15 MayThe Burning of the Burley Junior High School

           

Although each child is an individual, children as a group have common dreams. They dream of superpowers and wonder which power would be best. Could Cyclops beat Wolverine? How about Batman against Superman? Children dream of what they would pick if they could have any wish. Should it be all the money in the world or to never get sick? Most dreams stay dreams and most likely the world is better off for it. But then there are the dreams we don’t even know we have until they come true.

            In the early 1970’s, in Burley, Idaho, stood a tall, gray building of three stories. I’m sure my memory is not completely accurate, but the building struck me as being made of cement. It was old and it was forbidding and it was reminiscent of the state penitentiary. I was aware of this school building, and afraid of it, long before I had to confront it in the 7^th grade. As I got older and 7^th grade approached, the building and all it represented only became more horrific. The building, in its cold, cement way, seemed evil. And those who entered its doors and survived for any length of time, would come under its influence. The eighth and ninth graders and the way they preyed on the seventh graders prove this. All of us sixth graders heard what might happen to us when we went to that school.

            Inevitably my 7^th year began and I entered the world of dark hallways and warped, wooden floors; dank stairways; and classroom doors that hid in strange nooks and crannies. Hogwarts had little on the old Burley Junior High.

            The fact that nothing bad happened to me right away made the anticipation all the worse. There were too many hidden, lonely places where the 8^th and 9^th grade minions of the school could trap me and perform some perverse ceremony. It was just a matter of time. I had heard from a trusted source that in the near past a 9^th grader had sprayed Nair hair remover on some poor 7^th grader’s head. The kid left the school in tears and never came back.

            September turned to October. I had been going to that school for one month and still the fear of it hadn’t worn off. Each morning the sight of the tall, gray walls and the stark, plain windows, and then the big kids loitering around the school yard filled me with dread. It didn’t matter that no one or nothing had bothered me yet–I knew that it was just a matter of time. Sooner or later I knew I would be locked in the boiler room in the basement by an 8^th grader. Kids had been bitten by rats down there and had to get rabies shots. That was history everyone knew. Or a ninth grader would dump me in the dumpster out back where no one but the cooks and the garbage men went. Only bad things could happen in a school that looked like that.

            The worst part about my fear of that school is that there was nothing I could legally do about it. I couldn’t think of anything that I could do or was willing to do to change the situation. I imagine it’s like being sentenced to prison for life with no hope of parole. Each morning you open your eyes and you are still there. There is nothing you can do. It wasn’t that I didn’t have an imagination. I did, but I was too realistic to try to dream my way out of this school. But a dream was there, waiting for me, forgiving of my blindness.

            For one period each day I was able to escape the gloomy confines of those cement walls to attend band class in an ancillary building next to the school. This building was old, too, and housed the band room, the shop room, and the locker rooms for PE. But it was made of red bricks and was almost cheery to look at compared to the penitentiary we called a Junior High school.

            It was just at the end of my second period band class when the fire alarm rang. We knew it was just a drill, because only a drill would be timed so perfectly with the end of a class. The principal was efficient and wouldn’t waste actual class time with a drill. Since we were leaving class anyway, and since we were in the ancillary building, we simply walked through the classroom door into the school courtyard. The day was clear, but it was chilly standing there in the shadow of the school. In fact it was so chilly that instead of trying to delay returning to school, many of the kids were trying to get back in before the drill was over. Even I was cold enough to wish that the kids in front of me would get moving, but then the fantasy began.

            “There’s smoke! There’s smoke!” someone yelled. I looked up and out of a third-story window that was slightly opened came a thin column of smoke. The entire student body stared in silence for a moment—not in horror, but it disbelief. I’m sure the same thought went through all our minds at once. “Could our school really be on fire?” Things that cool just don’t happen. It’s never you that wins the million dollars. It’s never you that gets the prettiest girl. It’s never your school that catches fire. But there was the smoke. We all saw it together. Still there was silence a moment longer as if we were all waiting for the smoke to disappear and the principal to stick his head out the window and say, “Just kidding!” When that didn’t happen, the bouncing and cheering began.

            “There’s smoke! There’s smoke!” We all sang in ecstasy.

            `Then things only got better. Sirens. And we knew they were for us. Oh, the thrill. The fire department was only a few blocks away and all too soon they were there. Too soon because they would have the fire out in no time and the dream would be over. It was a big red truck, just like it should be. Firemen hopped out dressed in their reflective, fireproof coats and their helmets. They were beautiful. We all thought so, but we booed anyway. They were going to ruin our fun. We booed and yelled and told them to go away. They paid us no mind. I think they may have even understood how much fun this was to all of us. They disappeared into the building to do their duty even if it meant ruining our party.

            Five minutes passed. Then ten minutes. The smoke kept coming. It didn’t just keep coming, but it got thicker. Suddenly we all fell silent. Where there was only smoke, now there was flame. Tongues of flame were reaching out the window and licking at the cement on the outside. They were tentative at first, but then grew bolder. The school was burning. It was really burning. Our mouths opened soundlessly and then all at once we nearly went insane as we expressed our joyful disbelief. We twirled, we pointed, we ran in circles. Seventh, eighth, and ninth graders alike chanted, “It’s burning, it’s burning, our school is burning.”

            The reality of what was happening was finally brought home when the assistant principal, using a blowhorn, asked us all to move to the football field. We didn’t move quickly. I think most of us thought that fire needed our help and that if we got too far away, it would go away. This would have caused a real disaster. The excitement was at such a pitch that should the firemen win against the fire and the principal call us all back into school, many would have died from the adrenaline being removed too quickly.

            But we needn’t have feared. From the football field we watched the thick column of gray smoke turn into a thick column of black smoke. We watched as the flames spread from window to window, breaking some and melting others. There may have been some tears as we realized the fire was completely out of control. Most likely they were tears of joy and most of us just didn’t understand the magnitude of what was happening.  In my eyes, the building, in all its horror, was consuming itself.

            The message came, again through a blow horn, that the busses were coming and that those of us who could were to start walking home. I don’t know why I didn’t stand there and watch it to the end, but I didn’t. I started on foot for home. At the end of each block I looked over my shoulder just to make sure it was true. Each time the answer was the same—Yes, that horrible, old school building was burning down. The smoke rose high into the clear autumn sky as a sign. It was like a rainbow to me—a promise that I would never be within those walls again.

            Now, forty-seven years later, the school is just a memory. There is another building in its place. It’s not a school, though. The new junior high school was built across town, just three blocks from where I lived. It was built of light-colored bricks, bricks with a cheerful yellow tint. The evil spirit of the old building didn’t linger in the new. The evil had been exorcised by the fire. My year in the new school (for it took two school years to build) was a happy year. It was a year born of a true-life fantasy. If I never win another prize, if I never have another good dream, it will be okay because a school I hated and feared actually burned to the ground right before my eyes. How much more could I ask for?

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