The Abandoned Schoolhouse on the Mullica
One of my favorite uninhabited dwellings was an abandoned schoolhouse I came across while metal detecting with my grandfather somewhere in the wilderness of Burlington County, New Jersey. I wandered off by myself to explore, as usual, keeping within earshot of my grandpa, but letting my nine-year-old spirit of adventure take over. Breaking away from the sugar-sand road, I meandered through the tall Jersey pines in search of discovery, and soon hit the motherlode.
Before me was small abandoned building; the architecture made it obvious that it was an old schoolhouse built a long time ago. I walked from the edge of the woods through grass that came up to my chin until I got to the paved lot. The tract was covered with weeds, crabgrass, and new-fallen autumn leaves that shuffled noisily beneath my Keds. My footsteps startled a quail, which in turn startled me as it flew out of the underbrush. As I approached the school, I came to the end of the long, pothole-filled road that led back to the main highway several miles north. The little brick building’s windows, broken by vandals and the effects of time, provided the access that the huge rusty chains on the front doors denied me.
After finding a window through which I could safely enter, I found myself inside what appeared to have been the office. The dark, shadowy room seemed to have been hastily abandoned, judging by the items left behind. An old, damaged picture of John F. Kennedy was lying on the floor in the darkest corner of the little room. Two rusty metal filing cabinets stood silently amid the strewn rocks, beer bottles, and shards of broken glass, their sagging, empty drawers hanging open. At the back of the room was a heavy oak door, its narrow mesh-reinforced window still intact. Open just a crack; it beckoned me to come see what was in the room behind it.
The door opened with surprisingly little effort. I was soon awash in the slightly brighter light from the other room. A huge, rusty metal desk dominated the room, which was otherwise empty except for the debris on the floor. Natural juvenile curiosity prodded me to open the wide, shallow drawer in the middle. Inside were several yellow pencils, some long-since dried-out black ballpoint pens, and some cobwebs. Moving on to the top left drawer, I found about an inch thick stack of expensive typing paper. The paper was useless, however, yellowed from age and giving off the unmistakable musty odor of mildew. The next drawer down had mostly blank letterhead, administrative forms, and memoranda, but nothing very interesting to me. The last drawer on the bottom was locked, and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t open it. Did it contain anything cool, or was it just an empty drawer? I’d have given anything to find out, but I guess that’s the sort of thing that added to the mystery of exploring abandoned buildings.
I walked through yet another door into the beginning of the hallway, looking through the reinforced glass of the chained front doors. To the right of them was an old payphone (local calls were only a nickel). A 1960 edition of the Burlington County Yellow Pages sat on the little wooden shelf beneath it. To the left were a galvanized metal bucket and wringer with an old, worn-out mop propped up in the corner, evoking images of the cantankerous old custodian who must have tended the property. Before I started down the hall, I took one last look through the metal mesh, noticing for the first time just how many tall, ugly, scraggly weeds had forced their way through the asphalt parking lot and concrete walkway.
To my right on the office wall was a large bulletin board. Its green construction paper overlay was rotting from the ravages of age. In large, round, kiddish letters cut from red construction paper, the phrase “Have a Great Summer” was spelled out across its top. As I walked down the hall, I looked behind every wooden door, finding nothing of interest in any of the classrooms; just the genuine slate chalkboards, an old bra, a used condom (I thought it was a balloon), cigarette butts, more empty beer cans and bottles, empty packs of Winston and Marlboro, a discarded pack of Job 1.5 rolling papers, and random graffiti from the ones who partied there before. Of the six little rooms, the last one on the left was the only one interesting to me.
It was obviously the Kindergarten room, because a teddy bear, a rainbow, clowns, and other kiddish icons were painted on the wall all around the blackboard. What caught my attention was the back wall, which was adorned with a perfect painting of Boston’s first album cover. It had to have been painted by one of the teenagers who partied there, rising mightily above the cigarette butts, beer bottles, and broken Aerosmith LP on the white linoleum tile floor below it. It stood in stark contrast to the children’s paintings on the opposite wall, defining the difference between the big kids and the babies, the run-down and the modern, the simple and the sophisticated.
At the other end of the hall, the narrow mesh-reinforced window let the pale, beige light through the heavy gray steel door. I pushed on the silver bar, releasing the striker with a loud clack that echoed through the empty school. It creaked plaintively open, permitting me access to the schoolyard. The hydraulic spring was disconnected from the top, causing it to stay open as I walked outside. A musty, almost sorrowful smell hung in the air as I walked across the badly cracked asphalt. Tall brown weeds obscured the hopscotch courts in front of the rusty red maypole.
The only sounds to be heard on that overcast autumn afternoon were the backwards wolf-whistles of the quail, the rustling of fire-orange leaves from the nearby stand of sugar maples, and the eerie groans of the rusted swings swaying slowly in the October breeze. Rusted monkey bars and a dilapidated sliding board stood harshly against the platinum sky. Moving towards the Mullica River, I passed between the two silent giants on the basketball court, holding their rusty, orange, netless hoops before them like TV trays.
I walked southeast along the lush banks of the river. It was lined with water-loving deciduous trees, including sassafras, sycamore, sweetgum, and a magnificent grove of white birch, aglow with beautiful yellow foliage. The wide, lazy river slithered eastwards towards the bay some 20 miles away, carrying fiery fall leaves along with it. The trickle of the moving water entranced me as I watched a small green chain pickerel swim downstream through the clear water until my grandfather’s booming baritone broke my hypnotic state. It was time to go.
On the ride back home, my little prepubescent brain processed all that I had experienced as I told my grandfather about my day. I told him about all the neat things I found and the conclusions I had reached from them. I told him how I discovered that the present somehow invades the past, how worldliness eventually blots out innocence, about how Budweiser and Boston live together forever with Howdy Doody and JFK.
“Kid, you are really somethin'”, my grandpa said to me, “Ya really got a brain in ya head. I don’t understand why you hate school so much. Anyway, you sure seemed to like that one.”
“Yeah”, I replied, “There weren’t any teachers! Or other kids!”
My grandfather laughed at that, joking that maybe my parents ought to enroll me in an abandoned schoolhouse next semester.
Yeah, I thought, I’d actually learn more!
