Goodbye Palmer Elementary School

A discussion over breakfast this morning reminded me of this day from 2019:

It was the sudden jolt of a hypnagogic jerk that yanked me out of sleep.

One second I was somewhere in that strange no-man’s-land between consciousness and dreaming, and the next, every molecule in my brain seemed to fire at once. My eyes snapped open to the sight of the ceiling fan slowly turning above me. Nearby, the metal floor vents rattled softly as cool air made its way up from the basement and into the living room.

I’d been power-napping on the couch for maybe five minutes.

It’s something I’ve become pretty good at on weekends, especially after being out late the night before. I enjoy those brief afternoon escapes from reality, although they rarely last more than fifteen minutes.

What can I tell you? I’m getting older.

Not “Hey, you kids! Get off my lawn!” old. More like “It’s Sunday afternoon and a nap sounds pretty damn good” old. There’s a difference.

I glanced at the clock.

2:00 p.m.

Suddenly, a thought worked its way through the fog.

There’s something I’m supposed to be doing today.

Something important.

Something I was about to miss.

I dug my phone out of my pocket and checked the calendar. There, staring back at me, was an overdue reminder:

Walk Through Palmer Elementary School.

That woke me up better than any cup of coffee could.

I rose from the couch with all the grace and energy of a grizzly bear emerging from winter hibernation. My knees cracked, my brain was still rebooting, but within minutes I had my keys in hand and was headed for the car.

I was going back to elementary school.

Going Back to Palmer

Palmer Elementary School was part of the Easton Area School District and, if my aging memory serves me correctly, was one of the oldest schools in the district still operating under its original name.

The building itself was unusual because Palmer was really two schools joined together. The original section was known as the Cole Building, while the addition constructed years later was called the Auld Building.

As a kid, I never gave much thought to the architecture.

It was just Palmer.

A sprawling maze of hallways, green-tiled walls, wooden floors, classrooms and stairways filled with generations of Easton-area kids who spent their days there from September through June.

By the time I returned, however, Palmer’s days were numbered.

The old school was scheduled to be demolished and replaced by a modern building. Before the wrecking crews arrived, the district opened the doors and gave former students, teachers and members of the community one final opportunity to walk through its halls.

I had only attended Palmer for one year—fifth grade, during the 1979-80 school year.

One year.

And yet, decades later, I was about to discover just how much of that place was still buried somewhere inside me.

The All-Purpose Room

I entered through the Auld Building, the section of Palmer where I’d spent fifth grade.

Almost immediately, a strange wave of emotion came over me.

My biggest concern was finding my old classroom. I couldn’t remember the room number. In fact, I couldn’t consciously remember exactly where the classroom was.

But something about the building still felt familiar.

I began walking.

Before long, I found myself standing inside what we called the All-Purpose Room—a large room that had been used for meetings, activities, talent shows and just about anything else the school could throw at it.

Then a memory came rushing back.

On June 5, 1980, this was where Palmer held its Silent Spelling Bee.

I was part of a team that finished second.

At ten years old, it was one of the most exciting things that had ever happened to me at school. Not just because we won a ribbon, either.

The whole thing had been recorded on an amazing piece of futuristic technology:

A video recorder.

Try explaining to someone today how incredible it once seemed to watch yourself on television almost immediately after something happened.

No film developing.

No waiting.

There we were.

On TV!

It was practically witchcraft.

I still have the second-place ribbon from that day. More than four decades later, it sits in a curio cabinet in my office.

Funny how something that once seemed like such a small moment can become priceless simply because enough time has passed.

Somehow, I Remembered

I left the All-Purpose Room and continued through the school.

I passed the gym, where the smell of old wood still seemed trapped inside the walls. I walked by doors marked Janitor, Teachers and Boiler Room. The floors were dark and scarred from decades of sneakers, boots and dress shoes belonging to thousands of children who had walked those same halls before me.

Everything looked old. And everything looked familiar.

Then something strange happened.

My pace quickened.

I wasn’t consciously sure where I was going, but some ten-year-old version of me apparently did.

