Seeing Phil in a Play, Seance Makes Contact, Car Accident–College Memoirs: Life at Roanoke–November 1993, Part 1

by Nyssa McCanmore
Posted on March 24, 2013May 8, 2023

College Fun

Pearl once told me, “If you ever break down and use a cuss word, I think everyone in the cafeteria will stop what they’re doing and stare at you!”

The Muskie Inn now had slushies, so I often had a cherry one with my Sunday dinners. Also, probably after mid-November, my friends often sat in the cafeteria around the same time I got my Muskie dinners.

Either junior or senior year, the cafeteria began serving soup and sandwiches on Sunday nights, and they would have this. Junior year fall semester, and spring semester as often as possible, I liked to go sit with them and eat my Muskie burger and fries.

Mike S. often showed up as well, so I had all my best friends, including Clarissa, at a cafeteria table with me.

The cafeteria was usually deserted, so this was our time to do and say whatever we wanted. I used to like to be alone when eating my Muskie burger–it was “me” time–but I discovered how much fun it was to sit with all my best friends as well.

Mike liked to play a game with us in which he would ask, “What goes behind the Green Glass Door?” I sent him an e-mail in 1999 asking for more specifics about how the game was played (I think he’d give hints or ask questions), since I’d forgotten much of it. He replied,

I wish I could just tell you what was behind the green glass door, but that is not allowed. It is one of the rules of the game. If you don’t know what is behind the green glass door I can’t tell you. If I tell you what is behind the green glass door I would have to kill you. You would know too much information.
The truth is that I don’t remember how the game worked. I asked a friend how it worked and they got all upset with me. They told me that if I don’t know what is behind the green glass door they could not tell me. It is classified information. I wish I could help you. Sorry.

Whenever someone had to leave, the other members of the Group would say over and over, “Bye! Bye! Don’t forget to write!”

One day, my friends wondered about their bad luck with men. I had enough trouble finding dates; most of my friends had it even worse, not dating anyone for all or most of their time in college.

Tara said, “My man’s probably under a bus somewhere.” This is funny because–well, you’ll find out later.

Starting in November, our floor in Krueger did Secret Santa. I was Secret Santa for Carol. One day, I gave her a key chain which InterVarsity was selling. Each chain was made of discarded PC boards. (A PC board is this green thing with computer chips on it.) I also got one for myself. I had no idea that Carol collected key chains. Pearl told me my gift was a huge hit.

The Secret Santa for me was a girl named Jennifer (not my friend Jennifer). When she gave me French perfume, I thought she was Catherine, who had gone to Europe with Glen over Thanksgiving Break.

My door open as usual, I told Clarissa who my Secret Pal must be; laughter came from another room. Carol and a few others had overheard; they knew the true identity of my Secret Pal.

Catherine brought me some German or Swiss chocolate in a cute, child’s box with a line of cartoon figures in folk costume and panels so you could switch around who was wearing what costume. She would go to Europe again for her honeymoon–Czechoslovakia, probably, since Glen’s family came from there.

Every Friday night at 11:00, Clarissa and I watched Mystery Science Theater 3000 on Comedy Central. In those days, the robots watched mostly old science fiction movies, biker movies, Italian Hercules movies, strange movies about planets needing men and being run by Zsa Zsa Gabor–fun movies like that.

Catherine’s roommate, Carrie, had a best friend named Elaine. Elaine’s mom used to be a nun, and I believe her dad used to be a priest. Now, they loved each other so much they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. I thought it was cute, but she, of course, considered it annoying.

Sometime that year, The Rocky Horror Picture Show came to network TV. I had never seen it, but knew a little about it because two kids in high school English used to talk about it and sing the songs.

I accidentally missed half of it, so I didn’t know what in the world was going on, or why the heck they kept cutting away from the movie to show a theater full of people watching it.

It was so annoying and distracting to hear and see the audience, and it made no sense to show them there. Like, for example, why would we want to see audience members dressing up like the characters in the drag-dance scene at the end of the movie, and dancing around to it?

I had never heard of the running “dialogue” used by audiences around the country, or the throwing of Scott toilet paper at the line “Great Scott,” or people dressing up like the characters, or any of that stuff.

All I knew was that it was a movie with a cult following, and that sophomore year I had heard an advertisement for it being played at midnight in some theater.

I hated the disgusting tablecloth scene, but I liked the rest of the movie, as much of it as I could understand.

I finally saw the whole thing in 1995, when hubby Cugan showed it to me–and recited the audience dialogue, line by line, having gone to the showings often enough to know it by heart.

Taped to his little TV, he even had a certificate of “non-virginity” (as in, from his first time going to a showing).

Smoking was now banned in many places, even in Jubilee, to Counselor Dude’s dismay. He thought pipe smoking should be a professor’s right. I think, in the end, teachers were allowed to smoke in their own offices with the door closed.

