In the back of the hometown schoolyard was a set of heavy iron swings. On one side of them was a row of wooden teeter-totters. On the other was a broadjump pit whose run-path began at the south end of an old locked shed. Behind that small building, facing a farmer’s field on the other side of a wire fence, we smoked cigarettes we’d filched from some adult’s pack.

The schoolyard was edged on its south and west sides by two rows of caragana trees, with a path down the middle of them. Poplar trees grew here and there among the caraganas and there was one that had a V just the right height for me to get into and sit. When I wasn’t perched in the crook of that tree, I was running up and down the shadowy path past it, playing some variation of Cowboys and Indians.

In the corner where the rows of caraganas intersected was a wide triangle of larger poplars with footpaths crisscrossing the bare dirt at their bases. This was a sort of Lovers Lane; inside it, you were in heavy bush and could not be seen from the schoolyard or the road. Initials and arrows entwined in hearts were carved into the bark of the biggest trees.

When some public utility was put in, they bulldozed this corner down and dug a trench across it. What a shame. It has never come back to what it was — a mysterious magical place. I always look when I drive by, on my way out to my sister’s.

The school has long since been shut down. It went from my highschool heyday of 16 to 20 Grade 12 graduates, to six and then 2 and then 1 and then none. The school division shut it down and bused the kids to the next town. That’s when my home town changed; it has never been the same since. The children do not gather there anymore.

First they sold the gymnasium, which was small but fairly new because my hometown school struggled for many years to get a gym built. It ended up across the highway, turned into a restaurant that seems to always have cars and trucks parked in front of it.

The rest of the school was opened up to the townspeople to come and take whatever they wanted: library books, student and teacher desks, whatever was still there. Then it was sold to a local farmer who started a business building grain bins. He uses it for an office and workshop. The wall of half the elementary school -- the east walls of my Grade 4, 5, and 6 classrooms — has been knocked out and the interior walls are open to the elements.

It’s kind of hard to drive by there now. The place still calls to my heart, my memory. The swings are no longer there. They have been painted and incorporated into a bright playground of colour near the main street. But before they were moved, and well into my 20s and 30s, whenever I stayed with my grandparents I’d wait till after dark and walk the block or two to the school. I’d go swinging on the old swings, happy as a bat whipping its way through the night air.