My Quasi-Reunion At Oswego State
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Jun 24, 2011
Two weekends ago it was the 30th anniversary of when I graduated college; well, it was the reunion for it anyway, since graduation was actually in May. The place was the State University of New York at Oswego, also known as SUNY Oswego or SUCO; never liked that last one.
I decided I wasn’t going to pay for all the activities because, frankly, I did that for my 10th reunion and ended up only knowing 3 people there, one being my friend Bob and the other being the Ciotti twins; they won’t see this and they’re both married now so I’m using their names. There was just something about my generation that seems to have brought about a great apathy; my classes high school and college graduations are poorly attended.
What the colleges do now is invite 3 classes to show up; at least they did that this time around. So, along with everyone else who celebrated a deca-reunion of some type, they invited the class before and the class afterwards as well. I know what their thought is, which is to get more people to show up and make it seem like a big success, and I actually think it’s a brilliant idea, except one still might not know anyone.
This time around someone from the class after mine called me and asked if I was going to show up for anything; her name is Christine. We hadn’t seen each other in about 15 years when she had gone up with her husband for some event and my wife and I joined them for dinner. This time around she left her husband at home and my wife was at work, so we decided to go to breakfast instead.
I met her at Hart Hall, which is in the middle of campus, and since she had to wait for her friend to get ready we decided to walk to our old dorms, which she said had been renovated. Man, they were, and they’re super nice! Not only that but the modern dining room was outstanding as well, and the two dorms, which used to be the men’s and women’s dorms separately, Riggs and Johnson, are now both coed, connected, and air conditioned; wow! There’s also major construction projects going on around campus to both class buildings and some of the other dorms.
We got a chance to walk down to the shores of Lake Ontario, which was slightly perilous. The school has let the area around the lake by the dorms overgrow, so you have to find the stairs behind Johnson to walk down; funny, I don’t remember them being so small or the steps being so steep when I was in college. The water was beautiful as always and there were both boats far out and ducks fairly close but it was also higher than normal, probably from all the spring rain, and thus we only had a small patch of slippery rocks to stand on. But I did get a nice picture of the ducks, though none of my other pictures around the lake came out. The very top picture, in case you’re wondering, is of the lagoon on campus.
I got that picture much later. First we decided to go to Wades for breakfast, the famous breakfast place that I had thought was closed and taken over by Byrne Dairy. At least that had been reported a couple of years ago, but it turns out the deal never went through. Anyone in central New York that hasn’t gone to Wades is missing out on one of the classic breakfast events in the area. It’s tiny, which means if you get there too late the lines are long and you’ll have a long wait; ours was 50 minutes. The waitresses remember everything you order, which is pretty neat. And my recommendation is to get an omelet, which comes with real sliced potatoes and onions instead of those hash browns that are dry and cubed, and if you’re smart you’ll also order the cinnamon raisin toast, which they bake on their own. True, at my age now it’s slightly salty, but it’s out of this world.
After breakfast we went to what they’re now calling the west side of campus (we used to call it “new” campus and the side along the like “old” campus) and these new townhomes they’ve put up for upperclassmen. We were there maybe 3 minutes before more former students and a guide showed up so we could be part of a tour.
The townhomes fit either 4 or 6 people, and each person gets their own room. They share the living room, and in a 4-person townhome all the rooms are on the second level, in the 6-person townhome there are 3 rooms on the second level and 3 rooms on the third, and each level has its own bathroom. They’re also coed, but so far no issues. And in the overall complex there’s kind of a lodge that contains a game room on the second level, and it looks out onto the lagoon, which is where I took the picture above; told you I’d come back to it.
At that point I took the ladies back to their dorm and I came back home; that is, after chasing Chris down because she’d left stuff in my car, and the people at the dorm wouldn’t open the door and she was on her cell phone for about 15 minutes. Lucky for her, a quick stop at Cold Stone Creamery kept me in town for a little while, as one of the items was her camera.
I love Oswego, and I love Oswego State University as well (oh yeah, another name). And I have to say that if I was 30 years younger, I’d love going there now, especially if I could get one of those townhouses.
I’ve always heard it’s the sunsets over the lake that clinch the deal for Oswego.
Phil, it didn’t take a sunset to clinch it for me, just the lake. The sunsets were gravy. 🙂
Her name was Marjorie. I met her senior year in the house I shared with Colleen.
Since she was from Long Island as well we kept in touch after graduation.
It was great seeing you again especially marveling over the renovations.
I’m jealous. I wish we had dorms like these back in our day. Although I have
to say it was pretty perfect at the time. Here’s to next time.
Love always,
Your friend forever,
Christine
Thanks Miss Chris. It was a wonderful time, and what they’ve done is amazing. And I’m glad to find Wades still in business also. 😉