Jimmy DeVane walks right past it about a half-dozen times a day on his way in and out of the emergency management division at the Gadsden County Sheriff's Department.

He's often noticed those beautiful bold colors that tell funny stories about children's nursery rhymes in the mural on the wall at the local public library. Both the sheriff's department and the library share the same building.

DeVane said he always thought that work of art was eye-catching. But DeVane never thought it was eerie, until he took a closer look a few days ago.

"Now that's pretty darn distinctive don't you think?" DeVane asked. "I've come by here for years . . . and little did I realize what the value of this would be some day."

Scared looking at it
Other workers in the building and folks from around the Quincy community have been strolling by to take a gander at what's being called a haunting, almost prophetic section of the children's mural. To some onlookers it appears to be a depiction of the World Trade Center towers. Look closely and you'll find a jet plane that appears to be approaching the buildings.

"It looks just like the World Trade Center used to look to me," said Rose Wilson, a county maintenance worker. "It made me scared when I looked at it a few days ago, and it makes me scared looking at it right now!"

Faces of people peer through the windows. Some appear to be leaping from the buildings. There's also what looks like a little demon with a pitchfork standing next to the first tower just below the jet.

"Look at that! It's almost the exact pictorial replica of the jet that crashed into the first tower that day," DeVane pointed out.

Expressing themselves
Some bystanders say what's really spooky about the mural is when they realize that children from the community actually painted it five years ago. County librarian Jean Mock remembers when the kids started turning the concrete canvas into their work of art in 1996.

"The children did this after reading a series of books. They were basically expressing themselves in response to what they read ," Mock recalled. "Lately, some people said they found that part of the mural unsettling, but it's not that way to me at all. To me, it looks like it could be part of a story about King Kong."

Most of the children involved in the mural project have since graduated high school; some have relocated to other cities.

What were they thinking?
DeVane still believes the vivid imaginations of children might have turned out to be a vision.

But "this" is what makes art so awesome to Mock.

"There's no way to tell what those children were thinking that day the mural was painted," she said. "That's what makes art so great. Beauty, as they say, is in the eyes of the beholder, and there are no definitive answers."

• Story originally published by:
Tallahassee Democrat FL / | Carmen Cummings - Oct 06.01

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