Over the talk of a waterfall meeting rocks, I slide down out of the doorway. It's a four foot drop off to the path below, the one that runs by the river. It's sort of a boiler room back alley in this building passed over by time. This is how it's always been for me.
I grew up in a Mill village. The buildings were at the bottom of the hill. Granted, Mom never let me ride to that far alone 'till I was on the far side of six, but i got glimpses of them early. My father manufactured costume jewelry, and I spent many a weekend day tear-assing around the machine shop, picking up bits getting grimy and almost mangling myself. I remember this small port window, in the very back of the place, you could wipe off the dirt and look out across the bay and see the old red bridge frozen in its continual upright observance. My father told me they didn't need it anymore so they just let it rust that way. It no longer moves, just stands alone, watching.
Later on it was the early teen hijinks of breaking into the great empty ghosts down there near my house. Even then we walked its halls in reverence, they were greater structures then we had ever known, and they entertained our presence silently. It was families like ours that worked in these places, back when they were new.
Now I'm in another town, not far from where I was grown, spelunking the depths of another era, trying to preserve what history is left before the corporation turns it all inside out and leaves it luxury condominiums.
They don't get it. None of them do. These buildings were slaughterhouses. Concentration camps. The people before us, bled their lives away in the gloomy mist of these falls, their children worked here, generations were owned by these mills, by the nations thirst for industrial prowess. 15hr days, six days a week. Hearts and souls smeared on these machines, which I will save. Preserve . Restore. So they can decorate some rich fuck's bedroom. People died here. Worked themselves to death. Laughed, shed blood and tears here. My family has been involved in this business for nearly two hundred years now. Beginning to end. Some of them owned these buildings, some of them were owned by them. It seems fitting then that I do this. Suffer over theses bits of cast iron. Work late into the day to save the wood off the doors. The past lives in every scrap, and I care for these things now, like a dutiful son honoring the memory of his parents. I am a product of these times, more so than anything else. These buildings loom large in the recesses of my mind, commanding power and respect, whispering to me from the iron in my blood. They are tired times, and their rest is overdue.
this job belongs to no one else.
Things like this you have to keep in the family.
I'm here to close the door gently, to sing a soft lullaby and put it all to sleep.
