Near my boyhood home in Southeast Minneapolis there was a railyard that harbored half a dozen dilapidated grain elevators, several cadaverous warehouses that no longer did any business except as condos for pigeons, and an abandoned glass factory.
At some point before I was born the glass factory had partially burned down, and was not reopened. The derelict building stood on a rise of ground, giving it a sort of collapsed cathedral radiance in the sunlight.
My mother told me that under no circumstances was I ever to cross the railyard to the abandoned glass factory. She painted a grisly picture of railyard hobos lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce on disobedient little boys and eating them up like Twinkies. All the glass in the abandoned factory was tainted, poisoned by toxins so powerful that should I slice my pudgy fingers on a discarded piece of glassware my hand would blow up like a dirigible and explode in my face with fetid black pus.
So naturally I had to go exploring there with my pals as often as possible.
It was only two blocks away, and my pals, incipient hooligans like myself, relished the thought of trespassing; and what was even more tantalizing, after our first clandestine visit, was the demonic joy of hurling clots of melted glassware at the factory windows. Watching the glittering shower of powdered glass from a desecrated skylight was all the bliss a nine year old boy like me could handle.
In front of the abandoned glass factory was a small pond of black water. Like a black hole, it absorbed light but gave none out. A slick of oil on the surface gave it a surly rainbow color when the light was right. Using splintering pallets, we managed to sail out into the middle of the festering pool, which smelled of an evil and sour disapproval of all lifeforms. Inevitably, I fell into this cesspool one fine day. Thrashing around in terror, I discovered the whole pond was only about three feet deep. When I dragged myself to shore I reeked so bad that my pals -- fair weather friends to a man, curse them -- hightailed it out of there, leaving me to slog home by myself.
Hell may have no fury like a woman scorned, but a mother confronted with a child whose summer wardrobe is ruined, and who smells like a mothball factory, runs a close second.
My memory may be a bit fuzzy after all these years, but it seems to me I was grounded through the entire administration of LBJ.
Since then the only abandoned buildings I have ever felt like exploring are made of Legos, and constructed by my grand kids.
