...Sergeant Hodsden had more than two dozen young people photographed, fingerprinted and cited for unlawful trespass, with a few also cited for unlawful mischief. He cannot shake the indifference of one youth in particular, who asked whether he could use his mug shot on his Facebook page.

ARGH.

Well... good fences, good neighbors and all that.

Sigh.

Can I second BP's ARGH?

i wasn't all that fond of robert frost when i was in high school, but that is completely over the line.

around here if anyone dared do that to the thomas wolfe house, they'd be strung up by their nuts in the middle of pack square and pelted with rotten fruit.

Any country boy can tell you that a long empty rural house simply begs to have a door kicked in eventually and play host to a messy party. In the 90s we called such events 'raves'. I wonder if these kids had a DJ.

I watched a PBS special last weekend about Wired Kids or something like that. I must admit a little schadenfreude about a story in which a kid's parents discovered pictures of him and his friends whooping it up on a NJ Transit train coming back from Manhattan, where they had seen a concert. They were drinking, puking, acting idiotic. In other words, the same behavior I saw on those trains when I was a teen coming back from concerts. The difference today is that the kids were taking cellphone pics and videos of themselves being extremely sleazy, and plastering 'em all over YouTube and FaceBook, for yuks. They were so mad when their parents found the pics and videos and started spreading the word to one another. It became a PTO issue. One accused his mom (who initially found the pictures) of 'ruining my high school years.'

Well, that's their job, ruining your life. My parents ruined mine. It's a tradition. Don't put pictures of you on the internet if you don't want mom to see 'em.

I have to say, though, it's nothing new - I was watching that American Experience doc on the Summer of Love, and was treated to a feast of teenage snark, sarcasm, and self-importance. It's been around a long while, FaceBook or no. Only now, the bad adolescent behavior can be immortalized in public pixels, and follow you for a long, long time.

Except that the Thomas Wolfe house is locked, alarmed and guarded and right in the center of town, so the chances are incrementally smaller. Sigh. As the parent of a teenager and a former evil kid myself, I can't say that this kind of thing totally surprises me. I'd like to believe that my child wouldn't do this or that I wouldn't have at 16 but quite honestly, once a party of kids reaches critical mass, like 50 to 100, you just don't know. Mob brain takes over; boundaries are erased; they run wild. How many of us as teenagers went to parties where the parents were out of town and did shit we're not proud of? How many of us threw parties when our parents were out of town and then dealt with the carnage the next day? Any bets on what might have happened if there were no parents ever coming home?

This doesn't excuse this kind of behavior - yeah, it is appalling, and if a kid of mine was involved, there would be huge enormous big consequences for them to pay - and I wish the world was a different place, but still, I'm really kind of shocked that the house just sits there without any kind of alarm system.

They should've made the kids clean it up. Especially the one who wanted to plop his mugshot on Facebook. Maybe this will be the last time for 99% of those kids to destroy for the hell of it. That one indifferent kid, though, has the earmarks of future sociopath, methinks.

I can't say I didn't bust bottles and swipe shit from houses under construction, or puke in a dorm room garbage can and leave it for the poor cleaning lady the next morning. But I *did* know it was wrong when I was doing it, & felt guilty later.

We used to have bashes at the old Boy Scout camp. It was dark and creepy out in the woods and a real novelty to be able to light fires in the cabins' fireplaces. I'm sure we left our share of melted candles, beer cans and puke puddles. Teenagers are dumb and have a real problem seeing the "Big Picture," especially when they're in the middle of a booze-filled good time and/or drama. I'm just glad we had the luxury of being raging self-centered idiots in the days before Facebook and Youtube and never permanently destroyed anything.

Still, we wouldn't have harmed a poet's house. To paraphrase Clarice Starling: I can't explain it, but we would have considered it rude.

