Recently, I thought back to my time in high school. I wondered if the old 9th grade Curtright Campus was still being used by Eustis High School and came across an article about a new extension being added on to Main Campus starting this summer.
The last major renovation had been completed in 2003, the year before my husband and I both started attending the school. During that renovation, the campus received a new two-story classroom building, cafeteria, gymnasium, and media center in addition to renovations on the main historic building from 1942.
This newest renovation aims to incorporate the ninth graders back onto Main Campus after 26 years of housing them in their own dedicated campus one mile north across town. In addition, construction will include a 56,000 square foot classroom building, weight room, field house, bus loop expansion, restroom facilities, and a new parking lot.
The parking lot will be replacing the former softball field, the one my sister and best friend both played on during their time at the school.
I discovered the article during the last week of school, with demolition scheduled to begin the next week once the students were out on summer vacation. The timing seemed almost serendipitous. The school was in its final week of being in the version of my memories. I promptly decided to make a trip out to document the school before it started a new version of its life.
I pulled into the staff parking lot and walked toward the main building first. It looked exactly like I remembered, like only a few days had passed since I last attended and not the 18 years that had actually passed.
A series of banners that hung from the covered entrance caught my attention first.
COMMIT TO SUCCESS!
NO EXCUSES!
JUST DO IT!
BE YOUR BEST!
The text, while aiming to be inspirational, felt tone deaf to the composition of its student body, with 38% of students being economically disadvantaged.
I continued down the sidewalk toward the school sign and marquee. The sprinklers were running, creating a rainbow in the mist, behind it, the sign read “Eustis High School Panthers represent the best in everyone.”
In the field next to the previous addition sat a portable I don’t remember being there before along with a pile of trashed aluminum used as roofing over outdoor sidewalks.
An eastern lubber grasshopper clung to the chain link fence, unbothered by my presence.
At the softball field, wildflowers were growing, the grounds clearly unkept other than mowing. Vines hung to the fence and dugout.
The day was growing very hot by then, and I had to leave to meet up with my sisters-in-law for dinner that night. I made a mental note to return as soon as I could.
The next weekend, my husband and daughter accompanied me, a quick stop before showing my daughter her cousin’s empty house. We wanted to show her the school we went to while it still looked like how we remembered. They sat in the car while I walked the grounds again.
On the softball field now sat heavy equipment, including a skid-steer loader and compact excavator in preparation for the demolition.
Vegetation along the sidewalk was sprayed with surveyor’s paint marking the utilities. I walked toward the shade of the bus loop for a reprieve from the sun.
Details I had missed on my first visit now called my attention. The trash cans chained to the columns. The graffiti on a steel door with dates from 2014 and 2026.
Where the pile of aluminum roofing sat before now stood a football passing machine and a pile of construction debris.
On the walk back to the car, I passed a pre-cast concrete post. Covering it were mud dauber nests. I stopped and studied them, fascinated by the texture and forms.
Eustis has been my home, on and off, for thirty-two years now.
The school will continue on. New classrooms will rise. New students will walk those hallways and make memories of their own.
But the version that exists in my mind–the one tied to art classes, first dates, friendships, and the unique challenges of being a teenager–is about to transform into something unfamiliar.
The older I get, the more my camera seems drawn to these places.
The ones caught in the middle of becoming something else.
Places where the memory of the old and the possibilities of the new press against one another.
Standing on the sidewalk, watching the mud dauber nests and excavators waiting for demolition to begin, I realized I wasn’t really documenting a construction project.
I was photographing a place in transition.
And perhaps myself as well.
