Being a pledge in my fraternity was not all fun and games. Every Saturday morning at 1 PM (8 AM frat time) we were required to come to the house and collect all the bottles and cans lying around from the previous night’s party, as well as to clean up the piss, vomit, passed out sorority girls, cigarette butts, and other assorted trash that was lying around. We were also pretty much at the whim of the active members of the house. And there was one responsibility that loomed over the pledge class all semester.

Cave Party.

Every December, for the last 20 years or something, it was the tradition of my fraternity for the pledges to throw a massive party for the actives and their dates (and the pledges can come too). It isn’t your normal party, however. Oh no. This was a far more sinister ordeal. For instead of this party being a massive drunken drug orgy on the first floor of the house, this party was to take place all over the property. What’s more, the entire party was to occur entirely inside of an elaborate cave system made out of cardboard that spanned the entire house, all three floors, the basement, the porch, everything. And it was the pledges’ job to create this elaborate cave system.

We were informed of this duty of ours from pretty much the first day we signed up for the frat. And all semester the actives hounded us to collect from all over Greater Des Moines as many gigantic cardboard boxes as was humanly possible. What’s more, all those cans, bottles, and sorority chicks we picked up over the course of the semester were to be recycled, and the deposit money was to go into the Cave Party Bar Fund.

This was a big deal not only to the members of our fraternity (the best party of the year, as far as they were concerned), but also to pretty much every girl on campus. It was a big honor to get to go along to this party, which tended to overwhelm any other social functions on campus in terms of notoriety (we’ll get to that later). So believe me when I tell you that we were HOUNDED by the older guys of the frat to get as much money and as much cardboard as possible, to ensure the most booze and the most elaborate cave system we could conceivably create. A bad cave party would go down in the ledger as a major black mark to the fraternity, not to mention the abuse that we would have to endure if we fucked it all up. This was the World Series of frat parties.

So we dutifully collected about 3 tons of cardboard over the semester, and about 5 thousand dollars in recycled beer paraphernalia for the booze. And about 10 pledges spent a helluva lot of time and energy over the five months making cardboard cave schematics (which, in a travesty of America’s job market, does NOT, in fact, look good on a resume).

And the more work we put into it, the more the actives assured us it would not be enough.

And the Cave Party day was drawing closer and closer.

Oh yeah, two things I forgot to mention.

The party was to occur on a Saturday night. And we were not allowed to begin setting up the cave system until that same day. An engineering problem that would Frank Lloyd Wright weep. This was due mostly to the fact that about 35 people lived in the house in which the caves were to be set up, and partly was to test our resourcefulness and wherewithal (at least that is the bullshit explanation they gave to us, the lazy bastards).

This brings us to the other major obstacle involved in the creation of the caves.

Every year, since 1974, none of the actives have ever willingly left the house to allow the pledges to set up the caves.

Let me repeat that.

Every year, since 1974, none of the actives have ever willingly left the house to allow the pledges to set up the caves.

It was not the actives’ job to leave the house bright and early that morning to allow us to begin the massive job of setting up the party. It was, in fact, the pledges’ job to GET the actives out of the house to begin the massive job of setting up the party.

This was known as “House Takeover”, and was just as much a feat as setting up a quarter mile of cardboard caverns in a three story house.

Thus, all semester about 10 people were given the duty of establishing schematics for the caves. And about 5 of us were put in charge of planning the impending invasion.

Enter Lieutenant Colonel Paint CHiPs.

Now mind you, there were a few things that were unsaid. The active members were not going to come out of their rooms with knives and guns, and we were not supposed to punch or throw people out of windows (both of those rules got broken that year BTW), but still, we had a pledge class of 25 people, and there were about 55 active members (30 or so of which lived in the house). Still, none of them were getting out of that house without a fight.