Seeing Phil in a Play

On one of the nightly performances from November 4 to 6, Pearl and I went to see the campus production of the play “The Lucky Spot” by Beth Henley. It was hilarious, and Phil O’Hara impressed Pearl and me with his talents playing the main character.

The language was rich, however. Since this was Family Night at Roanoke, and many parents didn’t know about the language, there were a lot of kids in the audience.

The parents were understandably upset, and wrote letters to the editor of the school paper. A guy named Chad, who worked for the paper, countered that kids could not be sheltered forever.

He seemed sensitive about criticism of college plays. But the parents had a right to be warned, to decide how to raise their own kids.

But back to the play itself. Phil’s character and his love interest “Sue Jack” were very volatile. In one scene, they fought and hit and then collapsed unconscious on the floor of the Lucky Spot tavern. The song “Love Hurts” began to play.

Afterwards, Pearl and I went to see Phil. The actors and actresses would always come out into the lobby so the audience members could congratulate them, so we found him there. We both told him how well he did.

To my dismay, he seemed to look and smile at Pearl the most. He later said he did this because Pearl did most of the talking, but I saw affection in his eyes when he looked at her. Still, he looked at me the same way.

On November 12, InterVarsity members and anyone else who wanted to come went to the Phi-Delt suite to watch a “mystery” movie. To my shock, this turned out to be Years of the Beast!

I did not know a movie had been made from this book, a copy of which my dad owned. I read it several years before. The movie was much different from the book, however, and in some ways cheesy.

Long before Left Behind hit it big in evangelical circles, before The Omega Code hit the screen, there were books such as Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey and Years of the Beast by Leon Chambers; there were also movies such as A Thief in the Night and its sequels A Distant Thunder, Image of the Beast and The Prodigal Planet.

I already knew the Thief movies were cheesy. I don’t know what I’d think of the book Years of the Beast if I read it now, since I’m now an amillennialist, but I loved it at the time.

Seance Makes Contact

A copy of a letter written November 13 to the couple who used to run the S– Nazarene Church:

Things here are changing for the better. InterVarsity is a recognized group on campus now, and even though we’re a tiny group, we’re doing well and growing little by little. The spiritual warfare here is getting more evident. …
A German class held a seance in Old Main, not only the main classroom building but the main building with ghost legends. Of all the legends for the rest of the campus, the ones for Old Main were most likely to have some truth to them.
But now we know why the stories conflict on who the ghost is and what he does. The German class contacted four ghosts on their Ouija board! Now the question is what those ghosts really are.

One possibility was that the class made it all up without realizing it. Another possibility was that they really were ghosts. Another, far more disturbing, possibility was that they weren’t ghosts at all, but evil spirits playing with them.

They justified it as a class thing by saying they wanted to find a German ghost. One was mean, but the others were “good.”

One was a German-speaking little girl, 143 years old now. She was older than the college, and she froze to death, I believe on the site of Old Main.

One of them knew the teacher, Ruth, and spelled out her name when asked if they knew any of the living people there doing the seance.

…Peter’s dropped out of school because of money problems, but he might not need to come back if his computer business is a success.
I’ve also found a good church in S–. It’s the Evangelical Free Church, which is so alive and big that they need two morning services to fit everybody in. They even have a class for college-age singles.
The people are friendly and the pastor (or associate pastor or whoever he is) personally greets my friends and me when we come.
I asked for information about the denomination and listen closely to what the speakers and Sunday-School teachers say, and so far it’s compatible with the Nazarenes.

So I thought at the time….

Car Accident

I wrote this in my diary on November 12: “Odd news tonight. Jennifer and [her] Mike saw the aftermath of an accident ‘worse than in the driver’s ed movies.’ There was a van and I think a car. A state senator, Chuck Chvala, was in it.”

Also there: Georgina’s ex-boyfriend and Jennifer’s brother, named Gary; and his new girlfriend, Clarissa’s friend Diana.

“Gary was helping pull people out. The senator is very grateful, and wants to fund Roanoke or its band or something. Jennifer and, I hear, Diana are very shook up. Jennifer was crying.”

Chvala was put in a S– hospital. It misted or rained that night too, so they were soaked. Which didn’t help Jennifer any, with her mysterious illness that she’d had for at least a month.

So some Roanoke students were heroes. InterVarsity knew about it right away because we were sitting in the Phi-Delt suite lounge, having just finished watching Years of the Beast, when Jennifer and Mike got back.

Index
Cast of Characters (Work in Progress)

Table of Contents

Freshman Year

September 1991:

October 1991:

November 1991:

December 1991: Ride the Greyhound
January 1992: Dealing with a Breakup with Probable NVLD
February 1992:

March 1992: Shawn: Just Friends or Dating?

April 1992: Pledging, Prayer Group–and Peter’s Smear Campaign

May 1992:

Sophomore Year

Summer 1992: