A Small Utilitarian Building
Oct 19 2010


A small utilitarian building
on a minor street
of laundromats, and repair shops.
And plain post-war houses
rented out
by working-class owners
counting on the future of real estate;
and so far, disappointed.

It is single story,
rising like a corrugated island
in an asphalt sea,
cracked by weeds
that have gone to seed
and look like mutant transplants
from some alien planet.

I noticed a new sign, today
fresh paint.
A hopeful entrepreneur
determined to make his fortune,
as sure of success
as the last one,
the one before him.
Because this modest building has been abandoned
and resurrected
abandoned again,
in a morality tale
of bright-eyed hope
bank foreclosures.

So I admire the pluck
of the latest owner,
this budding small tycoon.
And wonder if he knows the history of this place,
if he feels the taint
of failure
I can’t help but see,
attached to these tattered walls
the layers of peeling paint.
I’ve seen other buildings like this,
scattered about the seedy streets
of depressed commercial districts,
where a black cloud
hovers permanently over them.

The sign says “Children’s Toys, New and Used”.
I hope they make a go of it.


I repeatedly drive by a place on Red River Road that looks exactly like this. It has corrugated steel walls, an air of abandonment, and the same dismal history. It keeps getting re-invented as some new business – a business that inevitably fails. I can’t help but admire the entrepreneurial spirit, and feel deeply for the crushed hopes of these small tycoons. I’m too cowardly to even try. They deserve a better fate.

Yet at the same time, I wonder why they didn’t see it coming; how they missed the oppressive sense of destiny that hovers over this decrepit building; and how they could allow themselves to be so deluded and seduced by possibility.

I know there is no such thing as “false hope”. Hope is hope, after all. Still …