In With The New Out With The Old

My high school son started 2013 in a brand new Catholic high school. Brand spanking new. They made the move over Christmas break. New lockers, new desks, new bells, new cafeteria. His four older siblings graduated from the old building, the decrepit, inner city, no parking, bleachers caving in school. The school would get so hot and the Depression era pull down shades would be permanently stuck in one position so the direct sun just added to the misery...we got a taste of this at one back to school night when at 7pm the parents sat in the desks dripping in sweat just beginning to appreciate what it must be like at 1 pm in direct sunlight and no wonder the kids come home from school tired! The building was old and literally falling apart. Kids were afraid to touch anything because it might fall off. But the moulding was thick and beautiful. The archways were curved. The kids had to drive 6 in a packed car to the fields for sports practice, there were no home field hockey, soccer, tennis, track, baseball. The only home field was the football field, affectionately referred to as the rock pile, for accurate reasons. The kids had to figure out so many things themselves! Sometimes a newly licensed 16 year old would drive 6 other kids in a car with 4 seat belts to sports practice, because there was no transportation to these far away practice fields. And then those same kids go on to college and tell their friends the stories of high school and no one believes it, because those college kids had field houses in their high schools, to which my kids would ask, what is a field house? Money could not duplicate that "charm" or buy those experiences. 4 of my kids grew up in those hall ways and we as parents kind of grew with them. The rest of the family grew listening to the stories that have now become legends. Now there is a new school, with glass windows that are not taped or replaced with cardboard, overlooking fields instead of concrete city pavements, and fields with turf instead of rocks. Everything works and is clean and shiny. Hopefully, I will have 4 kids grow up in this building and look back with happy memories.  Guess we all know a building is just a structure, it's what's inside that counts.