Logan-ia

I went to Logan this weekend to cover what seems like my 4,621st college graduation. But this time it was different. Too different. After you spend 5 years living in Logan and going to Utah State you can't go 3 minutes without seeing someone you know. Even two and three years after I graduated, the minute I set toe on campus social hour was on and crackin. But this time nobody even looked familiar and not one person yelled out my name. An entire four story building where I used to attempt to study is just a parking lot now. Buildings and shopping centers have popped up in areas that I didn't even know existed and the tree near Moen hall is gone where we attempted to carve our names right before we were fined by our R.A.
But after taking a small nostalgic lap around campus the memories came flying back...or screaming back in some cases. There is still the rut in the sidewalk near the Ray B. West where, when I was on crutches, a crutch got stuck and I went tumbling down. There is the stone bench outside of Animal Sci that Tyler waited for me on every other day to walk me to lunch and the fountain Josh and I went wading in one night when we got a wild hair. People still talk about Aggie ice cream like its an alternative fuel. The big "hang out" table in the Hub, which I blame for single handedly coercing me into skipping most of my classes sophomore year resulting in a g.p.a. I am too ashamed to disclose and thus prompting the birth of my mantra "Cs get degrees" is still there. And I even visited the gut-ripping slab of sidewalk I avoided for two years, where I first saw my first one-and-only hand-in-hand with his new one-and-only a mere four weeks after the carnage. (I did not however continue the memory lane side-path to the Geology Building's basement where I ran to that day to blubber for 30 minutes after the sighting.)
The boys in Logan are still, as a whole, a little lurpy but seemingly kind-hearted and a lot of them still drive jeeps. People still park inappropriately in the driveway of my old apartments (ya Carly, that's right. INAPPROPRIATE) and the traffic on main street still makes me want to kick puppies. Hippies still abound so it's probably safe to say they are still banging their drums whenever they get a chance. And last but not least the Baugh Motel — the place where about 10 of us were surrounded by four police cars, caught in the hot tub and subsequently slapped with criminal trespassing charges — is still there and in it's same seedy form.
But its true. Logan was never really "me." It was a hell of a clambake while I was there but Salt Lake became more of a home even after just a year than Logan ever really was. Even so, make no mistake about it — I bleed Aggie blue.