A Building, A River, A Swan

Report: In Eau Claire, Wisconsin, on the Eau Claire River, Raymond Gillette started a rubber company in 1917. This became U.S. Rubber, the city's largest employer and one of world's leading producers of automobile tires. By 1965, it was the third largest tire plant in the U.S. In 1967, U.S. Rubber changed its name to Uniroyal. In 1990, Michelin purchased the plant, and a year later, the last 1375 employees were laid off and the plant closed.
1.9 million square foot of unused space, called Banbury Place.
I’m asking why.

At Banbury Place, the palace of brokenness, I see questions written in the language of squares. There are green squares, brick squares, and boarded up squares of Building G. It is my frayed quilt of building, no longer giving warmth.
What is it made of? Where has it been? Where is it going?
Someone stitched a blue square and this yellow one, but here is a square of emptiness. No it isn’t blank, I can see the other side through the ear. It thinks of nothing, and holds even less.
“Mother… Father … Mother, you sewed this palace wrong!”
I turn to the swan sitting in front of the building, to the river flowing by, to the buildings of the palace that aren’t empty, and I am answered.
“Find the thread — I used braided fishing line and wings,” the creator says.

The buildings — broken pieces made of old tires and new tenants,

The river — a moving sapphire, no less a treasure than the quilt or this:
The bird—made of trash, a harsh eye over a beak made of a caution sign.


Report: Local financial institutions put together an $11.5 million loan pool to primarily finance the cost of leasing buildings by development corporations to further encourage new business activity. Banbury Place. At least 121 businesses had made a home by April 2009. There are apartments, conference rooms, church organizations, a restaurant, and a fitness center.
I’m asking why.

Once, men made rubber, made a living in the center of the palace.
Once, women made ammunition for the war.
And for a time, the wind from empty spaces made dust on floors come to life.
Now, inside, the carpenter wears goggles to save him from eye splinters.
The reverend gives a small message to a smaller crowd,
and an emaciated woman lifts weights.
They, too, start with small spools of fragile thread, and come prepared.
I search the halls for the alchemist named Ralph who poisons the air, and yet gives the factory walls a small flask of mystery.
Gold from salt. Gold from bricks. What can be made from this?
Some come with flashlights to find the ghost electrician, the ghosts of the shoe makers, the ghosts of the homeless in the underground tunnels,
But they are in the in-between, the purgatory, while
I have to seek the foundation, flesh, and future of this once and always palace.


The river says she can’t remember where she’s from. She tells me she supposes the sky, but can’t be sure. I ask her to tell me a fact, because abstractions are becoming exhausting. She says, “Did you know snowflakes are formed with a grain of dust at the core? Did you know I am made of dead snowflakes?” I frown and she continues, “I can’t tell you my core, if you have no desire for the intangible.” She says she’s named the Eau Claire River because she is truly clear water, and because she flows through the city, she is its namesake.
On bridges, I follow her to find where she is going today, starting from Banbury Place. The river heads past the library and sweeps by the old 2 Barstow where a masterpiece is now painted in each window. Brick, brick, then Paul Bunyan, brick, brick, brick, then the silhouette of a man with a martini. The river gives a small curtsy, dipping south slightly, gracefully. At the corner where Phoenix Park holds still flower bulbs in his breast, she meets the grand Chippewa River. They dance a minuet in fast currents. I am an unashamed voyeur of moving water. She sighs and joins him, winking at me through the solemnity of winter light. Tomorrow she’ll race to Altoona where she’ll fall for the lake, who is perpetually pregnant. This is not a love story, though I do know whatever tale I’m telling may love these paths and cycles of water like a snowflakes loves its grain of dust.


Report: Each year, the Minnesota DNR’s Adopt-a-River program commissions an artist, who creates an outdoor sculpture to be displayed at the Minnesota State Fair. It is made from a variety of materials gathered from actual river cleanup sites.
The 2003 sculpture was Watch Swan by Eau Claire resident Steve Bateman. “Inspired by the tundra swans of the Mississippi River flyway, this large bird calls us to stop allowing our public waters to be trashed.” Bateman put the swan in front of Banbury.

I’m asking why.

The king of this palace is a swan made of trash who is starting to tilt. He is leaning away from where the building ends closer to where new life is stirring. He knows his creator. He knows how and when and from what he was made. But where is he going?
I climb rusting pipes to crouch on the concrete platform near his body. I stroke the wings. Hard, cold, and curvy are the things we throw away.
Everything’s
white. I ask him if he’s made this way, and he says he was painted over and over to be
bright. The snowflakes are melting around our throne. The sun hurts. It shows grace in
light that reflects off the river we both watch from our aerie. I think not of strength, but of
might—the kind that makes some see this bird, ask what it means and what they can do to
fight to preserve this building, this river, this city.
What does it take to save not just the day—everyone can save the day—but to save the
night?


The building is cold and smells raw. In my mind, I paint short strokes of maroon or brown with a thick brush, four lines make a box. I kiss brick squares with their rough grooves of mustache and close my eyes in deep blessing. This unused building is closer to me in construction than any skin-covered, functioning being. I understand rough, broken shells with possibility. But what makes this palace come and go and be is more than I can find staring at a wall. I stop asking the creator and start asking myself why. I curtsy to the river, nod respectfully to the swan, and then I turn to the building.
“Look,” I say to the blank squares, “my hands are empty, too.”

Thanks to Dr. Kate Lang’s research on Eau Claire’s Wartime Women, the Wisconsin Historical Society Archives, Kathy Cobb’s fedgazette article, “Eau Claire responds to Uniroyal closing,” and Minnesota DNR website.