"If you're going to do something illegal, you might as well be smart about it, Right?" I said to Hans as we turned around in a gravel inlet by the Old Sugar Factory and headed back toward the street. He shrugged his shoulders and half agreed, but continued ahead without much thought. It was a lazy dreary Sunday afternoon and we'd decided to visit the factory one last time as we'd noticed most of it missing on a the drive by a couple minutes before. Strange to see what once was a vast factory laden with bricks and metal furnishings coming out its ears like a giant and ancient dog-eared book now just sort of missing...as if most of its pages had been suddenly ripped out leaving it naked and tattered. The factory I think has some special significance to Hans because he and is best friend had many adventures there, but also it was in a way the monument of the beginning of our relationship. In reality it was just the place where one hot June day we went to hang out and all the color drained from my face as the inevitable occurred and he expressed his feelings for me. I can't say either of us said anything memorable or intelligent that day...me least of all. Anyways, it was strange coming back to the place that now looked as different as we ourselves were different from the two people who walked the Sugar factory just five months before. I for one, was much less terrified, I had more color in my face and I didn't feel like running across the open field screaming "Get me out of this!" Instead of the place where the bulk of the building stood there was now a large slab of concrete bookended by two remnants of buildings, lots of wiry metal, scatterings of bricks and random factory looking objects. On the slab was a large frozen puddle that creaks and cracks when you step on it. Hans had a really good time with that. But, it was weird looking at a building with a floor sort of hanging out of a space like a blanket hanging out a window. We sort of just explored around the ruins of what used to be different looking ruins. The wrecking ball was surprisingly small compared to the vastness of the destruction and the space we had once wandered through like a maze. It was beautiful and fallen. We found the Men's room which was just a door sticking out of a wall two stories above us. We also found a monolith of sorts and resorted to our primitive primate state for a couple moments. We were suddenly incited to feelings of violence and hit the ground with sticks for a short time (if you haven't seen "Space Odyssey 2001" you won't get that joke).
But ape-like or not, here we were at the end of this era that had already ended a long time ago and was finally really dying. The factory had closed I think at least 70 years ago but still remained standing as a shelter for tagging and teenagers looking for a good time. But, something about that place sort of held our imagination in it's asbestos walls with wonderment. Seeing it made me feel more or less admonished, it held up for so long as an empty dangerous being hovering just out side of town but it never looked lonely, just well used. And, I thought, if this place could hold its emptiness for so long, our present lonely journey couldn't be that bad. I remember going into one room with these big steel vats and on the wall were these clocks and gauges that had stopped on their time and place so many years ago and had not moved since. At the time it felt like being in Star Trek and going boldly where no one had gone before... although people had gone there before.
We eventually climbed our way out of the ruins of what felt like an ancient city and I saw there on the ground, twisted and half gone, that same clock that used to hang in that big room there still lost in time. It was then that Hans said, "Good bye Sugar Factory we hardly knew you." And that was that, it felt like a eulogy of some sort and a saying good bye to an old era that we never really knew but effects us none the less. Someday perhaps, something new will be built there, a different factory perhaps, a day spa, a Golds Gym...ha not likely here on the Rez. But, I can dream can't I? Its strange to think of so much destruction paving the way for something fresh and new, but I guess that is one of those mysteries we'd like to know about so we search out places we're not supposed to go to like the Old Sugar Factory that here lies dead.
