Half a century ago, a small yellow house stood — just barely — on the 300 block of Stonemill. Parked nearby
was a small yellow car to match.
The house had simple rules: Don “Duck” Moiso ’75 cooked, and all the “Jersey Boy” housemates, including Terry Gilhooly ’76, Charlie Dougherty and Tom Kanofsky ’76, took turns each night washing the dishes.
“We would hide our dishes under our beds until Moiso’s turn came around,” Gilhooly admitted. Cups and plates came out in droves on those nights.
The house no longer stands; it was demolished right after the men moved out. It may have been for the best, considering two of them woke up one morning to the front legs of their bunk beds falling through the floor.
The house served its purpose while the men lived there, but even more, the car parked just outside — a 1974 MG Midget — was tangled up in the best memories for the housemates.
The two-seater yellow sports car was a tight fit for Moiso and whichever roommate tagged along in the passenger seat, let alone providing enough space to carry household necessities like ingredients for Moiso’s next family-style dinner.
“We would pack the car as much as we could with the groceries, and then whoever came with me ended up with a bag on their lap,” Moiso said.
These trips were quite frequent, given that the MG barely had the space for two to three days of food.
The car was so tiny that one evening, during a trip to Timothy’s on Brown Street, the housemates found it particularly difficult to leave the bar due to the car being right in front of the door. It had taken only a few people to pick up the MG from where it was parked and move it onto the sidewalk, Gilhooly said.
“We had to squeeze through the door, and the four of us picked the car back up,” Gilhooly said. “[Moiso] was mad, to say the least.”
“I wasn’t really happy to see that, but my roommates were pretty amused by it,” Moiso added.
The MG was also complicit in shenanigans to spruce up 325 Stonemill for the holidays. When the housemates couldn’t find a Christmas tree for sale in all of Dayton, they concocted a plan to “procure” one. Moiso and Doughtery drove up to Stuart Hill and cut one down. The group strapped it to the top of the car to drive it back to the house. Campus police, however, caught them in the act. As punishment, the men had to haul the tree to the campus police headquarters and decorate it for the station.
While a rather small ride, the MG had just enough leg room to carry the best of memories for the men of 325 Stonemill.