Sloss furnace
Posted Friday, March 21, 2003 @ 07:22 PM
There is a house down the road from my neighborhood that hardly anyone notices. It is small, white, old, and not much bigger than my bedroom. It has shutters and a tin roof. There is no yard, really--just some weeds and a clay donkey, a laundry line out back. The paint is peeling off the siding, leaving the white freckled with patches of wood, freckled with age. I don't know if anyone still lives there.
Were it not a few yards from a major road, this would be my ideal house. It is antique, and were there antique house shops, this one would surely be the dusty, extravagantly average piece in the corner that needs too much repair to be noticed by wise shoppers.
These kinds of decrepit treasures are the things I have craved, recently. It's as if I was once some old southern woman who, when deceased, was separated from her fragrant kitchen and tired veranda. I long for dirt roads where I can see strangers approaching; I long for dust clouds behind every car, breezes, and the darkness to see every star at night.
All of this has been a long time in coming, for I have a great love of all things junky and ancient, but perhaps it's been strengthened by a recent visit to Sloss Furnace--Birmingham's oldest treasure: the iron plant, built in the late 1800s.
It was a science class fieldtrip, nearly unrelated to anything we've studied thusfar. We arrived at the run-down site a little before twelve--the entire ninth grade (which is only 50 people or so)--where we watched an informative video in a hot, stuffy room. From there, we were given a tour that circled the entire property, the tour guide pointing to things at random, mumbling into a loud speaker as if any of us were paying attention.
We were set loose an hour before the bus was to arrive to wander among that rusted wasteland that I've seen from the interstate so many times. After getting only a short glimpse of everything on the tour, I was anxious to explore.
There was this huge room--the boiler room, I think--that was locked, though it had been unlocked for the tour. It had these enourmous, rusted wheels in it that used to churn and pump air, though I'm sure it's been decades since they saw their last revolutions. They were thirty feet in diameter, half deep in the ground. There were ladders and walkways all around and above them, like some kind of rusted maze.
Once we were loose I headed straight back there with Hannah and Sarah. We explored the whole area looking for unlocked doors or places to climb through, and when we reached that building, I found a broken window, waiting for us.
I went through first, and we all helped each other through, to the cool humidity of the building. It was damp and dark. I have a cut on my hand from the glass still littered around the window frame.
Once we were in, we wandered through the room, between the wheels and under walkways suspended twenty feet in the air. There were rusted gauges on one wall, dusty and timeless, and we passed them to climb one of the ladders.
Everything was brown and old--even the smell and temperature seemed ancient and drenched with the history of birmingham. I imagined that same room as it might have been one hundred years ago, hot and nearly 140 degrees. Orange, rippling in the heat, like one of those engine scenes in Titanic. I'm sure there are still traces of sweat in the brick.
I climbed the ladder first, peeping over the ledge onto iron ribs of the walkway, and Hannah and Sarah folowed behind me as we walked and climbed twenty feet above ground, among machinery that had been slumbering for decades, but that had once killed men, black and white.
Eventually we joined the rest of the group, where they were watching orange-hot iron pour into sand molds, none of us mentioning the broken window or the cut on my hand.
The whole property was covered in weeds and miscellaneous garbage that had rusted and become part of the scenery. The weather was perfect, cloudy. There were small houses where the workers had once lived. They were caving in and rotting. Everything had a past. You could tell just by looking at it.
It's so strange to find such a history right here in my city, in Birmingham. I am so used to seeking it when I travel, ready to soak up and absorb whatever aura a particular city has. Paris, Brussels, Brugge.
Knowing Birmingham's past, the entirety of the city changes right before my eyes.
Welcome to the past, bucko. You're swimming through the archive of rocket-fish.org. If this isn't where you were headed, I suggest you get out of here while there's still time.
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mwah! hey darlin'. I miss you! I called again today, you weren't home. le sigh.
mmm you find such lovely, interesting places. When you visit I'll show you this place I like to go, it's an escape from the town.
call me, Glynnis.
be well.
29 Mar 2003, 4:47 PM.
yes, yes. ahh...
such wonderful memories. you should've hit up he underground tunnels; though that might have been a bit dangerous without a flashlight.
love you dear.
03 Apr 2003, 11:15 AM.