Deconstruction
© Renee Goularte ~ Sept 2010
Last week my father
watched his son and grandson
prime the pump that would
siphon the fuel from an oversized tank
that had been unearthed the week before.
He watched from a dusty office chair
three generations at work
dismantling the business
piece by piece, truck by truck.
He said,
This is my life’s work,
all gone now.
We looked at his face, his eyes
scanning the concrete yard,
the weed-invaded pier blocks,
the giant hole where the truck scale
had weighed each load before it left the yard
until the day when it was sold and hauled away.
And so goes the family business....
... started in 1958, closed down in 2010, the victim of urban progress combined with an economic downfall, with no construction going on to keep it alive. In a short period of time it devolved from a thriving business to essentially nothing.... as trucks and equipment were sold, buildings dismantled and demolished, and finally the concrete was ground up into a pile of rubble. And there you have it ....
.