So the other 4 members of the ad hoc War Committee and I spent the semester devising various schemes, and collecting materials. The pledges had the advantages of organization and planning. The actives tended to not hatch schemes until the night before, whereas we planned out various scenarios for weeks in advance. Also, we had the element of surprise. All the actives knew was that we would start the invasion sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning (we would need to have all the actives out of the house by at least 8 AM to get enough prep time to set up the caves for the party, but it was an implicit understanding that to invade during the prime drinking hours of 7 PM and 10 PM Friday night was unkosher at best). The actives, however, had the distinct advantages of knowing the terrain better (they lived there after all), of outnumbering us by at least 2 to 1, and of being able to dig in against our assaults.

In retrospect, it was kind of like Vietnam.

The Wednesday before the cave party, one of the pledges, a guy ironically enough named Charlie, who worked with the House Manager (the active who lives in the house and fixes shit), snuck into the House Manager’s room and stole the set of master keys for every room in the house. To be honest, the keys were for the most part a formality, as 90% of the doors in the house could be jimmied with nothing more then a sturdy credit card, but they were nonetheless nice to have for that other 10%.

The next day, the Thursday before the Cave Party, we all had a big party in the frat house that night, the last friendly exchange of drinks between the actives and the pledges that would occur before the big party. We all had fun, and then all us pledges went back to our rooms early that evening to rest up for the day that was ahead of us.

Well, not all of us.

Charlie (known as Fat Screech to us, if that says anything about his personality and demeanor) had a little too much fun in the house that night. After all the other pledges had gone home, he stayed on to drink more whiskey and fuck around with the actives. He was not a bright man.

At some point late that night, while all the other pledges were fast asleep in their dorm rooms, Charlie must have looked up from his shot glass, noticed he was sitting in a room with 20 actives and no pledges, and then realized they were all eyeing him with evil grins on their faces. I am almost positive that at this point, Charlie looked around nervously, smiled, and said something to the effect of “Hey fellas. What’s up? Why you all looking at me like that?”

At which point the actives jumped him, duct taped him (the weapon of preference for frat guys everywhere), loaded him into a pick up truck, drove 60 miles into the middle of nowhere, released him from the bondage and the truck in the middle of a forest, and then drove back to the house.

I can almost picture Charlie standing there in the Iowa wilderness in the middle of the night, drunk off his ass, 30 minutes after the guys had driven away, and shouting to nobody in particular “Hey guys! This isn’t funny anymore! …Guys?” *insert coyote howl in the distance here*

However, earlier that day, Charlie had given the set of keys to one of the other pledges.

In any case, the next afternoon, the pledges (minus 1) all met in a guy’s dorm room with all our materials (save the building materials for the caves, which were locked away in the basement of the house), and then me and the other head of the War Committee stepped up and explained our (in retrospect) very half-assed plan for invading the house that night.

“Weapons check!
17 cases of bottle rockets?”
“CHECK!”
“100 smoke bombs of various colors?”
“CHECK!”
“20 stink bombs?”
“CHECK!”
“40 Super Soakers?”
“CHECK!”
“Good good. Remember fellas, fill those with whatever you like! Okay, 80 rolls of duct tape?”
“CHECK!”
“Two Slip N Slides?”
“CHECK!”
“Small arms!”
“CHECK! Along with the various waterguns and water balloons, both filled with various liquids, Stimmel even brought his .45!”
“Stimmel, put that away! We can’t take that!”
“It’s loaded with blanks, dude.”
“Oh, okay. Good, good. 5 queen sized mattresses?”
“Um, we only really have 4. The fifth is all infested with fleas. Maybe we shouldn’t have buried it to hide it from the actives.”
“Can it, soldier! A functional mattress is a functional mattress!”
“Um, okay, 5 then.”
“Dude dude! My cousin also gave me 10 flash bombs. He was a fucking Green Beret, man, these things are dope!”
“Excellent.”

And so on and so forth. We were well prepared, to say the least.

