Friday, December 01, 2006

Burning Bridges

There's always a joke that kids will celebrate when school burns. That's not the reality. The school where my mother taught most of her career has been destroyed by arson. Age has wiped away most of her memory, but I can't help feeling a little sad that hallways where her footsteps echoed for many years are gone.

I never attended there, but we lived within walking distance when I was a kid. We used to stroll there in the late afternoons. I once found a discarded Hardy Boys novel on the campus and I think I still have it.

I went to a lot of functions with her also. She took me to a play called The Guy From Venus that was put on by the drama department in the '60s. Later I would see the guy who played the alien drive past our house on his way to classes every morning, and it was like seeing a celebrity.

Most of her time was spent in a free-standing home economics building, but faculty meetings and other matters took her to the main building frequently.

One more marker that time marches on.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Arson is a truly horrible crime. A combination of rape and murder but with inanimate objects.

Anonymous said...

Firesetters. When I worked in residential programs we would take in all sorts of troubled kids, but whenever we saw "firesetter" in a file, we all dug in our heels and approached with kid gloves. Firesetters were among the most disturbed of the group..they were usually animal mutilators and violent toward smaller kids.

Anonymous said...

It certainly does march on, especially as we watch our parents age and remember our childhoods. Thanks for sharing this, Sidney.

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