Chapter 30
Jeffee goes to the University of Arizona
I finally got away from the cold weather and headed to Tucson, Arizona. I still remember I flew my freshman year from New York City to Tucson, Arizona. Again like I said earlier I'd never been further west in my life than Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I arrived at this nice little airport in Tucson, Arizona. I had no idea what to do or where to go or anything else. The University was really nice because they had either some fraternity or other organization out front of the airport to help all of us arriving students.
I had a bunch of luggage with me. I do remember I brought three or four suitcases. In those days the airlines didn't try and screw you over and charge you for every piece of luggage or carry-on. So I could bring three or four suitcases with no problem.
Awaiting us was a bus or something big to take new freshman students to the University of Arizona campus and I got to see the campus for the first time in my life. The campus of the University of Arizona was absolutely gorgeous really, really nice and beautiful warm and sunny, lots of nice palm trees and mostly orange tiled buildings.
Tthis bus or van took me to this dorm because for my freshman year I signed up to be at Apache dorm. Of course since I don't know my way around the campus we arrive at this dorm and I proceed to go in there and say hi I'm Jeff Weber, I'm here to check in. The people at the front desk of the dorm start looking at the records and say we don't have any record of Jeff Weber being here. Well, a little panic starts setting in. Luckily they found out that they had dropped me off at the wrong dorm; they dropped me off at Graham dorm and very quickly somebody very nice took me over to Apache dorm and I began my many happy years at the University of Arizona.
The rooms were very small but back in those days I didn't really care. It turns out that Apache dorm had this bunk bed arrangement and I wound up getting the top bunk. And then I met my roommate for the first time and he has turned out to be a lifelong friend, a really great guy by the name of Dennis McElhannon. Dennis was a local from the town of Stanfield, Arizona, about 50 or 60 miles northwest of Tucson, Arizona.
Dennis was a godsend because he had a car and I didn't. Dennis drove us everywhere; it was great. I even got another instant friend named Phil because he came from the same town as Dennis and they knew each other. We liked to get off-campus once in a while. There was a nice student union that we ate at occasionally but it was nice to get away and go places. We would hang out at all these fast food places. Back then one of our favorite places was Arby's which basically it just opened around 1965 or ‘66 and had the best roast beef sandwiches when I look back to what the prices were in those days you know it's staggering compared to what you pay today. Back then Arby's would display a whole slab of roast beef in a glass case like a roast beef aquarium fish twirling on the spigot. I don't think the sandwiches at Arby's are as good today as they were back in 1965 and 1966 but then again many things aren't as good as they were back in 1965 and 1966 like cars.
We ate at some fast food restaurants where every hamburger was like $.19 so you can load up for a dollar, get like five hamburgers and the maybe throw in another quarter, get a drink you see yourself pretty cheap.
I remember my freshman year I did something really dumb and I guess in a way my parents did something really dumb because they gave me a flat sum of money; I forget maybe was for $500 that was supposed to last me for the whole semester. And since Don Bosco High School wasted my time with horrible courses like algebra, geometry, trigonometry instead of useful courses like financial management, something you would need when you become an adult at 18; I had no idea how to manage my finances. I remember one point we went to this store and I did the dumbest thing; I bought this expensive camera back in those days good cameras were like $125. Doing stupid things like back quickly wiped out all the money I was supposed to live on for the semester.
And again I am new in the adult world, I'm grew up in a naïve world; I wasn't taught skills to make independent decisions so again I would do stupid financial things that I find out now some of which are actually illegal.
The student union used to have a check cashing service right there on campus. After I had run out of money, my parents put me on a strict weekly ration of $25 to live on and if you aren’t wild and crazy, you could live on $25 a week for food and a few other essentials. I guess again I wasn't frugal and I didn't know what I was doing, so I was constantly running out of money in the middle of the week like say Wednesday; money that was supposed to last me through Sunday.
What I used to do was pretty stupid but I did it and luckily I never got caught. I would go over to the Student Union cash checking service say on a Wednesday and I would write a check for $25. Then I had money to live on.
I would run back over to the Student Union on Friday; write another check for $25 and realize I had no money in my bank account to cover either one of those $25 checks. Then I would take the money from the second check, run over to the bank which I still remember was the Valley National Bank right near the campus. I would deposit that $25 on Friday to cover the check I wrote on Wednesday.
It wasn't until many years later that I learned that the legal term for that in the criminal justice system was kiting a check. I finally learned to manage my money better and eventually I stopped kiting checks. When I come to think about it, I think the reason I stopped doing that was I finally got a job somewhere nearby on campus and I actually was able to earn enough money to live and survive on.
Here's one other horrible story my freshman year that again illustrates why I think life is hard and then you die. Again for whatever reason, I ran out of money right around Thanksgiving of my freshman year in college.
