By June Mathews
As you may or may not recall – and depending on whether or not you read it – my last column fell somewhat on the sentimental side. The afternoon I wrote it, I had just toured the original Hewitt-Trussville High School building, which is about to become an elementary school. All but the front façade is slated to undergo extensive renovations, and though it won’t be the same building by a long shot, it’ll at least resemble the place where I spent many a happy hour making memories with my high school friends.
As for the adjacent stadium, now that it’s likely hosted its final game, plans call for its swift and total destruction. Deemed unsafe, as well as unfeasible, for continued use, it’ll be torn down and the land turned into space for a car line with a portion reserved for a walking track. A shiny new athletic facility a few miles away awaits its likely football game debut later this month.
But while I grew teary a time or two as I toured the old school building, the thought of losing the stadium doesn’t bother me nearly as much. And if I start feeling the least bit sentimental about it, all I have to do is remember the time I was trotting up the stadium steps in a short Highstepper uniform and clunky boots, tripped, fell and quite literally, showed my… well, you get the picture.
Then there was that even more embarrassing moment when I failed to execute a turn with the rest of the dance line and marched down the field in the wrong direction on my own. Forty years later, I still can’t talk about it without blushing.
Thoughts of the old stadium also always remind me of the time somebody had the bright idea of fertilizing the football field with chicken manure during warm weather. Once that stuff got to stewing in the sun, it stunk to high heaven for days, likely suffocating small creatures within a two-mile radius.
Making matters worse, the classrooms underneath the stadium became a collection of stink holes, and there was no air conditioning in that area of the school back then. Nauseating doesn’t begin to describe the stench, which naturally made learning more of a challenge than usual.
The stadium served as a setting for pure misery when it came to my one feeble attempt to qualify for a Presidential Physical Fitness Award by running a mile. I started out optimistically, thinking four little old laps around the track would be a cinch. But by the time I’d loped around twice, I realized a mile was a whole lot further than it looked on paper. My opinion of President Richard Nixon following Watergate was much kinder than my attitude toward his stupid fitness award (which I failed to earn) that day.
While most Hewitt alumni fondly recall graduating in the stadium, my classmates and I don’t have those memories. Several mid-1970s classes graduated in the gym, and mine was one of them. As I recall, unpredictable spring weather and unruly crowds at previous ceremonies figured into the decision to change the venue. But rain or rowdy relatives notwithstanding, an outdoor setting surely would have been more comfortable for us robed graduates than that steam bath of a gym.
I have to admit, though, that despite the not-so-fun times, I do have a few good memories of the old stadium. So when it’s gone, I’m liable to shed a tear or two on its behalf. I just don’t feel as strongly about it as I do the school building, for which I was prepared to lie down in front of bulldozers, had the Trussville City Board of Education decided to completely do away with it.
But thank goodness that didn’t happen. Sooner or later I would have had to haul myself up off the ground, and considering I never earned that fitness award when I was younger, thinner and presumably stronger, you can imagine how difficult that would be.
Email June Mathews at jmathews120@charter.net.
