As a toddler, we drove past or through MacMurray College, on the way to church. The MacMurray baseball field was across the street and the Town Brook, from the playground of Franklin School, where I went to kindergarten. My kindergarten teacher was Sue Jones. Her husband was the coach of the Mac baseball team, Itchy Jones. When I came to SIU, Itchy Jones was the baseball coach here, before his career at U of I.
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Starting with first grade, I walked through the MacMurray College campus every day, on the way to Our Saviour grade school, and later Routt High School. When I was in grade school, I remember being proud of how unique MacMurray was. While every other high school and college had a football game following their homecoming parade, MacMurray had a soccer game. This was decades before the sport swept the nation.
MacMurray was home to "the bridge" (linking the north side of campus, with its academic buildings and sports fields, with the dorms, south of the town brook) and the student center, to those in my neighborhood. We met under the bridge in the morning to smoke cigarettes, and progressed to the student center to drink cokes and play Foosball, years before Foosball tables were ubiquitous in every bar and suburban basement in the country.
When I was in grade school, our lunchtime routine was to burst outside and steal bikes off the rack and take off, before any teachers, or playground moms, knew we were gone. Then we pedaled as fast as we could to Burger Chef, got sandwiches and drinks and headed back to the bridge to eat. Sometimes on it, most times under it. Morning, noon, and after school, for years, that bridge was our meeting place, staging area and refuge. The track field, out on Routt Street provided an out of sight hide away for 8th graders playing hooky and drinking beer.
MacMurray was a growing institution when I was a kid. I remember watching the chemistry building (Julian Hall) go up on Clay Ave. It was on what seemed like more of a hill, in those days. I spent happy winter days throwing snowballs at, and through, the windows of passing cars. I remember Michaelson Hall being built, when I was very young. Later, I marveled over all the out of state license plates in the parking lot and the loud music blasting from the windows. Even later, I found myself in Michaelson, and other dorms, as their residents tolerated the long haired local kids who wandered into their rooms to smoke their pot and occasionally buy it, when they had cash.
MacMurray provided so many firsts. Besides soccer and foosball, that was where I first saw a lacrosse game, a war protest, hippies and attended my first rock concert (The Grassroots, at Annie Merner Chapel).
MacMurray was central to every day on the east side of Jacksonville. It was north, west and south of the hospital where I was born, and the church, grade and high schools where I spent 11 and a half years. It was the eastern end of the street I grew up on and it's campus like a magnet. The clock on top of the library was a focal point of my life for 20 years. It was visible going to school, church and work, from Beecher, College, Hardin or Clay streets. The last memory I have of my mom, before we moved her to a nursing home, was of an autumn afternoon, walking her down Franklin St, across Clay and down the asphalt walk behind the chemistry building to Beecher, past the library and on down to East street and on south, through the fallen leaves, home.
Bob Dylan dropped a new song today. Tonight I'm reminded of the last line, of a song he released in 1974, " ...I love you more than ever now that the past is gone."
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