I worked in a building today.
The loading dock bay doors were all shut, once whirring lifts silently parked. Water lay in shallow puddles on the floor, left over from cracks in the sprinkler pipes that froze after the heat had been turned off. But the place was clean, the spillways for merchandise boxes still shiny. A few coats even hung upon a rack, abandoned there because the day before this business had failed had been a warm one. This distribution center had not been long abandoned. Its parking lot remained in good shape, paint still good, mountains of material handling equipment in place. All of it. All it needed was someone to snap on the disconnects, to start the motors, turn on the computers. Even the forklifts sat ready, abandoned in place as another business closed its doors and sent its employees home to worry.
Up on the second level of the main conveyor was a landing, a place where a materials supervisor sat at his desk and checked orders. Behind it hung an American flag, right over where the materials would be placed on the conveyor. Lit only by a few night lights, it waved for no one but me as I was the only person here to look. And I thought today about IBM, who last week offered recently laid off opportunities the chance to outsource themselves to India, at Indian wages.
I began to wonder if what I saw up there in that lonely flag between the stanchions and conduit, a fable of America itself, once the Arsenal of Democracy, builder of so many new products that no one seems to want any more.