My roommate Dennis drove home to his parent’s house in Stanfield, Arizona so I was in the room all by myself. I remember Thanksgiving Day comes along and the only thing I had to eat was a jar of peanut butter. Based on my freshman year experience I can really relate to homeless people and people who don't have enough money to buy food because I had no money and I didn't know anybody I could even borrow some money from to buy any food over Thanksgiving because they had all left and gone to be with their families or whatever so I was basically home alone in that dorm room.
It's bad enough that all I have two eat is a jar of peanut butter, even worse I didn't even have any bread to spread the peanut butter on. But it gets worse. When I was getting ready to eat the peanut butter and all I was going to do is stick a knife in the jar of peanut butter and lick the peanut butter off the knife in my mouth, it got even worse. I dropped the jar of peanut butter on the tiled floor and the outside of the peanut butter jar shattered. But one good thing about peanut butter is it’s pretty sticky. So when the glass broke, all the pieces kind of stayed together held together by the peanut butter.
So I very gently picked up the broken jar of peanut butter from the floor of my dorm room, carefully laid it on a paper towel or napkin and then very carefully I still inserted the knife into the peanut butter and I was eating it trying very carefully to avoid any pieces of glass. This gives new meaning to the term chunky peanut butter because my peanut butter was chunky with little pieces of glass so I had a be very careful, another great moment I'll never forget.
Things got better my freshman year because my mom was working for Midland Products Company which is an industrial company that steel bending equipment, made industrial pumps, and operated a warehouse. One of the things they constantly did was to package up pumps and other industrial equipment in wooden crates so they could be shipped anywhere in the world.
My mom got the nice people at Midland Products to actually build a crate and ship my Vespa motor scooter from New Jersey to Tucson, Arizona so I had a way to get around him. That really helped and luckily again, the weather was much nicer in Tucson that was Ramsey, New Jersey so I could use my scooter most of the year and luckily again in Tucson it very rarely rains so I didn't get too wet driving my Vespa motor scooter all over Tucson and had a great time with it.
I think it was my freshman year or sophomore year; I did something pretty stupid that again I lived to tell you about and there was a good chance I might not have lived to tell you about it. I went to this party thrown by a real nice Newman Center guy by the name of Pete Hannibal.
I can't remember if I told you about the Newman Center yet but that was a truly God sent to me because it was the Catholic student organization on the University of Arizona campus on Cherry Street very near the campus. Just outside of the campus was a very large building. They had a church where you could attend mass and then downs stairs they had like a recreation area for the students and again that's where I met most of my best friends many of whom were lifelong friends that I still stay in touch with today about almost 50 years later.
Pete Hannibal was a really great guy. He went to the school and he also worked in a supermarket as an assistant manager. I remember he was dating this really tiny girl barely maybe even 5 feet tall named Corinne, I think.
I forget what the occasion was but sometime I believe on a Saturday night Pete threw this really great party at his house. His house was fairly close to the campus in this kind of rural area and he had something on his house property I've never seen on anybody else's property. He had an actual cave on this property and we went into the cave. I was actually doing some drinking in the cave, it was really pretty cool. Back in those days I was pretty stupid, maybe I still am, don't answer that.
Once again I over did it and drank far too much that night. I don't know my alcohol level. I think I have a low tolerance for alcohol because I didn't drink that much but when I did drink attended over drink or binge drinker guesses what they would call it. Naturally like a total idiot I am way plowed over with alcohol, and to compound the felony I actually try and did drive home on my Vespa scooter totally drunk.
What can be more stupid than driving home drunk on a motor scooter? I still remember I wasn't that far from my dorm room, I was still staying at Apache dorm so must've been my freshman year. I remember I drove on this road I think it was Campbell, no it wasn't Campbell, it was a road near Cherry and Campbell. And I still remember I was really drunk but I saw this red light and I knew I had to stop because it was a red light.
But after remembering to stop at the red light, I was at a total loss because I did not recognize what street I had stopped at. I later found out I failed to identify Speedway Road which was one of the three main roads in Tucson, Arizona and was directly north of the University of Arizona campus that's how drunk I was.
Since I didn't know what main road, luckily I made the right decision even though I didn't really know why. I drove straight ahead instead of turning on this main road. I decided to keep going straight and see if I could recognize anything.
I drove about another block and I finally realized I was in the middle of the University of Arizona campus and I managed to drive home about another two blocks to my dorm safely and vowed I would never do something that stupid again. God was with me that night because I should've gotten killed as drunk as I was. Driving home was pretty stupid so learn from my stupidity and don't you ever do something like that. You probably won't be as lucky as I was and you probably won't make it home and you might hurt somebody else and then you would feel awful the rest of your life. Especially if you go to jail for doing it and then you think about it every day while you're in jail that you hurt somebody who was totally innocent and didn't deserve to be hurt.