The 7th

Chapter 4

    C. O. Gibbs junior college stood at what was, at one time, the center of small town of Ithaca. The center of town had over the years moved from where it once stood to orbit around the great planet Wal-Mart. Strange how in every little small town that seemed to be the way of things. At one time there were these great little downtown squares with the little quad in the middle where all the events were held. The farmer's markets and arts and crafts fairs would be held there and the parades would follow their routes there. The shops were always full of shoppers and gossipers and there was most definitely always a barbershop where you could go get a hot shave and an ear full. Then a Wal-Mart would move in and it was like over night the square died off. I'm not knocking Wally Worlds by any means just stating an obvious and rarely stated fact that this was the case with many a small southern town. Ithaca was no different. The square here, though, had seen a recent resurgence in frequency of visits by people as it had only, in the last ten years, become part of the C. O. G. ju. Co.

The junior college was making a bid to take it to the next level so to speak. They had been acquiring land and buildings over the last year in an effort to become a full fledge university. Most of the acquisitions had been fairly easy for them as a lot of the downtown area were abandoned buildings that the property owners were willing to sell for just a fraction of the value just so they didn't have to be bothered with them anymore. The board of trustees for the C.O.G. had methodically bought or been donated nearly ever block of the downtown area at this point and had really played their cards well. The buildings they hadn't been able to utilize for classrooms or offices they had rented out.

On the square nestled into the buildings that had been renamed after various old dead people they had rented a spot to a bank, one to a lawyer, a couple others to food type places, and one other to a book store. This was where I was headed. Right between "What's his Shit Hall", a dormitory for students and "I'm another old crotchety twat that died Hall", the building that housed all the student administration employees for the university sat a narrow three story tall brick building. It was wedged right in between both of those college buildings that had been refaced to look more utilitarian. They were covered with a metal or composite siding, hiding the crumbling brick and mortar. The names of each of these buildings, which were not actually what's his shit hall or I'm another old crotchety twat that died hall, were plastered to the side of these two buildings in that all to common block lettering that colleges use. The narrow brick building in the middle was hugely contrasted.

The original brick still showed in all its pock mocked and rusty brown glory. Every now and again you could spot a broken brick or an off brick in the row. They had that look from construction of days gone by, where the mortar lines might not be perfectly straight but instead of making you think the mason didn't know what he was doing it simply reminded you that everything then was done by hand and likely by just the one or two men. If a brick was slightly off it was because he was exhausted instead of unskilled. You could appreciate the beauty of the imperfectness of it the way only old things can be appreciated. The windows of the place matched their shape to the shape of the building. The ground floor was mostly windows like you'd expect in any store, displayed with various carboard recreations of Harry Potter, Edward Cullen, and what I supposed was Shakespeare himself. There were various round tables just behind the collage of cut outs where people could sit and read if they'd like. The second and third story windows matched the building even more. There were six of them, tall and narrow like the building, rounded on the top, three on the second floor, three on the third. The outside two had a standard appearance, two single panes each framed in a wooden square, and looked like they could be raised up and down. The middle two were four panes in fixed position with a wooden frame that formed a cross in the middle. Then at the very top were what looked like castle towers. I don't think there was any way to get inside of them and they didn't have any windows but it certainly served to set the building apart from all the rest. Just below the second-floor windows there was a black outline of a dog of some sort, wolfish looking to me, with a bent ear silhouetted by a moon and the name of the book store in black painted wooden letters. "The Dog Ear" it said and then just below that in smaller wooden letters "Ancient, Old, & New Books".