Krispy Kreme leads to wonder

Friends, I am finally well enough to travel, and I left this weekend. I loaded up my old blue pick up truck and headed through the winding mountains to Riversleigh. Along the way, I stopped in a small mill town, such as the one in which I was raised, the reasons twofold. First, I know of a particular Krispy Kreme near the exit and cannot resist the sweet, melty deliciousness of the treat.

Second, textile towns call to me, in a wispy voice that was my grandmothers, and hers and hers before. Though the mills are shut down now, corpses of a grand economy that fueled the South, their eyeless bodies still exist amidst the small frame houses that sit around them like old ladies at a wake. The business is dead, but I believe, because I get the feeling, that the mills are alive. There has been too much life in the building to close up and die. Years and years, lives and lives- it doesn't die. It can only morph, I imagine.

So, I got off the highway and headed past the mills, past the mill hill houses, towards the Krispy Kreme mecca. After buying a dozena nd indulging in one as I drove away, I noticed a building. Isn't that how it always happens. You notice something. You don't mean to; and you probably pause briefly to think about whether or not you are going to notice it with a captial N. Well, my captial N noticing happened. I turned left out of the Krispy Kreme lot with the "Hot Now" sign blinking red in my back window.

A fence surrounded the building. It was obviously closed up, beyond repair some would say. It was alive though, breathing and looking out through its broken windows. It had been grand and someone had tried to make it grand again, but it was falling down now. Like the mills, I thought. I pulled over to think about the building, to try and figure out what it had been. What it could be. What would happen to it. It was unusual for a mill town, looking more like a Victorian than the Southern homes I was used to seeing. I ate another doughnut and decided that I had to take a picture of it. It was essential, of course, to my journey to Riversleigh, although I hadn't figured out why yet.