Erin The Great

I was sitting at work bored off my rocker today. It’s was an unusually slow Friday, so in my boredom I went to the Google homepage to see if there might be something to help my current condition. I was looking at my options as far as images, news, maps etc. when maps caught my eye.

It’s not very often that I look things up on Google maps, but being as homesick as I’ve been, I thought I’d look a few things up. I started with my apartment here in Utah, and gradually grazed over to my home in Oregon. From my house in Oregon I drove using the arrows to friend’s houses and finally found my self at my old high school.

I was looking at the aerial view of Good Old North Salem High School (if you click on the link, it should send you to the roof of the building) when I realized due to my adolescent negligence, I probably know the ‘aerial’ view a lot better then the actual ‘standing in front of the building’ view.

I zoomed (a better look at rooftop) in a little bit closer and got a really good view of the roof that I had spent so much time climbing. When you’re up there at night, there is a spot on the roof that looks like an old time dance floor and with the lights on it, it looks like you’re in an old ballroom. There are windows that cover one side and at night they act as mirrors…. Very cool!

If you go up a level (usually by taking a sturdy sweatshirt to help hoist yourself up) you have two options, you can 1. Climb a little further to the black top roof and go paint the bell tower base or play paintball of the roof. 2. Stay on the white top and go over to the turtle back looking cover, bust the lock using bolt cutters and shimmy/repel down the 40 feet of cable and voila! You’re in the auditorium.

I remember finely tuning my lock picking techniques on the doors of that old school. We’d break in, and as long as you kept to the left, the sensors couldn’t reach you. I should add a disclaimer about any property damage that was done. We were respectful.

There was this one rumor about my school that was built circa 1910 ish. During the wars supposedly our building had a bomb shelter, Rumor has it that a student was playing around and was trapped inside there and ether died or was seriously hurt. Shortly after this incident, they expanded the grounds and added the cafeteria; the cafeteria was supposedly where our ‘bomb shelter’ was located. This is not true, in fact the cafeteria can be used as a fall out shelter but the actual bomb shelter is located near by and after finding the enterance during one of our excursions one night, one of my friends decided to break into it. It was somthing he ‘had to do’ before we graduated.  My friend found papers from the 1940’s and 1950’s. It’s pretty crazy.

So many good memories of that place…mostly after-hour ‘good times’ but what’s a little adventure here and there?