LIBARY (sic) DAZE : My circumstances have led me to the library over the last 3 weeks. The first fortnight, a group project moving a school library from the 1st floor to the 2nd.
      As with all group projects, sub groups form to complete the task. My sub group of 3, well we could care less if we ever have another encounter with Mr. Dewey & his decimal system bit we do live in fear that if a major crime is committed in what we termed the “libary”, we’ll be prime suspects as our fingerprints are on every, & I mean every, bookcase & at least 80% of the bound pages resting on the bookcase shelves.
       It wasn’t fun & games all the time as it got real for me when I was reshelving the F/Chr section. In that section were the works of a favorite author of my elementary years, Matt Christopher & his sporting tales. I also ran into my elementary/Jr. High librarian, Mrs. Hoover.
        She was a good one. Once, when the latest Christopher offering came in, she set it aside so I could be the first to read it. She also pressed me & I’m sure others, to expand what we read. Not that we would like it, fiction is still not my favorite genre, but we would expand our vocabulary & our mind. The first push she gave me was Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn”. I still view a library as incomplete without a copy, simply because of Mrs. Hoover.
       This past week, Mrs. Hoover & others came to mind as I got numerous messages that the place where I met Mrs. Hoover & the others was circled by demolition fencing & heavy equipment. I visited post dinner on Friday for a last look & took some photos, one of the windows of the old “libary” & another of the gaping hole that used to be a window by where I sat in the 6th grade.
       One last round of applause for people named Moser, Careathers, Farrow, Pitts, Hoover & Chapman & for others that might have mattered more to others, among them Haskins, Welch, Hearn & Winston in the Junior High & McDaniel, Garland, Byassee, Honeycutt, Pennebaker, Wolfe, Lawrence, Blachard, & Dryman in the elementary, music & administration. And a thank you for people from the Class of ‘77 that I still share lunch with, people who live Thomas Jefferson’s “I have never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy for separating from a friend”.
        My affection for those 3 stories of bricks & mortar is well documented. I know others who don’t have an opinion, some who are glad to see it go. As I’ve gotten older I’ve become less worried about what others think & have taken an attitude from the 1960s, “whatever turns you on”. I suppose I went to give my version of last rites. To say one more thank you to a place that as long days & short years have rolled on, helped me realize that often the things most sacred are found in the things most ordinary.
        One more thank you for the place that turned the theoretical I learned on Sunday morning a scant ¼ mile up the road into the tangible during the week. A final thank you for the steps inside & outside the building that have inspired a writing journey that has reached people in 22 foreign countries willing to admit to reading. A thank you for the reset I’ve received every Sunday the last 12 years on my way to the church a ¼  mile up the road as I looked at the windows of the old gymnasium, my old 6th grade classroom, the field where now sits a soccer pitch. A reset required when life knocked me down but because of a church & a school a ¼ mile apart let me part with the apostrophe T portion of “I can’t “.
        Finally, a thank you for all the people, the undersized gym & its locker room, & the cafeteria that gave me more humanity as I run the human race. That gave me a well to draw from when life’s inevitable challenges arose & allowed me to view defeat as only optional.
       This summer & the approaching school year, I have done & will do the familiar, strolling across an undersized gym floor to an office, & athletically representing the smallest school in the conference. Just like I did for a building that’s been around since just after Dewey thought he beat Truman. A building that served its original incarnation of blue & white (& orange to Mrs. Hearn’s eternal dismay) Trojans until the late 1980s before a five year hiatus with over 20 years of service to some green & white clad Eagles. Seventy six years of well given service. As I prepare to instruct some Saints this year, I’m still trying to figure out if I’m carrying the Trojans or they’re carrying me…

       Following are two of the ten, give or take, columns I have written about that old schoolhouse. I present them as I wrote them, one lengthy paragraph much to disgust of Mrs. Pitts if God let’s her look down from Heaven on the “Peanut Gallery”.
        The first, “Souvenirs” was written in late March of 2022 after what turned out to be my last visit. The other, from December of 2022, when construction delays on a new school kept the doors open one more semester, offering one last day for student footprints to make their mark on the halls & steps.