At the same time that all this was going on, the actives were preparing as well. Now, while 30 or so people actually lived in this house, EVERY active member of the fraternity showed up for the takeover (about 57 or so I think). On the third floor, at about 5 PM Friday night, about 8 guys bunked down in a room with a full keg, determined to barricade themselves in there until the cave party, in theory drinking away as we set up the caves, and to maybe pop out in the middle of the day and smash to bits everything they could see. Every room was similar, though the third floor room (known as The Observatory) was the only one with a keg. It was also an implicit understanding that the actives who were not rooted out of the house, who were missed, would, at some point, emerge from whatever rock they were hiding under and attempt to demolish whatever progress we had made on the caves. That, and every active we DID manage to root out would at some point during the day, while we labored away constructing the caves, attempt to force themselves BACK into the house and fuck everything up.

And while the actives in the house were busy preparing their defense, about 15 of the actives were preparing an offense.

We had about 25 pledges, and 20 of them lived in a gigantic dorm building called GK (Goodwin-Kirk). This was a dorm building that was 90% freshmen. 5 other guys and myself lived in the upper-classmen dorm buildings around the campus. So, as our plan was to assault the house very early the next morning, after the weapons’ check and the final discussion of our plans came, we all dispersed to our respective rooms to take a nap to prepare us for the long night ahead. This was at about 2 PM.

I don’t remember much of what occurred after that. All I remember was that at about 3:30 PM, I was awakened to a terrible burning sensation on my skin and the heavy weight of a knee to my stomach. Apparently my roommate (a 5’ 4” 350 lbs. homosexual music major from Minnesota, a story for another day) had let in 5 active members of my frat against my express wishes, and the actives then proceeded to shoot off a fire extinguisher at me while at the same time two of them had gotten on top of me and pinned me down. Before I knew it, I was mummified with duct tape.

And while having been in my hazy states of being still half-asleep I don’t remember much of the actual abduction, I remember quite well the events that followed. I was carried, fully duct taped, from my dorm to the frat house, being lifted high above the heads of the 5 actives.

When they reached the frat house, I saw that two other pledges had been abducted as well, both in duct tape, both guys who did not live in the freshman dorm building, and both being carried high above the heads of five actives towards the back door.

They threw us each into separate rooms, while we were still duct taped, and locked us all in. The other two guys were locked in separate third floor rooms; I was in the President’s room on the second story. They threw me on the couch in that room and then left to drink more downstairs, locking the door behind them.

Here was their mistake.

Of the other two guys kidnapped, one was a skinny drummer from Nebraska. The other, however, was my co-chairman of the War Committee, the president of our pledge class and the only sophomore of it, and he was also a football player from Texas (6’ 3” and 300 lbs.).

The second mistake is that I was well known as being stark raving mad. To compound their mistake, although the house is three stories high, the second story contains a roof (for the gigantic front porch), a big sturdy roof that we often sat out and drank on. There were two rooms whose windows opened up to access for this roof. A room called The Beach (inhabited by the pothead and the beatnik), and the President’s room.

And obviously, despite the considerable handicap of being duct taped, I had to escape.

Somehow I managed to get to my feet, and as my legs and arms were duct taped together, I sorta hopped over to the door to the room. It was locked. But as I was known campus-wide as being a raving lunatic, I didn’t let that stop me.

So, I proceeded to bash my person into the door about a dozen times, as hard as I could.

Finally, about the tenth time that I lunged myself at the door, I heard something crrrrrrrrrrrrack. After several seconds of me making sure the crack was not a bone, I realized I had torn off most of the outer lock. Another two lunges, and the door burst open, the lock flew out, and I ended up sprawled out on the floor of the second floor hall.

After about 5 minutes I got to my feet, hopped down the hall, and then carefully began to navigate my way down the back staircase (remember, I had duct tape from my ankles to my neck).

Unfortunately, at that same time, the president of the house got home from work. He entered the house and proceeded to climb the back staircase on his way to his room, where he would change clothes for the heavy drinking bout that proceeded the House Takeover.

And on his way up those stairs, he encountered me, in all my silver adhesive glory. We looked at each other for a moment. As he had not been around that day (at work), he considered my duct tape visage quixotically, unsure of what exactly was going on. I stared back at him for a moment or two before it dawned on him that I was a fugitive.

