I lived in and grew up near Loveland, Colorado. There’s an old sugar factory that found itself exploded there, back in the day. Somebody went up there on the tipity-top of the ruins, which are still towering to this day, and grafiti’d “It was Sugar, Stupid” a long time before I was cognizant enough to know that it had ever been blow’d up. It was through inference I discovered it might could have been the developers; or even an inside job what needed it to be gone, might it have been?
Now, sugar in production smells like dog shit, anybody who lives near such a one knows. Oh and sometimes also wet rags. It’s sweet some of the time, sure, and that’s actually pretty nice those days when the wind kicks it up for miles around, but it surely smells like about twelve Saint Bernards, or perhaps monkeys, laid a fresh wet one right on the front lawn most other times… miles away from the smeltering, caramelizing, fermenting flavors. Just depends on where the sugar is in the process, you understand.
Scottsbluff, NE has a sugar factory, as well as a soda distribution facility. Beets are sold for pennies per ton. As I understand it, the locals told me there was also an explosion of the sugar factory back in the day. Now that raised the hair on my brow when I heard it happened in two seemingly different regions… which also happen to be juuuust barely within driving distance of one another. Maybe it was naturally-occurring, and maybe… well, I don’t know, what do you think?
Sugar plants, like corn butting up against human life, stifles growth.
Scottsbluff had been asleep as long as anyone but the old folks who knew the mothballed air force (called it Army back then) base could remember. I’ll bet you anything back in the days of the unlawful ratification of the 16th Amendment it was bustling with life, not unlike the famous Mark Twain stomping grounds of Quincy, Illinois which has its own breeds of small town fat cats, as I understand it. Sleeping giants, quiet capitals, suppressed.
The necessary elements, as I understand it, for a successful sugar and bottling operation are - access to lots of water, access to lots of energy, access to lots of cheap labor, a complacent populace in some manner or the other, oh and… lots of sugar beats. Well, I suppose other sugars would do the trick but sugar beats are mighty cheap and taste ok once turned into that addictive white powder.
