black-and-white photo took on an added shade of meaning—and spread them on the trunk. The two main buildings and the chapel for the white boys were simple but appeared well constructed, neat, and carefully maintained. Their many-paned windows were large and occupied much of the walls; the interiors would have been flooded with light, and I imagined the windows offering the boys pleasant views of oaks, pines, and magnolias. The buildings for the black boys, by contrast, looked flimsy, unkempt, and virtually without windows—rickety barns, essentially, for human animals.
“Jesus”—Angie marveled—“widely separate and hugely unequal. Even the cages had a double standard.”
“Yeah, the colored buildings were an afterthought,” Stevenson commented, unnecessarily. “The main part was originally built as a CCC camp—Civilian Conservation Corps—in the 1930s. During World War II, it housed conscientious objectors—mostly Quakers who didn’t believe in war. They dug ditches and paved roads and fought forest fires; some of them worked in the state mental hospital over in Chattahoochee. Some served as guinea pigs for medical experiments— that’s a weird parallel with the Nazis, huh? After the war, when the conscientious objectors left, that’s when it became the North Florida Boys’ Reformatory.”
“So it was a reform school from the mid-1940s,” I said, “until when?”
“Burned to the ground in August of 1967,” he said. Looking at his youthful face, I suspected that the fire had occurred at least a decade before either he or the sheriff’s deputy was born. “Terrible fire. Undetermined cause. Nine boys died, and one of the guards.”
“Good heavens,” said Angie. “Nine boys died? That’s nearly ten percent. Must’ve been a really fast-spreading fire.”
“Apparently,” Stevenson answered. “Not surprising—look at those old buildings. Firetraps. Late August, the days hot as hell, the wooden siding and cedar shakes like tinder waiting for a match. When I buy firewood, I pay extra for fatwood lighter that looks a lot like those shakes. Lightning strikes, a guard drops a cigarette butt in the pine straw, whatever, and whoomph. Anyhow, after the fire, the rest of the boys were transferred to other correctional facilities.”
“Was everybody accounted for,” I asked, “or were some missing and presumed dead?”
“Don’t know,” he said. “We’ve got some people doing research on the history of the place. Looking for records, first-person accounts. If we’re lucky, we might find a sixty-year-old who was doing time there and lived to tell the tale.”
As we walked the site, I noticed rectangular depressions in the ground—low spots where I could see traces of foundations, barely discernible amid the bushes and vines that had been swallowing them for the past four decades.
I wasn’t convinced that searching the ruins would tell us much—I’d not noticed signs of recent disturbance here, at least not yet—but the site was complex, and I didn’t want to rush to pull the plug.
I was poking around the ruins of the dormitory when I heard the call of nature, so I headed for the nearest line of trees. As I neared the tree line, I stepped on an old flagstone, a two-foot-square island of flat sandstone in a sea of weeds. The stone wobbled slightly beneath me as my weight shifted. I took my next step, then stopped and turned back to the flagstone. I put an exploratory foot on it and bore down gently. It did not move. I put my full weight on it and leaned forward, and when I did, it rocked again, barely perceptibly.
I trampled the weeds along one side of the stone and knelt. Using the triangular tip of my trowel, I dug two small handholds beneath the edge, then wiggled my fingers into the dirt and lifted. The stone was heavier than I’d expected—it was a couple of inches thick, and must have weighed a hundred pounds or more—so I was unable to budge it from my kneeling position.
“Jesus”—Angie marveled—“widely separate and hugely unequal. Even the cages had a double standard.”
“Yeah, the colored buildings were an afterthought,” Stevenson commented, unnecessarily. “The main part was originally built as a CCC camp—Civilian Conservation Corps—in the 1930s. During World War II, it housed conscientious objectors—mostly Quakers who didn’t believe in war. They dug ditches and paved roads and fought forest fires; some of them worked in the state mental hospital over in Chattahoochee. Some served as guinea pigs for medical experiments— that’s a weird parallel with the Nazis, huh? After the war, when the conscientious objectors left, that’s when it became the North Florida Boys’ Reformatory.”
“So it was a reform school from the mid-1940s,” I said, “until when?”
“Burned to the ground in August of 1967,” he said. Looking at his youthful face, I suspected that the fire had occurred at least a decade before either he or the sheriff’s deputy was born. “Terrible fire. Undetermined cause. Nine boys died, and one of the guards.”
“Good heavens,” said Angie. “Nine boys died? That’s nearly ten percent. Must’ve been a really fast-spreading fire.”
“Apparently,” Stevenson answered. “Not surprising—look at those old buildings. Firetraps. Late August, the days hot as hell, the wooden siding and cedar shakes like tinder waiting for a match. When I buy firewood, I pay extra for fatwood lighter that looks a lot like those shakes. Lightning strikes, a guard drops a cigarette butt in the pine straw, whatever, and whoomph. Anyhow, after the fire, the rest of the boys were transferred to other correctional facilities.”
“Was everybody accounted for,” I asked, “or were some missing and presumed dead?”
“Don’t know,” he said. “We’ve got some people doing research on the history of the place. Looking for records, first-person accounts. If we’re lucky, we might find a sixty-year-old who was doing time there and lived to tell the tale.”
As we walked the site, I noticed rectangular depressions in the ground—low spots where I could see traces of foundations, barely discernible amid the bushes and vines that had been swallowing them for the past four decades.
I wasn’t convinced that searching the ruins would tell us much—I’d not noticed signs of recent disturbance here, at least not yet—but the site was complex, and I didn’t want to rush to pull the plug.
I was poking around the ruins of the dormitory when I heard the call of nature, so I headed for the nearest line of trees. As I neared the tree line, I stepped on an old flagstone, a two-foot-square island of flat sandstone in a sea of weeds. The stone wobbled slightly beneath me as my weight shifted. I took my next step, then stopped and turned back to the flagstone. I put an exploratory foot on it and bore down gently. It did not move. I put my full weight on it and leaned forward, and when I did, it rocked again, barely perceptibly.
I trampled the weeds along one side of the stone and knelt. Using the triangular tip of my trowel, I dug two small handholds beneath the edge, then wiggled my fingers into the dirt and lifted. The stone was heavier than I’d expected—it was a couple of inches thick, and must have weighed a hundred pounds or more—so I was unable to budge it from my kneeling position.
Similar Books
