Oh, the memories! This weekend, I had the chance the roam the halls of the
old Pampa Middle School, where I attended sixth through eighth grades. The
school will soon be torn down to make way for a new housing development. The
developers had a huge garage sale there on Saturday to sell off the
old equipment and furniture that was abandoned when the school closed three
years ago.
The building was packed wall-to-wall with bargain-hunters and onlookers.
Like me, a lot of the people went there to relive old memories.
Besides desks and lockers, which seemed to be the most popular items at the
sale, there was a lot of memorabilia about the school. The library had pictures
and yearbooks and even some old trophies. I can't imagine why they were left
behind, but they were all up for grabs. There was a bulletin board with some of
the items found inside the lockers — hall passes and football ribbons and, yes,
old love notes! (Remember passing notes in class?) It brought back a lot of
fond memories.
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| My dad made this mosaic of the school mascot in the 1980s. |
Dad taught at that school. He was the seventh-grade art teacher there for
more than 20 years. In one of the hallways near the auditorium, there's a tile
mosaic that Dad made back in the '80s. I remember he spent hours arranging the
hundreds of little tiles to form the school mascot, "The Patriot." The mosaic
is still mostly in tact, although a few of the tiles are missing and the edges
are chipped.
I don't know what will happen to Dad's mosaic now. Like everything else,
it probably will be torn out and hauled away when the new housing project is
built. Some people call that progress. But I think it's a little sad. It's
the end of an era, and I'm going to miss old Pampa Middle School. I'm glad I
got to go back for one last look at the place. Soon, all we'll have left are
the memories!
I used to teach there--right across the hall from your dad. He was a good friend and gave great advice to a young teacher. I remember standing in the hall between classes. Once I broke up a fight by stepping between two students who were each much bigger than I was. (They told me never to do that again, but I just didn't think about it). I remember so many students...six hours a day. It was a good job, and it was there I learned to love teaching.
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