Easthaven (as I remember it)

What follows is an extremely sketchy, completely biased history based singularly on my memories of Easthaven. Probably the only people who might be interested in this account would be others who attended during the same years. The dearth of information on this place is quite depressing, especially since the school seems to have closed almost two decades ago, the church has since relocated, and the property has been subsequently bought, abandoned, but briefly rented out to a middle school while they waited for their "real" building to complete construction. That's about all I can find on the internet about the property itself. In terms of school history, there's a slightly active Facebook alumni page with some pictures and memories of students, a very small Classmates.com page, and pretty much nothing else to be had.

In some planning documents of the church, I found a brief paragraph outlining its beginnings: founded July 20, 1941 in what was then far-flung rural pastures of Houston along I-45, before the interstate existed; a decade later the church expanded its outreach into providing daycare for working mothers, a demographic that exploded by the time I was born. After the day care took off, the natural expansion was into providing a private school for elementary and junior high. 

From the Facebook group, there were two pictures of classes posted from the fall of 1961 and spring of 1962:

What delighted me was that I knew exactly where these pictures were taken: in the fellowship hall of the original building, with the kitchen hiding behind those dividers. That wood floor was the same one I would, some fifteen years later, skate across in my socks on the days it was too rainy to play outside for recess or PE. 

So, since there are doubtless other alumni out there who may someday go in search of validation of the fact that this place once existed and bustled with activity and life, here's my go at what I remember:

Above is the satellite image via Google of the property formally known as Easthaven Baptist School. It was also known as Easthaven Baptist Church, but since I didn't go there for church, that name didn't stick in my personal history like the school. From kindergarten in the fall of 1975 to the end of my sixth grade year, in May of 1982, I attended EBS. When I started the school their colors were maroon and white and I can't recall if there was a mascot or not. For some reason, I vaguely think it was a bulldog.  I remember distinctly getting the EBS maroon and white leatherette bag in kindergarten, similar in shape to a bowling ball bag, with a strip of plastic on the back that you could write your name on and slide through for all to see.

At some point during their expansion, circa 1978, they rebranded themselves the Easthaven Eagles and chose, like Baylor, green and gold for their colors. From that point on, every year we were issued green shorts and a gold and green PE t-shirt made out of some waffle weave material with a screenprinted eagle flying across the chest over whatever shirt number you'd been assigned. I don't seem to have a good shot of it, but here's what I can find:

I'm getting ahead of myself. Back to the satellite shot a little closer in:

The main property was bordered by Edgebrook to the south, Vesper Street to the west, Easthaven to the east, and Conger to the north. The two dark roofed buildings in the center, with their backs to Vesper were the first two built, the first being the one you see lowest in the frame. This housed the sanctuary, the fellowship hall, the kitchen, and Sunday school classes. I've already mentioned the wood floor of the fellowship hall. This was also where my Brownie meetings were held after school. In my memory, there was what I remember as a basement type of area, with stairs going down from the hall into other classrooms, but this is fuzzy and perhaps mis-remembered. The only times I got in there were after school and before the busses left, out of curiosity and a bit of rebelliousness. The creepy factor of those old rooms, with the "ancient" toys and one-eyed baby dolls that might have been played with at one time were fascinating to my elementary-aged self. I imagined the ghosts of children in those musty rooms. But those memories are from the early 80s when the classrooms had been replaced by much newer, brighter rooms in other buildings.

In my kindergarten and first grade especially, I remember filing into the sanctuary for chapel on Wednesday mornings. There were stained glass panes at the front, and a large pulpit with a choir loft and baptistery. In my memory, the place was ginormous because at five, even the ends of the pews towered overhead. In my mind's eye, I'm walking in line down the center carpeted aisle, up towards the front where the smallest children were seated, and I'm turning left into the pews where the choir books and bibles are at my eye level on the pew's back in front of me. I have to kind of jump and hoist myself up onto the pew and can just see over. In reality, it was probably a very modest place. To my five year old memory, it was as big as St. Paul's.