SOUVENIRS: On Labor Day evening 1971, with Monday Night Baseball the backing soundtrack, I sat in my dad’s lap in the house numbered 1432 & cried. Cried because the next day, I would enter 4th grade at a new school with a 6579 address. I left Elbert Long School, 6579 East Brainerd Road as a graduate in June 1977. I didn’t cry then because I was a 14 year old with the world to conquer. Yesterday, with some old friends, I entered & exited those seafoam green, flat & bull nose tiled hallways, hallways too talkative girls stood in & too talkative boys in Mr. Spencer’s class stood with noses against the hallway tiles, dismissed from class with the phrase “the hall called”, fairly certain it would be the final time. I didn’t enter with an eye for yesterday, a “we did it better” stance like old men leaning on a fence & seeing only the past on a fall Friday night, or intend to receive or stamp a letter from the past. I went to visit a gift shop. A place where invested time, scholarship, & friendship were shelved as momentos, souvenirs given by others on the way to their obituary, souvenirs collected by me on the way to mine. A tour that I ran into spots where I avoided the raindrops that puddled into “woulda’s, coulda’s, & shoulda’s”, & places where I danced in the rain with the intention of getting wet & I stomped in the puddles of “glad I did”. The auditorium on one end of the main floor, its wooden theater seats long gone. The place I entered & sat nervously at stage right waiting for the first 4th grade day. The place I entered in later years, proudly wearing my game day jersey or a wool letterman sweater when it was way too hot in September & way too cold in January, taking my seat at stage left. The place where I learned in orchestra that scales were the same foundation in music as footwork was to sports & I became attracted to jazz. The library where Mrs. Hoover encouraged my love of books, the words, the feel, the sound of a cracking spine & turning pages. The office where Mrs. Lawrence served Mr. Blanchard & Mr. Dryman as secretary. Next door the 4×8 room that served as a bookstore for needed erasers, pencils, notebooks, & P.E. uniforms. Up the steps to the top floor, & my 4th grade classroom. Where my rite of passage was being the new guy, ignoring my name being purposely mispronounced, ignoring the fact I was the last guy picked for football at recess, hanging in until on a spot where a soccer pitch now sits, I intercepted 2 passes during one recess & the next day wasn’t the last, mispronounced pick that day or any other. Across the hall to 5th grade where 2 boys picked up a shotgun rider in each other for the rest of our time at Elbert Long School & beyond*. I went back across the hall from where I came, shotgun rider in tow, for 6th grade. My friend & I joined our athletic lives here, youth league football & baseball in 6th grade & through open projecting windows that still protect from the weather, we heard cheerleaders clapping hands & bopping feet & the thump of a big bass drum as a pep rally roared for his brother & the Trojans. For the next 3 years as Trojans, the claps, the bopping, the drum beat was for us. Every class, every team, except 8th grade homeroom when the “M”s left the N-Zs & joined the A-Ls & 9th grade 1st period when he took art because he could draw & I didn’t because I couldn’t draw a blank. The room where Mrs. Farrow drove & demanded from an overhead projector, allowed a day of paper football before Christmas break, & wheeled in a big black & white TV so we could watch Aaron swat #714 before she dropped down the 3 floor central staircase & joined us for 7th & 8th grade math. At the landing at the central stairs, by the double swinging gym doors, at the spot where every K-9 student walked every day to recess or to lunch, sat Mrs. Pitts English class. It’s her fault for me clogging so many timelines, she told me I could write. The last time I saw her in 1988, she told me I could write, ’cause educators are gonna educate. On the left, back toward the library, sits what used to be Room 207, the room where football pregame took place, nervous blue shirted boys tapping orange helmets or fumbling with a chinstrap. Turning back on the main hallway, toward the big picture window which, like the hallway has grown smaller as the years have grown longer, Mr. Haskins Science room & Mrs. Hearn’s Civics class & in between the Typing room, where I spent 1st period in 9th grade with Miss Winston at 41 words per minute & nabbed my first byline courtesy of the “Trojan Trackdown”.  