So after that moment’s contemplation, he approached me, put me over his shoulders, and carried me back to the President’s room, where he laid me down on the couch.

“Brad, that’s not cool. You could fall down the stairs and break your neck,” he lectured, fulfilling his role as the President.
“Well, if I was untied, I could navigate the back staircase with ease!”
“Fuck that.”
“Can you at least loosen the shit on my chest, I am having trouble breathing.”
“Fine.”

At which point he got out a knife and cut a few strands of duct tape that were wrapped around my chest (there were about 20 left, but this left me a little bit of squirm room). He then changed his clothes and exited the room to hit the drinking binge going on downstairs. He closed the door behind him, not realizing that my partially dislocated shoulder had made short work of the locking mechanisms.

Unbeknownst to me, the other pledges had by this time realized what had happened, and had set up a rescue operation. Also unbeknownst to me, the Texan on the third floor had rolled over to a spot on a bunk that had sharp edges to it, and had cut off enough duct tape (and skin) to be able to free himself. He then retrieved the skinny drummer guy from Nebraska in the next room and they both huddled next to a third floor window nearly above the porch roof and attempted to hatch a plan. At around the same time, the rest of the pledges had subtly surrounded the house.

So here I was duct taped from my ankles to my neck, when I hear a commotion coming from downstairs, where all the actives were. I heard people running up the stairs, on their way to the third floor. A great stampede of drunken frat guys. I then heard some commotion going on outside, and the actives apparently trying to ram their way into the third floor room that contained the two prisoners.

At this point, I had no clue what was going it. Only that the pledges on the outside must be up to something. But I knew it was a good enough distraction.

I wormed my way from the couch to the floor (read: rolled over and fell), and began furiously contracting and expanding my chest. I was also doing the same with my arms and legs, putting as much force behind separating my legs from each other and my arms from my sides as I possibly could. Unless you have been there, no man can possibly fathom the extreme strenuous physical stress of trying to literally bust yourself from a duct tape cocoon.

Cut to the third floor. Apparently, the remaining members of the war committee had concocted quite a brilliant plan in rescuing us. They had parked a car an inch away from the back door (which opened up to the parking lot), and had used bungee cord to secure the front door. At the same time they had a large length of rope and a grappling hook rigged from table legs. Thus, when they saw The Texan and the other pledge leaning out of the third floor window, they threw up the rope. Meanwhile, in the third floor room, the two pledges had moved as much furniture as possible in front of the door in an attempt to block actives from entry while the pledges attempted their escape. And they then secured the table leg grappling hook to some guy’s bed.

At about that point, one of the actives inside must have glance out a window and seen 10 pledges hanging on to a rope that went up to the third floor, shouting commands into the air. The first impulse was to scream “PLEDGES OUTSIDE!” at which point all the actives threw their beers on the ground and went to the back and front doors. Upon finding them unpassable, a few stayed behind to try and bust open the doors, while the rest all went to try and bust into the third floor room.

For some reason or another, the Texan decided to go first as the Nebraskan kept tight hold of the rope. The Texan grabbed the rope and started shimmying his fat ass down towards the ground. He was about 6 feet from the ground when an active opened up the second floor window that was right next to the rope, looked up to make sure nobody else was climbing down the rope at the time, and then produced a pair of gardening sheers, the long kind you use to trim trees with. He stuck them out the window and cut the rope. The Texan fell to the ground, and the Nebraskan, who had been holding the rope steady, flew backwards across the room as the force of the rope went from 400 pounds to 5 in half a second.

This all occurred over a span of maybe 5 minutes, and in that time, I was exhausted, but I had ripped a significant amount of duct tape off myself (or at least had broken enough strands). So I rested for about 30 seconds, and then finally put all that I had left into one tremendous body-wide muscle expansion, which snapped the rest of the strands apart. I sat there panting, red in the face, sore all over, seeing stars, for at least a minute, before I sat up and freed myself from the remaining few strands of tape.

