Just a few of the things that are different from the lives our predecessors did 70 years ago. If you were in the market for a car, a Chevy would apparently run you about $1,696, or you could splurge on an Oldsmobile for $2,362. Putting on some quality Firestones would run you about 50 bucks for the set. A suit would run a businessman about $60 in 1954, a quality woman’s coat would set her back about $20. Putting your little boy in pants, this library tells me, cost $3.95. Bacon sat at 87 cents a pound. You could buy eight pounds of bananas for a dollar, bread for just 15 cents a loaf, and three dimes would buy you five pounds of potatoes. At least in some parts of the country, though the numbers may vary, the theme you and I are exploring is the same: 70 years can be a long time, or no time at all.

Let’s see what was different, and the same, at the ol’ alma mater.

This is the sixth installment of our glance through 1954. (Find ’em all — Part one, part two, part three, part four and part five.) All of them will wind up in the Glomerata section (eventually). You can see others, here. Or maybe you’d like to click through to see all the covers. I wouldn’t blame you. They’re quite handsome. The university hosts their collection here.

We’re wrapping up the space filling photos that float around the undergraduate headshots here. There’s no logical sequence to these, but some of them do provide a nice slice of life. For instance, this was on the weekend of Nov 21st. These women went down to the train station to greet the football team upon their return.

The caption says “waiting for boys to come home after ‘Clawing Clemson.'” Clemson estimated 20,000 people filled their stadium for the rivalry game, and the game went Auburn’s way, 45-19.

“Everybody votes for Egbert.”

Egbert has to be a nickname, right? There’s no one listed among the senior class or the underclassmen as Egbert. But maybe he was king for the day. Maybe we’ll find out later.

This is George Atkins and a ski champ, says the cutline. Atkins was from Birmingham, walked on at Auburn, earned himself a scholarship, lettered in football for three years and then spent a year with the Detroit Lions.

He came back to Auburn and coached the offensive line for 16 years before going into business for a decade. He came back to Auburn once again, spending the last 13 years of his career working in university development. He retired in 1995.

Atkins married his high school sweetheart, and college classmate, Leah Marie Rawls — and I’m pretty sure that’s her in the photo. They had four children and, when George died in 2015, he counted 16 grandchildren.

Leah Atkins won the 1953 World water skiing championships in Toronto in 1953, turned that into a career and then earned a Ph.D. in history from Auburn in 1974, specializing in local history. She served as director of the university’s Center for the Arts and Humanities, became the first woman in the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. She taught history at Auburn, UAB and Samford. She was on the board of the state’s Department of Archives and History. The university’s highest award for athletics is named in her honor. She died just last week. Her obituary listed all 16 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren by name. Leah lived an Auburn Creed kind of life, she believed in work, hard work. It says, “Leah lived an Auburn Creed kind of life, she believed in work, hard work.”

Yep.

Usually I don’t put buildings in these collections, because they are buildings. But sometimes exceptions are made.

The football stadium looks a bit different today.

This is a 2016 photo from midfield. I’ve oriented it so that you’re looking in the direction of where this photographer was standing. Spin around and you can see the whole place. The stadium has had nine project expansions since George Atkins retired in 1995. They tend to upgrade something substantial every three or four years now, where they need to or not.

When Atkins’ teams played, the stadium sat 21,500. When he retired, the capacity was 85,214. As of this writing, it is 88,043.

In last week’s installment we saw another photo from this parade, where the photographer was standing in the same spot. And, if you squint closely you can tell for sure this is a parade from just before the Iron Bowl.

Using the clothing as context, this is obviously at a different event. Maybe the homecoming parade. The caption reads “the land of plenty.”

Here’s the Sports Arena. Later, we called it The Barn. One of only three all-wooden structures on campus, and it has a story to tell.

In 1998, during a football game, The Barn burned. Investigators would later conclude some tailgaters pushed their grill too close to the old building, and then this happened.

Curiously enough, the university library does not have a digitized copy of the campus paper following the fire.

I was in the stadium, sitting at about the 40 yard line on the side where the fire is. So we saw smoke, and then glowing on the cement undersides of the walk ramps and, soon, flames coming above the bowl itself. At first, the voice of the stadium, Carl Stephens, read a message asking people to go move their cars. A moment later, he said, “Too late.”

There was only a small two-lane road between the barn and the stadium, and I’d studied enough forestry and burn management to know that wasn’t enough of a fire break.

I remember thinking, If you have to go, going with 85,000 friends is one way to do it. In truth, I’ve never felt perfectly comfortable walking into or out of crowded venues after that. Remarkably, there were no injuries. Miraculously, the wind was blowing away from the stadium where all of us.

When it burned, the gymnastics team still practiced there. They, of course, used the “phoenix rising from the ashes” imagery for a couple of years after that.

There’s a parking deck there now.

This was Drake Infirmary. I knew it as Drake Hall. This was the health clinic in my day too. The landscaping looks a little rough here, but that part was much improved by the time I came along.

Named for John Hodges Drake, who was the university doctor from 1873 to 1926, this was a $100,000 building when built in 1940 and it was the only hospital in town. Over the years, it became infamous for its health care. The joke was anyone that walked in came out with a flu or a pregnancy diagnosis. I never sought out any care there, but I did photograph the last renovations that the building underwent. It was a bit dark, a little cramped and felt a bit creaky.

It’s gone now, a proud engineering building stands in its place. A larger, more modern facility was built on the other side of campus.

The yearbook calls this “The ‘Y’ Hut,” and that’s an accurate name, but it took a second to register for me. It looks familiar, yet different, and that name meant nothing to me.

Today we call it the University Chapel. It is the second-oldest building on campus, and the oldest building in its original location. Also, it looks much nicer today.

Built with slave labor, it was a Confederate hospital during the Civil War. This was where they pulled the wounded to from the Battle of Atlanta, 115 miles away. That had to be a nightmarish experience for a wounded person. When campus life returned, the chapel served as classrooms, then became the YMCA/YWCA center and housed the university’s acting troupe. It is on the National Register of Historic Places and is believed to be haunted. (Blame the theatre kids.)

Sydney Grimlett had his leg amputated, and did not survive the proceudre. He’s said to have shown up during stage productions, and players started complaining of props missing from their sets. The story goes that the ghost liked candy. (No idea how that worked.)

And finally this photo, which we’ll just use as a teaser.

The caption says “C.B. selects these eight as Auburn’s tops.”

And you’ll know, at least in passing, who C.B. is next week.

That’s enough for now. All of these will wind up in the Glomerata section (eventually). You can see others, here. Or maybe you’d like to click through to see all the covers. The university hosts their collection here.