hey chris, like your poem, its concrete, and i like that. you're really missin out not readin sk some may say he writes schlock, but i say he only wrote schlock in the beginning. anyways, a tired argument i know. things sound like they're going well for you, whats your town like? is it like the town in the goonies? are there any haunted houses? any weird history happen there? I like findin out about that kinda stuff when i move places. There is always somethin crazy. For instance, I went to a town here in Alaska called Whittier. Now there is a novel waiting to happen. I bet if all four of us went there we could come home and write 4 completely different novels. The thing is this.

Whittier is a town that was created on the site of an old military base from the 1940's. Everyone in the town lives in one apartment highrise. There is a huge abandoned building called the Buckner building that in the 60's was home to up to 1200 military personell. It was the largest building in alaska for a long time. Now it is the largest eyesore in alaska, cracking concrete walls, a thousand broken windows, it just sits there falling apart. Whittier itself looks like a post apocolyptic commune, neglected machinery sits rusting scattered around the small town. Besides the Buckner building there are a number of other smaller buildings that have long been abandoned. The only way into the town is through one of the longest railroad tunnels in north america. thats right, railroad tunnel, it opens to automobile use on the half hour on the way in and on the hour on the way out. This isn't the only tunnel in the town. Rumor has it that there are tunnels leading out into the uninhabited mountains behind the Buckner building. There is also a tunnel from the Buckner building down to the harbor, and a tunnel from the apartment complex to the elementary/high school.

I had to go to whittier to work on some boats there for a couple days. The company put me up in the apartment complex. This is where the weird stuff comes in. Think of this, a whole town of 200 people living in one building. It houses the 'whittier church' a general store, and of course a large gym like room that serves as the city dump. There is not 1 private home in the rest of the town. The only bar in town is accessible by a four story flight of a fire escape which the patrons must stumble down at 3 oclock when the bar closes. The place looks like an apocolyptic commune, complete with the decaying remnants of a grander past. weird i'm tellin ya.

anyways, I gotta go,
talk to you all later.

erik