This is few blocks northeast of my workplace, where a year of tuition is more than my annual salary, and only 3 blocks north of a $128 million-plus baseball stadium.
Just to the east of the railroad tracks lies a muddy lot strewn with weeds, and this structure plopped in the corner: the onetime Wayne’s Auto something. It’s at that awkward abandoned building age where it’s not quite old enough to hold historical interest, and certainly isn’t architecturally interesting – it looks like a giant cinder block. What is interesting about it, then, is that it isn’t very old at all, yet nature is already trying to reclaim it. The bright orange stripe on it’s bricks has hardly begun to fade, but already wild sunflowers and bushes are trying to overtake it.
Why did this place close? Why didn’t anyone want the building? Who decided to give up on even selling it? The dirt road that leads up to this structure seems like it was never paved. Maybe the place was built and never even opened.
There is another Wayne’s Auto Repair in Omaha. So I like to think this spot just didn’t work out for Wayne, but he is doing just fine. Maybe it was too close to the train tracks.
On the bright side, this lot has more wild sunflowers than I have ever seen.
All That Does Not Glitter 