A chunk of history.

I found this brick by the site where an old retaining wall had been taken down and a new one put up. 

"Salina 40" is written on it; this meant nothing to me. But a short visit to the Internet yielded some interesting information. 

Salina, Pennsylvania, about five and half hours west of here by car, was a factory town built in the early 1900s to house workers at the Kier Firebrick Company. Kier was quite an operation at the time. Established in 1874, it "was known internationally for building the first continuous tunnel kilns for producing fire brick. The new kilns allowed streamlined manufacturing of the brick, which was more efficient than the traditional beehive-shaped kilns," according to an article in the Trib. The firebrick, which was made with and used to endure extremely high temperatures, is probably the type seen here labeled No. 40 (although according to Steve Nelson of the town's historic society, the No. 9 was supposedly the finest firebrick ever made).

Alas, nothing remains but the brickworks' foundation now. It closed in 1981. I suppose it wasn't a matter of the brick-making all going to China, but rather the demand for firebricks bottoming out. The Trib article said that "A vital part of the Industrial Revolution, fire brick companies were busy in the late 1800s and first half of the 20th century producing the fire brick to line equipment in steel mills and locomotives, both industrial processes involving high heat." But materials science came a long way in the twentieth century, and diesel-electric locomotives overtook steam in the United States between the 1930s and 1950s. 

Still, it's another sign of what happened to Pennsylvania, which at times led the country in oil, natural gas, coal, and steel. This purple swing state seems to have been stuck in a rut for a long time now -- or has it?

Salena Zito, whose first name is coincidentally almost the same as this town, has a different take in one of her periodic dispatches for PJ Media. She finds that there are still plenty of manufacturing jobs in the state of Pennsylvania, but too few people qualified to do them:

For generations, people in the U.S. were known for their work ethic, for making things, for using their hands alongside their intellect, from farming to mining to building roads and bridges. Our parents and grandparents and their parents before them built this country with those types of skills.

     Those same jobs are often not just financially rewarding but also emotionally rewarding, often giving children and grandchildren the opportunity to remain in the communities that suit them rather than migrating to larger cities or faraway states that break up those family and community bonds.

On the other hand, a lot of Americans have reason to distrust factory towns because we know what happens when the factory closes, perhaps because the company went bust or decided to move its jobs elsewhere. It's like the sun went out -- everything in town revolved around one workplace, which granted light and warmth. You can't even leave because your house has lost its value because everyone else wants to leave. The children flee for other places. It's an awful situation.

On the other other hand (get someone to lend a hand), people on the Left tend to look on every instance of manufacturing and think of Blake's dark satanic mills. They act as if the Triangle Shirtwaist fire happened just last Saturday, that nothing has changed in 109 years. For generations, our social elites have despised manufacturing as ecologically dangerous, soul-killing, exploitive, fit only for morons. Few of them have ever spent a day at a real job, I suspect. 

I guess when you've been to college you know everything.  

I certainly don't know everything. I don't know enough mechanics or physics or engineering to get any kind of a advanced job with a plant, but all those things go into it. 

I also have no idea why a Salina No. 40 firebrick wound up in a retaining wall, seemingly all on its own, now left by the side of the road. Some mysteries just have to remain mysterious.