destruction

My most fond living arrangement since I moved out of Nana's house is Garner Apartments. It is a place I lived for almost two years in college. A quirky, 14-story apartment building on campus at SFASU. At one time it was the tallest building in East Texas. Built in 1969, it is currently being demolished to make room for two new buildings in its place.

I had noticed a call for memories of the building a few months ago from the alumni association. I thought they were just making a news story for the magazine. Yesterday, via twitter, I came across photos of the destruction that is expected to take approximately three weeks. My heart broke like the building appears in the photos. In some of the images, you can look through the building seeing the rooms and their characteristics...those places in my memories being taken down.

What made Garner so wonderfully quirky?
-the patched doorways that converted a suite style residence hall into apartments
-the pie-shaped layout
-the built-in refrigerators that no longer worked therefore creating much needed additional cabinet space (or better yet, when they did work and were still used as cabinets--cold trash bags anyone?)
-while in your bathroom, it was hard to determine whether the ringing phone was in your apartment or the neighbors'
-while in your kitchen, you could hear the toilet flush in the neighbors bathroom but never anything else
-while sitting on your couch, you could hear the pillow talk on the other side of the wall
-a good rule of thumb...never comment to your neighbor in the lobby about what you heard through the walls!
-each apartment was furnished but with different items from various eras. there were coveted items that were sought out from empty apartments
-my 12th floor apartment flooded during a particular rainstorm and no one could explain why because the water was not 12 floors deep (several other apartments on the west side also flooded that night)
-there were two ways out, but only one way into your apartment
-the mystery and intrigue of the roof

Why I loved it so...
-you didn't have to drive around for hours to locate a parking space in our lot
-everything on campus, and even a few things off, were in walking distance
-I could see over the pine trees for a great view of sunsets
-dinners in my kitchen
-Nintendo challenges
-1205
-all of the quirky things
-my friends

The thing I disliked the most...
-climbing the stairs after a fire alarm, especially in the middle of the night