(no subject)
Back in high school, Kim and I used to walk around Tech a few times a week. It was our escape from what we saw as a monotonous existence--attending high school in a rural farming village in the southern part of the county never seemed very exciting. Usually she drove, coming down Cornbread Road to pick me up in her Mazda 626, the car that seemed to get about a thousand miles to the gallon. We rarely ever even discussed a plan as to where we were going; it was generally known we'd be heading to Blacksburg. Every now and then we strayed from this routine and end up in Christiansburg (although we always ended up going through there to get to VT, since these were the pre-bypass days), Roanoke, or even once in Montvale, but those occasions were rare.
Sometimes we'd start out in downtown Blacksburg, having parked in the lot by Squires where I once got a ticket, or on the Drill Field. We'd walk over to Crossroads, and later to Mike's Music. Very very occasionally we would make it within the 15-minute weekly window that the Record Exchange was open. A lot of the times, it was just a straight up Tech walk. Sometimes Chris came along (and while I loved hanging out with each of them individually, they ganged up on me together and I secretly (or maybe not-so-secretly) resented that), and sometimes Laura did, but usually it was just Kim and I. We'd throw around a Nerf football (one time resulting in a bounce that caused quite a bit of pain), or try and slide around on the sand volleyball courts when they were iced over in the winter. One night we were trying to do cartwheels or some shit like that and I fell on my neck. Mostly we just walked, and talked. Over years of doing this, the scenery became familiar...the pebbled sidewalks, concrete steps with dark brown-painted handrails, yellow light eminating from the lightposts. We learned our way around the different parts of campus, walking for hours, crossing the streets and crossing through the gothic arches among the probably millions of "Hokie stones" used to construct the bulk of the campus buildings. We walked the duck pond, Squires and the Alumni Mall, the residentials quads, the sports complex, the "ugly part of campus," and our favorite by far, the Drill Field.
The Drill Field is the heart of campus. A huge grassy field, oval in shape, and huge. Couldn't tell you the distance, but it probably takes a good 8 - 10 minutes to walk across it longways. During the academic year, tons of students walks across it, moving from the primarily (although not exclusively) residential section on the south side (including the Egglestons, Harper, Pritchard, Payne, the AJs, etc.) of the field to the academic buildings on the north (Davidson, McBryde, Pamplin, all the ugly concrete buildings, and Norris, etc.). There are some paved sidewalks, and some walking lanes where student after student has plotted his own course. At the midpoint of one of the long sides lies Burruss Hall, a stately castle-like building housing a bell tower. This is the building on all the brochures, and was one of the first buildings I was exposed to at Virginia Tech, having gone there in middle school to see a concert with the band. I've stopped to look at the building hundreds of times, starting that first night, and over and over again through years of memory making with Kim, with others, at conferences, being a UB tutor-counselor and living on campus the summer after my freshman year of college, all the way right up to this very evening. It always has looked like a castle to me. Across the drill field from there lies the War Memorial Gym, also statuesque, but nothing like Burruss. Lying on the perpendicular axis of the Drill Field, on the town side, was the War Memorial and the Chapel. The chapel is at the level of the drill field, and on the roof (at road level) are 8 pillars, memorializing Tech alumni felled during the wars of our nation. And way, way across from the War Memorial, all the way across the drill field, was the duck pond...perhaps one of the most secluded part of campus.
Kim and I would spend literally hours walking around campus, talking about everything. I wouldn't be surprised if we hit every sidewalk on campus at some point or another. That was our place in the world, where we connected with the greater rhythms of humanity. Students came and students went. There was no telling where the people we saw were from, or where the were going or who they would become. But we all shared the experience of being at VT, in whatever role it might have been. Today, when I meet someone who went to Tech, I imagine that person in some of these familiar places, maybe walking through the arch connecting Main Eggleston and West Eggleston, or walking across the Drill Field on a sunny day. Maybe having lunch in Dietrick, or camping out for tickets over by the Cassell Colosseum box office.
Nowadays, I can't imagine ever having enough things to say to fill up all that time we spent walking. Life seemed so much more interesting in our sophomore, junior, and senior years of high school, which seems so odd considering what we really had was our youth in Virginia. All the things I've gotten to see since then in traveling and living in the city, and the things Kim has done with the rescue squad and such, and I'd put money down that any conversation we could have today wouldn't be half as interesting as what we talked about when we were 16 years old.
I wish I could remember what it was we talked about for those years of walks. Today Kim and I have certainly drifted, not through any falling out or misunderstanding, but simply through the everyday changes that happen as people get older and grow up and move on with their lives. She still owns a little piece of my heart, rooted in our shared memories, even if she doesn't know it. Thinking back, I wonder what we would've said to one another if we could've glimpsed the future during one of our walks. If we had come through the Eggleston arch looked across the Drill Field only to see dozens of candles lit. Seen a semicircle of 33 stones, flowers, flags, and handwritten notes accompanying each stone, a line of people walking around them. Seen the flags flying at half-mast, the yellow police tape off to the right of Burruss, lining the perimeter of Norris Hall with its shot-out windows. What would we have done had we heard the sniffles and the quiet prayers?
