User talk:Possible20

The original Animal House

“The original Animal House.”

Consider the following – despite what’s described on the “Animal House” website about Chris Miller and his days at Dartmouth:

Harold Ramis, co-writer and director, graduated Washington University, St. Louis, in 1966. He was a ZBT and had many friends at the very active ZBT house over at Missouri University, in Columbia, less than 2 hours away. As a Kappa Sigma at Mizzou, with many brothers from St. Louis, we had a lot of friends who were Zeebs, as we used to call them, and would actually party with them on occasion.

I graduated Mizzou in 1968 (yeah, I’m older than you, but I play a kick-ass guitar); I was told years later that Ramis would visit the Kappa Sig house back then, and our parties, when he would come to Columbia. And while I can’t attest to this, he must have. Here is what he saw, or would have seen – and these are all true, way-back-then events that I can attest to, because I was there, and saw all of them:

• Toga Party. Not after the movie – 10 years before it came out. We held ours at the Mizzou Motel, where we crammed 20-some actives, and various disposable dates into a single room, all dressed in sheets. The toga/toga/toga chant traditionally ended with the discarding of most of our togas. A couple of honorary pledges were always invited to these Toga Parties, held the week before school started. This is how I was introduced to the real Kappa Sig fraternity. • “My man Otis.” Ours was Winston Rose (and the Aftones), who played many weekends at an all-black club in the middle of downtown Columbia. Jim’s Rib Station. And every so often a couple of us white brothers would descend the stairs down into what was then a very alien world. Winston actually stopped in the middle of a song one time, but only because he recognized me from the last time I sat in with the band. • Terry Ranahan, who now practices law in California, wheeled his Harley all the way up the front stairs inside the frat house one night. • The Kappa Sig annex was a dump of a house outside Columbia; it was fronted by a fenced porch. We honored the tradition of those who came before us by regularly pissing off this heralded platform – just like they do in the movie. • It was also at this annex that Charles (Hoot) Gibson rigged a hole in the bathroom window from out on the porch, at … knee level. Shameless, and you had to stand guard when your own date was in there, if you cared. At least we didn’t have to climb a ladder, like Bluto. • Food fights. Once a year, minimum, in our dining room. And who cared? Pledges had to clean in up. Once the housemother even got nailed. • Your date’s dead. A classic at the Kappa Sig house. One of the brothers was worried about a blind date he was set up with at Stephens College, one of two all-girls schools in Columbia(!), so he sends over a fellow brother to check her out first, with the instructions to tell her he’s just been in a tragic car wreck if she shows up ugly. She did, and did he. Just like what’s his name did at “Dickinson” college. • Spook trains. As rush chairman, I followed a long fraternity tradition by ushering undesireable rushees into a back room, all together, where one of our brothers would engage them in the theory of the slide rule or something. Another time I showed them a room upstairs, where they had a pledge lying face down on the top bunk. On the springs. Butt naked. Face down. Didn’t see this last bit in the movie. Funny thing, we used to call these rushees “geeks.” Little did we know that one day they would rule the world. • And without fail we would introduce ourselves to incoming rushees as Neil Downaneater, Michael Hunt or Dick Hertz – this last one a name you’ll see written on the blackboard in the student court scene. • Our Niedermeyer was, well, I won’t name him. But he was a Vietnam Vet back in the house, fully armed and dangerous. Once he shot a harpoon gun through his wall, just missing a pledge’s head in the next room. He used to fire his semi-automatic off the back fire escape, into the night air, “just to clear his head,” he would say. Then he re-upped. • Annual Kappa Sig tradition: Keg party in the chapter room, followed by an exodus over to the Pi Phi sorority house, where we raised our beers, sang our “You didn’t win the skit Pi Beta Phi” song at the top of our lungs, and emptied our bladders in their honor, en masse. • Two of my pledge brothers were locals, from Columbia. One of them dated an underaged girl from local Hickman High, a Kewpie. She was the daughter of Dan Devine – Mizzou’s head football coach. Just like Pinto and Clorette. • This one wasn’t ours – it happened at the KA house. They had a drop dead gorgeous, 40-something housemother. Drove a Corvette convertible. Beautiful. The KA’s had some hunks, including Mizzou’s quarterback. Yep, he did, just like Otter and the Dean’s wife. • Probation. The entire three years I was in the house (I pledged my sophomore year), we were either on social or scholastic probation, or both. We called our Dean “Black Jack,” for some reason, and had to visit him often. We were under constant threat of being closed down. My first duty as house president was to deliver a check to the SAE house because one of the brothers had thrown a boulder through their front window, drunk, and then sat down to wait for them to come out. The SAE’s were arguably the quintessential privileged white bread anti-frat epitomized in the movie. They were the first guys I ever saw that wore Khakis and Weejuns and no socks.

True, factual stories, every one of them. And every one of them in “Animal House,” one way or the other. Coincidences? I don’t think so. True greatness like this does not come by accident. It has to be earned. And believe me, there are many, many more stories, some of which will remain untold except at Kappa Sig reunions. Who knows? With a closer look I might even come up with more “coincidences.”

You’ll see on the Animal House website that their first choice for location was Missouri University, in Columbia, “College Town USA.” No wonder. My roommate for one semester was Lloyd Carr, Michigan football’s head coach, one of many, many animals in our house. Another brother went to Nam and ended up dead and on the memorial wall in DC. What it doesn’t say is he died by friendly fire, just like Niedermeyer.

Tim Arnold

Note

An editor's personal recollections are not valid sources, and personalized wording is not appropriate for encyclopedic writing. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:54, 28 February 2010 (UTC). Response: I'm writing from personal experiences. I was there. I saw it all. I was in most of it. These are not "recollections," they are eye witness accounts. Tim Arnold

February 2014

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Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to vandalize Wikipedia, as you did to Animal House with this edit, you may be blocked from editing. Wikipelli ^Talk 20:36, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

As noted before on this page, 1st person narrative is not appropriate for an encyclopedia. While they may be your personal recollections, there is no way to verify them. Please do not include it in this article. Wikipelli ^Talk 20:37, 24 February 2014 (UTC)