It isn’t until Monday afternoon that I feel reasonably whole again – a very fortuitous time to get myself together, incidentally, because on this very evening Melissa ends her short stint as our roommate. Summer is nearly over and the sorority house is open, Alpha Delta Pi, located directly in the murderer’s row of such on 15th. Damon and I therefore help her pack her things up and ship them out, drive them down to campus.
Not that there isn’t a little bit of friction here, at least initially. It’s a hot, sunny day and both Damon and I are busting our asses carrying boxes in and out, until after a few trips, when it occurs to us that Melissa’s been sitting on a couch all this time, strumming no discernible chords at all on an acoustic guitar.
“Are you gonna help or just sit there and play with the guitar all day?” Damon snaps, at this juncture. She protests but gets up to join us nonetheless.
Melissa’s stuff had taken up the entirety of our washer & dryer closet, which gives an idea just how much stuff of hers she’d crammed in there. Now, less than two weeks later, we are piling it all back out again, so she can move once more into the sorority house. Funny, too, I could have sworn I had a basket of dirty clothes in the closet somewhere, but they’ve been M.I.A. ever since she moved in.
We get Melissa’s car & Damon’s truck loaded up, follow her down to campus. After parking behind the house, the three of us commence carring armful after armful of stuff up three flights of fire escape stairs that run along the house’s backside. These lead into a 3rd floor hall, and Melissa’s room is the first on the right. There’s already a radio humming softly in her room, some local pop station either she or a roomie turned on.
Somewhere along the line we decide to take a breather and detour into the downstairs dining room, where dinner has just recently been served. Mashed potatoes, gravy, bread, salad and the like, lukewarm and not very good to begin with, but what the hell. Damon and I help ourselves to heaping piles atop our plastic plates, as Melissa’s too cool sisters look over at us, aghast as usual. But we’re long since accustomed to this response.
Another handful come drifting in and Damon attempts to be friendly, but by now we are making a joke of how unwelcome these girls always make us feel. Unpleasant plain janes devoid of any personality, they look away or snicker should we try and actually carry on a conversation with them.
“How’s it going!” Damon cheerfully hails our newcomers. But two of them fail to acknowledge he said anything, and the third, she offers only a curt nod before sitting down to chat with someone else.
Out and out bullshit, in other words. But already my wheels are turning, devising some crude means for pranking them.
Exactly one of Melissa’s sisters is tolerable, a slightly chubby blonde (I prefer the term “soft” and consider it much more applicable) whose name I nonetheless forget. She offers to pitch in and help, is even willing to give up this Scooby Doo poster hanging on her doorway when I express interest. But no…it is best not to accept tainted merchandise, even this angel in the land of demons is dirty by association.
With four individuals sweating their way through the task instead of three, the work moves along much more swiftly. We’ve gotten everything out of Melissa’s car and made our way through most of the material in Damon’s truck when a most unexpected discovery turns up.
“My dirty clothes!” I shriek, “how the hell did they get in here?”
It is the green laundry basket I scoured the house for a couple weeks back, only to have it finally turn up here. Really quite remarkable – unless considering it was obviously mixed up with Melissa’s stuff this entire time. The others just laugh.
Only as Melissa and the blonde have trudged up the rusty metal stairs again with their arms full do I lay out my sudden, improvised, but quite beautiful plan for Damon. Stuffing both our pants pockets full of my dirty socks, he and giggle and start our way up to the third floor.
“Alright, what are you guys up to now?” Melissa demands from above, hands on hips and grinning, all too in tune with her brother and me by this point not to recognize we are up to some sort of mischief.
“Nothing,” I snicker.
She shakes her head and waits for us to pass before descending the stairs once more.
In Melissa’s room I hide a dirty sock behind her dresser. And these aren’t any dirty socks, mind you, but formerly soaking wet, filthy, fishy smelling socks I’d worn back in the seafood department at work, left to rot in the bottom of a basket that had been tucked away, apparently, beneath Melissa’s goodies in a humid, musty closet and only now, weeks later, allowed to surface momentarily before being thrust into the bedrooms and bathrooms, mattresses and drawers of unsuspecting nineteen, twenty year old girls.
To put it mildly, these bitches stink. The socks, that is, I mean. Let me clarify that before proceeding.
Up and down the hallway, we’re tossing those slimy bombs into one room after another, slinging them with careless abandon over our shoulders, behind our backs, alley oops style as they go skidding across linoleum bathroom floors. At the end of the hall, we hook a left, and in this one room with bright blue walls, I encounter what has to be the hottest chick residing here, this cute little blonde, sound asleep in bed.
I fling one sock in there, but then consider that this isn’t going to cut it. Precious seconds tick by and I act as lookout, as Damon must venture back in for one more mission, the most dangerous of all.
He takes our very last sock, a particularly foul one, and hangs it on the bed right in front of that blonde’s face, draping it only inches from her nose. Barely escaping in time, we laugh and dash down the hall as this brunette next door stands folding clothes and eyeing us suspiciously.