I "stole" an abandoned building for a party when I was a teen. It was an empty apartment building where a few rooms were damaged (no floor, no ceiling) due to a fire. I spent weeks in there nailing the dangerous rooms shut and then painting the apartments themeatically. One floor was dedicated to the Doors and had only lyrics and trippy patterns, another had Walt Jabsco playing soccer with the two-tone girl across the rooms walls. The only colors I used in the entire house were white red and black.

I felt incredibly guilty for painting "This is [nickname's] house but Martin's roof" on a classic porcelin fireplace, damaging something antique beyond repair you know. My mate Martin had called dibs on the roof and we used to sit up there and watch the stars, I had called dibs on the house.

So I spread the word that there would be a party in the house one Friday and all you needed to bring was your own booze and at least one bag of tealights.

I was grounded that Friday, and the party I hear, was legendary.

This was winter 87/88. In 1990 the house was broken into again by anarchists who were a bit sick of watching it stay empty for eight years while our generation had no apartments to move into and they made a big deal about it so it was all over the news and cops stormed the building to reclaim it. A friend of mine was in that group, I told her before she went in "check out the Doors lyrics". She called me when she was let out of jail a few days later just yelling "I can't believe you got that first and had a f*cking PARTY in it!"

As for these kids, jesus what twats. It's not like it was abandoned fire-damaged building just rotting away in silence.

Not to excuse the wanton destruction, but man, I hate empty houses, and empty artists' houses seem especially sacriligious. You've decided to commemorate someone's contribution to society by making their inspiration... their love... their HOME! a mausoleum with no life in it? It's morbid. And I would have felt 100x stronger about it as a teenager and probably rationalized it as- well at least it has LIFE in it again!

I agree they should have made these kids clean it up, and they should have done it right- taught them woodworking, picture restoration, antique restoration, etc.

I always want to enter abandoned houses, to see if they tell any stories. I've only ever done it twice. Once, as a teen, a small group of friends and I entered a house which had been empty for years. We went in through the back kitchen door. It was creepy. The house was still furnished, with paint peeling down from the ceiling and walls, dishes still in the drain board, a formica table and chairs covered in dust. The dining room had a beautiful, curved glass curio cabinet. I never went past the dining room. I kept thinking that we might find skeletons upstairs in bed. We didn't break, or take, anything. We left it as it was. Some years later it was purchased, fixed up, and filled with life again.

The other place was a large, brick, three and a half story building. I heard it had been a children's hospital at some point. In the attic I found a horsehair chaise lounge. Luckily, someone also bought this place, and turned it into a bed-and-breakfast. (Miko, if you read this, it's on Rt. 36 in Highlands. A teacher from our high school bought it).

I think it's horrible to destroy a place just because you "can". And I also think they should have made the kids responsible clean it, and also pay for the damages. Stupid, thoughtless kids.

Hey. I will resent your comment until April.

I watched a PBS special last weekend about Wired Kids...

That was last week's Frontline Episode -- Growing Up Online (and available for viewing at the website).

Aren't they making the kids clean it and fix it and pay for it? It's the only punishment that makes any sense. Especially replacing antique plates and shit. When they end up paying maybe 300 USD for the perfect plate to match the set maybe they'll realize that things have value even if they don't particularly fancy it.

I don't get why it's empty and not a museum to visit instead.That would be kind of cool. With a cafe in the yard in the summertime for all frost fans to sit and ponder in.

Aren't they making the kids clean it and fix it and pay for it? It's the only punishment that makes any sense. Especially replacing antique plates and shit. When they end up paying maybe 300 USD for the perfect plate to match the set maybe they'll realize that things have value even if they don't particularly fancy it.

I don't get why it's empty and not a museum to visit instead.That would be kind of cool. With a cafe in the yard in the summertime for all frost fans to sit and ponder in.

There's always been meaning to my madness and i kept people from wanton destruction, so i guess i get to poo poo this with righteous abandon, but it just makes me feel sad that mediocrity reigns supreme.