Inside 2015 Osborn

This set of photos was shot on Tuesday June 2nd 2015, classes had ended for the last time the Friday before and the teachers were in the middle of packing things for the move to Taft. It was my first time inside Osborn since a brief visit in August 1997. I entered by the main entrance with the permission of the Principal. The photos are in the order in which they were taken.

In retrospect it is interesting how close I cut it on my move back to Ashland, in relation to my main goal of documenting the end of the school. Although my lease began in late April, it was only after the Alabama High School Softball Championships ended late in May that I was able to spend any real time in Ashland. Arriving for my first extended period on May 27th.

Room 211, my first grade classroom. Looking at the readers through the windows in the book cabinet's blue door fascinated me in first grade. I got the door for $4 at the auction a few weeks after this visit.

This green room #210, was my second grade classroom, our flag was on the opposite wall and I purchased the original 1923 flag holder at the auction.

About halfway down the hallway, one classroom into the 1949 annex. The light brown tiles were used for the walls throughout the annex. The first door on the right is the entrance to the girls' rest room. The dark gray band across the ceiling is the track for the accordion steel door that could be stretched across the hallway to secure the south end of the school when there was a non-school hours activity taking place in the gym. There was also one of these in the basement hallway. I don't recall them ever being used.

The wire mesh window into the gym was one of three distinctive things in this part of the school; and the only one remaining. The second was a wooden ladder mounted horizontally on the gym wall, you jumped to grasp the lowest rung with your hands and then climbed rung by rung ape-like by your hands-it had a slight upward incline. The third a bronze plaque of the "Gettysburg Address" mounted outside the gym entrance.

Room 217, at the time that I took this I was unsure if my fourth grade classroom had been this one or the one directly above - Room 329. I am now relatively certain that it was Room 329 but the layout is identical. Perhaps more important it still retains the look of Room 109, the coat check room that my parents ran during the Osborn Festivals where (after exhausting my supply of festival tickets) I would retreat to read the stack of comic book I had just acquired.

Close-up of the wall mounted wooden speaker box from which daily announcements were broadcast to each classroom. Some have been replaced or painted, but this one in Room 217 has its original look.

The four photos with green trim are of Room 320, my sixth grade classroom.

Obituary

Anna “Lou” McDaniel, 96, of Greenwich passed away peacefully at Gaymont Care Center on Friday, December 13, 2019. She was the daughter of Albert and Angie (Cramer) McDaniel. Born on July 23, 1923 in Myersdale, PA.

Lou held two bachelor’s degrees and retired from teaching at Osborn Elementary School in Ashland. Lou spent her free time listening to and enjoying Christian music. She faithfully read her bible and was a member of Bethel Baptist Church in Savannah.

Lou leaves behind her special and dear friend Shirley Mead of Greenwich. She is also survived by her cousins, Rosemary Hammersla and Patricia McDaniel of WV. She was preceded in death by her parents, sister: Doris (John) Divly, and 2 infant brothers.

There will be a graveside service held on Wednesday, December 18, 2019 starting at 1:00 p.m. at the Greenwich Greenlawn Cemetery, Townsend St. Greenwich. Memories of Lou my be expressed by sending a card for Shirley to the funeral home or online condolences may be shared at www.eastmanfuneralhome.com.

https://www.eastmanfuneralhome.com/obituary/Anna-McDaniel

Coming.....

.....And Going in the top floor hallway (hint - the clock is on the east side of the hallway).

"In the Court of the Crimson King"

The wonderful staircase where the sun wakes you up from your classroom stupor on your way down to the gym or to recess in the playground.

The rusted chains of prison moons

Are shattered by the sun

I walk a road, horizons change

The tournament's begun

The purple piper plays his tune

The choir softly sing

Three lullabies in an ancient tongue

For the court of the crimson king

My standard lament is the shoddy and ultra-cheap repairs that have been done over years. When the expensive trio of steel doors with wire mesh glass wore out they were replaced with this POS aluminum double door arrangement, of course it goes nicely with the bargain bin ceiling panels that were probably added about the time the high end institutional light fixture was swapped out for that $1.95 piece of plastic.

It took most of 4th grade, repeatedly checking out "Guadalcanal Diary" and badgering my parents for definitions, for me to be able to meaningfully read it, but by the end of the school year all that effort had my reading skills testing at a 9th grade level.

This is the current library, across the hall from the small room on the bottom floor that was the library in the 1950's. This room was my kindergarten room during the 1955-56 school year; 60 years ago I was taking naps on my blue bear rug on this floor.