Melissa and the friendly soft blonde return upstairs with one last load; it doesn’t take a genius to behold our winded, gleeful expressions and gather we’ve been up to no good, but what, precisely? That, they can’t quite put their finger on.
Damon simply must have one last look at the hot blonde and tiptoes into her room. A reproachful glance from the clothes folding neighbor stops him briefly on his way out, but he explains, “I used to know a girl that lived in that room named Renata…I thought that was her…”
The brunette isn’t buying it, but that doesn’t matter. Damon coyly slides in behind Melissa and our friendly blonde, then he and I hop, skip, and jump down to ground level again before anyone notices something amiss.
“Do you still want my Scooby Doo poster?” the friendly blonde questions from just beyond my passenger side window, as she’s followed us outside.
“No, that’s okay…,” I demur, “…uh, you’ll have to come partying with us….we’ll do it again sometime…”
“I don’t party much…,” she mutters as, Damon backs out.
“You will,” I tell her and we zoom on out of there, up the road and off to our next adventure.
II.
Alpha Delta Pi was a sorority house which sat at 94 E. 15th Avenue, in the heart of the Ohio State University campus. Comically enough, I guess you could say, this house is no longer a sorority house at all – it belongs instead now to a frat, Phi Gamma Delta, as it has since at least 2005. The header photo on their website is especially hilarious to me, this smiling ocean of lads in navy sports jackets, trampling all over the patio we were not exactly welcomed upon with open arms ourselves. It’s as though they are pulling off what we could not, not fully, anyway, by claiming this land as their own.
These dudes have been known to report, however, that this building is haunted. Which we could have maybe told them, depending upon what they are talking about.
If taken literally, then this source is not the least bit amusing. Residents report often seeing an apparition in the hallways or even their mirrors, which they believe might be the ghost of a former sister who committed suicide. Chandeliers are also allegedly shaking for no apparent reason, although nobody’s sure if this is paranormal activity or due to jackhammers and bulldozers operating at various nearby construction sites.
ADPi, as the organization is colloquially known, was actually the first exclusive society for women in the world. Regarding their OSU chapter, it was officially welcomed to the club on June 14, 1921, which they celebrated with a banquet at the Chittenden Hotel. Helen Huffman was named as their first ever president, and one of their great big early causes they rallied around – difficult though this might be to fathom – was chipping in $25 apiece for the construction of Ohio Stadium. But sports were evidently a greater concern all around than in many later years, as for example the house also participated in OSU’s inaugural Panhellenic Basketball Tournament.
The early phase of this chapter sounds quite tumultuous, as within the first year alone they initially occupied a house at 1917 Waldeck Avenue, then another at 199 W. 10th Avenue. Finally, in 1922, they moved yet again, to 263 E. 15th, just up the road from their final and by far most permanent location, at 94 E. 15th, which they presided over from 1949 clear up until they vacated OSU altogether, some 50 plus years later. Though celebrating 80 years at OSU in 2001, with a ceremony at Longaberger Alumni House, this chapter would not last much longer beyond that point. Lauren Fitting, whose tenure ended sometime in the early 2000s, is the final president I can find listed for this chapter.
III.
We park on Indianola in front of the middle school and walk the few blocks to Melissa’s sorority house. We throw pocket change at a window until a roommate opens it, and retrieves her for us. She comes to the window, then meets us at the front door.
I have to pee very badly and do so down a drain on their laundry room floor. When I return, everyone’s in the kitchen. I sit down at an out of tune piano in the nearby living room and start banging out Let It Be. Melissa comes and drags me away, shushing me and saying I’m going to wake up her sisters.
Some girl in glasses comes down, then goes back to bed. We decide to rearrange some items in their den. Melissa cuts us short of completion, however, and suggests we go terrorize the Tri Deltas instead. We’re walking around with no clue how to find this particular sorority. Paul’s bitching about getting kicked out of school, and how he’s wasting his time at Columbus State. We ask two girls walking past where Tri Delta is, and they are at least able to give us the correct street. But still we cannot find it. Damon says it would be a good idea to ask the next person we see, once again.
“Yeah, as long as they don’t live there!” I joke.
So a guy and his date come out of this house right in front of us, and we pose the question to them.
“Right here,” he says, and points to…the place they’ve just emerged from!
They climb in a car and split. “Let’s get out of here,” Paul says. Damon and I settle for knocking over a flower pot before leaving.
IV.
I can’t find an exact date of their departure from the OSU scene, nor any stated reason. All my usual resources are coming up blank in that regard. It could be that, much like the society itself, these facts are intentionally kept secret. Or maybe this is just what I get for some admittedly juvenile antics on these premises. We did have our fun with some of these ladies, however, the select few who actually dug us – both at this chapter and one other – so I suppose I shouldn’t be complaining too much.
There are numerous references to the Phi Gamma Delta frat returning to OSU in 2003, after a five year ban, though. And I’m guessing it was at this point they took over residence of this iconic house on East 15th. So we’ll run with that, as the actual date couldn’t be too far removed from there, whatever it is. Until I unearth more, whether from my own archives or elsewhere, we’ll have to live with this minimal history, one as murky and elusive as that mysterious ghost who roams these halls.
