Antioch College - Towers Yearbook (Yellow Springs, OH)

Page 213 text:

'rf P H A N T A S Y RI skeletal framework of a skyscraper, silhouetted against a dull gray sky, attracted my attention. The girders, beams, and columns fascinated me,-their I unbelievable strength amazed me,-the implicit faith placed in them by the engineers frightened me. How like a house made of straws placed end on end! My eyes wandered slowly toward the top. My amazement was increased,-fright changed to terror as I watched a der- rick perched on the topmost Hoor of the uncompleted building. It was a derrick that might have been designed by a drunkard or a dope addict, whose mind was cluttered with the unreal, the fantastic, the absurd. It was a derrick whose innumerable parts would have made it the realization of an engineer's dream. It looked like a human hand with the power to grab and to lift all that might be brought forth. Its unreal dimen- sions superimposed on the building gave it a masterful touch. I watched with awe as it slowly lifted a huge column to its place. Suddenly there was a quiver in its gigantic boom that seemed to rock the entire building to its basic caissons. Then came the din of cracking and bending steel, of rivets being ripped from their places, and the pitiful whining of steel cable rushing madly on through pulleys was overwhelm- mg. 2II

Page 215 text:

The sight of the broken and twisted steel hurtling earth- ward petrified me. It bumped against the side of the building on its way down,-down,-down towards the earth and to the ultimate destruction of all that lay within its path. In the next 'moment the picture was changed. Only chaos and destruction remained. Lives had been crushed out of ex- istence by this falling giant,-property had been destroyed. How quiet it was after that few seconds. It was the silence of death,-the death of men and the death of a demon. 213