Four Years in the Institute's Gates
Based off TV show "Cold Case" Season 6: Episode 22 "The Long Blue Line" and Season 6: Episode 23 "Into the Blue". Cadet Lawrence Gardner wrote this poem during his knob year at Pennsylvania Military Institute.
Oh, St. Augustine's quite a wonderful place, and I've heard so's Beverly too
But you'll find if you ask a quite different task amongst any junior kid new
It's not to spend college at Harvard, eating breakfast on silver-lined plates
Take your four-poster bed, just give me instead four years in the Institute's gates
XX
In good times of days past, our teen minds were fast filled with thoughts of champagne
Of money and girls, of Barracudas and swirls, in our heads of all we could gain
'Twas too good to last, those parties now past, and now in college applications of late
When they ask aspiration, I have no hesitation: four years in the Institute's gates
XX
Knobs are dumber than hell, our IQ's just swell, they go down a bit every day
From our dazed face expressions, they know our profession, those free men who pass by our way
We're ungodly slobs, God-cursed knobs, and until our cadre's screaming abates
Give us the courage to make it, show we can take it: four years in the Institute's gates
XX
So once it's all done and said, and my life's story is read, the line now drawn in the sand
I'll face Him with pride, bristleback by my side, a certain gold ring on my hand
Smoking that cigar they say He so hates
And say: Send me to Heaven or Hell, I know them both well
After four years in the Institute's gates
