DT Demo

I’m a sentimental guy, but really. I received the following email today from the BYU alumni association:

A Memory of Deseret Towers

As a service of the BYU Alumni Association, we are offering a piece of your BYU
history. Our records indicate you are a former resident of Deseret Towers. As
you may know, several of the towers have been torn down, and we have salvaged a
limited number of the buildings’ bricks.

If you are interested in obtaining one of them-at no charge-you may get one by
coming to the reception desk at the Knight Mangum Building, the temporary home
of the Alumni Association.

Regardless of whether you come by for a brick, we hope you have fond memories of
your stay at Deseret Towers.

I do have fond memories of the cinder block cell where I spent my freshman year (Q-Hall 1992-93) playing spades, listening to the Beastie Boys, and eating Five-Buck pizza, but DT is not exactly the Berlin Wall. If someone really wanted to commemorate the towers, they’d drop one last sofa off the rooftop and pour out a bowl of Cap’n Crunch.

27 comments for “DT Demo

  1. As a dormmate of Greg’s, I can verify the playing of cards. However, I generally recall Little Caesar’s as being the more prominent pizza of choice, and the Steve Miller Band Greatest Hits CD as the more common background music. Nonetheless, I mourn, sort of, the passing of Deseret Towers. Those were some classy towers. And we sure lived in them. No question, live in them is what we did. I mean, we had beds there, and our stuff was there, and everything.

    Remember when that guy urinated in one of the elevators? Good times.

  2. Eric, I stand corrected. Five-Buck pizza came later, and Steve Miller was definitely the background for our card games (though I remember a lot of Springsteen, too). The BBs stick out in my memory because DT was where I first heard Paul’s Boutique (your copy, I believe).

    Arnie, Wick, Marcelo, Ras: whereever you are, you deserve a brick.

  3. I got that e-mail last night, too. I laughed like crazy and started trying to figure out how to send it to my DT roommate. Best funny e-mail I’ve gotten in a long time.

    What she and I would probably both really get sentimental about would be a piece of the Palace Modern Room.

  4. Greg and Eric,

    I worked at the Morris Center Cafeteria when you were there (loading dock to be precise). You’ll be pleased to know that I never spit in your food and I don’t know of any food workers who ever did.

  5. I was in DT as well, W-Hall, ’94. I found out about the demolition the hard way. Last summer, when parking in the large parking lot just north of the Monte Bean Museum — so just immediately west of DT — my three year-old daughter had to go potty, urgently. My wife headed with the rest of the kids and the nieces and nephews to the event while I picked up our daughter and ran as fast as I could across the parking lot toward the buildings. (It’s not easy to run holding a three year-old who has been known to have an accident when a potty is not readily available.) First, I got to the creamery and ran inside the loading dock on the west side. There was no obvious bathroom in there so I ran out and headed straight for the DT building (can’t remember which one now) just north of W-Hall, my old haunts. Locked with darkened windows. So I jetted over to W-Hall and for the first time noticed something I had completely overlooked until now because of my panic: the whole place looked like a war zone. W-Hall was locked but the lobby of W-Hall was completely torn up as was the sidewalk around it. My daughter was very concerned that we might go inside such scary buildings to go potty. In the end I made it to the Morris center which still had an open bathroom in its lobby just in time to avert disaster. Fun way to say goodbye to DT, I guess.

  6. Geoff, I worked in the Morris center cafeteria in Fall ’04. That was miserable. I was washing dishes at first and later was in charge of the condiments cart. I really didn’t like it; but I can also verify that I never saw any impropriety with the preparation or handling of the food.

  7. oops, Fall ’94. By fall of ’04, I was no longer at BYU. But spring of ’04 was my last semester of law school, so, conceivably, I could have still been working at the Morris Center.

  8. V-Hall Winter ’93! V-205, if I recall correctly. My parents lived there too (not, however, in 1993, thankfully).

    Russell, forgive me if I tell a related joke (forgive both the fact that I’m telling any joke, and this particular joke): A man from the midwest finds himself on a business trip near Cape Cod. He decides that in his down time he’ll go find some of the seafood for which the place is famous. He gets in a cab at his hotel and asks the driver, “Can you take me somewhere I can get scrod?” The cabbie gives him a quizzical look and says, “Buddy, I’ve heard that question a thousand times, but never before in the pluperfect subjunctive.”