Would we have cried or hugged, or stopped and sat down? Talked through it? Turned around and walked away and said, "Thank you world, I'll wait and deal with this another day?" Would we kept coming back every few days, or would it have tainted our tradition with a tragedy we weren't ready to deal with? Would we been able to make sense of it? Any better than we are now?
Sometimes we'd start out in downtown Blacksburg, having parked in the lot by Squires where I once got a ticket, or on the Drill Field. We'd walk over to Crossroads, and later to Mike's Music. Very very occasionally we would make it within the 15-minute weekly window that the Record Exchange was open. A lot of the times, it was just a straight up Tech walk. Sometimes Chris came along (and while I loved hanging out with each of them individually, they ganged up on me together and I secretly (or maybe not-so-secretly) resented that), and sometimes Laura did, but usually it was just Kim and I. We'd throw around a Nerf football (one time resulting in a bounce that caused quite a bit of pain), or try and slide around on the sand volleyball courts when they were iced over in the winter. One night we were trying to do cartwheels or some shit like that and I fell on my neck. Mostly we just walked, and talked. Over years of doing this, the scenery became familiar...the pebbled sidewalks, concrete steps with dark brown-painted handrails, yellow light eminating from the lightposts. We learned our way around the different parts of campus, walking for hours, crossing the streets and crossing through the gothic arches among the probably millions of "Hokie stones" used to construct the bulk of the campus buildings. We walked the duck pond, Squires and the Alumni Mall, the residentials quads, the sports complex, the "ugly part of campus," and our favorite by far, the Drill Field.
The Drill Field is the heart of campus. A huge grassy field, oval in shape, and huge. Couldn't tell you the distance, but it probably takes a good 8 - 10 minutes to walk across it longways. During the academic year, tons of students walks across it, moving from the primarily (although not exclusively) residential section on the south side (including the Egglestons, Harper, Pritchard, Payne, the AJs, etc.) of the field to the academic buildings on the north (Davidson, McBryde, Pamplin, all the ugly concrete buildings, and Norris, etc.). There are some paved sidewalks, and some walking lanes where student after student has plotted his own course. At the midpoint of one of the long sides lies Burruss Hall, a stately castle-like building housing a bell tower. This is the building on all the brochures, and was one of the first buildings I was exposed to at Virginia Tech, having gone there in middle school to see a concert with the band. I've stopped to look at the building hundreds of times, starting that first night, and over and over again through years of memory making with Kim, with others, at conferences, being a UB tutor-counselor and living on campus the summer after my freshman year of college, all the way right up to this very evening. It always has looked like a castle to me. Across the drill field from there lies the War Memorial Gym, also statuesque, but nothing like Burruss. Lying on the perpendicular axis of the Drill Field, on the town side, was the War Memorial and the Chapel. The chapel is at the level of the drill field, and on the roof (at road level) are 8 pillars, memorializing Tech alumni felled during the wars of our nation. And way, way across from the War Memorial, all the way across the drill field, was the duck pond...perhaps one of the most secluded part of campus.
Kim and I would spend literally hours walking around campus, talking about everything. I wouldn't be surprised if we hit every sidewalk on campus at some point or another. That was our place in the world, where we connected with the greater rhythms of humanity. Students came and students went. There was no telling where the people we saw were from, or where the were going or who they would become. But we all shared the experience of being at VT, in whatever role it might have been. Today, when I meet someone who went to Tech, I imagine that person in some of these familiar places, maybe walking through the arch connecting Main Eggleston and West Eggleston, or walking across the Drill Field on a sunny day. Maybe having lunch in Dietrick, or camping out for tickets over by the Cassell Colosseum box office.
Nowadays, I can't imagine ever having enough things to say to fill up all that time we spent walking. Life seemed so much more interesting in our sophomore, junior, and senior years of high school, which seems so odd considering what we really had was our youth in Virginia. All the things I've gotten to see since then in traveling and living in the city, and the things Kim has done with the rescue squad and such, and I'd put money down that any conversation we could have today wouldn't be half as interesting as what we talked about when we were 16 years old.
I wish I could remember what it was we talked about for those years of walks. Today Kim and I have certainly drifted, not through any falling out or misunderstanding, but simply through the everyday changes that happen as people get older and grow up and move on with their lives. She still owns a little piece of my heart, rooted in our shared memories, even if she doesn't know it. Thinking back, I wonder what we would've said to one another if we could've glimpsed the future during one of our walks. If we had come through the Eggleston arch looked across the Drill Field only to see dozens of candles lit. Seen a semicircle of 33 stones, flowers, flags, and handwritten notes accompanying each stone, a line of people walking around them. Seen the flags flying at half-mast, the yellow police tape off to the right of Burruss, lining the perimeter of Norris Hall with its shot-out windows. What would we have done had we heard the sniffles and the quiet prayers?
Would we have cried or hugged, or stopped and sat down? Talked through it? Turned around and walked away and said, "Thank you world, I'll wait and deal with this another day?" Would we kept coming back every few days, or would it have tainted our tradition with a tragedy we weren't ready to deal with? Would we been able to make sense of it? Any better than we are now?