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A long time ago, in a land far far away, man constructed the crown jewel of all modern architecture. I speak not of the Parthenon, nor the pyramids in Egypt. I speak of the Sears catalog warehouse, on the corner of Cleveland and East Parkway in Memphis, TN. Built in the mid 20's, this gargantuan edifice used to house thousands of employees... It was closed down in the late eighties, and has lied desolate and abandoned ever since.

In the fall of 1999, David, Pablo and Lagan came accross this abandoned place one drunken night. And being the rational, clear-headed young men they are, they decided to scale all 20 stories of it. Perched atop one of the largest buildings they had ever seen, they decided it was necessary to penetrate deeper into the building. The rest is history.

I wouldn't know where to begin with all of the stories that are associated with this place - but I will share several items. For example, there was the night when David and I sat atop the tower for 2 hours, ranting and raving about women, then made our way down, only to find a trigger-happy security guard waiting at the bottom. I mean he was the first person we'd ever seen at the building. We weren't prepared for a security guard. Jumping from 15 feet up, we hit the ground running, and were shot at many times. I mean that is not an exaggeration. We were actually shot at. I almosed pissed my pants.

More importantly, I will share with you what went down on August 26th, 2002. Lagan, David and I had the audacity to penetrate the building during broad daylight. This involves climbing the side of the building, running up 10 stories of fire escape, climbing several large ladders, all in plain view of the traffic below. Yet for some reason we decided to do this. We scaled the building, to the very top of the tower portion, and sat for a while, smoking pipes and contemplating life, friendship, and mexican food. Then they decided to move to the inner portion of the building.



We first stopped at floor 15. Through the bleak light of a memphis sunset that poured through a window, we discovered an old boardroom, and executive office area. After examining the possibility of finding several old dead people dressed in suits, we decided that we would still press on. And it was worth it, my friends, for what we found will forever be engrained in my memory.

As we rounded some corner, Lagan stumbled on some sort of back supply area. And what we found there were 3 HUGE maps, made of wood. These maps, of Mississippi, Kentucky and Louisiana, were approxiamately 10 feet high and 7 feet wide each. They probably weighed 60 pounds each. Yet a concensus was reached - we all agreed that these maps all needed to come back to Lagan and Davids house and be nailed to the wall.

And so off we went, carrying these three states on our backs, down 13 flights of stairs. We exited the building on floor 3, where we decided the best thing to do was drop the states to the ground below, and hope they didn't break. As we let go of that first state, I felt as though I had dropped my own child to its death. Kentucky banged up against the side of the wall, and landed on an air conditioner, shattering immediately. Mississippi, on the other hand, glided gracefully to a soft, beautiful landing on top of a bush. And Louisiana followed suit, landing precisely on top of Mississippi. And so we pulled my explorer around, loaded up and drove off into the sunset, feeling quite pleased with ourselves.


Stolen from the depths of the building

And so it goes. There will come a day when this building comes to the ground. And I have a feeling that Lagan, David and I will have something to do with that.