Things sure have changed a lot since my undergraduate days at West Virginia University.

For one thing, Mountaineer Field was in the ravine below Woodburn Circle that housed the three original buildings from WVU’s 1867 founding, and not on the Evansdale Campus, which didn’t exist then I did as a WVU student. Woodburn Hall, Martin Hall (named for first president Alexander Martin) and Chitwood Hall.

That made it convenient to pass up those students who passed out from over-drinking up the rows until they were dumped onto Woodburn Circle beyond the last row of Mountaineer Field. That purple-colored Kickapoo Joy Juice was laced with a lot of vodka. These were the days before ID cards really mattered.

WVU gobbled up farmland in the Evansdale area, built a Personal Rapid Transit system (those driverless blue and gold cars on rails that hold maybe 12 if you crowd into one) to get students from downtown Morgantown to the Evansdale campus, and in 1980 plunked the current Mountaineer Field into the landscape.

As you can see from the photo montage, the PRT (bottom center of top half of montage), Student Recreation Center, National Center for Coal and Energy, the Mineral Resources building, Health and Education Building and Agricultural Science Building – like the new Mountaineer Field – came later.

To give you a better perspective of the changes, Agricultural Sciences (A), Engineering Sciences (B), Creative Arts Center (C) and the WVU domed Coliseum (D) are in both halves of the montage since they were among the first buildings to sprout up on the Evansdale campus.

I got my exercise BEFORE going to phys ed in what was WVU Fieldhouse on Beechurst Avenue along the Monongahela River. I had 10 minutes to scamper down a ton of stairs that went left, then right, then left, then right from Woodburn Hall, where the School of Journalism was housed at the time, to cross Beechurst and enter the fieldhouse. And 10 minutes to run up those same damn steps to get back to my next journalism class in Woodburn Hall.

WVU Fieldhouse became Stansbury Hall in 1970, when the WVU basketball team and other indoor sports moved to the new WVU Coliseum on Monongahela Boulevard. Mountaineer Field followed a decade later.

By the time I was finishing up at WVU, the School of Journalism moved from the third floor of Woodburn Hall to take over all of Martin Hall.

Later, J School was renamed P.I. Reed School of Journalism, for the English department professor who founded the journalism school, and whose favorite phrase was, “Don’t you see?” He, appropriatedly, taught journalism ethics. My other journalism professors included Don Bond, Paul Krakowski (who kept me from getting thrown out of school for printing only the Daily Athenaeum front page sideways) and Paul Atkins, who I still see at WVU Homecomings.

When I was at WVU, Dwight D. Eisenhower, in charge of winning World War II for the world, replaced Harry Truman as President, appointed Earl Warren as U.S. Supreme Court chief justice and warned about the “military/industrial complex” ruining the country someday. Marilyn Monroe had just married Joe DiMaggio. Hugh Hefner published the first issue of Playboy, which all the college men checked out for the articles (yeah, right!).

I guess it has been a while.

But I’m still standing at age 83. That’s the upside. Plus all the glorious memories of my life, my family, my travels and the two women who added a blinding golden glow to it all.

And I’m sure that there are many other Monongah High alumni who have similar happy ever afters in their lives, too. That’s the Lions way.