April 10, 2020, 9:02 am
Joe and Dave were up bright and early on their McIntosh computers, finishing up their video on Bullworth, when they got an intriguing notification.
"Abandoned school building reported collapsed in storm". They read the article.
An abandoned building on the campus of an abandoned boarding school collapsed yesterday amid heavy rain and blustery winds.
The building was on the campus of Bullworth Academy, which closed in 1997. Formerly known as the Harrington House, it was open for a short period in the 1980s before it closed. The building was reportedly in an advanced state of decay.
"Advanced state of decay? Most of it was literally rubble." said Dave, laughing.
Bullworth Chief of Police Max MacTavish reported that residents called 911 around 8 pm last night after hearing a very loud, unexplained noise. Harrington House was reported to be "completely destroyed".
"It looks just like it was professionally demolished," said MacTavish. "All indications are that it crumbled in a matter of seconds."
No one was reported injured in the collapse, said MacTavish.
"That's why you don't explore when the weather's bad." said Dave.
"No, that's why you don't explore buildings that are already half rubble." said Joe.
November 4, 1989, 2:16 am
A padlock over the doors didn't deter a group of angry greasers from breaking into the house in the wee hours of a Saturday morning and getting revenge at the preps. Johnny Vincent's little brother, Jeffy, led the half-dozen greasers. Waiting for a moment when no prefects were looking, they busted the front door open, then re-closed it to make it look normal. These greasers had come armed to the teeth. They had sledgehammers, regular hammers, baseball bats, and even machetes.
The first round of destruction was frenzied: the muscular almost-adults first turned to the counters in the lobby, smashing them until they were match sticks on the ground. The plants were thrown to the ground, exploding in a hail of porcelain, dirt, roots, and leaves. Others in the group decided to attack the large steel statues that symbolically guarded the preps from their intrusion, reducing them to pieces. One greaser even took his machete to the walls, stabbing into the drywall and insulation. Another cut down the chandeliers with his machete and proceeded to hurl each chandelier at the wall until they broke. Jeffy tried to swing his sledgehammer to hit the letters in "Harrington House", but he couldn't hit hard enough.
"Hand me a bat." said Jeffy, to one of the other miscreants. He took the aluminum bat and started swinging. Hit one dented the first H. Hit two dislodged it. Hit three, and it fell to the ground. Jeffy repeated with the other letters and the "HH" sign.
"SCREEEEEEW YOU DARBY HARRINGTON!" yelled Jeffy.
"Be quiet, do you want to be caught by the prefects?" asked another greaser.
Another heavy wooden door prevented access to the rest of the building. The damage was already thousands of dollars in the lobby alone. A greaser kicked the door. It held. Another kick, this time running. It held. Jeffy grabbed his sledgehammer, stood by the door, and swung so hard a momentary wave of pain ran through his back. The whole building shook. The door was battle-scarred but held firm. Jeffy swung again at full force. More back pain. The building shook again. The door opened a bit this time but held strong. A clock fell – it would forever be 2:23 am.
"Take it away, Tony." Jeffy sat down. He needed to rest.
Tony was Jeffy's second in command, and ran at the door, executing a very dangerous running swing. He hit the doors again, causing it to buckle.
"You're going to break your neck," said Jeffy. "Stand and swing." Another full force hit by Tony, and the doors flew open, the lock flying across the floor. They found a plate broken on the floor and a portrait had fallen off the wall in the grand room. There were some things out of reach, too high to be hit.
Two more steel statues. Smashed to smithereens. Several plates on the wall. Smashed to smithereens. Vintage wine bottles. Thrown on the ground and smashed. Jeffy went to a couch to rest for a few minutes. He let out a sloppy, wet fart on the couch. Somewhat surprisingly, they spared the couches and the bookcase, probably because Jeffy was laying there, but they did take some books and rip handfuls of paper out. The portraits on the walls were trashed as well, their frames smashed to pieces and the cloth portraits themselves cut up. They tried their damnedest to destroy the big deer's head above the fireplace, but the stuff they threw at it made only a few dents. Tony took a staff from one of the destroyed steel statues and hurled it like a javelin, breaking some windows. A few holes in the wall completed the destruction.
Two greasers went into a small room to the right, ransacked it, then went into the room underneath the stairs, thoroughly ransacking it too. The rest of the pissed-off greasers, including Jeffy, went upstairs, turning the railing on the catwalk into mulch on the floor below. A security system mounted on the wall was turned into thousands of pieces, each no larger than a pea, by a sledgehammer. Chandeliers were cut down and hurled at priceless paintings. Of course, all the windows in here were smashed as well.
A greaser got ready to sledgehammer a big-screen TV, when Jeffy interrupted.
"LOUIE! DON'T SMASH THAT!" he yelled.
"Why?" asked Louie.
"We want that shit for our hideout!" responded Jeffy. "Electronics are off-limits."
More plates, wine bottles, and steel statues were destroyed. After a few minutes, the two left to destroy the downstairs came up. All six went into another room, which had a pool table in it. First, they stabbed the pool table with knives before taking their sledgehammers to it to destroy its structure. A pool score board was ripped down and ripped into pieces.
Then, all six went upstairs, smashing the door to the balcony on their way. Then, two of them started smashing the potted plants upstairs and their planters, while four went to work on the room's back wall. The large glass windows and door, made of tempered safety glass, shattered easily. While the four wailed on the wall itself, the other two got all the plants smashed and even managed to smash out the glass dome by throwing a sledgehammer. They returned to the back wall, joining their friends in smashing it in.
While the six were smashing the back wall, George, a prefect, walked by and noticed that the windows on the house were smashed out. He listened closely, and heard loud noises coming from the house. He immediately called the police; when he made his last rounds about a half hour ago, the house was intact, and now it was clearly severely damaged.
The cops arrived, snuck through the building like '80s ninjas, and found all six heading toward the last undamaged room, a small kitchen. Three officers arrived just as the greasers were getting ready to open the door.
"FREEZE! YOU'RE ALL UNDER ARREST!"
The shock was so sudden that Jeffy wet himself as he, and his five accomplices, immediately surrendered, laying down their weapons and pressing themselves against the wall with their hands behind their backs. The officers led the six greasers out of the building. As they walked out, one talked to George.
"How long does it take to make your rounds?" asked the cop.
"Maybe a half an hour." said George.
"There's no way in hell that only took a half hour. That's at least two or three hours of work." said the cop.
George was right. In 36 minutes, the vandals had done as much damage as it would take natural decay 36 years to do. The building would never be repaired; it had been appraised at $718,000 and would cost $805,000 to fix.