Boiler Up - Changes
Another campus visit during another sea of black caps and gown the bad good friends set to boilermaker country, West Lafayette’s Purdue University.
Purdue is a campus BGF Ayrielle is all too familiar with. Her father is an alum, her mother’s family has worked her, and she met her husband at Purdue. You could say her life wouldn’t be what it is today if John Purdue didn’t set up this little land grant institution across the Wabash River. But if Ayrielle’s father was here today he sees that the campus has changed a lot since the 80s. Frankly, it has changed a lot in the last five years...in the last 10 months.
To all the graduates celebrating, the campus you see now, the campus you hold dear in your memory shall change. For better (or worst) the campus changes to fit the needs of the new students and faculty. They create new dorms, purchase new digital materials for libraries, upgrade lab equipment, and so forth. Every now and again the alums or industry partners will donate large sums to purchase something rather sexy for the institution. By sexy I mean—not something necessarily needed by either students or faculty, but future students will inevitably be attracted to. Take example any outside artifact (aka statue or fountain that adds to the scenic ambiance to campus). Many artifacts could have provided funding for new classroom equipment or be banked as a repeating scholarship for many years depending on the size of the overall donation. Only one artifact on campus — Mr. John Purdue’s grave located next to the humble founder’s fountain on the Hello Walk—cost relatively no money. Yet the statue of him very near is one of those sexy pieces that many current graduates sit beside to take their pictures. So is Neil Armstrong and his giant leaps boot marks. Or the unfinished P...the boilermaker hammering down outside Ross-Ade...the sun in the solar system replica.
Sexy.
The next time these alums come back to campus, more sexy stuff will be on campus. But hopefully so will new facilities, new academic buildings, new study spots, and new technologies. Maybe even some good oldie get a refurbish for a repurpose. Stone Hall and the Union have certainly gone through some remodels in the last year which normally wouldn’t have happened on such a timeline if Covid didn’t reduce the on-campus foot traffic.
But there will always be the institutional favorite watering holes. You probably are envisioning the ones on your campus right now—for Purdue it’s Harry’s and Triple XXX. Harry’s was originally an ice cream parlor and soda fountain in the early 1900s, but they had some competition on campus when the Union had its own parlor in the basement. After prohibition, they obtained a one-way (beer only) permit to stay in business but kept its namesake as the OG chocolate shop in the area. Hence the photos in front of the side building mural with the name Harry’s Chocolate Shop in the cream and chocolate brown monotone. Harry’s is no longer own by the same founding family, but many Purdue graduates now co-own it and recognize it as a traditional cornerstone to Purdue’s Chauncey Village (ps. Purdue was originally founded in the town called Chauncey...not West Lafayette).
Triple XXX also has a family-owned history. A common misconception to those not familiar with root beer drive-ins, this is not a lady dancing gentlemen’s club...the X’s represent the quality of root beer, triple being the highest of quality. Their tagline “We were here before your mother was born” isn’t just loose ice, they been a thirst station in Chauncey since the 1920s. It was a place that had roller-skates and carhops that bigger chains like Sonic try to mimic, but with MSNBC and that Flavor Town Guy making the landmark more noticeable on a national level than just to boilermakers, it’s a lot easier to grab a burger from inside the diner from someone not on wheels. The root beer is still made the way it has always been and now can be shipped invade you need a throwback.
Revisit fond old memories. Share them even. But growth and change also are great to create new memories.