Across the hall, Coach Moser’s art room. The room I visited frequently for one who wasn’t an artist. Down the steps to the bottom floor, passing the picture window & looking over the baseball field & beyond, to the patch of green that used to be the gridiron. At the bottom of the steps, on the left, Mrs. Farrow’s math room, now without the obligatory overhead projector, a room that in later years proved, as I looked over blueprints or tried to balance an ailing checkbook, that one does use math as a grownup. On the right, Mrs. Welch’s Home Ec room, where for 9 weeks I learned to sew & to cook. Past the lockers, to the foot of the main stair by a library that used to be the woodshop sits the coaches office. I spent a lot of time there to not be a coach. It was the room from where I got my first big boy phone call from Coach Moser, a call informing me that our classmate & teammate Gary had drowned. He was with us during football season in the form of a black cross on the back left of our orange helmets. Under the steps, school janitor Mr. Chapman’s office. His green uniform & red mower gone but not the memory of well cut ball fields & slick gym floors nor the double duty magic sawdust, the sweeping compound that could suck up a poorly digested lunch or dry a rain soaked pitchers mound with equal effect. A quick turn back into the cafeteria. The half moon sink to wash hands became a relic the first time the school closed in 1989. Over to the location where 2 tables of boys shared meals. Boys with hair of brown, afro, & blonde & skin of light brown, white, & mahogany. Dino. Cedric. Bruce. Clay. Tommy C. Stefan. Tommy J. Todd. General. Mike. An empty chair for Gary. Boys Mrs. Farrow was proud of when we came back & beat Notre Dame. Boys that as men I still call friends. Boys that turned the abstract truth of “treat & love your neighbor as yourself” that I learned at the church in view of the school’s front steps into concrete truth. Then up the back staircase to the gym. My often private route to 5th period English class through the gym. At the top, by the girls locker room, the site where bleacher stairs descended to a landing & I received a pep talk from Mr. Chapman that I didn’t apply or fully appreciate until 2013. The double water fountain that refreshed during many basketball practices is now gone. Through the half door & on the end wall on the right, the location of a long gone chalkboard where I spent many Sunday afternoons with Coach Careathers working on the offense & finding out football, & from Coach Mo in basketball & baseball, that sports is a life metaphor. That it really isn’t about X’s & O’s but Jimmy’s & Joe’s. The Jimmy’s & Joe’s in my case bearing the same names as the boys in the lunchroom. In the shadows of the hoop at the gymnasium’s North end, Coach Careathers let me know that the last 2 quarterbacks he huddled with were Conredge Holloway & Ken Stabler & while I couldn’t come close to them in talent, I had better match them in commitment to words & numbers like Slide, I, Veer, 19, 34, or 70. The hoop at the North end was the one Coach Moser stood under & threw tennis balls in the summer to help refine my swing & then still expected me to hit 80 out of 100 free throws after the baseball experience. Then, the wall that fronted the bleachers that I walked in front of on my personal post lunch path. The wall where I nervously approached a cheerleader, a girl I had eyed not only on the sidelines, but in orchestra in the woodwinds over the bell of my trombone, Tracy, during the Homecoming Dance & asked to fill a line on her dance card. The wall where she said yes. Near the foot of the wall, being an observant Baptist, I knew to keep my hands at east & west above the hips & to leave enough room between us for Jesus. I was so nervous, more nervous than I ever was in room 207, that I’m sure I left enough room for Him & a couple of the cats that He strolled the shores of Galilee with. In spite of my awkward start, girls went instantly from mostly “yucky” to as Matthew McConaughey stated, “alright, alright, alright “.  Our basketball bench sat against that wall & I learned that team 
outranks me as I became a former starter turned 6th or 7th man because the team was better that way, because you never give up on your team on or off the floor & on the floor, you never give up the baseline. Out the other half door with a quick glance to where my dad sat every game. Every. Game. The glance became a journey into the bleachers & my seat plopping into his with much more gratitude than I possessed years ago. Back down the steps, a left turn & up an incline of 4 or 5 paces & on the left, the locker room. In its tight confines I learned that jersey color is more important than skin color. A last exit out the double doors & the deluge was forming in my eyes. A last walk of the 45 degree angle from gym to English class, a last view down the hall to the auditorium & picture window, & a final peek up & down the main staircase, a final handspin on the newel post & trip down the 5 treads to the back door & a concrete landing where Bruce & I waited on a post practice pickup by one of our parents. Down the steps where shoes were put on & tied before practice & untied & removed before climbing the steps after practice. Then onto the parking lot, hearing in my head the rhythmic click-clack of football cleats & the crunch that baseball spikes added as a coda to the click-clack as metal met asphalt. Around the drive that leads to the baseball field, a look toward the train tracks as a bush grows where an old wooden bleacher of 2×12s once sat as a sentinel for a football field where five touchdowns with my name on them lived long ago. With the diamond below me, off to the left, the most important triangle, save the Holy Trinity, in my life. The adjacent side formed by Coach Moser’s room on top & Mrs. Farrow’s on the bottom & the opposite side by the cafeteria under the gym, forming the points for the hypotenuse of my days. Down to the diamond & a promise to a friend now halfway around the world. A promise kept at a place where we were much closer, the 90 feet between first & second base. I also fielded an imaginary grounder & completed the 4-3 putout to honor our season as the right side of the All City infield, documented somewhere by an old photo with adhesive tape patina in a scrapbook. I was the pivot man on an imagined 5-4-3 twin killing as my main sidekick was in that yellowed photo as the year’s All City third baseman. I made my way to the batters box & took my stance in sight of a metal A-frame awning that has overlooked the field since 1977. An awning my dad & other boosters used as a concession stand to help pay for athletics. Back up the hill, by the side door & steps & around to the front steps to see classmates for the “it was good to see you”, & it was, before the goodbyes. And it was time to go, the once new, now old, always my school in my rear view mirror, the deluge releasing in my eyes, not because a time & place had vanished but because it had occurred, & my off key rendition of the alma mater in my lungs:

ELS Forever
Her men today
Are eager for battle
Ready for the fray
Every soul is loyal
For her they’ll fight
So cheer for her colors true
The BLUE & WHITE!

*EPILOGUE: Less than a year after graduation, I found myself with Coaches Moser & Careathers even though we had left for other schools. I was in a hospital room with an exploded left leg in traction from a spring football injury. Coach Moser was laying the foundation for state title winning Lady Dynamo basketball & Coach Careathers was coaching a guy who would be enshrined in Canton, Ohio, Reggie White. I’m still moved by their appearance, one they made to encourage me, not one of their players any longer, on a comeback that ultimately failed. The failing meant that the previous November, I walked off a football field for the final time. My new school had traveled to meet my besties new school. After the game we found each other. Familiar faces in unfamiliar uniforms. He in his home white jersey & blue pants, me in a maroon top & gold bottoms, but Butch & Sundance walking off together again, me on the left, him on the right. Under the goal post & across the track & time to part. He, straight to his locker room, me taking a step back, patting the back of his jersey between the 4 & the 7, & heading to my team bus. Every athlete wants to leave the field a hero or be valiant in defeat or as Spartan mothers told their warrior sons on the way to battle, “…return with your shield or on it”. I left neither a conqueror or on my shield. I left with a third, unknown to a Spartan, rather pleasing option. I walked off the final time with my best friend, and that, along with coaches who forever consider you their player, are souvenirs too…

ARRIVING HOME, LEGENDS, AND GOODBYE: Dear 10 of you, The clock on my phone read 2:29AM as I failed at sleeping on a friend’s couch in Pearl, Mississippi Tuesday morning. I nodded off thinking about you, the windows, doors & seafoam green hallway tiles as you serve your last week on a job you began in 1949, left behind for the reason you came to exist. In a few hours, the final student footprints will meet you. I thought about you on the Tuesday drive home, in Wednesday’s rain, in Thursday’s sun. It’s now Friday, a little after 5:00AM, I’m clutching a cup of coffee in my hand & you in my brain. In March, I visited & told stories about the building you give access to. Every legend story has an origin, a vehicle to get the subject from “there to here”, to be “The Sandlot” line come to life, “…heroes get remembered but legends never die…”, to get the subject home. Disney demigod Maui lost his hook, Batman lost