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