LAKEWOOD, N.Y. - One more year! Couldn't they have waited one more year to tear down Lakewood Elementary?
But down it is coming, and as the photo with the blog attests, it's almost down.
Sue Guertin Chandler, who taught in the school for years, had her room still standing at the time these were shot May 24. But the wreckers are pretty efficient in the 21st century and it's doubtful there is much more than bricks and steel on the ground as you read this.
Lee Anderson said his sister Carin went by and picked up a brick as a memento, I might want one of those myself.
It's kind of hard to imagine that spot without the school. So many of the Class of '66 came through there on their way to the big junior school on the hill. After surviving Mr. Gugino's 5th grade, I landed in Robert Lamp's 6th grade classroom. Mr. Lamp was an ok guy, I remember, though when we misbehaved, he sported a pretty nasty temper for an elementary school teacher. We once toured the Lakewood Sewer Plant (not exactly Disneyland, eh?) and a group of the boys got a little bored, listening to the sewer plant operator droning about primary versus tertiary treatment and starting pushing each other. Mr. Lamp made us stand at attention, four feet apart while the rest of the class walked around. And he made us stand downwind of the sewage tanks.
He sometimes had a good sense of humor.
I remember Hawkeye taught 6th grade, too. (Oops, Mr. Hawkins.) But I don't remember any other 6th grade teachers, though I'm pretty sure there was at least one more.
But the school is gone!
Years ago - could it have been the 20th reunion? - I came home to Lakewood to find the Triangle Bar gone, torn down, vanished into the mist. Bud Hooper and I and Jim Carr and Bob Fulcher and John Rupp and God-knows-who-else dropped a lot of cash there, watching a lot of the Vukote locals fighting with their spouses as they got increasingly drunk, every night of the week.
In one memorable evening, one 'old woman' (she had to be 40 if she was a day, waaaaay old), was arguing with her husband about his dog. Actually, they weren't arguing. She was giving him a beer-laced, mostly incoherent lecture about how the dog smelled, the dog hair was everywhere, she hated the damned dog - and she ended her soliloquy with the kind of ultimatum you should never give.
Either the dog goes or I go!
I can still see the grin on the old guy's face as his wife stormed out of the bar. And I don't think she was going home to feed the dog.
I will always miss the Triangle, but I think I'm going to miss old Lakewood Elementary a lot more.
Bye Hawkeye!
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