Think back over the living you’ve done. Most of us spend most of our time in a relatively small number of buildings and situations. I was considering the other day how few of those experiences of mine have survived intact.
My homes have done well. Homes generally will. I’m currently living in my twelfth discrete residence, and I know that ten of the previous eleven survive. I’m not sure on the Gaslight Apartments in Oxford. I’ll have to ask my dad where they were to see if they soldier on under a different name.
Schools are a different story. Score on Church of the Good Shepherd Kindergarten! Still there, in the same building, where I attended 39 years ago.
That’s pretty much it, though. The lower grades of Donoho were the Episcopal Day School at Grace Episcopal Church when I attended. All of the grades are on the same site now. The building in which I attended Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic School is now an Islamic center. Oxford High School is still on the same site, but with many new and repurposed buildings. The building in which I attended Bob Jones High School is now Discovery Middle School. The University of Alabama in Huntsville is still there, though literally my entire department’s faculty left the year after I graduated, so there’s not anything for me to visit.
As for work, the yogurt shop I assistant managed lasted exactly as long as my tenure. I opened and closed it, though the shopping center is still there. I got a massage in it two months ago. Madison Books & Computers is gone. The paper mill where I did my college internship is in the process of closing. Jerry Damson Acura is still going strong, though a good eight miles or so from where I worked. Intergraph perseveres, though almost everything I worked on there has been sold off. They’re also constructing a single building to move all Huntsville employees into, which is quite different from the sprawling campus at which I worked. CSC is another rare hit—the Athens office remains open and does pretty much the same thing it was doing when I left 14 years ago. The office where I worked on Solid Edge is still there, though German-owned now.
Know where is more intact than anywhere else?
Taco Bell. Same site, same building, same everything as when I worked there 27 years ago. Once in a while I’ve told the person running the drive-through that I used to have the exact same job, standing right where s/he stands. (S/he is never very impressed.)
How many of your previous situations are still there, intact, for someone to experience?
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Haven’t been back to my hometown since my brother’s funeral, but according to Google, my first and second childhood homes are still there. Both had nearby vacant lots when I was growing up; now both have houses there. First home added a carport and a tacky-looking fence, second home got rid of all of Mom’s roses and the huge Bradford pear tree. 🙁
My college apartment is still there; we knew Jeff’s had been condemned and bulldozed. That was interesting, because for 20 years, the sci-fi club lived in that same apartment so that it never completely turned over. Ended up being a rent-control situation.
Our first home is still there, and same as my childhood homes, the unused land across the street is now occupied by houses. Trees are taller, the porch railing has been painted green, otherwise everything looks the same.
All the public schools I attended are still there, while I think the Montessori school I attended in 1st grade is for sale. I have no idea where the kindergarten was, though that led me to search on my teachers. Mrs. Boone passed away last year, and I would guess Mrs. Gossett has gone on to her eternal reward as well.
Pretty sure the Virginia Tech library is still there. That was my only job other than the one I have now and babysitting.