Speaking of surfing the web, a friend of mine recently asked me how I can find so much to do on the computer. This is a perfect example of how I while away the hours and entertain myself on these days we have to wait while a show plays. As usual, when we have the time we check the map for a back road, get off the interstate, and take a route we have never travelled before. Not only is the trip more scenic, most of the time the roads are smoother too. That’s what we did yesterday. One thing we were watching for is cheaper fuel. We can always get a better deal at a mom and pop store than the big commercial truck stops. We saw a good price at a station as we zoomed thru Concord, NC but were going too fast to make stop so we broke our own ‘never go back’ rule and found a place to turn around so we could take advantage of the good price. However, the point of my story is not the price of the fuel, but what we saw when turned down a side street to make the u-turn. Across the road from the fire department that we turned around in, we noticed several huge old abandoned buildings that looked like a backdrop from a horror movie. There must have been five or six of these huge brick structures that had been boarded up, dilapidated, and were somewhat overgrown. What in the world was this place, we wondered - possibly an old school or college, a state hospital facility, or even a prison? It was all very eye-catching but we saw no signs around to explain what we were looking at. So I snapped a couple quick pictures and took to the internet to figure it out while Jorge took off to fuel. My curiosity was piqued. I’ve heard you cannot trust Wikipedia on a lot of things but it, along with many other websites, did clarify the answers to my many questions. As it turns out, these grand old buildings we had happened upon were what remained of an old detention center for white, male juvenile delinquents of the early 1900’s. They called the place the “Stonewall Jackson Training School”. Wikipedia had this to say about it…
"Boys were generally incarcerated for relatively minor scrapes with the law, including school truancy. At the school, the young men lived in a series of dormitory style buildings, and received an academic education as well as learning a trade. Students worked in industries including shoemaking, printing, barbering, textiles, and a machine shop. Many of the young men worked on the school’s farm, learning modern agricultural techniques, and maintaining the fields and cattle herds that supported the school. The print shop produced a small newspaper called The Uplift."
By the time I was done reading about it, I had learned quite a bit about the people who had lived there and this place I had never heard of before and will probably never see again. I just wish we hadn’t travelled so far past it so we could have gone back for a second, more thorough peak at the place. It was sad to see what had once been such fine architecture crumbling and no longer useful. Check out the picture I took from the truck window. It happens to be the exact same two buildings that I found on a picture from back in the day. So it’s not just sitting around, this job is an excellent learning experience as well.