On the wall behind the furnace room door was the Sanitary Dairy Milk Machine - regular & chocolate were the only options. Beside the machine was a stack of metal cases for the empty milk bottles.

Last Time Inside

This photo set was taken on August 2, 2015. Asbestos removal had just been completed and they were removing the windows. I was able to slip in briefly at lunch time - my last time inside.

The name was put there in 1923,

I intentionally avoided passing the school during the days they were destroying this front facade.

This room was Principal Carlson's office, on the top floor between the two sixth grade classrooms.

Looking through the window into my first grade classroom (Room 211). The book cabinet door I purchased at auction was mounted between the main door and the chalkboard on the right.

Across the hall going west was my second grade classroom (Room 210), basically a mirror image of first grade. At the June auction I purchased the original metal flag holder attached to the blackboard.

This lone pine tree is doomed by the upcoming demo.

Sixty years ago this side of the school was full of pine trees, we parked our bikes under them.

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The playground bell mounted on the outside of the gym. Note the different color bricks on the left - the bricked over glass block windows that made it largely unnecessary to have the lights on in the gym. The bell was never good news as it summoned us FROM the playground prior to the start of school and at the conclusion of recess.

I entered though the propped open door on the Armory side and first went down the steps to the first floor (or basement). There had been very little change down here since the July auction, just the flipped open air duct access panels on the ceiling. I am especially fond of this area, we would line up down this hallway to process through the cafeteria and it always felt so solid; during the duck & cover days this is where I envisioned waiting out the nuclear attack. The enamel painted bricks were so smooth and most everyone would kill time running their fingers along the brickwork and the mortar tracks. I believe that they added a false ceiling to cover up the duct work. It is interesting that you have to go down a couple of steps at this point given that the 1949 addition does not start until the glazed wall tiles just before the red trimmed cafeteria door. Since the lot has a slight grade from Main Street to the Town Creek they may have designed it this way to save excavation costs.

I always felt that Osborn's heart was located right here. It was from that spot that she seemed to radiate out and touch me whenever I was in the building, in that sense I have lost my Tiffany's, for the first time ever I will be facing life without having Osborn as my fall-back position.

"Well, when I get it the only thing that does any good is to jump in a cab and go to Tiffany's. Calms me down right away. The quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there. If I could find a real-life place that'd make me feel like Tiffany's, then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name!"

The boys' rest room, intimidating to a 5 year-old but it always smelled better than the newer rest room on the second floor. And it had that wonderful waterfall urinal (since replaced). Other than the entrance doors this and the girls' rest room went to their doom intact, something you could verify from the outside of the building once the windows had been removed. There were also rest room facilities in the locker rooms. Although I was unaware of it at the time there were teacher rest rooms near the gym, plus single toilets in the principal's office, the teacher's lounge, and the kitchen.

The now empty cafeteria, it may have been about eight feet longer in our day with that door at the end to a storage room of relatively recent construction. The figures on the wall are also recent additions - they are very nicely done and about the only change that I would classify as an improvement to the 1956 building. The floor was not part of the asbestos abatement, my guess is that heavy wear caused them to replace the original asbestos laced linoleum years ago.

Two shots inside Room 210, in 1957-58 my second grade classroom on the middle floor. Looking up Main Street you can just make out the building that used to be Strine's Gulf Filling Station, on occasion I would hang out there. One week in the fall of 1962 I won their college football prediction contest, the prize was 25 gallons of gas which I then sold to my father.

These two shots are the window of my first grade classroom on the middle floor (Room 211). The pizza place across the street occupies an intersection point once occupied by "The Station", a early mini-mart and Standard Oil filling station. It was torn town in the late 1950's and replaced by a Sohio Station. In 1957 I purchased my first baseball card at "The Station".

Up on the top floor now, the window of my sixth grade classroom, Room 320.

The tree evokes images from the movie "Speak".

Fifth Grade classroom on the top floor, Room 324. This was one of the rooms from which they had to remove the asbestos linoleum.

Each month Miss McDaniels would rearrange seats according to our current academic standing. This seemed to motivate the girls and demotivate the boys who valued slacker status more than crushing our classmates during tests and graded projects.

On auction day the banks of lockers in each of the 1949 classrooms were aggressively bid on and I was surprised to see that those in this room had not been removed. Then I recalled the difficulty one purchaser had detaching them from the wall of a room on the first floor. Apparently at least of one purchaser got halfway into the project and gave up, leaving them for the demo.

I always loved the glass block windows in these rooms, they provided a huge amount of light.

Room 329, my fourth grade classroom and the only one facing Holbrook.