Julie and I went on an adventure yesterday, and what an adventure it turned out to be! Bilbo’s words ring true in this sense:
It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.
Julie and I were merly planning to take a nice few hours under a shady tree in the West Jordan city park (AKA Veterans’ Memorial Park) and write in my story a while. This we did, sitting under a lovely old tree across the street from the West Jordan Library in a little grove where relatively few people wander. I took out my netbook, Julie snuggled in the grass, and we commenced. Aside from a little boy who was fluent in Spanish mock-barking at Julie, we sit for some time, undisturbed and happy.
Suddenly, as if a call from the heavens, we heard it. A train engine’s horn blowing. I turned to Julie, she to me, and we knew then what me must do. I slapped my netbook closed, stuffed it in my backpack, and Julie and I began running as quickly as our legs would take us towards the West Jordan Sugar Factory. We ran across the entire diagonal length of the park, behind the Gene Fullmer Grossness Center, and into the rodeo stadium parking lot as the gate was unlocked and it was quicker to cut through there (the fence separating the back of the Sugar Factory and the stadium parking lot has a section cut out of it).
Near the fence between the Sugar Factory and the parking lot, we saw piles of dirt and several small backhoes scattered about. Not having much time, we skirted past these strange apparitions, into the Sugar Factory grounds, and out the back gate that leads to the City Hall complex as well as an unfenced section of railroad track. The horn had stopped sounding, and we still didn’t see any train. Hoping beyond hope that a train was still coming, we walked all the way down nearly to Redwood Road. Still nothing. A kind, smoking construction worker said hello as he filled his truck with water from a fire hydrant while we meandered about this dirt road connecting the Sugar Factory and City Hall complexes with a depressed aura about us. Julie got a drink from the dripping fire hydrant tube after the unhealthy construction worker drove off to spray water on some dirt, and then we moped our way back to the Sugar Factory.
Once there, we walked past a backhoe taking chunks of asphault from the edge of the factory parking lot, past a sleeping construction worker in one of the dump trucks, and then into the back of the factory. We shouted into one of the holes in the back of the silos and listened to the reverberations (one of our favorite reasons to go to the Sugar Factory), played with a yellow golf ball we found, analyzed the short shadows of the silos at that time of day, investigated a garage door behind which sleeps the West Jordan Monster, and then went back out of the cut fence to the rodeo parking lot.
Upon going past the fence, we remembered the abandoned backhoes and piles of dirt, so we went closer this time to investigate. We found behind the piles of dirt about a hundred foot long ditch that had been dug, and inside were the remains of some old cement foundations for some ancient warehouse built for, I assume, the Sugar Factory back nearly a hundred years ago. We were so very intrigued by this that we trudged up and down the foundations and even into the ditch where the foundation was more than just a wall of sorts. There was a large cement block with a trap door in the top, and the door was missing. Inside of this cavity was a collapsing bunch of wood with a lot of dirt piled inside, so I’m not entirely sure just what it was. There were massive cables and rebars sticking out of the crumbling cement, and there were also some iron pipes and strange iron constructions sticking out of the foundations. In the piles of dirt, we found many broken and whole bricks, pieces of wood, and more curious iron pipes and works. One of the bricks we found had an incscription on it, so I took it home with me to add to my museological collection:
The only letter that seems to fit the broken off one is “D,” making the acronym “DFC.” I’ve done a little bit of research and have concluded that, from what I could find, the only probable connection to DFC is the DFC Ceramics company. DFC has been around for around one hundred and eighty years, and they seem to make ceramics for a wide variety of purposes– casting, melting, molding, baking. I wonder if they had something to do with the making of this brick. Architects always seem to mark their buildings in some way (West Jordan High School has a brick near the main entrance with the architect’s symbol inscribed in it), so I think that this brick is more likely the architect’s mark saying “I built this building. If you find that its remains in almost 100 years in an archeological dig, please give me credit and make me feel special even though I’m dead.” (Researching more, it appears that the Sugar Factory was built by F.M. Dyers & Company… if you rearrange the first letters of F, Dyers, and Company, you get DFC. Hm. Shrug.)
After exploring this most exhilarating archeological dig and then finding and exploring another one further north, Julie made it known unto me that she was very hot and thirsty, so I took her to the nearest puddle and let her have a long drink. We thereafter made a deal that we would go to our shady tree in the park and rest until she felt well enough to go home. After shaking to bind the contract, we commenced towards our tree.
Upon reaching the little shady grove, we were appalled to find two nearly middle-aged adults publicly displaying types of affection that we didn’t want to see. We were about to leave this abhorrent scene when Angel Moroni descended from the heavens and told us that we needed to be valiant and not let the fair city of West Jordan be overrun by hormonic demons such as these. After giving Julie a blessing for courage, Moroni ascended again and left us to the battle before us. Bracing our spirits, Julie and I sat under a nearby tree and made as many loud noises as we could without looking at the pair. Soon after this barrage of noise, our battle tactics proved successful! The two nearly middle-aged lovers stood up and walked off in a huff to their separate cars (if that doesn’t have “affair” written all over it, then I don’t know what does) and proceeded to drive away.
Our victory secured and West Jordan safe from the rabble once more, Julie and I went home. She slept for hours on the kitchen floor.
Awesome brick! I’m proud of you for stopping their affair. That made me laugh.