Parking Garage Construction

[Cajun90]

If these walls could talk.....wow

Oh I'm glad they can't.....with that said my freshmen year in Stokes had some of the best memories of college.

[Boomer]

Roger Staubach (Pensacola Navy) and Terry Bradshaw (spit) and I think there was one more but I can't remember who it was. John Pennel a gold medal winning pole vaulter appeared at the southwestern relays one year.

Jim Ryan from Kansas --Randy Mattson T a and m----John McDonald UL-----Making love in the green grass behind (McNaspy) stadium---well not quite!!!

[ATXCajun]

I lived in Voorhies, so I'm having trouble
feeling sorry for anyone that lived in Stokes. 😁

[SlickRick]

Well....since Boomer asked, I'll provide the story.

I lived in Stokes 75-77. No cable then, and we couldn't catch much on the tube with just the antennae on our little B&W sets....those that had them. Anyway, we pooled money together and purchased a state of the art antennae at Sears. We planned to mount it on top of Stokes and figured we get awesome reception....possibly a NOLA station with the right weather conditions!! For the youngsters reading this, channels 2(BR), 3(Laf), 5 (Alex), 7 (LC), 9 (BR) & 10 (Laf) were all in play if you had a good antennae. Six Channels!!!

Well, we soon found out that the hatch door leading to the roof was locked and we were denied access to the roof. Looking back, that rule probably saved lives! In any case, we were unperturbed and proceeded to plan a way on to the roof. We figured the best way was the shortest distance between two points, which meant going thru a 4th floor window. So we made a deal with the wrestling suite on the 4th floor, directly above our suite on the 2nd. Give us access to one of your back wall rooms and we'll provide a splice to the antennae! There's was no debate and soon we were all in the room with a piece of pipe, antennae, wire and a couple of tools and the all important harnessing equipment. Next came the tricky part. How to get the installer up on the roof safely. Those windows are small and did not have much of a ledge. So, the only way to get on the roof was to have someone (ME), crawl out of the window, hanging from a rope and then figure out a way to stand on the window whereby I could reach the edge of the roof and pull myself up. So,we borrowed one of the big weightlifting belts from the weight room at the athletic complex. Blackjack never found out! I put the belt on, tied a double hitch knots with a 1/2" nylon rope which I had acquired while working offshore somewhere!! Anyway, picture me hanging out of the window wearing a weightlifting belt tied to a rope. I'm trying to get my footing on the window's edge when I hear a shout from the ground below...."YOUNG, what the hell are you doing!!!

That was Boomer, yelling at me! He was on his way back to the married apartments and ran across the our covert antennae installation! He screamed something about "you are going to get yourself killed" and I replied with..."don't worry coach, Rip Eveland is tied to the other end of the rope!" If any of you know/knew Rip, you would know that back then, he couldn't fit thru those windows, so I figured I was pretty damn safe. The guys in the room laughed their ___ off! Boomer, waited until I got on the roof, shook his head in disgust, and went on his merry way.

We got the antennae set up, picked an orientation that gave us as many channels as possible, even though we lost some definition on the closer stations. It didn't take long before the baseball suite on the 3rd floor found out and they helped themselves to a splice too! Reception was better, though not great. A month or so later, a few more antennas found their way on the roof. Of course, I was blamed for all of it.

[cajunhawk]

Well....since Boomer asked, I'll provide the story.

I lived in Stokes 75-77. No cable then, and we couldn't catch much on the tube with just the antennae on our little B&W sets....those that had them. Anyway, we pooled money together and purchased a state of the art antennae at Sears. We planned to mount it on top of Stokes and figured we get awesome reception....possibly a NOLA station with the right weather conditions!! For the youngsters reading this, channels 2(BR), 3(Laf), 5 (Alex), 7 (LC), 9 (BR) & 10 (Laf) were all in play if you had a good antennae. Six Channels!!!

Well, we soon found out that the hatch door leading to the roof was locked and we were denied access to the roof. Looking back, that rule probably saved lives! In any case, we were unperturbed and proceeded to plan a way on to the roof. We figured the best way was the shortest distance between two points, which meant going thru a 4th floor window. So we made a deal with the wrestling suite on the 4th floor, directly above our suite on the 2nd. Give us access to one of your back wall rooms and we'll provide a splice to the antennae! There's was no debate and soon we were all in the room with a piece of pipe, antennae, wire and a couple of tools and the all important harnessing equipment. Next came the tricky part. How to get the installer up on the roof safely. Those windows are small and did not have much of a ledge. So, the only way to get on the roof was to have someone (ME), crawl out of the window, hanging from a rope and then figure out a way to stand on the window whereby I could reach the edge of the roof and pull myself up. So,we borrowed one of the big weightlifting belts from the weight room at the athletic complex. Blackjack never found out! I put the belt on, tied a double hitch knots with a 1/2" nylon rope which I had acquired while working offshore somewhere!! Anyway, picture me hanging out of the window wearing a weightlifting belt tied to a rope. I'm trying to get my footing on the window's edge when I hear a shout from the ground below...."YOUNG, what the hell are you doing!!!

That was Boomer, yelling at me! He was on his way back to the married apartments and ran across the our covert antennae installation! He screamed something about "you are going to get yourself killed" and I replied with..."don't worry coach, Rip Eveland is tied to the other end of the rope!" If any of you know/knew Rip, you would know that back then, he couldn't fit thru those windows, so I figured I was pretty damn safe. The guys in the room laughed their ___ off! Boomer, waited until I got on the roof, shook his head in disgust, and went on his merry way.

