It had been thirty-six years since I had walked into Foster Hall on the TCU campus. Thirty-six years is a long time and in anyone's reckoning much can happen. In thirty-six years, a person can grow up a lot, can pass from one generation to the next older one, can raise a family, find a piece of work, learn much, and know the need to learn much more. It had been thirty-six years, and I don't know what took me so long.

It was not lack of opportunity that had kept me away. I've been here, just across the street for twelve of those thirty-six years, and close by for nearly every year of the balance. I have walked by the dormitory and around it, following familiar concrete paths under taller trees than I remember, have looked up at the third-floor windows that were "mine" and out of which I could just see the roof of my home halfway down Rogers Road. I have lingered in front of the porch where we long ago lingered coming home from a date, and I've marveled at the great number of parking spaces that are always filled. Sally Marie Tull was the only girl I knew who had a car in '52.

I've taken special notice of the pull-down fire escape situated on the southeast corner wall, the same one that Peggy and I dared, out of fear, to climb to a third-floor window where friends let us in. The coeds of today would surely laugh, as I do now, at the reason for our fear. We were in shorts, you see, without suitable cover-up, without even the tennis rackets that would have justified our brief attire. We had been a hair after 6:00 p.m. getting back to the dorm, the back door was already locked, and we would surely have been caught wearing the strictly forbidden shorts had we gone around to the front, where maybe Miss Shelburne, or worse, Mrs. Minnie Harrison, was on guard.

I had passed by, noted these things, but had not entered the place that had been my home in the fall and spring of 1952-53. I could come and go as I pleased then, of course within the rules of the house. I guess I didn't enter all these intervening years because it was someone else's home now. I didn't know the rules anymore. I would be a stranger, perhaps unwelcome.

The catalyst came in the form of young Carrie Robinson, a TCU sophomore who helps me in my job at the library. Now, in 1989, Carrie lives in Foster Hall. We talked, I about then, she about now. Could anyone just walk in and look around, I asked. Were the back and side doors locked at 6:00 p.m. still? Were there still lounges on the first and second floors, where we had entertained family and friends, where there were pianos one could play if the mood struck, where we had gathered for Frogette meetings and evening devotionals? Was the sun deck still there, where we were allowed (with Mrs. Minnie Harrison watching) to witness attempted panty raids. Was there still a dorm "mother", who kept you straight, who looked out for you and saw to the well-being of both body and mind, who kept you out of serious mischief and harm? Is there a Miss Shelburne, Mrs. Harrison, or Miss McLendon, still? ...a Mrs. Fahrner, Mrs. Ball, or Dr. Huber? It seemed some things were different, and some weren't. I had finally come to want to know, and so I went to see.

As I mounted the porch steps, all seemed the same, except perhaps the spring in my step. In thirty-six years, that can surely change. Even the old green metal glider--the only piece of furniture then, the only piece now--was in its familiar place to one side of the front entrance. But as I ran my hand over the stone balustrade that borders the porch, I felt something rough and unfamiliar. Graffiti! -- rudely scratched inscriptions covered the balustrade and even decorated the stone sides of the front doorway. Barely discernible to the eye, "Lori and Brad" were enclosed in a heart, another heart surrounded "I luv u 4 ever", and hundreds of initials were bound together with a plus sign, some with dates -- all a part of the stone now, an engraved record of Foster's residents, their friends, and lovers. I vaguely wondered how many of the human ties documented in the stone had remained tied. I looked for signs I could recognize, initials I had known, but the earliest date I found was 1969, long after our time. And then I understood that I probably wouldn't find any of my contemporaries so noted, wouldn't find "Betty loves Bill" or JH + JRS. We wouldn't have dared note our passing in such manner. What if Miss Shelburne, or worse, Mrs. Minnie Harrison, had caught us? To be sure, they would have been watching.

Miss Elizabeth Shelburne had been Dean of Women from as far back as I could remember -- Dean Moore's chronicle of TCU says from 1937-1961. My mother remembers Miss Sadie Beckham before that; my children and today's children know of Elizabeth Proffer, Dean of Students, Miss Shelburne's protege and the TCU students' longtime guardian and advocate.

In Miss Shelburne's employ were several matrons who actually lived in the girls' dorms, one to each floor. When I arrived to take up residence at Foster, Mrs. Minnie Harrison was keeping the second floor occupants in line, and German professor, Dr. Irene Huber, was attempting the same on the third floor. Miss Shelburne lived on the first floor in two rooms off the foyer, and although she held court during the day-time in her office in the Ad Building, she was a presence to be wary of at night in Foster, as some of us would discover. Now, on the outside looking in, and from the perspective of those thirty-six years, I wonder that any of those ladies would take the job, with its potential for a mother's worries multiplied a hundred times over.

Carrie tells me there are no "mothers" to manage her Foster home or to monitor her comings and goings, no checking out or checking in. Upperclass student residence assistants, "RAs", are "on duty" now--girls taking care of girls. The world and college life changed some while I wasn't looking. I guess today's wiser coed needs less care, or maybe swifter communication and ready transportation keep mom and home closer than they could have been in my time.

Having entered Foster at last, I was to find little materially different. Rooms, community restrooms, ironing rooms, and lounges are still in the same place. Air-conditioning, carpeted halls, lounge decor, tacked-up wall signs and notices, and a beach-scene mural painted on the brick walls of the sun deck bespeak a more modern time. Although wall jacks still testify to their earlier existence, hall telephones once used in common by residents, are gone now in favor of private room phones.

A slight change in lifestyle is in evidence, too. Beside each door that opens onto the floors, a poster reminds that Foster Visitation Hours are 1 p.m. - 12 a.m. Sunday through Thursday, 1 p.m. - 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday. Clipboards with guest sign-up sheets hang close by with the warning that "males must be escorted at all times." I felt Miss Shelburne, and worse, Mrs. Minnie Harrison, looking on with disapproval. In my time, no male was allowed beyond the downstairs parlor at any time; residents were to be in their own rooms, and quiet, by 10:00 p.m. Three infractions and you could be "campused," not allowed for one whole humiliating week to be out after six or to leave the campus at all.

I feel less alien and somewhat reassured since my talk with Carrie and my visit back home to Foster. Much had moved in thirty-six years, but much had stayed still, and thirty-six years are not as far back now as I had thought they were.

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