By the late 70s the sanctuary was no longer needed in the original building and was cut down to a small chapel room. The front entryway between the outer double doors and the inner ones were left alone, but a second floor was built within the large room itself, and two classrooms and bathrooms added at the back of the first floor. One of those classrooms was Mrs. Miles' room where I attended fourth grade. The other classroom turned into the music room, with Mrs. Rhoades and Mrs. Hall, and the classroom had door access into the chapel for practicing the school plays. The boys' bathroom I specifically remember being pushed into and trapped by a couple of sixth grade boys.

The new upstairs housed more classrooms, including the rival fourth grade class whose teacher was younger and hipper than Mrs. Miles, whom everyone feared as she could turn you to stone with one glance. Mrs. Miles also towers in my memory. I want to say the other fourth grade teacher was names Mrs. Kennedy. I am very saddened to look back at my fourth grade class picture, the last year I have a group picture of my class, and realize she didn't get in the photograph like all of my previous teachers had done. It would probably put into perspective that she was not, in fact, 7 feet tall like my memory prompts me to think.

The only other connection I have with the new upstairs portion of the oldest building was that in the 5th grade we had one of those "markets" where kids could bring their money and buy crap for Christmas presents that was pretty much destined for Goodwill donations otherwise. They held it in one of the larger rooms, with stuff displayed all over various tables. I bought my dad a really cheesy "World's Greatest Dad" statue of a very 70s looking smiley dude (it would have been 1981 when I made my purchase) and which he still has on his desk to this day.

Outside the foyer, looking toward what was once the sanctuary, to the left was a small hall with a payphone and a large storage closet with windows looking out the back. The pay phone was disconnected, but we'd make up stories about hearing dial tones or dead people when we'd pick up the receiver. I got trapped in the storage room once by a bigger kid holding the handle of the door shut. He kept the prank up so long, by the time he let me out I had to run to catch the "bus", which irritated the driver so much she called my parents that night, who threatened to go to the principal, which meant I'd have gotten busted for poking around areas I wasn't supposed to as well as being branded a snitch, so I begged them not to.

Ah, the Easthaven School Busses. They were cargo vans with windows and two real seats up front where the driver and sometimes a kid (usually the driver's) would sit, protected by seat belts. Behind the front seats, though, were tiny wooden benches, two against the long walls of the windows and two back to back down the center of the bus, where the riders would sit knee to knee with the kids whose backs were to the windows. Those benches were brutal and just splintery enough that if you were wearing tights you'd doubtless have holes in them by the time you got home. The advantage to the van system was that they could have a fleet of 5 or 6 going in different directions to transport you to and from school and they picked you up and dropped you off at your door.

My earliest memory is getting dropped off at my house on Kirkdale, which would have been half-day kindergarten, running inside, and eating spaghettios with franks for lunch and watching Lassie on the black and white television in our living room.

The vans were emblazened with "Easthaven Baptist Church School" lettering in some really garish color palettes. I remember baby blue, a kind of pepto-pink, a pukey-tan, a pastel green, etc. You knew which bus to get on each year because the routes were color-coded. I think I had them all over the course of my seven years there. Since my house was on the edge of the start of the Sagemont route, I was the last one picked up in the morning and the first one off. That was pretty sweet since the van was rarely filled and you never had to worry about finding a seat. By the last year, attendance had so dwindled that there were only 12 kids in 6th grade, and the busses ran half-empty all the time. The only kid my age on my bus route that last year was George Chin and, by then, those teeny-tiny wooden benches were not nearly as roomy as they'd been when I first started riding. George and I would splay out across our own bench as the oldest kids at the school and feel like we owned the place. George is a friend on Facebook now. He's a pilot for China Eastern. His family had just moved from Taipei to Houston in 1980 and we graduated the same year from Dobie. When I posted on his wall recently for his birthday, he replied with the remark that I was probably one of his oldest friends, which prompted some of our earliest memories together at Easthaven. George made a puzzle out of rolled up paper that required you to select one of several lines visible at the edge of the roll. Your line would then split and diverge and your goal was to get as far up the unrolling scroll before hitting a dead end. My other distinct memory was of the two of us being sent out of class to wait in the hall during our 6th grade year for being disruptive. We were out there a long time, sitting probably 10 feet apart, where we'd been positioned by Mrs. Atkinson and left there to stew. At some point I managed to fart, which sent me into red-faced embarrassment as George proceeded to crack up with uncontrollable laughter. That brought Mrs. A. right back out into the hall to ask what was so funny. I will always love George for pulling the stone faced silent act at that moment and just looking at the ground.

