My first college

Last weekend I stopped in at the first college I attended after high school. This is a picture through my windshield of what I guess is still the main building of the Black Hawk East Campus just south of Kewanee, Illinois. It is a much larger campus now with several additional buildings, including some on-site student housing that wasn't there in my day.

I only attended for one semester. I believe I had a track scholarship, but I never did run track. At the time, Jane was attending ICC in East Peoria and my intent was to transfer to nearby Eureka College to compete in track. Somehow I ended up just transferring to ICC, and that ended my college track career (before it ever started). I rented an apartment in Washington, IL for one semester, then Jane and I ended up just living together in her apartment in Washington the following year. I wonder how different my/our life would have been had I went to Eureka and ran track (Ronald Reagan's alma mater, btw)...

Anyway, I don't have a lot of memories of my time at BHE other than living in an apartment in downtown Kewanee. At the time it was above 'Tina's Shape Shop' and was not a very nice building. Drunks used to sleep on the crooked stairs leading up to my second floor room. I shared the apartment with my high school friend Brian G., and this is where I proposed marriage to the lovely Lady Jane. I lived there until someone broke in and stole Brian's stereo. I don't really remember how it happened that I/we didn't live there anymore. It's all kind of a blur now.

BHE was also the first place where I made friends with black people. Greg and Johnnie. Not that we were real good friends, but we smoked cigarettes together. I didn't realize it at the time, but the athletic director - who also taught my Intro to Psychology class - didn't think too highly of me because I smoked while on an athletic scholarship. Greg told me about this later. He was on the basketball team, as was my roommate.

So, that's about all I can remember about my brief time there. Coming back from my aunt's funeral last Saturday, I simply drove up between the buildings and turned around in the parking lot. I could barely recall having ever been there. Kind of sad, I suppose.