The first time I remember returning to the house where I spent most of my childhood years, I gazed in wonder at the brick structure on the lot, amazed at its size. Not because it was huge, but because it was not. 

In my memory, it was enormous — filled with room after room, and countless memories. But the physical structure was nowhere near as large in reality as it was in my mind’s eye. Such is the nature of memory, especially of those places that hold large importance in one’s life.

The feelings were similar when I returned to the place where I graduated high school. Though it was not the first time to go back to the spot off Hwy. 80 in Hickory, Mississippi, it was the first time I really paid attention to the differences. 

The brick structure of Hickory Attendance Center — particularly the campus for the junior high and high school — had somehow shrunk with age. Its U-shaped construction didn’t look so large to me anymore. Granted, I had moved in the eighth grade from a school where my class had 175 students to this rural school in Newton County where grades 8-12 had 175 students — I suppose I remember this because the numbers told to me were the same — so it didn’t look very big to me when we first arrived back in 1984. But in the four years following, it was the central locale for my formal education, sports, countless social interactions, and the beginnings of numerous friendships — some of which have lasted a lifetime. 

I can walk through the halls of HHS in my mind with ease, entering the westernmost doorway and glancing to my right at the double doors that led into the auditorium, then to my left at the door to the office of principal Mr. Ed McGowan. I can hear him asking, “Campbell, where do you need to be?”

I say “Good morning” to teachers like Coach Richard Harris, who smiles and nods; and Ms. Mary Carpenter, who returns the greeting and tells me sternly I need to hurry up if I’m going to make it to class on time. I can see Mr. Mac in the ag shop and the lunch ladies in the cafeteria. I can smell the unique aroma of the home ec building, and hear the squeak of rubber soles on the wooden floor of the gym as I look in admiration once again at the numerous trophies in the entranceway case. 

I remember how disappointed I was that the school building was eventually demolished, even though it was shuttered in the early 1990s when the county schools consolidated, just because of what it represented to me. 

Some dozen or so years back, I drove past the old campus with my daughters in the car. I pointed to where the main building once sat and said, “Right there is where I went to high school.” My then-teen, ever quick with the comeback, replied, “Where? The Dollar General?”

She couldn’t see what I saw — the spirit of a place that birthed so many memories I still hold dear. I have no idea how many times I have driven past or stood back on the old campus in the years since I graduated as a Bulldog in 1988, but rarely have I not looked over and some memory popped into my consciousness from my time there. 

It’s strange, isn’t it? That a place with limited square footage can grow into a ghost so much larger than it ever was in life? 

When it comes to “shared experience,” it matters not where each of us went to school, was born or raised, etc. We all have lingering memories of The Past. May those memories of yesterday drive us each to create new memories today — ones of which we will be unashamed in the years to come.

News editor Brett Campbell can be reached at brett.campbell@dailyleader.com.