The world I knew is slowly disappearing

My elementary school was torn down this summer.

In its place will be erected a monstrosity of an institution, designed to house thousands of youngsters, many of whom are the offspring of transplanted yankees, invading my beloved Raleigh and spreading their demon seed. It will bear the same name, but it will never be the same school.

I have so many cherished memories of that place. Mind you, the old building wasn't much to look at, either, a shining example of bland 1950s suburban school architecture, but it had character. I made great friends there, one of whom I'm still in constant touch with 20 years later. I had excellent teachers who actually gave a shit about teaching, far different from their modern-day counterparts, who count down the days until retirement while receiving a weekly pittance to act as babysitters.

Every October, the school hosted the Fall Festival, a Halloween-themed event with games and activities. One of the trailers was converted into a haunted house, where I got scared shitless by a chainsaw-wielding zombie surgeon. The girl I had a crush on grew up to be kind of a bitch.

I remember getting dropped off right outside the trailer where my 5th grade class was—in those days the school wasn't all paranoid about security and didn't force the parents to drop their children off in one area. My 4th grade class was in a trailer as well, as the city was just beginning to feel the strain of overcrowding. It was a quaint little box, clad in corrugated metal, with a wooden access ramp. I remember one day when a freak sleet storm hit, and my friend was sliding down the ramp over and over. My 4th grade teacher was awesome. She would read aloud and do a voice for each character. She held trivia games where the class was divided into two teams. She brought in a drama coach now and then for a fun diversion. 4th grade was the best, and I got to be a 9-year-old during a time when kickass cartoon shows were in abundance and no none knew just how terrible for you sugary drinks and cereals were.

I dislike change. Change means that what I know and is familiar is going away, never to come back.

A couple months ago I drove past my old grade-school chum's house where he had lived from about 1983 until his parents sold the place last year. I had spent countless thousands of hours of my childhood and adolescence hanging out there on lazy Saturdays. The place was comfortably furnished with plush chairs and a bigass leather sofa I loved to stretch out on while watching TV. In high school and into our college years, our routine was for me to show up around 12:30 on Saturday, bum around town, go to movies, rent movies with titillating nude scenes, go to bookstores, and come back for a great supper his mom and dad had fixed. Then we'd chill out with more TV and new & exciting websites, and I'd finally drive home at midnight.

The formerly well-manicured grass is now knee-high. The house is dark, with not a stick of furniture. The cat doesn't traipse about the yard anymore. The green metal outdoor chairs are gone. The driveway sits empty. A huge chunk of my childhood has vanished.

My wife is not immune from this epidemic, either. Every house she lived in as a child has either been demolished or altered to the point of being unrecognizable. The private school she attended has been built up so much that it no longer even closely resembles what it used to look like.

Other shit that has changed around Raleigh which I dislike:
1. The redesigned Cameron Village. Removing the upper parking deck above Bailey's really fucked up my sense of direction around there for a while. And just what was so bad about the blue & white bubble domes? At least you could read the signage clearly from the street, since it was all white type set on blue, illuminated from behind. Now it's a bewildering hodgepodge of every typeface and color imaginable. Some may call it charming, I call it a fucking typographic nightmare.

2. Rite-Aid taking over Eckerd's. It was enough of a shock when Eckerd's bought out nearly all the Kerr Drug stores in the area, now this? The Rite-Aid at Cameron Village feels like a wasteland compared to the former Eckerd's. They put in glaring linoleum tile floors where sound-dampening carpet once lay. The layout of the checkout counters was rearranged, and there are far fewer displays and aisles of merchandise to excite the senses.

3. The complete ass-fucking of Hillsborough Street. Seriously, people? Traffic circles? 25mph speed limit? Fuckin'-A, man, they're ruining a quaint, historic street. Part of its character is its seedy, run-down, college-town atmosphere. Parking always sucked around there, and I don't see this project making it any better. Traffic moved just fine without a bunch of damned traffic circles. We had traffic lights and that was good enough.

4. The vanishing of Brothers Pizza. It was a venerated Hillsborough Street institution for 40-odd years. Everyone my age had at least one birthday party there as a child. The wood-paneled walls were festooned with NCSU athletic memorabilia, and they always had the city's best sweet iced tea. At least I took my wife there once, so she got to see it before it disappeared. I like the new restaurant, Melvin's, that took its place, but it's yet another part of my childhood dead and gone.

5. Teardowns and McMansions. It's a disease that spread to my parents' neighborhood a few years ago. Charming 1940s and '50s houses were deemed not big enough for soulless, gotta-have-it-all yuppies who swooped in, razed them, and erected 10,000-square-foot monstrosities that block out the sun. Well, I guess little Dylan does need a 16x20-ft playroom, and of course you can't live without a closet bigger than my bedroom. And the gourmet kitchen the size of a concert hall with 8-burner Viking stove, two convection ovens, and Subzero fridge is a must for all those home-cooked meals your alcoholic wife will never make.

One thing I actually like about modern-day Raleigh is the new North Hills mall. Sure, I'll always have a special place for the old indoor dinosaur it replaced, but I'll concede that its time on this earth had passed. The new one kicks ass. The re-opening of Fayetteville Street to automobile traffic also has my approval. The pedestrian mall was one of Raleigh's greatest blunders.

Population growth around here is getting out of control. Too many god-damned people are invading and nesting in the Old North State. Can't we just turn them away at the border like California did to the Okies? Why can't I just wave a magic wand and freeze Raleigh in the year 1999? Seriously, folks, it can't really get much better than it was before 2001. Even my wife expressed a longing for the Clinton years. I heavily disliked Bubba back then, but comparing him with his successors, I'd re-elect him tomorrow.