  9. The pluperfect subjunctive is used like the past subjunctive, except that it expresses a past-tense sense. So, for example:

    If I had known (yesterday), I would have done something about it.
    If I had seen you, I definitely would have said hello.
    I wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t helped me.

  10. 2000-2001
    Food poisoning on two separate occasions from the Morris Center Cafeteria

    “Mystery Meat” on a regular basis. EVERYTHING swam in grease

    I became a vegan for two months, hung out with Democrats and burned my obligatory copy of The Fountainhead…

    Ahh the angst of youth

  11. V-Hall Summer 1994: Perfect view from my seventh floor window of the MTC, the temple, the foreign language complex, and the rabbit hutches (er, Wymount). Oh, and the pool – that was distracting. Plus that term there were hordes of EFY brats who liked to get in the real students’ way. (And sing in groups right outside my window at 10 pm!)

    R-Hall Fall/Winter 1994-95, 1995-96; Fall 1996: And all in the same room. (Made forwarding mail easier – I kept y magazine subscriptions in Provo.) View of the hutches at a different angle, including the roofs of the women’s buildings. One of the highlights of living in a mostly-returned missionary dorm was watching the foreign-language IBM commercials in the day room, and at least one of us there spoke that language or recognized it.

    I was in Helaman Halls for about the same length of time (1990-1992, before my mission) and DT was the preferable experience for me.

    I wish they had offered to mail a brick to us alumni who can’t exactly swing by (I’m about 2000 miles away.) But I did have my brother (a senior) pick one up for me. I’ll see it as soon as he makes it out this way.

  12. Hmm…dirty socks. We had good times, didn’t we Norbert? Remember the toga party? Glenn’s robot? The Disciples of Soul? The possessed elevator? The Nativity play? The time that-somewhat-mixed-up-sister-who-shall-remain-nameless managed to sneak in after hours and went around pounding on our doors, crying in despair and demanding love and affection? Ah, what bliss it was to be on the fourth floor of V-Hall in 1987, and to be young!

  13. Do you still have the Hebrew tie tack, Russell? DT was the first place I heard Queen (that is, the first place I heard Queen over and over again). I believe Roger and Norbert’s Tommy & Gordon show left an indelible imprint on my understanding of Mormonism. (Thanks a helluva lot, guys; that kept me as a primary teacher for the better part of a decade!) There was something magical about V-Hall in 87. It could have been the asbestos.

  14. I’m afraid not, AREVM. I don’t know when I lost it, but I know sometimes I mourn for those rabbinical days, long ago. (Who are you? Give me a clue, if you wish to remain anonymous. Did you play the guitar? Are you from Canada? Did you own a cheese table?)

  15. Oh, great times. I got threatened with a Standards referral for watching Soul Train in the basement. Moral outrage on the loose!

    There was also a guy named Louis who asked out every woman he ever met . . . but never twice. We called him Sweet Lou, and a weekend in which one goes out both Friday and Saturday night is still known in some circles as a Sweet Lou weekend.

  16. We affectionately called the Morris Center “the Morbid Center” and the cafeteria in Helaman Halls the Canon Center was “the Cancer Center.” Well, maybe not affectionately, but that is what we called them.

  17. I was in T hall in ’87. I remember you, Norbert and Fox. The “Disciples of Soul” reference sparked a memory. That was a fun year.

  18. As an S-Hall Resident from 87, I remember being assigned to the \”overflow\” room which was next to the bathroom and therefore afforded about the worst night\’s sleep possible :-)

    Anyway, at least the alumni office isn\’t \”selling\” the old blocks…which most Universities would…

    Good memories…

  19. The only time I lived in DT was a couple of years ago at Education Week. I am more than pleased to hear of it’s demise.

    I worked at the Cannon (sadly not the Morris) Center my freshman year, I think it was. “Promoted” from dishroom to salad bar. I never saw food spitting, but I can tell you that the guys in the dishroom actually ate everything that came through moderately presentable. Which, of course, led to the “ladies of the bar” setting them up with a lovely *looking* sandwich, drenched in pepper and tabasco. I, of course, do not recall the incident.

  20. I got one of those emails, even though I never lived in DT. Someone got carried away in their attempt to provide nostalgic mementos to former DT residents.

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