Osborn Demo II

A sort of dullness settled down upon Dexter. For the first time in his life he felt like getting very drunk. He knew that he was laughing loudly at something Devlin had said, but he did not know what it was or why it was funny…. He had thought that having nothing else to lose he was invulnerable at last-but he knew that he had just lost something more, as surely as if he had married Judy Jones and seen her fade away before his eyes. The dream was gone. Something had been taken from him. In a sort of panic he pushed the palms of his hands into his eyes and tried to bring up a picture of the waters lapping on Sherry Island and the moonlit veranda, and gingham on the golf-links and the dry sun and the gold color of her neck’s soft down. And her mouth damp to his kisses and her eyes plaintive with melancholy and her freshness like a new fine linen in the morning. Why, these things were no longer in the world! They had existed and they existed no longer.

Now we move to my last visit during the demolition, I could not force myself to return and watch the destruction of the front of the school; nor did I drive by during this period.

As I sat in this room in November of the 1956-57 school year (first grade), I never imagined that 59 years later I would be standing outside taking a picture just prior to its destruction. Nor for that matter would my father imagine while sitting here in 1926 that he would have a son doing such a thing almost 90 years later.

When the voices of children are heard on the green,

And whisperings are in the dale,

The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind,

My face turns green and pale.

Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,

And the dews of night arise;

Your spring and your day are wasted in play,

And your winter and night in disguise.

Robert Blake

Songs of Experience