Thanksgiving
break at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in the autumn of 1977 was a
bit strange. It was my first Thanksgiving away from home and I was dreadfully
homesick. To make matters worse my long time girlfriend back home was trading
me in for parties at Western Michigan University, bong hits and red Solo cups
full of temporary feel-good. Add to that the normal meat-grinder /
pressure-cooker of attending college at ERAU and I was pretty beat. Thus, my
pals and I decided on an excursion to Walt Disney World on Thanksgiving day as
good medication for the bunch of us. I’d been looking forward to that adventure
for nearly a week.
By late
November the huge crowd of 2,500 freshmen that had invaded the campus at the
beginning of the term had thinned a good bit. Classrooms where there was almost
standing room only, now had a number of empty seats. That number seemed to grow
every day. Our dorm, the “RSI” or Royal Scottish Inn motel, where we had
been packed in by three to a room in the final week of August now had some solo
rooms and some vacant rooms. On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving I went to
campus and found that in my Foundations class there were exactly seven of us in
attendance. My English class was cancelled and my late night Reading and
Comprehension class, which was a pain in the ass non-credit bullshit class intended
to increase my reading speed (which instead soaked me for some extra tuition
dollars) had its door locked. Apparently the upperclassman who proctored it had
split early for Thanksgiving break. In fact, everyone who could bug out for the
break, did bug out. It was the first time I’d ever seen the campus nearly
vacant- that was a bit strange.
On Thanksgiving
day five of us piled into our dorm neighbor Russ’ land-boat car and motored our
way to the Magic Kingdom. For most of the guys it was their first time, but I
had been there in February of 1973 on a family Florida vacation. Of course in
1973 not all of the attractions were fully open. By 1977, the park was in full
swing. We parked the land-boat in the Goofy lot and jumped the tram to to the monorail and the main
gate. A 1977 “12 Adventure” ticket book was $9.50 and contained “A” “B” “C” “D”
and “E” tickets. For those of you who did not “do Disney” in the ticket era; “E”
tickets were the good stuff, “D” tickets were the fairly fun stuff, “C” tickets
were the stuff you did when you ran out of “E” and “D” tickets, “B” tickets
were for the stuff you did because you didn’t wanna leave yet or spend any more
money and “A” tickets were the ones that always went home with you and lived in
a drawer forever.
For ERAU
students the one place that you could go to and actually fully escape the pressure-cooker was Disney World. Almost everyone went once each term and some went more
than once. There you could forget classes, tests, prog-checks and just be gone
for a day. You could even forget how much you wanna kill one of your roommates.
It was a true escape and we strolled around without a care- for a change.
For my
Thanksgiving dinner I had a Tomorrow Land moon burger and large fries as well
as an iced tea. It probably cost me as much as going to the store and buying a whole turkey, but it came with the privilege of eating while watching Michael
Iceberg performing live. He covered the Moody Blues “Dear Diary” in a great
fashion.
As the time
for park closing drew near our driver, Russ, remembered a critical piece of
information. He told us that he suddenly remembered that his car was nearly out
of gas! Of course he shared this fact with us after we ALL had completely spent
every last cent that we had. Now we wandered around the park trying to figure
out how in the hell we were gonna get all the way back to Daytona. We were
totally devoid of ideas until my roommate Mike came out of the Arcade waving a
ten dollar bill over his head! He had been walking around looking of change in
the machine return slots and spotted the tenner laying on the floor under a
pinball machine. Four of us rejoiced, but Russ, who was so Midwest that we
other Midwesterners noticed, insisted that it didn’t belong to us and we had to
put it back where Mike found it. Russ nearly got the shit kicked out of him at
that moment. Of course we headed home with ten bucks worth of gas in Russ’
land-boat.
I’m 100%
sure that our Thanksgiving trip to Disney gave me the boost that I needed to
get me through the rest of that first trimester at ERAU. Of course a huge
percentage of my freshman class went home for Thanksgiving and never returned.
After that break there were A LOT of empty seats in the classrooms, because
once back home a lot of guys didn’t want to come back to the pressure-cooker. That’s
what led to the saying that ERAU was the easiest place to get into, but the
hardest place to finish. I filled my place in my classes right up until
Christmas break and returning to Michigan.
When I told
my mom that I’d had a moon burger for Thanksgiving dinner- she cried saying, “Don’t
you dare ever suffer like that again.” I told her it was one of the best
Thanksgiving dinners I’d ever had.
She never
really did understand why I love moon burgers… at Disney.
Posts
