50 years…

50 years ago I graduated from here…

The sign wasn’t electronic, and where the flags are was the parking lot… And the arch led to the football field… Now that’s the ‘practice/PE’ field and there is a new 10,000 seat stadium a block away.

But some things haven’t change… The odor of despair and sweat in the gym… LOL Even the scoreboards are the same ones we had!!!

The rest of the school, not so much… Modernized isn’t the half of it!!! The school was originally built in 53, two wings, plus the gym. The main entry is now a ‘collaborative‘ space, the trophy case is gone, and that entire wing of the building is GONE! The office is now in the old library, and there are new ‘facilities’ all over the place. And to top it off, there are apparently THREE food lines, pizza, burgers & made to order sandwiches, and the ‘regular’ food line. And lunch is free!

The truly sad part is that this mosaic, which used to be just inside the main entry, is now outside and has, to put it politely, gone to s**t… Sigh…

We’re talking about getting a fund together to save it, clean it up, and have it properly sealed. Kids today have NO sense of history… Dammit…

 

Comments

50 years… — 17 Comments

  1. Fifty years. Wow. That’s amazing, and I’m struggling to grasp the concept of your graduating fifty years ago, and what it must have been like to ride the dinosaur bus to school.

    I suppose it will be clearer next year when it applies to me.

  2. Kids today have NO sense of history…..

    These things are not done by kids but by pudgy beancounters in their fifties for whom the only values are market values.
    .

  3. I like to say that 30 was the best thirty years of my life. You’re an old fart just like me.

    😉

  4. Hey Old NFO;

    I despair when I occasionally drive my my High school, the demographic shift wasn’t kind to my Alma mater. Kids today ain’t taught because they don’t want the past to be acknowledged except to beat someone over the head with it.

  5. Gotta agree with Bob on that. My HS has suffered the same fate, giving in to the PC crowd. Who were once the Rebels with Dixie as our fight song, are now the Patriots. We went to our 40 year reunion back in 2000. It was fun to introduce my wife to my HS girl friend. But you know, there sure were a lot of old people there.

  6. John- ;-P

    Stencil- Good point.

    BP- LOL, yep we’re NOT 18 or 21 or 41 anymore… sigh

    Bob/Flugel- Things have definitely changed… And not for the better…

  7. What do I remember about my high school? Let’s see, they situated the buildings so the windows were north/south, on a place that got constant east/west sea/not sea breezes, but rarely north/south breezes, in east central Florida, one block from the actual beach, with pitiful a/c units, so you’d melt or freeze depending on the weather, or go to the old science wing which was a collection of 8 rooms huddled around a central courtyard, again with not enough AC and because central courtyard, no airflow even if you opened the windows, or you went to the new science wing where, because of modern a/c, you froze to death due to being covered in sweat from being in the previous buildings or you froze to death because the pitiful heaters were 16′ above you (science, which teaches you heat rises, cold falls, so install the ac ducts on the floor and the heat ducts on the ceiling….)

    All while dodging every jerk, idiot, spaz and geek, who’d beat me just because, or even worse, being the crying shoulder for all the hot chicks, who treated me like their friend, not their boyfriend, while telling me about how pitiful their boyfriends were in the boyfriend department.

    Parts of me were blue not because of the excessive a/c in the new science wing, if you know what I mean… While other parts were constantly black and blue if you know what I mean…

    Yeah, high school.

    Maybe if I had taken shop and built my own killdozer, but by that time all the safety nazis had already started taking the fun out of shop classes, plus aforementioned me-beaters tended to be extra-heavily congregated in shop…

    Other than that, boy was I glad to never see high school again. And I take great joy in throwing away the pieces of paper that seem to find me, much like offers to talk about my car’s extended warranty or missives from a government employee insurance company, no matter where I hide.

    Glad you had an interesting time. It is a shame when good buildings and good things are destroyed by progress. At my high school, they destroyed one of the better buildings in order to build a ‘magnet arts Theater complex’ while maintaining some of the worse buildings. Because… Progress.

  8. So many similarities-
    My old H.S. had a hog farm outside the South windows. We got our sex ed from pigs.
    Now that school has an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a 2000 seat auditorium/theater, and two gymnasiums- one for practice and one for Friday nights.
    We’re rich.
    And money may not ruin everything, but it certainly changes it.

  9. It’ll be 20 years since graduation for me here in a few… Not once have I ever received anything for a reunion or any other function. Not that I’d be particularly inclined to attend; my current career would put me at loggerheads with a number of my fellow alumni.
    As for old buildings and such, my old high school isn’t even in the same location. A few years after I left, they built a new facility and up and moved. The old place is still there, but it’s now a middle school.
    I don’t miss it, though. High school was never “the best part of my life,” and nostalgia wisely excludes it from any fond memories.

    • They start really harping at the 25 year mark comes around. Just get a shredder. My yard used to have the best mulch thanks to all the junk mail I shredded and undermulched with. (The plastic windows helped hold in the water…)

  10. I haven’t been back to my HS since I graduated many, Many, MANY years ago, and have not been to any reunions. Could have, once, but I’m a loner, and had no interest.

  11. The 50th for my high-school class was this fall.

    I didn’t go…..no interest in going back to my home town to see how decrepit it’s become…..and too many of my classmates are screaming liberals now.

  12. All- Thanks for the comments. HS was NOT good for everyone. Beans, at least you HAD A/C!!! Sigh…

    Posted from my iPhone.

    • Barely AC, in some buildings. That one building with a common courtyard? No AC at all. The physics room was officially measured at 100 degrees one early September day. And with the courtyard, no cross-ventilation. Go from the physics room to the overly chilly new Chemistry room, from 100 to 65 in 5 minutes.

      No, me complaining, not at all…

  13. I missed my 50th earlier this year. A 3000 mile (each way) trip just wasn’t really in the cards for my broken down old carcass. The more I thought about it, there really weren’t too many of the kids (then) from my class I was willing to make that trek to see, although it would have been ‘interesting’ (and maybe entertaining as well) to see what adults the ‘cool’ kids didn’t turn into.

  14. Gomez- Heard that… And some of ours were ‘interesting’… 😀

    LSP- I think we will.