In August of 1984, I moved from Austin, Texas to assume the position of Assistant Professor of Spanish Linguistics at The Ohio State University. Upon arrival in Columbus, I was issued office number 423, on the fourth floor of the Cunz Hall of Languages. It was a notoriously horrible little place: an interior cubicle with cinder-block walls and all the noise that comes with being across the hall from the TA bull pen and sandwiched between the women's restroom and the elevator.
(Legend has it, in fact, that this space appeared on the original blueprint as an elevator shaft, and that any day the ever-tight-mouthed Physical Facilities People would announce the construction of three--or five or eight!--more floors above the fourth, exceding 423 to the new elevator required to carry the army of grateful faculty members to their expansive quarters nearer to God.)

Not that I was about to complain. Indeed, I was thrilled to have an office at all; the graduate students across the hall were piled seven or eight deep in a vast sea of carrels that went on and on, as far as the eye could see. But at least they had windows. I, on the other hand, was landlocked. And nothing at all would stick to those cinder blocks. Within 24 hours of my discovery of some new and improved version of the classic double-back tape, all my posters, photos, calendars, and telephone lists would be on the floor, wrinkled
and torn, with their backs
half-stuck to their fronts.

But there was The Door. There was that huge,wooden
door! It was so deliciously smooth and sturdy, and so
submissive to the will of every sticky substance, that soon even the poorest-quality masking tape was doing time on the back of some curiosity that had found its way to the shrine at 423 Cunz Hall. Mafalda comics, jokes from home, and bumper stickers from around the world were among the first items to be immortalized on the monument, but before long, entire three-dimensional artifacts were vying for prominent frontage on what had turned out to be the fourth floor's most prestigious address--prestigious, I mean, if you're graffiti.

Traffic slowed, undergraduates took up reading, and before we knew it, even the very locations of other campus departments were expressed as distances from The Door. While the core of the collection remained largely intact, it would be complemented by the occasional traveling exhibit or that daring piece of paraphernalia necessary to perk up an otherwise gray week.

This tradition continued through the end of the decade, but in 1991 news arrived that I was to be moved to larger quarters, and a notice was circulated to remind the occupants of all area buildings, quite coincidentally, that nothing could be attached to the doors of offices. The Door was dismantled and has not been seen since.

This web site is an attempt to electronically relive the eighties--or at least to recreate the feelings of the passers-by who stumbled upon the museum at 423 Cunz Hall and perused the paraphernalia while waiting for an instructor or on their way to the bathroom--even as they hoped they wouldn't pee in their pants or disturb the guy on the other side of The Door.

The material on display ranges from the unassuming to the gaudy, from the relatively funny to the downright stupid. It is all no more than what language teachers affectionately refer to as 'realia', brought together by some quirk of fate, the only common denominator being the fact that it can all be scanned (or stuck on a door).

The current collection is dedicated to Elizabeth Saunders, the fourth-floor custodian who turned a blind eye to all that crap on the door of 423 Cunz Hall for seven years. I've always admired Liz for her ability to see beyond the present to much larger issues, and I appreciate her not only bearing with me but going out of her way to make the fourth floor of Cunz Hall such a pleasant place to work.