At this time, the actives had succeeded in nearly tearing the third floor room door off of its hinges, and the Nebraskan was panicked. Finally, in a fit of terror, exhilaration, and stupidity, he secured the remaining length of rope to the bed and then grabbed hold and sort of repelled out the window. He was now at about the second floor, and there were actives hanging out of that second floor window trying to grab him and pull him back in. This was the side of the house, and the porch was on the front of the house, but the roof to the porch overhung enough that about 10 feet of it sprawled out past the side walls.

The Nebraskan decided it a good idea to start leaping from right to left in an attempt to gain velocity. Finally, when he felt he had enough, he swung as far as he could towards the front porch roof and let go of the rope. He somehow made the 8 feet distance to the porch roof, and landed on it with a thud. He rolled down the slightly inclined roof for a moment before catching himself and thus stopping himself from falling. At that point, the actives came bursting into The Beach (the second floor room near where I was), and were opening the windows that led DIRECTLY to the roof.

At which point the Nebraskan just jumped off the damn thing and landed in some bushes.

Meanwhile, I had jimmied open my window and was considering the short climb to the porch roof outside. The porch roof was not directly outside of the window to this room, but rather there was about a three-foot wide gutter walk to get to it. Easily negotiable in the summer, but in the middle of December this was caked with ice. Think of the scene in the Matrix when Keanu Reeves was trying to walk around his office building. Kind of like that. Oh yeah, and a brick walkway lay directly beneath the window.

I thought about it for a few minutes before chickening out. It was only a two-story drop, but still. I may be crazy but I’m not fucking crazy.

So quietly, I opened up the door to the room. There was nobody around, though I could hear the commotion of people nearby, very close.

I quietly made my way down the hall and towards the front staircase. All of a sudden I heard a person shouting about six feet behind me “Ack! The pledges have stormed the house!” (he was speaking of me, BTW, and had mistakenly concluded upon seeing me loose that somebody had freed me), at which point I bolted down the staircase, opened up the door at the bottom, straight-armed an active who was on his way up (in the neck, BTW, he fell to the ground gasping for air), and like a jackrabbit flew across the large main room in which about 20 actives were gathered at the moment and leapt out the first open window I saw, landing on my shoulder in the driveway. I then heard shouts from the parking lot to my right, and glanced over in that direction. Since my glasses were still on my bedside table back in my room, all I could see was a group of people running at me while shouting my name.

So I fled. I took off across the yards of the other frat houses and sprinted for a solid ten minutes, jumping over fences and cutting across yards until I was convinced I had shaken my would-be pursuers. When I finally felt it safe, I doubled over behind somebody’s garage and threw up on a pile of snow, solely from physical exertion. I had exhausted myself that much. That hour period in which I busted out of my duct tape mummification and sprinted for 10 minutes solid probably marks the highest level of physical exertion I have ever encountered. Kinda sad, really.

In any case, once back on campus, I trudged through snowdrifts towards GK. When I got there, I made my way up to HQ (some guy’s room). When I entered the room, all the pledges, including the Texan and the Nebraskan, were gathered about taking shots of rum and planning the next step. They looked at me when I opened the door, bruised, battered, and with vomit all over my pants, and then all half-cheered/half laughed at me. After a few minutes of me telling my story, somebody spoke up and said “That’s amazing and all, but why the fuck did you run away like that? We were in the parking lot when you jumped out the window, we saw you and starting calling your name, and you just fucking took off!”

I tried to explain to them that after having just been pursued by 50 guys intent on duct taping me and locking me in a closet for 24 hours, that running after me shouting my name was probably not the best way to get me to lower my guard.

In any case, I passed out for the next hour or two. When I awoke, I went right to jumping into the conversation regarding staging our offense on the house later that night.

It was about 7 PM by then.

So I took a shot of rum, pounded a beer, and commented “We attack at dawn.”

To Be Continued…