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April 21, 2005
Farewell To an Old Lady
This makes me sad.
The sale papers for the Washington County Courts Building were signed Wednesday, four years after the county put the building on the real estate market.
The building is at the corner of College Avenue and Center Street, directly north of the former Mountain Inn. Fayetteville bought the building Wednesday for $413,000 as part of the Mountain Inn redevelopment project.
It will be torn down, along with several adjacent buildings, and replaced with a hotel. And I will miss it. I spent a lot of happy (and frantically busy) hours in that rickety old building during the 3 months I filled in for a friend as juvenile prosecutor. The office was on the ground floor; the court on the third. And most every time as I paused after climbing the 3 flights of stairs (the elevator was prone to getting stuck between floors), I would hear my name called by the judge's case coordinator.
"RRRRRRRRRRita!"
And I would answer "Marrrrrrrrria!"
It was sort of a running joke between us that I was one of the few white people she knew who could properly trill 'r's. Maria was Hispanic, you see. And as warped as I, so we hit it off famously. And if it was Friday afternoon, I always took a few minutes to fuss over her tiny teacup poodle, Violet, that she kept stashed behind her desk. Violet had a standing Friday appointment at the groomer's, so she got to spend the remainder of the day at the office. Because the Judge was a nice guy.
I miss working with him, as well as the court reporter who would give me a thumbs-up signal whenever I forgot to project my voice sufficiently during court. And the case workers and other staff.
I even miss working in that building. Built during the 1930s, it sat astride the corner like a determined, yet dignified grand dame. But like many old ladies, it is well past its prime. I don't miss the nauseating smell, said to come from some funky mold growing in the walls because of the leaky roof. Or the smell from a nearby drain that was for some reason, a favorite place for illicit grease dumping. Or the creaky old elevator that only worked sporadically and that had a tendency to get stuck between floors. Or the way the heating/air conditioning system seemed to only work at full blast or not at all. Or the Day-glo orange carpeting.
Iknow it's time for her to go. Yet it makes me sad, because she contains so many good memories. I got my first real courtroom experience there.....sink or swim courtroom experience. Eventually, I swam. And it was there I first discovered my passion for children's law. So many memories.
It's like saying goodbye forever to an old friend.
Posted by Rita at April 21, 2005 09:42 AM