BBRPCI (B.B.R. Progressive Concrete, Inc.) stamps are a dime a dozen in the neighborhood, but most are from the 1980s. This one, and a few others on the same block, are notable for being the newest BBRPCI stamps I have yet found. I don’t exactly know when the company ceased to exist, but OpenCorporates shows them incorporating in 1979 and dissolving in 2016.

This one is right in front of the entrance to the former Allen Street School on the south side of East Kalamazoo Street between Shephard and Allen. The school was built in 1913 and expanded in 1926. It closed in 2005 and the building was purchased by the dystopian-sounding biotechnology company Neogen. This was hailed as a victory for preservation.

In writing this, I suddenly realized something I had been rather oblivious to. In my early years in Lansing, I often walked to the bus stop at Michigan and Clemens to get to work in the morning, and on the way would cross with help from the light at Kalamazoo and Clemens. There would be a crossing guard there helping children cross safely, just like when I was a kid walking to and from elementary school. (Do they even let children walk to school anymore?)

One day years later, well after I had quit riding the bus regularly, I suddenly thought: hey, what happened to the crossing guard? When is the last time I saw one there? I realize now what it was. Those children were going to Allen Street School, and the crossing guard disappeared with the school, around the same time I started working a job I had to drive to anyway. I missed the moment when that changed because my own life changed at the same time.