College kids like to eat. College kids have no money. For me and a whole bunch of my friends at Pomona, these simple facts translated to multiple instances of illegal late-night entry into dining halls.
At first our break-ins were simple and straightforward. While eating lunch at a favorite dining hall, we would unlock a window in some inconspicuous spot, then come back at midnight or two in the morning, crack it open, climb in, and help ourselves to whatever we could find in the kitchen. We made sure to keep the lights off and leave everything as we had found it, minus a bit of food, so that our activities would never be noticed.
After a while the Harwood dining hall became our favorite break-in target, not because the food was any better but because the massive walk-in refrigerator was usually left unlocked. That meant we had access to cheese, cold cuts, fruits, and chilled beverages to supplement the breads, crackers, English muffins, peanut butter, nuts, and canned goods that were not in the fridge.
Eventually we became so accustomed to our late-night dining at Harwood that we began to think of it as “Fourth Meal” (Taco Bell later stole that phrase from us—I’ll get around to suing one day). And we began to get more creative about how we consumed Fourth Meal. On a chilly night in January one of us decided to actually heat up some of the canned soup that was in the enormous pantry. Soon after that I made grilled cheese-and-turkey sandwiches for everyone. We always washed the dishes and put everything away.
Then we got a little careless. One night, on a whim, Robert and I decided it was time to cook an entire spaghetti dinner for about six of us, complete with garlic bread, an assortment of canned vegetables, and salads with Thousand Island dressing (that’s all we could find). I boiled the noodles and heated up some Ragu, then started cooking hamburger and ground sausage meatballs while Robert did the salads. Bill Meickle (Bitchin’ Bill) cooked the vegetables and prepared the garlic bread.
The meal was superb. Witt had added a little cayenne pepper and just a hint of thyme to the sauce, and the meatballs turned out great. We even found half of a chocolate cake in the refrigerator for dessert.
However, we didn’t have a chance to eat the cake. As we were slicing it up we saw flashlights coming toward us from the other side of the darkened dining hall. Campus Security! In an instant all six of us were Curly from The Three Stooges, whooob-whooob-whooooobing and heading for the window. We were all out and gone before the security guys could run the length of the dining hall after us.
We felt bad about not doing the dishes.
