Trash Jenga.
That’s what you could find seniors Danny Braner, Matt DeSapri, Andrew Gibson, Dan Hawks, Mike Molnar and Matt Wills playing at 118 Lawnview Ave.
“Basically, we tried to see how long we could go piling up trash in our kitchen garbage can,” Gibson ’08 explained. “The person who ended up knocking trash over while trying to pile their trash on had to take it out to the dumpster. This game really taught us some important life lessons, like don’t play Trash Jenga.”
Instead, the crew recommended video games. Wills ’09 said Guitar Hero was a big draw, and it would pack players in front of their old-style, thick, 60- inch television squeezed into their small living room — which was right next to Wills’ bedroom. The lesson? Sleep when you can.
The house had four bedrooms and only one bathroom for six men, but Molnar picked it as among the best in the housing lottery. It was an especially easy walk to class for Wills, an industrial engineering technology major with classes in Kettering Labs; he is now a manager of construction projects in Baltimore.
Another draw: the porch.
“It got the job done,” said Braner ’08, an underwriter with Cincinnati Insurance. It attracted a crowd on a nice day and, in the fall, it was the place for carving pumpkins.
Students knew 118 Lawnview as the “crab house” for the bright yellow flag emblazoned with a red crab that hung from the porch roof.
The house had another distinctive feature.
“Behind our house, there was a little attached storage area that really served no purpose,” Gibson said. “People, apparently, thought we were still living in the early 1900s and had an outhouse.”
The shed and basement were too creepy for Braner, but he did explore the attic once and found old magazines, more evidence of the generations who have called it home.
“I’d love to go back and see what the current students have done with it,” Braner said.
Best hopes are the porch is still drawing friends on a warm afternoon while the memory — and smell — of Trash Jenga has faded away.