In return, George related a memory completely forgotten by me. Also in 6th grade I apparently lost all patience with his unrelenting sniffling during class, and, as he tells it, "You got so tired of hearing me sniffling and sniffling, got up from across the room, marched up to teacher's desk, grabbed a handful of tissues, trucked over, and said "HERE... BLOW YOUR NOSE!!!"

What an obnoxious kid I was. Of course, by the 6th grade almost all of us were veterans of the dwindling classes who had known each other forever and were more like constantly bickering cousins than anything else. (I'm getting ahead of myself, but this blog isn't entitled 'wandering' for nothing). My twelve classmates in sixth grade consisted of 6 boys and 6 girls,  11 of whom I can name off the top of my head:  George, Chris, Jeff, Alan, Duong, Nikki, Stephanie, Priscilla, Lynda, Christina, and Tori. And now the one missing name is driving me nuts.

The building just north of the original sanctuary was the building where my kindergarten class was held. Over the years, most of the younger grades were housed here, with a few across the way in the newer building that also held the administration offices. I remember the first day of kindergarten. My mother walked into the classroom with me, which, of course, is very large to a 5 year old. It was actually two rooms with two doors opening onto the hallway, with a divider that could split the areas. I remember the cubbies in the center cabinet with the top shelf being above my head, and I remember hanging close to my mom for a while, before venturing off to chase around some other little kids while the mothers stood around and chatted. One side of the room was open for play and for nap times. The other had little kid tables and tiny chairs for all of our art projects and coloring and lessons. The play area was just outside the windows looking north toward the newest buildings with their white roofs. Below, I'm the girl in the white turtleneck, center row, fourth from left, standing next to Christina, who is in the pink on my right. It is also, strangely, the last time I would have a class picture where I wasn't on the front row.

That largest building on the left, above the kindergarten building pictured in the satellite photo was the cafeteria, auditorium, and infant rooms. It was also where our music lessons were held for a long time. I think I may recall eating food from the cafeteria a handful of times on those plastic sectioned trays. Mainly, I was a lunch box kid. The lunch box kids got first pick of the seats at their grade's table since they didn't have to go wait in line. Within the large cafeteria space was the stage where so many of our musical productions were held. Like the costumed kids above from the early 60s, if you went to Easthaven you were guaranteed at least two productions a year, sometimes 3 or 4 depending on how ambitious Mrs. Hall and Mrs. Rhodes were feeling, or perhaps based on the estimated talent pool.

From the end of my kindergarten, clearly for the bi-centennial of 1976, is this patriotic shot:

The door you see on the right were the primary ones for the lunch crowd and led out to the main covered walkway between the campus' buildings.

And lest you fail to appreciate the awesomeness of my 5 year old self, here is a closer view of me in my white tennis dress with my spectacular orange snoopy tennis socks in white patented Mary Janes.

