There are a lot of ways to learn that we grow when old things are tossed aside and new things are let in. I was reminded of that recently and thought I’d share this story.
One of the hardest days of work I ever had was when, as a teenager, I cleaned out an industrial building at 2490 Lafayette Street in San Jose. It was a classic metal building that had been a manufacturing plant. With about half an acre under the roof, it was filled with grease, oil, dirt, and a fine dust that today would probably be considered toxic.
The Memory Lane showroom being set up.
It took three days with two others helping me, filling six huge dumpsters, but we eventually got the entire building “broom clean” and ready to lease. I remember one of the men helping with the job, an older black man, who taught me how to sweep. No, seriously, he really did! “It’s all in an efficiency of motion” he’d chant over and over. Even then I thought it was amusing to take lessons on how to use a broom, but I was impressed with the pride he took in his work.
I too was proud of the job we did because it was hard work that we finished well. After college I managed that building for years. We negotiated dozens of leases that included everything from cabinet shops to a motorcycle repair place. I even had my picture taken in front of the building for an article published about my work of “recycling old buildings.”
At one point the biggest section of the building sat vacant. Seeing an opportunity to do something fun, and having the time on his hands to pursue it, my Dad opened a classic car sales business in the building. He called it Memory Lane and started taking consignments and also buying old cars for resale. He never made much money — but it wasn’t meant to be a profitable business anyway. He just wanted to have fun and create enough revenue to pay himself rent.
Eventually Memory Lane was closed and the building was leased to a carpet retailer. They later purchased the building. A long story short, my nieces and nephew ended up owning the building again and then selling it to a developer.
Last week I received a photo of the building being torn down. It’s a bittersweet photo for me. As a developer myself, I’m glad the highest and best use of the site is finally about to happen. The whole neighborhood will benefit because the old eyesore will be gone. But there were a lot of memories in that building. There is a part of me that is sorry to see it go.
That’s life, isn’t it? New things push the old out. The junkyard taught me that as new cars were stripped and then crushed, making way for more new cars. Nature can teach us the same thing. So can our own lives as our hearts and souls resist change, often to find that life is so much better after allowing change to happen. Junkyards, nature, life … they can all teach us about change.
So can an old metal building in Santa Clara.