Freddogg Off The Chain

TEMPLE HALL OF HORRORS

Gordon Leibowitz brought his brand of Long Island mischief to the campus dorm at Temple University in 1964. Johnson Hall was an 11-story hotel for wayward matriculators on North Broad Street. The mix of people was unique. Jewish kids from Long Island sprinkled among scholarship athletes, both black and white, from Philadelphia and New Jersey. There was a hidden economy at work in the dorm where certain athletes paid certain New Yorkers to facilitate their learning process by providing papers the athletes couldn’t read or by impersonating said athletes in test situations. From a distance it was rather entertaining.
One night in late October as my roommate Jonny Kerr and I lay in our single (just had to say that) narrow beds pushed against opposite walls we heard this strange hissing sound. We looked up above the closed door and there in the transom was a young Count Dracula complete with red lip stick, a chalk white face and pair of fangs.
Leibowitz had been scaring the crap out of people up and down the hallway, sliding his wooden desk chair with him. John and I were no amateurs when it came to this behavior and we were the first set of “Mischief Night Vets” from Philly Leibowitz had tried to scare. John and I looked up! There were first questioning expressions followed by smirks and then a hardback economics book that hit Count Dracula in the face and knocked him off his chair. Leibowitz was screaming out in the hallway, ”What’s the matter? You guys can’t take a joke?”
Leibowitz had started the Johnson Hall Halloween Wars and would later be named in the University’s Vampire Indictments. But no one could have predicted the Horror Show that would emerge over the next weeks that included flying devils, urban “werewuffs”, a rouge mummy, a seven-foot black zombie, several ghouls, one gay goblin and a bevy of ugly and increasingly violent vampires. And one sighting of the Psycho undead mother of Norman Bates.
Kenny Morgan and Tom Kirby steeped off the 10th floor elevator at 4 a.m.singing a selection of the Four Tops Greatest Hits. Kenny was a 6’10” basketball player from West Philly while Kirby was a 6’5” pitcher from Northern Jersey and a major league prospect. In 1964 there were no black people in America. Kenny and Tommy were a couple of lovable colored guys. Two incredibly big and strong but nevertheless cuddly and lovable guys.
Kenny tried the door handle to our room when he walked by, but we had it locked for protection from the creatures of the night. Later I heard them singing in the big shower room in the middle of the floor. I woke up the soundly sleeping Kerr. “Do you hear what I hear, John?”
“What are you, freakin’ Santa Claus? What are you talking about?”
“Kenny and Kirby in the shower. They’re singing and I think they’ve been drinking!”
“Let’s drop a Mrs. Bates in their laps. Get up and I’ll help you dress.”
Kerr was stupid like that. One minute he was sound asleep and the next he was allowing me to wrap him in a sheet and cover his face with baby powder. We constructed a fake dagger out of looseleaf paper. Kerr wanted fangs cut from an index card but I told him that was stupid cause Mrs. Bates wasn’t a fanged monster.
Kenny and Kirby were singing and snapping their fingers, drops of hard water beading over their rippling brown muscles. They looked invincible!
Kerr came around the corner with a high-pitched falsetto squeal. He raised the dagger and went right into the shower after the frozen crooners. Kenny and Kirby were hugging each other. It was A number one freaking hysterical.
A week later I came into my room around midnight and prepared for bed. Kerr was down the end of the hall watching television. I noticed a pair of size 16 sneakers sticking out of the back below Kerr’s bed. I knew it was Kenny but decided to play double agent and say nothing. Kerr later came in, put a stack of 45 oldies tunes on the record player and settled in to sleep. About 15 minutes later I heard his faint voice.
“Fre-ed! Fre-ed!” I tuned on a desk lamp to see this enormous black hand that had palmed Kerr’s freckled red face like a girl’s basketball. “Fre-e-ed”!
Morgan rolled out from underneath the bed, his hair covered with dust. Kenny was having the best time. He couldn’t stop laughing! “I got you man! I got you!”
Liebowitz dropped his Dracula costume and went werewolf on us. One night while watching television in the 10th floor lounge, Leibowitz jumped into our field of vision from the 11th floor overhang. He was incredibly authentic. He looked just like Lon Chaney Junior. He crouched low and went around the room swatting at people. It was hysterical! But Keer cuffed the ‘werewuff” upside the head and Leibowitz fell to the floor. “You ain’t funny no more, you stupid ass, ”Kerr yelled, still smarting from Morgan taking a few years off his life.
Two coinciding creature feature uncalled for events brought about 20 of us monster mashers in front of the dean for possible dismissal from the University.
Don Mauer played split end on the football team and he was one flat out ugly white boy, but at least he was incredibly strange and sociopathic. Mauer looked gaunt at 6”3” 185 pounds of muscle and his face had so many craters he must have shaved with an off road razor. Mauer had it in for these two little Jewish kids because they upped the price of writing his term papers from 10 to 25 dollars. Maurer decided they needed a visit from the Price of Darkness.
Meanwhile on the same Saturday night Kerr got dressed in a costume that made him look like a black Tom Cat. “What the heck is that, Kerr? ”I asked sarcastically.
“I’m a homicidal zombie nun, what does it look like?”
Kerr went across Broad Street, broke into some guy’s apartment and just stood in the bedroom doorway hissing. The kid, who was alone, awoke, startled and petrified and sprinted out the back door into the North Philadelphia Ghetto in just a pair of Jockey shorts. No one ever saw him again.
Back in the dorm two little intellectuals checked under their beds and locked the door before turning out of lights. Twenty minutes later the Prince of Darkness came in through the sliding floor to ceiling window. Maurer had been standing out on a 10th floor ledge for a couple of hours.
The screams went unheeded and unheralded. There were just too many people each and every night crying “Wuff!”
Maurer trashed the room and threw those frantic little guys all over the place. He never threw a punch; he just tossed the place and the people.
My mother congratulated me for allowing her to receive such a strange letter. “Did you see this registered letter from the Dean of Students at Temple, David? It says you’re on social probation. It says that if you are spotted anywhere on campus impersonating or otherwise representing yourself as a vampire, werewolf, mummy or Mrs. Bates that you will not only be expelled from the University but prosecuted to the full extent of the law. David, this is a great letter. Can I take it to work with me and show it to the other nurses? We exchange stories every night but I don’t think anyone will be able to top this one.”
“Sure mom. By the way, where’s my face?”
“Excuse me? Where’s your face? Is that a philosophical question? Don’t tell me you’re getting an education after all?”
“No, I ain’t getting no education. There’s a valuable charcoal drawing of me sketched by a top Temple art student and vampire victim on top of the television upstairs. But the face had been erased!”
“Oh, that’s where Checkers sleeps! I guess the cat stole your face. Did you know that real vampires don’t reflect in the mirror? ”my mother said. “Don’t you think it’s ironic that your face disappears the same day you receive a Vampire Indictment?”
Checkers was basking in the sun on hot concrete when ----“Up your nose with a rubber hose, cat!”
The mischief wars never stop for a Philly boy! There are only summer truces!