Other stage productions I have visual evidence from include:

The Thanksgiving play, also 1976

Mrs. Miles' 4th grade spring music spectacular featuring the handy-dandy, semi-portable record player:

The 5th grade spring spectacular, with butterflies, birds, sheep, flower microphones, and clearly the star of the show, fireflies. This particular firefly was tasked with presenting Mrs. Rhoades (in blue) and Mrs. Hall (in black) with flowers at the end of the show. This is also the only picture I seem to have of my 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Upshaw, far right.

And the final stage production of the cafeteria, while the finishing touches were being put on the large new auditorium complex across the road, was the Christmas play from the Grady Nutt parables my 6th grade year. This particular year I was all about the stage shows. I think being the lead firefly with the solo in the 5th grade had put it in my head that I needed to play either the lead or the narrator in every show. So I was absolutely crushed when the part I wanted in the Christmas play went to Michael Denney, who was a year ahead of me, in the 7th grade. It didn't help that the only part I would audition for was the male lead. (No type casting here!) So what was I? A nameless angel who shows up in the final scene. I don't think I talked to Mrs. Rhoades for two months after that blow.

The following year the new auditorium complex was complete (which is the odd sea-shelled white roofed structure you see across the street from the main campus) and I landed multiple roles in the continuing Grady Nutt parables, including the male lead role as Daniel in the Lion's den. To this day, I believe Mrs. Rhoades was making a point by choosing this play and this role to shut me up. There was one section of the script that was several pages long, black with ink, and 95% of it was huge monologues for Daniel. To top it off, the lion group got to sing, dance, and wear those awesome costumes while I ended up in my brownie beanie as a yarmulke.

The only memories I have of this latest building are of this production and the rehearsals involved. Thanks to the odd shape of the place, the hallways were like mazes, with corners everywhere and blood red carpet. We had our end of year awards in the giant sanctuary my very last week of classes at Easthaven, and with only 12 people in your class, you tend to get called up to the stage a lot. I remember seeing Mrs. Tulloch, my first grade teacher, smiling at me each time I was called. I've read on the facebook group that she and Mrs. Miles went on to serve as principals of the school after I left.

Mrs. Tulloch is a good segue way back to first grade before I wandered off into memories of the stage spotlight of yesteryear.

So, back to the map:

The smaller yard across from the first sanctuary and the large gymnasium was home to lots of field day events involving soccer balls. The larger football-field sized yard across the the street, long before the newest sanctuary was constructed, was the primary recess spot. Many childhood hours were spent here in the sweltering sun, playing tag or turning cartwheels, which was about all there was to do in a big, empty, slightly weedy field. Early on, at least for my first two years, there had been playground equipment in the barest patch of grass you see above. This is where I catapulted off the jungle gym in the first grade and broke my arm. The two trees nearest the road are where the teachers would stay, trying not to pass out from the unforgivable heat. The day of the broken arm, it seemed an eternity before someone could run back to the trees, alert Mrs. Tulloch, and for her to march across half a football field's length to collect me and take me to the nurse. In the earlier days there was a covered pavilion at the far right end, away from the school, but it was torn down in the 70s. Behind it and off the picture, maybe a few hundred yards was the McDonalds with the little bi-plane inside. There was nothing better than the rare occasion where I didn't ride the bus home, but got picked up by car and was treated to McDonalds after school.

The area at the center bottom of the screen, where you see the apartment complex now, with the pool, was a horse pasture, owned by my friend Dana's parents, at least back in the early 80s. When I was in 6th and Dana in 7th we snuck out of field day in between events to visit her horses, and eventually several other seventh graders joined us in the hay barn. Now, the 7th grade class was about the size of the 6th grade one, so you can imagine having a quarter of the students missing from one section of the bleachers on field day would probably attract attention. After the fourth person showed up, we were alerted that gym coach Walters was on her way to find us and hurried back across the street into Easthaven territory to get our telling off.

