Memories of the 'Old' Cass High

Even before it was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, that blue-and-gold building on Grassdale Road always resembled a penitentiary more than a high school.

There were no windows at the old Cass Comprehensive High School building—the story I always heard was that it was built during the tumultuous ‘60s, and the designers excluded window panes because they thought rioters would have just smashed them out anyway. You literally couldn’t look outside if you attended Cass; if there was one word I would use to describe the old Cass High, it would have to be insulated.

Cass High always had that reputation. If Cartersville was a factory for athletes and Woodland was the county’s academic leader, then Cass High was Bartow’s blue-collar nexus. A lot of graduates from Cass attended college, but most of them didn’t. Quite a few earned technical diplomas, but a majority of them earned paychecks through physical and manual labor.

If you take a look at any class yearbook, it’s pretty safe to say that most of the seniors pictured therein eschewed higher education for enrollment at the school of hard knocks. Cass may have produced some doctors, engineers and lawyers, but it has definitely produced far more waitresses, cashiers and factory workers than career-centered professionals.

It’s been almost 10 years since I graduated from Cass High, and I’d be lying if I told you most of my memories of the institute were favorable. Sure, there were a few decent moments, I suppose, and I had a number of encouraging teachers, but by and large, when I think of my time at Cass, I can’t help but feel the same sentiments a prisoner must feel when reflecting on his time spent in the slammer.

The hallways were always dark—it seemed as if no matter which corridor you went down, half of the fluorescent light tubes weren’t working. No matter where you were in the building, you felt cramped, and in some of the older rooms, there was this bizarre smell, a mixture of dirt and cotton, that never seemed to leave the air.

I spent four years of my life in that building, but for the life of me, I don’t think I can recall a single classroom lecture, unless it involved a fistfight breaking out during the middle of it. My remembrances of Cass High, I’m afraid, are all memories of the nonacademic variety.

I remember walking around listening to Johnny Cash: Live at San Quentin on my portable CD player and humming along to the Man in Black, rewording the lyrics in my head to “Cass High, I hate every square inch of you.”

I remember eating french fries, chicken fingers and charred pizzas five times a week for the better part of the early 2000s. As a freshman, I went into the building weighing 120 pounds, soaking wet, with bricks in my pockets. When I graduated, I weighed approximately 100 pounds heavier.

I remember hanging out on the top deck of the school parking lot, which was affectionately referred to as “Redneck Hill” by the student body. Just about every day, we’d wait for the principal to come up there and shoo us away, as we anxiously tried to hide the enormous chunks of chewing tobacco in our cheeks from being seen.

I’m not really sure I fit into a “clique” during my high school years. If the group I hung out with was indeed a “clique,” we were one lacking any sort of agenda, that’s for sure.

We really didn’t do a whole lot, I recall—we’d drive to Hamilton Crossing and watch juniors engage in fisticuffs (in my day, I’ve seen some bare-knuckle brawls that’d put the Ultimate Fighting Championship to shame), we’d eat pizza, and we’d go over to one another’s houses to eat brownies and drink what we told our parents was citrus soda. If slacking were an Olympic sport, we’d probably earn a spot on the national roster.

To me, it’s amazing that the things I remember most are all really trifling and inconsequential things. I vaguely remember walking across the stage to receive my diploma, but I’ll never forget the smell emanating from the cosmetology lab on perm day. I’ve forgotten the names of a good 75 percent of my teachers, but for some reason, I still recall the combination for my sophomore year locker.

In hindsight, I have a hard time believing that Cass High left so much as an indentation on my life. I lost touch with everybody I was friends with, I have no idea where I put my actual degree, and I never even bothered showing up for senior picture day. But now, a good decade after the fact, I find myself dwelling more and more on those bygone days of my youth, when the future seemed so far away and it felt like 10th grade would never end.

Alike an ex-inmate, I really can’t say that I miss the old Cass High, per se. I don’t miss it, but I sure as heck find myself thinking a lot about it these days.