I reached the beginning of a long hallway and stopped.

And somewhere inside my head, I could almost hear him.

It’s down here.

On the left.

Not the last classroom.

The one just before it.

I started walking.

I peeked into each classroom as I passed, becoming increasingly convinced that my memory was playing tricks on me.

There was no way I could remember the exact location of a classroom I had occupied for only one school year more than four decades earlier.

Could I?

I reached the second-to-last classroom on the left.

Then I looked above the doorway.

And laughed.

409.

Room 409.

Of course.

How could I possibly forget?

It was the same number as that damn cleaning product.

Formula 409.

That was how my ten-year-old brain had remembered my classroom number all those years ago.

And apparently it still worked.

Back in Room 409

I stood outside the doorway for a few moments before stepping inside.

The classroom was completely empty.

But only for a second. Because almost immediately, my memory began putting everything back.

The desks returned.

My classmates returned.

And there was my fifth-grade teacher, Ms. Reiersen, with her dirty-blonde bob, standing near the blackboard teaching whatever lesson we were supposed to be learning that day.

I remembered sitting at my desk. I remembered staring through the windows at the monkey bars, wondering how much longer it would be until recess. I remembered those brutally hot days near the end of the school year when every window was open but not a single breeze seemed interested in coming inside.

I remembered reading.

Social studies.

Tests.

Homework.

Friends.

And laughter.

It was also in Room 409 where my friend Steve and I came up with the brilliant idea of auditioning for the school talent show by putting paper bags over our heads and performing a skit called “Unknown Comic News.”

If you don’t know who the Unknown Comic was, congratulations. You’re younger than I am. Look him up sometime.

I slowly walked around the room, running my fingers along the walls and reading messages former students had written on the chalkboard during their own final visits.

I even tried opening one of the old closet doors where our coats had once hung.

It still required a Herculean effort.

Some things apparently never change.

But most things do.

Standing there, I began thinking about all the kids who had gone to Palmer with me. We were ten years old then. The future stretched out endlessly in front of us.

Middle school seemed far away.

High school was practically another lifetime.

Fifty?

Impossible.

Yet somehow, all those years had disappeared.

And that may have been the strangest part of standing in Room 409 again. I wasn’t simply remembering elementary school.

For a few minutes, I could almost feel what it was like to be that kid again. The kid who stared out the window waiting for recess. The kid who thought a video recorder was the greatest invention mankind had ever created.

The kid who wore a paper bag over his head for a talent show. The kid who had absolutely no idea where life would eventually take him.

Back then, becoming a writer wasn’t part of some carefully mapped-out plan. Neither were the books I’ve written, the people I’ve interviewed, the stories I’ve told or any of the other twists and turns that came afterward.

At ten years old, the world beyond Room 409 was still mostly unwritten.

Maybe that’s why returning there affected me so deeply.

I wasn’t just visiting an old classroom. I was visiting an earlier chapter of myself.

One Last Message

Eventually, it was time to leave.

I stepped into the hallway and looked back.

Then I looked back again.

And again.

I’ll admit my eyes were a little glassy.

Part of me wanted to believe that if I stood there long enough, time might somehow stop—or maybe even reverse itself for just a few minutes.

Of course, it didn’t. It never does.

I’d taken plenty of pictures during my visit, but as I prepared to leave Palmer Elementary for the final time, something still felt unfinished.

Then I realized what it was.

I walked back into Room 409.

There was a small piece of chalk sitting in the tray beneath the board.

I picked it up.

And in much the same way that ten-year-old kid probably would have done all those years ago, I wrote one final message.

Not because I thought anyone needed to read it, and not because I believed it would somehow survive the demolition.

I wrote it because sometimes you need to leave a little piece of yourself behind in the places that helped make you who you are.

Buildings disappear. Classrooms are emptied. Schools are torn down. But somewhere inside us, those hallways remain.

And every once in a while, if we’re lucky, we get the chance to walk through them again.

go.Jimmy.go

Leave a comment Cancel reply