The gymnasium itself must have been erected sometime after my first grade year, since I remember playing in a little playground area where that large building sits across the street from the sea-shell shaped sanctuary. There was a pole in the middle of a sandy area, away from the swings, that might have once been a tether ball pole that we would take turns seeing how far to the top we could shimmy. Once the gym went in, the playground equipment was moved to another area and, when I think about it now, I have no idea where PE was held prior to the gym's construction. The big gym had polished wood floors and locker rooms, girls on the left, boys on the right. Above where the locker rooms were placed, I seem to vaguely remember an open upper area. In my 6th grade year, I recall Coach Walters gathering all of the girls in sixth and seventh grades together in a classroom and talking for half an hour about responsibility and respect until some of the older grade girls broke down and admitted they were the ones who had tp-ed the girl's bathroom in the gym. If memory serves, some of the older girls had also shown the rest of us how to play the fainting game one time in the locker room that same year. Of the older girls, names that stick with me are Monica, Becky, Dana, and Vicky.

In the fourth grade I remember all of the girls having a crush on the gym coach, Jon, who was young, buff, and blond. The next year he was engaged to another one of the teachers, Miss Elrod. Apparently the fourth grade girls weren't the only ones smitten. In gym, each year we would do the Presidential physical fitness award, the culmination of which was a patch and a certificate with the President's stamped signature. Completion of this award meant all year long we were logging sit-ups and push-ups, and miles run. The miles run throughout the year were logged on large poster-sized charts that hung on the back wall of the gym. Lord, but I hated running around that gym in circles. We also did Jump Rope for Heart, getting sponsors and raising money, and each jump rope team had to make a poster to hang on the gym walls. One year I designed and drew the majority of our team's poster, with a frog on a toadstool as the mascot, that won a ribbon in the poster contest. But the highlight of PE class was track and field day. How I loved the broad jump, sack race, and the 50 yard dash. Those were my events. Each year I would earn the shiny blue first place ribbon for those. And on end of year days, they would gather seemingly the entire school on the floor of the gym, turn the lights off, and project a movie for all of us to watch. The one I remember was "Where the Red Fern Grows."

The building nearest to the gym, on the left in the photo, was home to my first grade class. It was the only time I had a classroom in that building, but we visited it weekly to access the little room in the corner that served as the library. This was also the building you would visit for the nurse, to get picked up early, or, in the worst-case scenario, to be summoned to the principal's office. I still have distinct memories of Mrs. Tulloch's first grade class. The desks were in rows in the center, but around the walls of the class were shelves that housed all manner of toys.  Each morning before the bell we could choose a toy from the shelves to play with at our desks until class started. My absolute favorite was a little western set with plastic horses and fences. It would make me crazy when I'd get there and someone else dared to grab that little set before me.  Mrs. Tulloch seemed wizened and very old when I was 6. Looking back at the class picture now, she might have been in her fifties. If you made a 100 on your weekly spelling test, she put a sticker on it, a big red-penned 100, and wrote the phrase "Goody Goody Gumdrop" underneath. These were posted on the bulletin board the rest of the week before you took it home in your weekly folder to show to your parents. The weeks I would make a stupid mistake and miss out on my sticker and that cherished "Goody Goody Gundrop" were heartbreaking. This was the year some of the kids took to calling me Tori-ota, since the small Toyota trucks were getting quite popular in the area. We had a Spanish teacher that year, Mrs. Garza (? I think, but not sure). She was wonderful, too. Here is the only picture I have of her, at our Easter program held in Mrs. Tulloch's classroom:

I've blogged before about my aversion to anything frilly, but this picture always makes me smile, with the juxtaposition of my blue culotte jumper next to Rhonda's dress beside me. That's Lance, beside Rhonda, with Bobby behind him, and Peter behind me.

I'm not as good with the whole class though: Chris and Devin are the two kids pictured on the right in the back row. Center row left to right: Peter, Karen, Bobby, Mary, ?, Rhonda, Lance. Front row: Michael, Stacy, Rhonda, Me (note the same jumper), Jason, Care, Susie, and Stephanie. I'm sketchy on Stacy and Susie, but those are the names that leap to mind when I think about it.

