It has been twenty-five years since I’ve wandered around my college haunts. It was fun giving my family the tour. Things have changed.
You can no longer drive through the arch of my then modern, new high school; it is seedy now and there is a newer one now across town. My “West Engin” building, is now the anthropology department, with engineering relegated a bus ride away on the north campus. The building where my dad had his lab all those years has been torn down. Borders, once a small, wonderful, single store independent bookstore on State Street during my childhood, now is selling off shelves and furniture from its world headquarters after growing too big for its britches in all these intervening years. The UGLI (Undergraduate Library) has been rebuilt so it is no longer ugly; and you now need a card pass to get into the Graduate Reading Room… Not once did I hear the carillon tower chime.
But the colors are still yellow and blue, football is still mania (today was the first unfinished game ever in Michigan history, due to lightening threatening a 100,000 fans on metal bleachers), and the diag feels the same. Nichols arcade is still there with the Caravan shop where I bought the moon and star ring that I’ve worn since 10th grade. Also Middle Earth and the Brown Jug are only slightly different. And how I loved 507 Church Street and Randall Physics Lab, both were high points of my stay in this town. We also visited Stockwell dorm where in a first floor corner room I found God..