Gyproc Factory

     by Doug Righteous (third member of The Righteous    

     Brothers)

Jordan walked along the railway tracks marvelling at the loud black birds and frogs in the stillness of Wednesday morning, 7 AM. His wife had left the car at home because she was commuting with another member of her carpool today and he could have driven if he'd wanted. Recently, he had begun walking instead of taking the bus or the car. It felt good to go for miles and feel tired and say to himself as he began to feel that good exhaustion that this too would change and soon he would be in good shape. 

     He passed a number of obstacles peculiar to the railway. He wouldn't have seen them had he gone his usual route. First, he crossed the railway bridge 100 yards along the way. He was surprised at its narrowness, at the way the two steel rails ran down its centre and beside these there was only 2 feet of railway tie before the drop into the dry riverbed.  He was surprised at the depth of the drop. It left him feeling silly, feeling it's vertigo. He was surprised also at the length of the bridge once he was on it. From a little distance it had seemed like a one or two minute crossing. Once on it he knew that if a train appeared at the bend behind him he would have a hard time making it over in time. He'd have to run and even then likely it would be too late. 

     Next he noticed the houses with their variety of backyard configurations backing on the tracks. A few sections, a few yards, had alleys that came down from the street and ended up right next to the railway ditch for maybe 10 houses. The next 10 or 20 houses had a high fence separating them from the track and its dynamics.

    "If hoboes come along there they will be deterred by this fence,” he could hear the planners of that block of houses thinking. Thinking in fear. Next came neat wire fencing for 10 or so houses, then no fences, as if a certain group of families wanted to be able to see the trains pass unobstructed. Then there was a cluster of houses with trees, and one group with a row of 12 foot caraganna. After that came the perimeter and its tunnel of concrete through which the train barreled. He felt some apprehension in case hoboes might be still sleeping there under the tressle but there were none. Only paint can graffiti met his eyes. The Dancer in glaring silver paint. Homie and the Jesuits.  Fuck Mia. Metal Stomach. Butch Spaz. 

     And then he was through that section and into the next field of uncertainties: a Pool grain elevator, a Traza Tex gyprock factory with a huge parking lot cum loading area. Stacks of gyproc sheets, some almost tumbling as if they'd been there a long time waiting for delivery and maybe getting rained on through their deteriorating plastic coverings. Blue and white gyproc bundles, red and white ones, green and white. A 3 ton truck with one of its front wheels off pushed against the fencing as if it had once been worked on, once was still a possibility until something happened—maybe an upturn in the company’s fortunes—made it unnecessary to fix it and it was left there, an obstacle for the yard maintenance guys to mow around and under. After that he came to a long row of high fencing. Planks, 2 x 10s, 10 feet high with old fashioned trees behind them of a kind that no one had planted on the prairies for the last 50 years. This fence went on for a quarter mile or so. 

     Behind it he saw rising quite high, maybe 15 feet, blue brick of a recent sort, the sort used by contractors on newer buildings instead of the older style bricks of brown and beige. Trees hid most of this back wall of the building. It seemed to go on too long for his sense of propriety. It was too long a building. Maybe it was a factory of some sort, he thought. Or a set of offices  Or a mini mall. But he knew the front of that street and he knew there was no mini mall there. Then he remembered. It was a storage shed where people could come to drop off their belongings and leave them there as long as they wanted and pay only a small holding fee each month. Sentinel Self Storage he saw then in a space where they’d left off planting trees on purpose so that the sign would show up well. But show up well to the train going by? They just miscalculated, he thought, in the early stages of the design when they couldn't imagine all the problems or effects of the blueprint and plans. Weird, he thought, too. How expensive the façade here at the back. They put out a lot of money to make this rear area of such rich materials. The front he remembered now was of ordinary stucco with each dozen feet or so another garage door. He'd been inside there once picking up a load of belongings for some friend. The sheds were about 20 x 12 inside, dark, unlit, hundreds of them. He'd marvelled at the sheer number of stalls stretching out a long way past the one they were at. What if people deposited their belongings and then died and their children were too wealthy to bother to come for them, or their children were not their children, or some other oddity kept anyone from finding these possessions? What if the sheds were empty and the proprietor was barely making enough money to keep the mortgage alive? These thoughts had come to him then and he had liked the Kafka sense of the improbability of this building as a functional business. As a place where the predictable happened.