A College Freshman's Dream

 A College Freshman’s Dream

I was in my second semester of college at Queens College in New York. 

I received a phone call from my high school buddy who had gone to Florida State University.

He told me that his girlfriend, who was on the Florida State Drill Team would be coming to New York the next week with her drill team to be on a TV show called Hullabaloo.  He requested I get take care of her and her 14 teammates.  He wanted me to show them around the city and make sure they had a good time.  He gave me her name, the name of the hotel the team was staying at, and the date and approximate time they would be arriving.

Of course I agreed. Visions of tall, beautiful, southern belles filled my head.

My next problem was arranging for 14 other guys to go with me.

I had joined a House Plan at Queens; it was like a fraternity but without the rules and affiliations.  There were plenty of candidates for the Drill Team dates.

That Monday, I went to school and got a group of guys together for the expected date that Saturday night.  Needless to say, I was very popular that week and somewhat of a hero in the House Plan.

On Thursday, the girls arrived in New York City.  I called the hotel and was put through to my friend’s girlfriend.  She was expecting my call.  

She had told her teammates about me and they had agreed to go out with my friends on Saturday night after the TV show.  I told them I would arrange to pick them up at 10PM at their hotel in Manhattan.  We would have 5 or 6 cars so they would have to break up into groups.

I prepped my group. We consisted of freshmen like me on up to seniors. We made tactical plans of who would go with who based on who had cars and where we lived.

Saturday night came. We assembled at a rallying point and proceeded to Manhattan.  We parked the cars and went into the hotel.  We went up to the floor where the girls were and knocked on the door of the room my friend’s girlfriend was in.

She opened the door and was exactly what I expected.  Her friends were the same.

We piled into the room, and after some short small talk, divided up and went down to the cars.

The group I was with, went to Greenwich Village and into a popular coffee house where we saw a show and had some drinks (they only served soft drinks because they didn’t have a liquor license) and French fries.  We went to Chinatown next and then Little Italy for dessert.  We had a good time, they were fun to be with, and seemed to enjoy being shown around Manhattan.  We brought them back to the hotel around 4AM and went home.

Various groups did different things and I never did get the whole story about what happened, but all my friends were very happy on Monday and I remained popular if not a legend (perhaps in my own mind only) on campus.

I spoke with my friend at Florida State and he told me the girls had a good time and his reputation benefited from the “fix up” he had arranged.

I often wondered what these girls thought of us. 

Queens College was mostly Jewish, and all the guys I took with me were Jewish.  I was sure the girls were not.  I have no idea if they even knew we were Jewish or what that meant (I was sure there were no Jews at Florida State).

Maybe this was my small contribution to bridging the religious gap in the South. 

Or maybe I give myself too much credit.