There are any number of nice things about working in the same place to which I was born, in the same neighborhood where I grew up and went to school, and where most of my personal history since has been made, but I think one of the very nicest is seeing old, familiar faces that appear now and then among the more numerous new that come and go, and come and go, almost, it seems, with a tidal rhythm. I think of them -- these old familiars -- as ballast in my passage, life-lines to the solid anchors of the past. Those who have trod for long the ground I have, watched for long the scenes I have, and gathered for long many of the memories I have, provide stabilizing stuff. When we meet, the old familiars and I, we exchange pleasantries, sometimes a snide remark or two, often a laugh, and on occasion, take time out from present realities to consider the past, pausing to reflect on those things we find worth keeping in the nooks of memory.

I often see English Professor Emeritus Karl Snyder walking across the campus or rummaging around in the library, and it was in this last place that I encountered him one recent day, approaching with a smile. He told me he had just come from a visit to the English Department in Reed Hall. He paused for a moment, then delivered his punch line: "I was told nothing had changed." He waited for the reaction he suspected would come. Having been long in this place himself and sensitive to change, and knowing that I am a sometimes chronicler of change, he thought I might be incredulous. I didn't disappoint; I was incredulous. The immediate absurdity inherent in the statement hit home. Standing in a building approaching its eightieth birthday and saying nothing had changed? My word.

It will surprise few that, after Dr. Snyder had gone his way, I began to think about the "no change" remark, and all that it implied. Maybe the remark was intentionally ironic; irony often adopts an attitude of unemotional detachment. Maybe the remark referred to no change since Monday morning or last week or last August, and therefore, the words taken out of context had lost relativity. Could be, too, that the speaker spoke in a more narrow sense, specifically referring to the fact that a course in Shakespeare, which Dr. Snyder is known to have taught, is still taught, although we are no longer sure as to the real identity of the Bard -- could be, they say, that Shakespeare was not he of Stratford, but the nobleman, Edward de Vere, in disguise.

Perhaps those with whom he spoke were too young or too new to TCU, so that no long look had had time to form. As humans, we must drag what we have known along with us and fit what we see into the interstices of what we saw. On the other hand, the speakers could have been old familiars themselves, who just don't give a fig for change-watching and didn't want to bother with the thought. And, it is also possible that, to some, an acknowledgment of change calls up too close to hand the passing of time and, thus, becomes a reminder of their own mortality, and they will, therefore, refuse to mark it.

With the notable exception of the library, the Reed building alone, has undergone more change than any on the campus. In fact, some who have been this way before and come back, look for its once-familiar columned front, and don't -- can't find it. Those who have passed this way before can't climb the vinyl- covered steps without remembrance of the worn-down stone that lies just beneath; can't enter into the Add-Ran College administrative suite without remembrance of the old auditorium with its wooden floor that echoed every footfall and rear-numbing wooden seats; can't pass through the central entrance from the outside, without an out-of-habit glance to see if the tiny model planets circling the light-bulb sun are still secure in the solar system display case to the right. I'll wager there are still those of us who, letting habit rule, start toward Reed instead of Sadler Hall to "check the mail" in the basement post office.

It was in April of 1911 that the cornerstone of what has since been named Reed Hall was laid. As the first Administration Building, it was the center of campus activity until relocation of administrative services to newly-built Sadler Hall in 1961. It was only then that the old Ad Building was renovated and reassigned to classroom and office use, primarily for the Add-Ran College of Arts and Sciences.

Some of us old familiars even remember the days before air-conditioning. Open doors and windows allowed cross-ventilation on hot September days, as well as conduits for sound floating inward, and outward, and along the open corridors. Harkening back to that time, we recall the wonderful old story that provides capsule characterizations of the grande dame of the English Department, Lorraine Sherley, and the no less distinguished, but ever so much less formidable, teacher of English, the soft-spoken Artemisia Bryson. Seems their classrooms were across from one another then, and Miss Sherley's popular course in Interrelation of the Arts was in progress at the same time as Mrs. Bryson's freshman section. The day was warm, the doors were open, the students in various attitudes of attentiveness to their respective lessons. What the day's topic for the freshmen was is lost to the story, but memory is clear about what was being interrelated to what in Miss Sherley's class. Her subject was Richard Wagner and his artistic contribution to the world of his time. By way of illustration, the class would be treated to a Wagnerian opera.

As the phonograph needle picked up the rich, heavy passages, dramatic choruses, and brass volleys from the record's grooves, and as the volume mounted and drifted out the door and across the hall, Mrs. Bryson found it increasingly difficult to have herself heard by her students. To close the door, of course, courted suffocation or, at the very least, torpor. Finally, she made bold to step across and ask Miss Sherley if she could turn the sound down "just a little". (All who knew Lorraine Sherley will immediately recognize how bold a step that was!) To the querulous request came the imperious reply, dripping with outrage, and with a heavy emphasis on the composer's name pronounced with a "V": "Turn it down? Artemisia, you don't turn down Wagner!"

From one perspective, the old Ad Building was a microcosm of what the university has become, harboring in its lifetime not only the English department, but all other humanities, too, and the sciences, music, and art, business, education, "home ec", all classrooms, the cafeteria, the student lounge, and, very early on, the little library tucked into a two-level space in the southeast corner. Now, it requires twelve separate building complexes to house these same programs and to carry on the work of the school.

One can say, I suppose, with some accuracy, that nothing has changed. Not much, anyway. Nothing except the land, the structure, its use, the people, man's knowledge, the universe, and time. After all, the English Department has been in the same place for eighty years, and they still teach Shakespeare, don't they? -- or is it De Vere?

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