arrest and most of the trial), we approached the unsuspecting signs. Unfortunately there arose such a clatter from the D-6 parking lot. Several drunken girls were returning from a visit most likely to Club 23, as this was a Thursday night. Their ruckus was enough to make us delay our plan for a few minutes, suspecting that they may draw the attention of someone inside the security building. We quietly lay in wait behind a tree like lions on a hunt about to pounce on their prey.

When the stillness returned to the night, the video began recording, we returned to the "sign graveyard" and we not so quietly plucked two signs from the pile. All the video shows at this point is some dark indiscernible movements, some stumbling sounds, some hushed breathing, and finally... under the glow of the golden dome, a shadowy figure galloping across the new fallen snow at full stride, with none other than a pristine stop sign in his hand. The cameraman was similarly carrying a dual "ND Parking" sign. Nothing and no one could stop us now!

We regrouped on the lake side of Carroll, retrieved some wrenches from our room, and dismantled the signs, disposing of their 2x4 bases in the lake.

The perfect, victimless crime. (except for the poor sap who had to explain to his boss how he lost a stop sign and two "ND Parking" signs)

Those signs hung proudly on the walls of our respective rooms for the next three and a half years. The sign graveyard eventually disappeared. Apparently, others had the same idea as us, and you know, stop signs are pretty expensive. But we had our prizes, and the video to prove it. Thankfully the video has only served as entertainment and not incriminating evidence.

So why did we steal the signs? Because we could, and we like to tell the story. Why did we capture it on film? Because we were idiots.

As told by Carl Mayer...