Design on a Dime, 1969

Orange flounces and more orange flounces. Not burnt sienna or tawny suede, but basic orange as found in a Crayola box of five. It was a vision of attention getting boldness. I loved it! My mother hated it! She was an Eve Picone suited woman. Lace, ruffles and especially flounces were time wasters. Orange burlap irritated her sophisticated senses.

“But the orange flounced curtains match the orange flouncing on the skirt around the row of sinks. Matches the closet door covering, too,” I whined.

“I haven’t paid my good hard earned money for you to live in a basement. You’ll catch your death of rheumatism down here,” she countered.

“You’re missing the point, Mom. Leslie, Diana, Julia and I wanted to live here in Rood House. It’s the senior dorm. This suite was the last space available.”

“A suite! Is that what you call this dungeon? Your room has two window slits at the ceiling; your study area is a former laundry room and the bathroom doesn’t have a proper tub.”

Once she got started, my mother was a steamroller. “Did you see the large windows in Diana and Julia’s room?” I parried.

“So what, I’m not their mother. Windows? Well I did notice the door. That’s it, that’s why your so-called “friends” talked you into living in this hellhole. A nice back door so boys can come and go as they please. Well, I won’t have it. You are not living in a pit without proper supervision for what this is costing me. Dean Jean is going to get a piece of my mind, right now!”

I prayed that the Dean of Women, exhausted by the parents’ visiting day activities, was already back in her own dining room, sipping Darjeeling from a Havilland teacup.

Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa was Brigadoon for my mother. At the end of the Depression, she had earned her BA in night school at Northwestern University while waitressing full time at my grandmother’s restaurant. Her only child, me, would have the ultimate coed experience she had wanted. Unfortunately, I disappointed my mother for three years, studying philosophy and literature instead of preparing for a teaching career. My dating-life was below par and my grades were lack luster. In my fourth year, I performed the ultimate betrayal; I chose to room with my best friends in subterranean heaven.
I knew my small liberal arts college, with its manicured lawns and pleasing mix of 19th and 20th century buildings, was my mother’s dream. We had toured many campuses before reaching the hamlet of Mt.Vernon. It was love at first sight as we drove around a curve and beheld the better than picture-postcard scene of King Chapel crowning the hill with ivy-covered halls of learning spread out below. At that moment, no matter what courses of study were available or how much it cost, Mom decided that her daughter would attend this college. Since Cornell had been selected for its beauty, it was more than ironic that I would finish my coed experience in a musty, lower-than-ground-level, suite. My mother’s dreams were tarnished with orange flounces.
There was more to my choice than rooming with other seniors or my first opportunity to interior decorate. It was 1969, the time of flower-power and counter-culture. That year a peace rally replaced the homecoming parade. Kent State would occur that spring. One of the few chances I had to demonstrate my newly liberal self was to live in a basement. Besides, Rood House had history and character. Cornell, founded in 1853, was the first college west of the Mississippi to grant women the same rights as men. The first women to graduate college in Iowa had lived in one of the three boarding houses that were later joined together to become our senior dorm.
Along with its history and character, our “garden apartment” offered various benefits. The space shared by Leslie and I was so small that we had trundle beds. Leslie’s half was soft and lumpy, and mine, set perpendicular to hers, was hard and unforgiving. During the day, if we made our beds, mine tucked neatly under Leslie’s, creating a couch with mustard yellow pillows that coordinated beautifully with the orange flounces. Pulled out for sleeping, my Posturepedic fought with Leslie’s dresser for space. The result was an effective alarm clock. Spray deodorant was invented in 1969 so Leslie could leave a cloud of Secret to guarantee I would wake-up coughing. I built a bedside table with a triangle scrap of wood perched on a cement block. To contrast pleasingly with the room’s already rich color palette, I painted it olive green. This accent furniture taught physics. A glass of water, or a beer can, or a paper cup of wine could never maintain its balance on the tri-cornered board.
Everything was perpetually cold and damp (despite the dehumidifier my mother insisted on buying). The bathroom was the worst. It was a blessing that we did not have a proper tub because we would have fainted from the rotten fish odors before we finished washing our toes. In the mornings, none of us shouted to be first in the bathroom, not because Dean Jean had taught us better manners, but because Diana’s cat spent the night there. Angel was no such thing as he hissed and charged the unfortunate victim who gave in to the call of nature. It wasn’t until April that Julia noticed the radiator bolted to the bathroom ceiling. We all bemoaned our needlessly icy winter. In truth, I had seen this heat maker in September. I thought it was worth the chilly visits, if only Angel would freeze to death one night.
If you can picture the Twiggy era fashions, orange was very popular. The decision to anchor my scheme with the color of sherbet push-ups had two causes. The first was that orange is Cornell’s unofficial school color. When the commons opened in 1966, the 25’ x 25’ orange carpet was its focal point. Known as the OC, the Orange Carpet has survived two remodels, and remains the place to be and to be seen. The second and more important reason for my affinity with orange is that I could afford multiple yards of orange burlap. We demonstrated that anything orange would add to the décor. Illinois orange license plates made great wall art because we overlooked the spatterings of black spots. Jack-o-lanterns provided silly grins before during and long after Halloween. Stolen from food service, oranges in orange bowls accented a dark corner even after their citrus scent turned sour. Every Hallmark Store from Cedar Rapids to Iowa City contributed orange candles. We became Syracuse, Oklahoma State, and Clemson alumni and natives of Orange County California. We loved Tang. If it wasn’t orange, we made it orange. My teddy bear collection profited from orange accessories. We put family photos, calendars and pictures of Elvis Pressley in orange frames.
My carefully decorated dorm room was more than a forerunner of HGTV’s Design on a Dime. Remarkable events, during that all too turbulent school year, occurred within its garishly accented walls. Great philosophical debates and pecking out term papers on manual typewriters (before correction tape) took place in the study room. Guys did come and go as we pleased through Diana and Julias convenient outside door. However, the real living happened in the orange, mustard yellow and olive green room. It was the best place to hear the signals of long and short rings announcing which one of us should charge up the stairs to answer a call on the nearest wall phone. Diana was standing next to the bug-covered license plates when the mail girl delivered her acceptance to the doctoral program at the University of Chicago. Leslie planned the details of the anti-war sit-in she organized while slouched on her lumpy bed. Julia sobbed while practicing for her senior violin concert in front of an audience of stuffed animals with orange bows. My first look at Diana’s real engagement ring and Leslie’s fake engagement ring was in the glow of the lamp with the orange shade. Julia was trembling on our orange shag when she revealed that her student-teaching advisor had sexually intimidated her. Staring out of the window slits, I decided to go to graduate school at the University of Illinois, because my ex-boyfriend was there and would break my heart again. Burning her hand lighting our orange candles, Leslie confessed she was failing two courses. When the military draft was reinstated, the four of us stood underneath the mobile of orange doves to scan the list of lottery numbers, seeing but not believing,
My mother’s opinions about orange flounces were prophetic. I do have rheumatism. I have never since lived in a basement or had a home with a basement. My son’s dorm rooms were on the third, eighth and seventeenth floors. My daughter’s first apartment in New York is the turret of a Queen Anne brownstone. In home decorating and attire, I avoid any colors that even resemble orange. As far as I know, Leslie, Julia and Diana no longer consider license plates acceptable wall art.
Actually, when deriding our basement situation, my mother coined our nickname. We were then and are still known today as the infamous residents of “The Pit.” The next year, Cornell replaced Rood House with a science building, denying any other students the pleasures of subterranean living. However, in the most important way, my mother was wrong about “The Pit.” Living there was worth every penny she paid for it.