We got the antennae set up, picked an orientation that gave us as many channels as possible, even though we lost some definition on the closer stations. It didn't take long before the baseball suite on the 3rd floor found out and they helped themselves to a splice too! Reception was better, though not great. A month or so later, a few more antennas found their way on the roof. Of course, I was blamed for all of it.

This story was great..reminded me of my crazy installation of a direct tv dish on the roof of the International Student Office behind McDonald's on Johnston where I lived during college. I worked for both the Parking department and the Physical Plant (Trouble crew which landed me the free room at the International Student Office on the second floor), and I picked up one of the old Buckets of concrete with a sign post in it that you used to see holding up parking signs. This was to be our mounting bracket for the dish since we were unable to puncture the membrane of the roof for warranty reasons.

So we drive up to the back of the ISO and there is the narrow stairway up to the patio on the second floor. It was me and three other guys and neither of them was very big. I was a hefty summ_____ so I just grabbed the bucket by the sign post and started to lift it one stair at a time. The thing had to weigh at least 250 to 300 pounds so I was basically dead lifting that for each of the 35 steps. Then someone else took a turn dragging it up to the building. Then it was my turn again. We had to get it on the roof somehow. So we set up a 6 foot ladder, put one of the skinny guys (Cajunstros) on the roof to help us get it up there. So then it was my turn again, so I started to dead lift it up each one of the steps until we reached the top, where another guy was up on the ladder to start raising it up to the guy on the roof. Once we got it up there it was easy installation and worked extremely well for what we wanted it to do. We ran the cables down the side of the building into our windows which we just left open the little crack we needed to get the cable in. College was fun. We also had a 500 plus foot Network Cable ran throughout the ISO to steal DSL from the downstairs computer lab. We lived in a dump but ______...life was good.

[CajunAmos]

Well....since Boomer asked, I'll provide the story.

I lived in Stokes 75-77. No cable then, and we couldn't catch much on the tube with just the antennae on our little B&W sets....those that had them. Anyway, we pooled money together and purchased a state of the art antennae at Sears. We planned to mount it on top of Stokes and figured we get awesome reception....possibly a NOLA station with the right weather conditions!! For the youngsters reading this, channels 2(BR), 3(Laf), 5 (Alex), 7 (LC), 9 (BR) & 10 (Laf) were all in play if you had a good antennae. Six Channels!!!

Well, we soon found out that the hatch door leading to the roof was locked and we were denied access to the roof. Looking back, that rule probably saved lives! In any case, we were unperturbed and proceeded to plan a way on to the roof. We figured the best way was the shortest distance between two points, which meant going thru a 4th floor window. So we made a deal with the wrestling suite on the 4th floor, directly above our suite on the 2nd. Give us access to one of your back wall rooms and we'll provide a splice to the antennae! There's was no debate and soon we were all in the room with a piece of pipe, antennae, wire and a couple of tools and the all important harnessing equipment. Next came the tricky part. How to get the installer up on the roof safely. Those windows are small and did not have much of a ledge. So, the only way to get on the roof was to have someone (ME), crawl out of the window, hanging from a rope and then figure out a way to stand on the window whereby I could reach the edge of the roof and pull myself up. So,we borrowed one of the big weightlifting belts from the weight room at the athletic complex. Blackjack never found out! I put the belt on, tied a double hitch knots with a 1/2" nylon rope which I had acquired while working offshore somewhere!! Anyway, picture me hanging out of the window wearing a weightlifting belt tied to a rope. I'm trying to get my footing on the window's edge when I hear a shout from the ground below...."YOUNG, what the hell are you doing!!!

That was Boomer, yelling at me! He was on his way back to the married apartments and ran across the our covert antennae installation! He screamed something about "you are going to get yourself killed" and I replied with..."don't worry coach, Rip Eveland is tied to the other end of the rope!" If any of you know/knew Rip, you would know that back then, he couldn't fit thru those windows, so I figured I was pretty damn safe. The guys in the room laughed their ___ off! Boomer, waited until I got on the roof, shook his head in disgust, and went on his merry way.

We got the antennae set up, picked an orientation that gave us as many channels as possible, even though we lost some definition on the closer stations. It didn't take long before the baseball suite on the 3rd floor found out and they helped themselves to a splice too! Reception was better, though not great. A month or so later, a few more antennas found their way on the roof. Of course, I was blamed for all of it.

Do you happen to remember the guy who was in charge of the cafeteria near the dorms. I think his first name was Mike.

[Thetaxiao1012]

Looong Overdue Parking Tower!!! Would have made my time as an Architecture Student way more enjoyable.

[basinbear]

Man we were all immortal back then....

[CajunRebel]

Why did they decide to build the garage where they did? It seems to me that if your going to tear down those dorms you ought to build the garage in their place where it would be out of the way. It would be less of an eyesore and maybe leave room for another building down the road.

[CajunStros]

I believe the master plan calls for more student housing where the Stokes buildings currently are. In the meantime, it will make a good temporary parking lot.

[HelmutVII]

Why did they decide to build the garage where they did? It seems to me that if your going to tear down those dorms you ought to build the garage in their place where it would be out of the way. It would be less of an eyesore and maybe leave room for another building down the road.

The first level of the parking garage will have lab space for the Architecture and Civil Engineering departments. Both are near the proposed location. Plus the area available at the Stokes location is not that big nor is it properly configured to construct a parking garage.

[cajun67]

RS? Did that team for Pensacola ever make it to Mc Naspy? I seem to recall it was cancelled at Mc Naspy.

Played in McNaspy but RS was hurt. Didn't play in game. Got to watch him on sidelines. That was an impressive team. We won in close game. Next year, off to Pensacola. Great game, we led till late and the Jolly Roger pulled it out at end. Some kind of QB. Tough duty too for him, playing football with a bunch of former football players.