Sugar

The sugar factory still stood on the side of the highway, a silent sentinel over the city that it had created. The main building was eight stories tall and made of red brick. It overlooked the oldest neighborhood in the city, now full of turn-of-the-century Craftsman homes and wide streets covered by the shade of hundred-year-old oak trees. 

The burnt-sugar smell that used to accompany the sugar cane harvest in November no longer permeated the air. The company had moved all of its operations to Louisiana fifteen years ago, saying that this area had become too developed. There was no more cane here and the fields had been mowed over, turned into developments. 

The only original plot of land was that on which the county prison stood, where inmates still picked cotton while police officers looked on from their horses. That hadn't changed in a hundred years.

The red and white neon sign at the top of the factory building still hummed and buzzed and turned on every night, though the company had stopped maintaining the edifice. IMPERIAL SUGAR FACTORY, it read, with the logo stuck on top like a little hat. The logo and a few of the letters flickered constantly but hadn't burned out yet. 

People had died in that factory, the local kids said. Don't go in there.

Yet people still broke in. The only glass that remained in the windows clung to the sides, the panes having been shattered by curious onlookers. 

Despite the indignities it had suffered, no one would tear the factory down. Like a shrine to a lost god, the townspeople held on to it, refused to destroy it because it was the reason for their prosperity.