MY BOOK……….LILAGCS B4 - 22

Wednesday July 18, 2012

MY COLLEGE YEARS

Another Special Story

Before I begin my college years at Buena Vista I was reminded of a “Buena Vista” past story. I wasn’t sure where to insert this story so I made a decision to place it at the start of my Buena Vista College Years.

Since it was my good friend Terry Penniman was a large factor in my transferring to BV from Vermillion, South Dakota USD.

Terry lived and commuted from Sac City to Storm Lake where BV was located.  He wrote to me and reminded me of an incident that happened when we both rode together to Storm Lake. I call it “the Frozen Tenny” episode. 

My father had purchased not one but two Studebaker cars I think they were both from the early 1960 era.  I was allowed to take one of the Studebakers as my commuting car to college. There was one problem with the car I used. The floorboard on the passenger side of the car was almost rusted through. There was also a problem with the heater…..it would shut off from time to time. This made it very cold sometimes inside the car. When you have to depend on a car that you get  for nothing ….you learn to forget anything that might be a problem. like the inside temperature for just a 30 minute drive.

I stopped at the usual time to pick up Terry for the commute to Storm Lake. He came out of his “warm” house” and got in the car. We started off on our trip to BV.

As usual we started joking around as we started off. I was extremely cold and starting off the heater was working fairly well. Terry was wearing a heavy coat and had a pair of Tennies on. (Tennies were somewhat like tennis shoes made of canvas tops and rubber soles.)  The heater would start and stop. Interestingly enough his warm shoes placed on my car’s very cold floor made his tennies sweat and create moisture. He didn’t move his feet all the way to Storm Lake for the 3o minute trip.

After arriving and finding a place to park we got out of the car to go to class. (You really had to be there to appreciate the humor) in this explanation of Terry removing his feet and his tennies remained frozen to the car’s floor. It was an event that we never forgot. We had to chip the shoes from the floor so he could wear them to class. Thank you, Terry for reminding me of this story about our commute to Buena Vista (BV).