Industrial Graveyard

 

There is a long, empty factory sitting back away from the road.  Most of the windows have been broken and weeds have taken over the parking lot.  The time of noise and safety posters are long gone.  Spiders have taken up residence in the silent timeclocks that still hang on the wall, next to the empty racks of cards. 

Old skid marks can still be seen on the cement floors where forklifts once squealed along aisleways.  Overhead cranes sit motionless above the dark, ominous machines that once cranked out large sections of the American dream. 

An exit sign still glows at the far end, slightly illuminating a sign announcing 218 days without an accident.  A faint odor of machine oil, thicker than the silence hangs in the air, a reminder of how work clothes smelled at the end of each day.   

We don’t bury or cremate our dead factories but just continue driving past them.  They are a sign that time has kept moving, leaving in its wake a crumbling headstone.