his parents, Superman lost a planet, Ray Kinsella had voices & a cornfield & he’s who I most relate to, he didn’t figure it out until the end. Soon, you, the vehicle of my there to here, will be lost to a demolition team like Ray’s corn to a tractor. I wanted to apologize for the oversight, for not figuring it out until the end, & say thank you before you meet your obituary & to give a significance I’m in no hurry to give to mine, to help you never die. Thank you for getting me in & out for recess in elementary school, for letting me tie my 6th grade football shoes on fall evenings & Saturdays in youth league for the Falcons at your landing like the junior high Trojans I longed to be part of, for the countless Trojan baseball & football practices I went up & down you & tied & untied my cleats & spikes, for the tired legs you supported after double line drills at the end of basketball practice, for the post game trips up to the locker room after contests we’d read about winning or losing in the next days paper, for the trips down post practice & performances we’d read about in the mirror in the eyes of the guy combing our hair, for the assist carrying the math homework of Mrs. Farrow & the steps she took on you to our home games, or Mrs. Pitts English assignment or the ideas she gave me to write a short story on the side because she was more committed to my writing than me, I was barely involved. So much so that the first time I heard the bacon & egg breakfast story on commitment was from her, “…the chicken is involved & the pig is committed…”, she informed me, & I’m still not sure if the double entendre was intentional, that I was the chicken in that instance. Or carrying the book Mrs. Hoover knew I’d like & had checked out in my name before I entered her library, for school janitor Mr. Chapman, the angel with a dust mop at another staircase, having to find his broom once again when we waited to bang the mud off our spikes at your base instead of the grass on the other side of the parking lot, for the boost up as I met Coach Careathers on Sunday afternoon to work on Thursday’s game plan as we verified his 3rd rule of leadership, “there’s no substitute for preparation in the 4th quarter” or meeting Coach Moser in the summer to put in the work hitting 80% of my free throws & hitting a baseball, for being there when a not so confident fella went up you before the Homecoming Dance in ’76 & then stepped down like a Rockette at evening’s end as he risked a “No” & got a “Yes” as the cute cheerleader let him fill a line on her dance card, for providing a way to the two story 90° angle of brick & mortar & life lesson learning where cafeteria & gym met Coach Moser’s art room & Mrs. Farrow’s math room, for being my example of the algebra of a crisis as you’re built on the formula of rise over run & every crisis must be met by rising or running & either’s going to hurt with the pain of discipline or the pain of regret & regret has a long shelf life, for letting me & my best friend wait on top of you, sit on you, or lean on your rail as we waited on my dad’s copper Barracuda or his father’s blue rear engine VW to be our end of day Uber, for helping a group of adolescent boys that covered every point on the compass rose of religion & socioeconomic status remain friends as grandfathers, for turning the abstract of treating your neighbor right that I heard at the church a ¼ mile away into the actual I learned inside the doors, & that the color of the jersey is more important than the shade of skin. And for the aid in navigating the truths & lies & in-betweens & detractors in the reckoning of self, like that time I lost my starting point guard job & never got it back, dealing with the fact that some Jericho walls never fall as I trudged on your incline but that day I came off the bench & played the game of my life I came down like a Rockette again knowing that sometimes you bring a slingshot & a stone to fight one with a sword & shield & you may not win but you’re sure gonna lose if you don’t sling the rock, a fact that came in handy in the big boy times when a job was lost, a fire consumed,  or I followed an ambulance carrying my child. The overlooked reality is nothing would have happened without the collective 10 of you, the voices in my corn, the there that got me here. Last Sunday I was privileged to attempt to make Mrs. Pitts proud, to commit & be the pig & write narration for my church’s Christmas program, that same church a ¼ mile away. After the performance, two people told me I’d missed my call. I know they meant it to be complementary & I took it that way, but in my mind I thought, “no, I think I finally found it” & you ten steps, you legends, helped lead me home. Thank you for getting me here,
Mike