April 5, 2010

• Places

  I like to share some of the places that have had a major influence in my life and this past weekend I took a day to go to the town where my first high school was located.  "Was" is a keyword.  The campus is now a minimum security prison.  My church body bought this campus from the Catholic church.  The Catholic school was run by the Jesuits in order to train young men to become priests.  I only remember one famous student attending that school(Campion).  His name is George Wendt, he portrayed Norm on Cheers.  Thankfully he dropped out of the his quest for the priesthood and gave us one of the most lovable television characters of the 80s.  We should also be thankful that he dropped out in a non-lethal form.  Suicides were regular occurrences at that school.  There is a set of train tracks that runs near the dorms so many young men would lay down on the tracks.  Fastforward to 1994.  I began my freshmen year of high school at Martin Luther Preparatory School in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.
  
  This was the junior varsity baseball field.  The razor wire wasn't there when I attended the school, neither was the security van.
  
  This is the main athletic compound on the campus.  It isn't part of the prison now but it is owned by the city of Prairie du Chien.  Fact: this building was built by the Kennedy family.  The basketball gym holds 2000 people.  There is an Olympic sized pool with Olympic sized diving boards and the locker rooms must have had about 500 lockers.  I had 3 to myself that freshmen year.  Oh and a funny story, one of the professors of my school had his office next to the pool and every year the senior class would prank him by throwing his desk into the pool.  We called the teacher "Pit" because he was so bald and his head looked like a roll-on deodorant.
  
  Here are three buildings.  The closest one story building was the music center where the bands and choirs practiced and where music classes were taught.  We also had to take piano lessons and they had individual practice rooms that were horribly small.  It felt like solitary confinement which is what people say the building is used for now.  Behind it is the girls dorm which is supposedly haunted by many ghosts of boys who committed suicide.  I was only in that dorm twice.  Now before you think I am lame, the school had a strict policy about males entering the female dorm.  It wasn't done.  Boys could not under any circumstances enter the girls dorm.  I went in to help a friend pack after the semester had ended and then that summer there was a reunion and that is the dorm where they housed us.
  
  Our Lutheran school had a great football field and on part of the field there is now a Mormon church.
  
  This is my dorm.  OK my room was on the top floor, second window from the end.  Of course there wasn't any razor wire when I went there but we had strict rules about being in our rooms.  Sunday through Thursday night we had to be in our rooms and studying from 7:30 to 9:30PM and bedtime was at 10PM for the first quarter and 10:30 for the rest of the school year.  We could get out of the study hall by using a "permission".  We were given 4 each month.  I have so many more stories but I'll save those for another time.
  
  That big building is what we called the Ad Building.  It's were all the classes were conducted.  You can't make it out but the cafeteria is connected to the Ad Building.  There was a cook in that cafeteria that was named George.  The upperclassmen always told us to watch at how during the school year the squirrels would disappear.  They claimed that at night after bedcheck, George would hunt them with his butcher knife.  There were dozens of squirrels when school started and none by the time the year ended.
  
  This parking lot was one of the main buildings for the Catholic school.  It was torn down and replaced with a parking lot.  The building was haunted.  My roommate and I would watch at night as we saw lights turn on and go off on random floors.  No one could get into the building and there was no electricity in the building.
  
  That is the chapel.  It had one of the most beautiful white marble altars I have ever seen in any church.  That was gutted along with all the stain glass, confessionals, and pipe organ.
  
  This is the smoke stack for the boiler room, the place that heated all the buildings on campus.  No one has bothered to paint over the "MLPS".
  
  I went into Iowa, directly across from my school.  On spring days, when we were allowed to leave campus, we would jump from a bridge into the Mississippi.  No, not that bridge.
  
  I couldn't resist taking a picture.
  
  This is the Miss Marquette riverboat.  I couldn't go there while in high school but now I can and I lost $3. 
  
  I found an adequately named Mexican restaurant.
  
  Near my hometown there is this high school named Kickapoo.  The school is named for a river that flows through the area.  My grandfather always told me how the river got the name.  He said that a band of Native Americans happened across an early settler taking a dump in the river.  The Natives looked at each other and went running to the water and they began to kick the turds around while yelling "KICKAPOO!  KICKAPOO!" 
  
  I had all my fun and took everything down on Highway 61.
  
  Some people are way too devoted to NASCAR.
  
  My mom made me some socks for Christmas.  Yes I am a freak.  In the right corner you can see my cat's paws just for comparison.
  
  And that is all from...I am so lame.  Also, it's fairly common for Packers fans to have Packers helmets lying around their house and if not a helmet then a cheesehead.

  • 10:49 PM
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