“A school is a building which has four walls with tomorrow inside.”
The clouds are still here though the rain has gone. Partly cloudy is the forecast with a high of 66°. I’ll be home today. I have a few odd tasks on my to do list. I’m going to reline the kitchen silverware drawer with flowered vinyl paper. What is there now celebrated its 45th anniversary last year. I figured it’s time to say good-bye. I want to rearrange the stuff in the drawers of the small hall chest. After that, I might do laundry but that may be a stretch. I still have clean clothes.
I have an appointment with my surgeon on the 29th at the ungodly hour of eight am. When I spoke to his secretary, she had messages. The pins need to stay in longer. He is hoping I’m using my finger and bending it more, but I find when I use my finger it hurts, sort of a dull ache and an occasional zap of bad pain, but I’ll just have to grit my teeth and bear it.
Earlier, the dogs were quiet and not with me. I got suspicious. When I got to the living room, they ran down the stairs. Nala’s tail was wagging, a bad sign. She does that when she has been up to no good. It is her guilt personified. I looked up the stairs and saw the gate was still up so she had been in my room. I decided not to check right now. It is a bit scary.
I went to St. Patrick’s grammar school from first grade to eighth grade. I was in the old school through the fourth grade. In the fifth grade we traveled to a different school in the next town over because there were so many of us we didn’t fit in our school any more. That’s when they built a new school. We then had two schools we always called the new and the old. I have bits of memories of the old school. It had beautiful wooded stairs and you could see from the bottom to the top of the stairs, to the top floor. The bathrooms were in the cellar. The girls’ room had exposed pipes and a funny smell, not gross but strange, maybe an odd clean cleaning fluid. There were wooden toilet doors. My first grade classroom had a cloak room with not enough hooks. My fourth grade class was up the stairs. I remember when the tall windows behind my desk were open I could hear guys playing basketball in the schoolyard.
In the second half of the fifth grade we moved into the new school. I was on the bottom floor next to the windows overlooking the school yard. Everything, as befitting a new school, was shiny and bright, but it lacked a quirkiness, a personality. I liked the new school, but I missed the old school, even the overhead pipes and the smell of the girls’ bathroom in the cellar.
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keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
October 18, 2022 at 2:00 pm
You talked about this in the past and it inspired this poem… Godspeed your damaged digit gentle muse…
Going Home
I was just passing through my childhood hometown
And noticed the old school was razed to the ground.
The path I had trod from my home to its doors
Was paved over
And painted
And not there anymore.
Nostalgic, I followed the now missing path
In hopes it would take me someplace in my past
A place where the sky rang with laughter and shouts
And we chased one another in mystical bouts
Bouts of wonder and fancy, of Kings and their pawns
But the path to that moment was paved over and gone
And there in its place were realities pains
The sum of existence in losses and gains
And the anguish rose up in my throat in a rush
As my sum was the balance of dreams that were crushed
I stood on that path now paved over and gone
And my tears stained the paint as I wrote down this poem
“We may not go back and start over
No matter how deeply we mourn
For the world we would find on our journey’s return
Would not be the one whence we’re borne.”
Ochoa
October 18, 2022 at 6:45 pm
Beto,
Before I even read the poem I was taken with your introduction. It touched my heart.
What a perfect title!
When I go to my childhood hometown, I follow that path from school to home. The streets are there, but the places I remember are gone, “And not there anymore.” Happily for me, though, the schools are the same, both old and new, so I am spared the pain of that loss, but I miss the houses I passed, the train tracks and the tree lined sidewalk. I miss what used to be.
Thank you for this.
October 18, 2022 at 4:40 pm
Hi Kat,
Well autumn finally showed up in North Texas. The high today is 64° and this morning was a chilly 45°. I even brought my light jacket to work. Tomorrow morning the low is predicted to be a frigid 40°. 🙂
My old elementary school was the victim of the tornado that swept across north Dallas almost three years ago. Our condo was missed by about 800 ft. and we sustained one broken window. My old junior high was also hit and it was completely demolished and is being rebuilt as an elementary school. The Elementary school is being rebuilt and converted to some kind of use by the school district. The front part of the building was in the Spanish adobe style with red clay tiles on the roof. It was built sometime in the 1930s. I think and hope that they are going preserve the facade on the new building. I never ever want to get that close to a tornado again.
October 18, 2022 at 6:53 pm
Hi Bob,
Your morning was colder than mine. I was surprised when I got the paper by how warm it was. It will be in the 60’s for the rest of the week. Tis is fall in New England.
I remember you talking about the destruction caused by that tornado and how lucky you were. That your junior high was demolished is horrific. It is sad to lose the places of our memories. I agree about saving the front. We aways need to place an importance on preserving as best we can our iconic buildings.