My weakest link is the second grade. I had Mrs. McCaffrey again, who was also my kindergarten teacher. I could not even tell you which room we were in, which seems very strange. Where did those memories go? Most of the kids I can name here I had multiple years but it's unusual to have half a dozen unknowns.

That's either Wesley or Jesse (the twins were never put in the same class to keep the teachers from going crazy), ?, Frank, ?, Nancy. Center: ?, Chris in his very timely "Darth Vadar lives" shirt, Christina, Sandy, Dana (she of the aforementioned horse escapades was moved up a grade a few years later), Mary, ?, ?. Front row: Stephanie, Rhonda, Michael, ?, Suzanne, Karen, Me, Peter, and Jason.

Third grade we were in the top building on the map, across from the cafeteria, in the middle classroom on the left. The windows looked out across the street to a playground area where the slides and swings had been moved since the construction of the gym. Third grade was Mrs. Perkins, who had a baby near the end of our school year. This was the year of the "magazine" where the girls had to design stories, artwork, and the cover to pit against the boys' version. I want to say this was for the Health curriculum where we had to write articles about our changes bodies and feelings. I also remember having a running competition with Kevin, standing beside me below on who would score highest on each test.

Somehow the memory mysteriously returns here: Back row is Sandy, Nancy, and Frank; Center Row:  Phillip, Robert, Mary, Alan, Scotty, Wesley, Terry, Christina; Front row: Shannon, Michael, Rhonda, Shiela, Me (in a dress! and very awesome brown boots that don't show), Kevin, Peter, Karen, and Stephanie. (I got stuck on Phillip for a minute, but I think that's right.)

Here's Mrs. Miles' 4th grade picture without Mrs. Miles. Note the dwindling class size:

Back: Nancy, Frank, Alan; Center: Chantelle, Jesse, Mary, Scotty, Yvondia: Front: Stephanie, Rhonda, Shiela, Me, Angie, and Michael at front. And this is the dressiest I ever got. This was the year of my concussion, going after the ball out of bounds near the bleachers in the gym and hitting a waxy spot on the floor that sent me careening to the ground head first, knocked unconscious, and carried by the aforementioned very hunky Coach Jon to the nurse. This was the year Stephanie's father was killed and we all didn't know what to say or how to comfort her when she cried. And this was the last year of class pictures that I know of. If anyone out there has Mrs. Upshaw's fifth grade class from 1981 or Mrs. Atkinson's sixth grade class from 1982, please let me know!

Fifth grade was Mrs. Upshaw, whom I loved. It was also the year of longing for those jordache jeans with the embroidered strawberry patch on the back pocket, which my parents refused to buy me and seemingly every other girl in the fifth grade wore. It was the year of my first real cattiness with other girls, being left out of the clique, and discovering who my real friends were. Care Williams, if you are out there and ever read this, find me. I still remember spending the night with you when your pet rabbit was hopping all over the living room and a litter of puppies was living wunder your house and we watched The Bodyguard on TV. It was the year of square dance lessons in gym that were so horribly embarrassing, especially the times the girls were told to line up along the wall and wait for one of the boys to pick her. I much preferred dodge ball. It was the year we rode a bus to see Brigadoon performed at a theater downtown . It was the last year there was more than one class of my age group. 

