funny thing about facebook. not the people you 'rerun' into, but the places your reminded of. At least this is true for myself. One particular place is the town where i spent my childhood, (and i stress the word hood) and my teenage years. Rossland. type that name in the searchbar and you'll be cast into another world. of course rossland is another world. It seems though, that it's been many worlds. perhaps every generation sees it differently. i wonder how one little town can change so much yet still be the same. I lived there in the 70's, 80's, and a bit of the 90's. Now being alive and remembering the 70's may make one feel old, but what really makes me feel old is not so much recognizing the names of the people in these facebook rossland groups but recognizing that these names are the children of the people i went to school with. THAT makes one feel ...aged. But checking out the forums about rossland compels me to release some thoughts. It's like exorcising demons or belching after a drinking a can of pepsi in one gulp. So what are people talking about these days? people are talking about the old elementary school "cook avenue school" that they tore down a couple weeks ago. "are you a smart cookie?" people were sad about that. i guess it sucks to see an institution go. My fondest memories of that place are; getting in fights, and sneaking out of detention. and now that it's gone i guess i can admit that....(deep breathe)...it was me and some girl i was trying to impress who broke a bic pen open and wrote all over the freshly painted walls by the grade one class. But all in all, it was an experience. the school was in my neighborhood, a 10 minute walk from my house. The highschool is another story. Rossland senior secondary. Class of 89, 32 grads, 300 students total. How many people know that it half burned down in the early 90's. no one seems to have mentioned it in these forums. I remember being in home ec. class and at the start of more than one class i would break a tea bag open on an element , turn the element on low heat and then sit down for class. i read a story about how another kid lit the teachers desk on fire with lighter fluid and how she retired a couple hours later. I wonder if he realizes that the same teacher though it was her fault for the fire that destroyed half the school. School was brutal for me. i spent more time staring out the windows at the bright blue sky then i did at the dusty green chalkboards. I would play sick so i could go to the nurses station and sleep on a cot. I skipped out of more classes than i attended. I actually would forget where my locker was. And this was half way through the year! I remember in grade 8 and 9 we didn't have electives yet, so i would just go to the same classes that i knew i shared with certain other students. but in grade 10 these students would take different electives than i did, and i couldn't follow them anymore....i didn't know where certain classes were. And this was grade 10! did i mention that there were only 300 kids from grade 8 to grade 12. even though it seemed like a big building, it wasn't a big school. It's a wonder i even graduated. Wow, reading this over makes me realize i was not the honor student that i portray myself as. I remember those high school years and not being surprised that instead of school being my focus, i think skateboarding, bmxing and snowboarding were my focuses. And the topic of a skatepark was an issue back then and still is alive and well on facebook today. even back in the 80's we were trying to get a park. the city admin. offered a solution. a crappy dead end road full of cracks and weeds. just an old street. No ramps, curbs or anything. now almost 20 years later, it looks like rossland may finally get the park it deserves. Another thing they're talking about on facebook is that they've renamed the annual celebrations that used to be called "golden city days" to "rossfest". geez, we renamed it years ago, 'cept we called it "cold and shitty days". i still like our name the best. They used to make a big sandpile out behind the supervalu and put pennies and nickels in it and let the kids dig for the change. Then after the events you'd find me and my friend digging around looking for the change that everyone missed. It happened at the end of summer and usually it was just as our name implied. i think that rossfest is a lame attempt to capture what some would like rossland to be known as. A hip, trendy town full of culture and a coolness. Ross-vegas they call it. however, i know better. it's still cold and shitty days, and as cool as ever. But i could talk all night about rossland, I knew about rossland when 'boomtown emporium' was called the o.k. store, and was actually a store, and owned by a crazy asian named sheck. maybe i'll talk more in the next post in 2 months time, i could probably write a book about all the crazy shite that happened there, and people would read it. maybe this is it, we'll see.
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