No, this isn’t an existential post. Well, maybe a little. So Liz wanted a tiered strawberry bed. That wasn’t a priority project, but something she had been keeping in mind. Recently, we had a kid-free day, and she suggested a couple options to fill that opportunity: Dayton’s 2nd Street Market, and Mendelsons liquidation outlet. The former didn’t sound very interesting to me as I had envisioned food and hippies peddling art (we went there later anyway, and my prediction wasn’t far off). But Mendelsons sounded just odd enough that I became intrigued. And so, off to Mendelsons we went.
“Liquidation outlet” didn’t do this place justice. It was somewhere between hoarder’s opus and nerd’s paradise, if that means anything. It occupied 3 stories of a downtown Dayton manufacturing compound, and was filled with surplus/deprecated products, ranging from plastic restaurant containers to decommissioned business electronics. One day I’ll have a server rack, and I now know where to acquire one to refurbish.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Liz found some nice wooden boxes on the ground floor, which we would go back to. A sign, however, informed us of electronics being on the 3rd floor (the 2nd was off-limits for an unknown reason). Following these signs, we were led down a hallway to a choice: elevator or stairs.
A service elevator with a dubious last-maintenance date? We took the stairs.
It was on floor 3 that I realized there is so much in this world I just don’t know anything about. There were piles of circuits and various mechanical components. Alarm systems, telecommunication systems, closed-circuit surveillance systems, row upon row of capacitors and resistors. There was a section filled with ball-bearing rotation devices. There were things I was afraid to even touch–what appeared to be high-pressure sodium light bulbs. How is this place allowed to exist? I don’t know, but I’m glad it does.
There were many, many ideas for future projects. But, back to the strawberries. Downstairs, we picked up the two boxes we had set aside earlier. They were labeled as NCR boxes–a company I had to research as I am a non-native to these parts. Once I did, however, I remembered the logo. Sadly, it was another big company that had abandoned Dayton with the recession. The meaning behind those numbers, written upon the wood, will be forever lost to time as the sun physically erases them from existence.
But the wood is solid and looks nice. One placed inside the other, raised on bricks, created the tiered strawberry garden Liz wanted.
They just don’t make ’em like they used to.
–Simon