I showed up for 6th grade in my cast from the broken arm on the summer Canadian vacation. The first couple of weeks we had a new teacher, whose name I cannot recall, although I believe it started with a J. She was a slender, young black woman with very short hair who brought in her own worksheets and taught us exciting things about math, such as the concept of having a numeric system that wasn't based on ten and how to do exponents and other daring stuff. And then one day, she was gone. Mrs. Atkinson took over the class, we went back to textbook math, and I spent the rest of the year angry about it. It was the year of getting so angry I kicked my bag across the classroom, which would have been enough of an outburst, except there was a pencil lead sticking out of the canvas bag that broke off in my foot, to add injury to anger. The first months I had to write with my right hand and remember being so frustrated and angry that my handwriting was so ugly. I never seemed to appreciate that I could write with my right hand, just that it wasn't pretty. It was the year when I was called on in chapel to read the account of Jesus coming into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, when I took it upon myself to substitute the word "donkey" in place of the King James preference for "ass" to avoid snickers and got publicly lectured about changing the Word of God . It was the year of the first space shuttle launch in March of 1981, when we huddled around a small television to watch the launch happen live, and I was more preoccupied with the rumor that Chris was going to ask me to "go together",  which he did later that week, in front of his friends, in the gym, when we were running those endless laps for our Presidential awards. I think I managed to say, "Yeah, ok" before starting to run again, cheeks flushed.  Our big moment together came on the hayride that the class took during field trip day, on some farm, when we held hands and some of our classmates tied our feet together as a prank. I remember hiding an award trophy of his in one of the classroom cabinets because I was jealous. I don't think we were even talking by the end of the semester. It was the year I had twelve teeth pulled and braces strapped on. By the summer, I was leaving the only school I'd ever known.

Nothing was ever the same after that. I went from a tiny class of kids I'd grown up with, to Thompson Intermediate, in the 7th grade with hundreds of other kids, almost all strangers, when everyone else had already been there a year. I didn't know how to change classes or navigate schedules or a large lunchroom. I entered band that year, skipped over beginner band, and started on the oboe with a few lessons. I was an odd mix of awkward, with too much attitude and sarcasm, and not enough sense of how to fit into the changing balance of junior high cliques. It was a long time before I felt as though I fit in anywhere again. 

I think that's probably why Easthaven holds such a place in my heart. It was safe and small and familiar, just how you're supposed to remember your childhood. 

I look at the Google Street view of the place and sigh for the toll time has taken. It sits virtually empty and abandoned, a shell of its former self. The ghosts we would always pretend we heard in the dark corners of those seldom-used rooms are still there.

I can't remember what is inscribed on the white cement there on the bricks at the corner. Zooming in didn't help. But it's been there forever.

This is an angle of the back of the first sanctuary (steeple still in place) and the kindergarten building. This was also the place to catch your ugly-colored van home, most years.

A centered view of the back door of the kindergarten building.

And below is the yard where I used to play at recess in kindergarten. To the left is the back door into the cafeteria, by way of the old music rooms.

This is a side view of the old sanctuary and fellowship hall entrance. I remember playing Red Light, Green Light out on this lawn, under those trees (the fences were added later) and hunting for easter eggs.

And here's a view of the front of the old sanctuary, far left, the kindergarten building hidden behind trees, my first grade building coming up the walk towards the viewer, and the gigantic gymnasium near the red car.

This is the back of the gym and a view of the building where I went to possibly second, definitely third, fifth, and sixth grade classes. The only time we left our classroom was for lunch, recess, PE, and music. The overhang near the back of the picture was where the buses were parked in my last years there. To the right, across the street, is where the playground equipment was moved my last years there.

A shot of the back of the cafeteria. Those windows were the teachers' lounge, which had the only coke machine on campus (.35 cents)

And finally, while the Google Car skips over the portion of the road that would give me the best angle on the back of the old sanctuary, unless my eyes deceive me, below you can still see that stained glass panel I remember so vividly from the inside, when the light would stream in during chapel in the mornings of my kindergarten and first grade years, when we would recite Psalm 100, the King James version, of course, together at the start of service, and which I can close my eyes and still hear my five year old voice saying:

Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands; Serve the Lord with gladness, come before His presence with singing; Know ye that the Lord, He is God, it is He who has made us and not we ourselves; we are His people and the sheep of His pasture; Enter into His gates with Thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise; be thankful unto Him and bless His name; for the Lord is good, His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endureth to all generations.