My mother is explaining excitedly about some railroad tracks she saw, with this strange wear pattern that she can now explain! It was caused by the police always walking over the tracks, with their jackets billowing, because they could never afford buttons. Their jackets were wearing out the tracks, because the buttons would graze over them. I'm tired, and I say that I don't understand, though hesitantly, because I don't really want her to explain it more. Finally I decide to get up from where I was trying to sleep, wake myself up, and go see the affected tracks.

I go with mom to a run-down, rusty area. There I can see some old tracks, just rusted into the ground, and randomly worn away on the top from rust, rain, and probably occasional traffic. In some spots the rails appear almost out of the ground, completely rusted away to nothing at the ends. I still don't see any reason for the police-jacket-billowing theory, but there are some interesting buildings here.

There is a tower made mostly of glass with just rusty beams for a frame. It is thirty or forty feet tall with a wider base, then the column, and a pyramid on top. It is surrounded by tires, piled high, and filled with metal bits, mostly hubcaps and similar metal parts. It looks like somebody's junk collection, assembled over many years and wedged in piece by piece, but now long abandoned. My brother Steve climbs up on it and reaches inside, rattling several pieces loose and causing a small cascade of shiny metal circles inside, against the glass.

For some reason I'm thinking about clearing it out and living in there, but it would be too small. Nearby is another glass building, like a barn, and similarly piled high with rusty junk. This one is bigger, perhaps a 20-foot by 30-foot rectangle, a much more livable size, but contains some large appliances, stacked high. Near the top of the pile, well above my head, I can see a fridge with some scrawled black writing on the front, as if something had been sold out of it, a long time ago when it was already garbage but still worked. The top part of the writing has worn off, but the last part can still be read "...or Dermatological use".

There is a peculiar chemical odor in the area, which is familiar to me as some byproduct of decaying refrigerators. Mom comes over to me and complains about it, saying we'd better get out of here or we'll never get rid of that smell, so we leave.