Ruins

[Lenin McCarthy]

1. The abandoned creosote-infested wood impregnation plant that was situated next to my elementary school. We used to play among the ruins, abandoned cars, piles of scrap and needles. I have nothing but fond memories from that place. A few years ago the authorities decided it was dangerous and had a bunch of really impressive machines eat it all up. Still 150x300 metres of desert, partly used by the school as parking space. They're destroying the tranquil but dilapidated valley of my childhood.
2. Two fort ruins in my hometown where I've spent a lot of time LARPing.
- One from 1673, a few kilometres outside of town west of the river. A portal, a gunpowder cellar, a well and the outlines of the other buildings are intact.
- The other fort ruin, from 1683, on the hill overlooking town. The foundations of the buildings, a few walls and cannons are intact. After WWII some local politicians had the brilliant idea of placing a huge water tower in the middle of the ruins. There's a nice monument there to the first mayor of the town, who was killed on Constitution Day 1840 when a salute cannon exploded.

[Salty]

There are people who have lived here for a long, long time. They have no ruins, aside from their culture of course.

But I can see the ruins of tomorrow every single day.

This town, this whole state with all the:
-hippies
-outdoor fitness enthusiasts
-environmentalists
-what have you

they would have nothing without all that sweet oil. Sure, nature would still be here, as beautiful as you have ever seen. And more terrible than you can imagine because they haven't built anything for this environment.

THEY painstakingly, arduously turn this place this way and that in their hands, like a toy or a piece of carving stone and make it...well they make it look like the rest of the country. The plastic, easily stampable bits anyway.  THEY do so because it's what WE do.

It would be unfair to say all they build is Carl's Jr's, though there are plenty of them, and the fanfare when a new similar franchise comes into town is as deafening as it is stupid. The truth is they carve out scenic pathways and small artistic communities and humble places of quiet solitude.

But I can't help but laugh, that special little laugh at all of it. Because when that black sweetness is gone, those jerks will be too. I mean, it'll be a few years, they've released ANWR to the barons and they are not going to treat her politely.

And after...

People will come along and find this small, greasy paradise. They'll walk past the strip malls, crumbling and toppled from all the snow. They'll see the squat-but-formidable Conoco-Phillips building, and the bar the mayor opened right next to it, grey and lifeless but still menacing. If they could get in they would see the probably still sense the smoothness of the walls, the softness of the carpet that was once there.

It wouldn't take long, maybe a couple of decades what with the weather. Let's speed that up a bit, hmm?

[Suu]

Funny this thread, and the thread I just posted about my trip to Manassas. Yep, I know exactly how you feel.

There are also TONS of ruins in New England, especially Providence, which has enough housing for a population twice its size, though now it's all becoming parking lots or tinder boxes.

There's definitely a certain feeling they give. Not scary, just...emptiness.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

I grew up in the country, sorta. There was a highway with a string of houses along it. And all around those houses were trees and fields and more trees. But between our set of woods and fields and woods and Amish landholdings there was a stretch of strip-mined land that had mostly been turned over for use as a dump and blackberries or blueberries depending on which end of the stretch you hit.

Birds didn't chirp there. Deer ran through as fast as they could. Stray animals snuffled the trash until they got the colly-wobbles and went nuts. Animals didn't like it much.

In the middle there was a pond. The water was always opaque and blue and the stuff that grew on the bottom was a sort of neon teal. You never saw birds bathing at the edges or snakes swimming or nothin'. If you threw a rock in there, you never saw it descend.

That spot kinda felt like a dungeon or an abandoned planet. You couldn't hear the highway, or see anything living. Just dead trees and a glowing pond and bags of trash. It kinda echoed, too.

That's as close as I've been to ruins.