re: For the Old Timers. What was it like living in Tiger Stadium?

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How was the food

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I lived in Hodges in '85, pre-east side upper deck of course. Third floor. Our window overlooked the walkway between us and the Journalism building. Basically all of the commuter students who parked in front of the stadium walked under our window. We would scream out of the window at the 7am class people to go back to fricking bed. All-time record for getting the finger in return was 17 on a witch's tit ice cold random Wednesday. We would keep count on the concrete wall of the dorm room with a permanent marker. We had to repaint the wall when we moved out to get our deposit back. Also, its weird to think about it now, but the hill behind the Journalism building which is packed for the band coming down the hill these days was just a large wooded area with no access. The back of the actual building wasn't even visible. The band coming down the hill wasn't even a thing then and the players would just walk in small groups at random intervels from Broussard to the stadium

Every night we played pickup basketball in the field house or pickup football on the turf at Bernie Moore. There was also an ancient basketball hoop next to Tiger Stadium right outside the KLSU DJ booth. They had a barely average looking chick DJ doing the overnight broadcast and a buddy of mine had a thing for her. One night he got drunk, stripped naked and shot free throws while waving at her. She apparently lost it on the air laughing and they ended up going out a few times.

There was also a small bodega type store and a coin laundry inside the stadium at that same area. The guys name was Habib so we called it the Habib Shop. To this day, if I meet any of my old friends before a game, we always meet outside the Habib Shop.

During football season, the visiting teams equipment truck would usually roll in late on Thursday night and park right there against the stadium. The Florida one was basically just a large painted Ryder truck. Walking back after the bars closed that night, we opened the drivers side door with a coat hanger with the idea of hot wiring it but had no idea what the frick we were doing. We had grand plans to drive it to the french quarter. We left a dozen empty beer cans in the cab before relocking it.

But I digress. Like the Stadium dorms, our dining hall was in the basement of Hatcher. Nothing like today, it was straight up high school cafeteria food. The breakfasts were on par with a Denny's and was by far the best meal of the day. They did occasionally make gumbo and it was actually better than average and the homemade rolls were killer. Burgers were the safe bet and were somewhere between a stadium concession stand and Wendys. a friend of mine had a student job as a janitor there. He worked close to 80 hours a week the week before the semester and first week of classes then quit. He made the entire two weeks of pay last the entire semester. If I remember it was like $400 and he blew half of it the first week of school at Sports Illustrated and still had a few bucks left at the end.