My friend JimBo Gulley, for reasons unexplained, drives through Breckenridge Texas - my hometown - weekly. Why he does that is a mystery, but not the mystery that is the subject of this blog post.
He said that the signs above the doors on the old YMCA building cause him to chuckle, and he recently stopped and took a photo to share on Facebook, stating, "Well, apparently it’s only a blank wall that separates the boys from the men."
You may have to click on the picture to see them clearly, but above the left-hand door is the legend "Men" and above the right-hand door is "Boys." Some suggested that you go in as Boys and come out as Men.
Speaking from my own personal experience, I said that, "Actually,
the right hand door was the entrance to the town library, where we
learned about men. The left hand door led to the gymnasium, where at
Friday night Teen Canteen, we learned about girls."
Then JimBo wondered if the section in the middle had been boarded up. What was there originally? That's the mystery.
My interaction with these two doors is almost exactly as I stated. The library, behind the door on the right was probably my favorite place in the entire town. Well, there was this bakery I passed in the wee hours of the mornings as I delivered newspapers that had hot-out-of-the-oven pastries, but I digress.
For my entire growing-up years in Breckenridge, Pansy Pace, the local librarian - skillfully guided me through her meager inventory (neither the city of Breckenridge nor Stephens County has ever fully supported the library; the organization of my era was the
brain child of and was created by the Wednesday Study Club). Nevertheless, she led me through the Bobbsey Twin series, and the Hardy Boys - and dare I say it - the Nancy Drew books, From there we went through biography's of famous and important people - and beyond. Far, far beyond. God Bless You, Pansy Pace.
And the left-hand door that led to the gymnasium, where every Friday night (except for football season) the lights were low and the music wonderful, and the girls were... Well, as Bob Seger puts it, "We were working on mysteries without any clues."
There was a third interaction. If you turned right at the entrance to the gym, you ended up at the swimming pool, which was housed in a structure that looked almost as if it were tacked onto the building, but my understanding is that it was original with the building. That's where I learned to swim.
A man named Woodrow Garrett taught me - and thousands of kids like me - to swim in the YMCA indoor pool. My recollection, perhaps faulty, is that busloads of kids from the local elementary schools would bus over to the Y for classes. How and when we got there may be vague memories, but the swimming lessons were not.
And now to the mystery of the "third" door. Looks like it was decorative, JimBo. Here's a picture taken by the architect that designed the building in the early 1920's, W. G. Clarkson.
No middle door.
The fate of this building is a bit dodgy at the moment. It needs repairs, and like so many small town buildings, has been unused for years and the chances of it ever being used again are slim and none. Some benefactors built a new building for the library; the pool was drained decades ago, and I don't know where "mysteries without any clues" are being worked out today in Breckenridge Texas, my hometown. I just know that somewhere there are still doors that you go in as boys and come out as men.
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1 comment:
I was in that building once in the two years I lived there - at the Friday night dance. But I felt so guilty that we didn’t stay long. I didn’t know it had a swimming pool or library. I learned to swim before we moved there.
But I do know what happened to some of those windows in the original building, when they got replaced. I can look out of them at the lake.
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