When I reached the first academic building I saw on Clarion College's campus, the entrance door to the building was locked up. So I sat down on the steps in front of the academic building, placed my large knapsack next to me, and began to think about where I should hide outside on the campus for the night--before one of the local town cops might notice me and order me off-campus or out-of-town or arrest me for loitering, vagrancy, trespassing or some kind of phony trumped-up drug possession-related charge, perhaps?
Luckily, however, while I was sitting on the front steps of the locked academic building on the then-deserted campus in the very late evening, a culturally straight-looking, lone white male student with short hair appeared. And, after glancing at me sitting on the steps while walking by me a few yards, he then turned around and asked, in a curious, friendly Midwestern accent: "Don't you have a place inside to spend the night?"
"I was hoping to get into this building. But the door is locked," I replied.
The young white guy, who looked like he was around 18 or 19 years-old, then laughed and said: "I know where there's an unlocked back door that gets you into the stairs and up to some classrooms, if you follow me."
"Far out!" I replied as I stood up while picking up my knapsack.
As we walked to the unlocked back door, the white young guy, who was around 6 feet tall, not built like an athlete but neither overweight nor thin (like me), and dressed more in a mod student style than a hippie student style, mentioned that the reason he was on the then-deserted campus at this late evening hour was because he was being initiated into one of Clarion College's male fraternities.
In order to be accepted as a full number of his college fraternity, he was required by his new fraternity brothers to prove hiss fitness for fraternity membership by sneaking into the classroom buildings late at night and writing the fraternity's Greek letters name on the blackboards in some of the classrooms.
And he was in the middle of carrying out that mission that his fraternity brothers had ordered when, after stumbling across me, he seemed to get a flash in his mind that helping a slightly older generational baby-boomer brother on the street while on his fraternity mission also reflected what the true spirit of male fraternity was about.
Once inside the academic building and up the stairs a few flights, the white frat student then led me into one of the empty classrooms at the end of the hall. And, before writing the Greek letters on the blackboard, advised me: "Just stay here for the night and no one will probably notice you. As long as you're out of here before classes start here in the morning."
"Thanks for being a fraternity brother for me," I called after him as he quickly left the classroom to chalk up his fraternity's Greek letters on other classroom blackboards on that floor of the building.
Although the classroom floor was hard, I did manage to fall asleep for three or four hours during the night. But by the time the sun was rising, I was awake and read to leave the classroom, walk down the stairway, exit through the backdoor and get back on the road --before anyone else had arrived on Clarion College's campus.
