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Old-home day puts the past in perspective SANDRA SNYDER WALL TO WALL

Saturday March 06, 2010 | 12:00 AM

One quick and easy way to feel old is to get yourself involved in a discussion about how old your old “home” is now.

By home I mean dorm. And by dorm I mean hotel. Or at least I used to.

Time was it was hard to distinguish my old dorm-home from a luxury hotel, so packed (for the era) was it with amenities. So modern and so brand-new it even carried that frou-frou, four-star scent, and everyone and their roommate wanted in. We even had to compete, demonstrating with grades and campus involvement that we were worthy of the best. The good news for anyone who didn’t make the cut was one person could “pull” another in, so the whole tizzy and buzz around the place also made for many a grateful arrival in a sidecar.

Yes, life was good in “The Hotel Gavigan,” with its contemporary bathrooms shared by four (not 40) women, its modern elevators and laundry, communal basement kitchen and its equally huge patio/courtyard and abundantly windowed top-floor study lounge with a whole-campus view. And, revolutionary for the time, men and women were allowed to co-exist, separated only by wing. Imagine.

Then in steps time.

On a recent visit back to campus for an alumni speaking engagement, not only did I feel old (the program listed graduation years and the first number was a gasping 9), but a discussion of dorm life today with members of the classes of 2010, 11 and 12 drove the point home. It is, after all, room-selection season, that crucial, nervous time of year, same as ever, except these days at my old school, I’m told, it’s all about the lottery number, and everybody has an equally random shot at the top digs.

And that means, they hope, please not Gavigan.

My Gavigan? The place once so cool it actually was called a college, modeled after the British concept of colleges within colleges? Yes, the University of Scranton’s Gavigan College was a community of scholars and neighbors unto itself. Now people can take it or leave it? Or take it only if they must?

The explanation made sense. The line between home and dorm sure has blurred since the 1990s. These days, a place called Condron Hall is all the rage for sophomores (juniors and seniors can get even swankier apartments), and hopefuls talk of full gourmet kitchens with granite countertops and wall-mounted flat-panel televisions absolutely everywhere. Geez, I didn’t even have a clunker TV in my room, just a shared set in a lounge. And we thought we were living the dream.

’Tis what I reminded myself when I came home and looked around my own place, which, while dreamy enough for me, hardly meets the going definition of having it all. At 70-some years old, though, I reason, the place is closer to becoming a classic century home than a tired two-decader of which we all grow bored all too quickly.

So now I worry for Condron Hall, as I worry for all of us. Granite countertops? I’ve been reading they might be on the outs, almost a clich�. Wall-mounted televisions? But how long until we mount our sets on ceilings or bury them in the walls themselves? Sometimes I think we’re sticking them on walls just because we can.

At the same time, we’re loving retro, even in reproductions, and compromising the very definition of “classic.”

We’re attached to our houses, no doubt, but, still, I think we’re all commitment-phobes. Probably because we’re so paralyzed by choices. I’d still love new floors, but heck if I can make the call which and when.

Talk to me when I can at least commit to a throw pillow.

About the Author

Sandra Snyder covers Features for the Times Leader. Reach her at (570) 831-7383 or ssnyder@timesleader.com.

Sandra Snyder is the Times Leader's features editor, overseeing the food, family, home and Sunday lifestyles sections as well as the weekly entertainment Guide. She began working at the Times Leader in 1993 as a copy editor and has held various positions, including Hazleton editor/bureau chief, editor of the Times Leader-Mountaintop and Social Issues co-team leader. She also has done general-interest news and features reporting. Her most memorable interview to this day remains the delightful and now decidedly not 16-going-on-17 Charmian Carr, a.k.a. Liesl in "The Sound of Music." These days, she encourages readers who love (and sometimes despise) their homes to write to her and share their household tales, tragic or otherwise, particularly the type they're willing to have retold in print.