A small village on the east end

It was empty as if I had been placed in a space where life suddenly stopped.

Away from the bustling tourist destination, I drove along the US 1 Road in Maine to Eastport, the easternmost end of the United States near the Canadian border. The small islands in the fog remind me of the Dadohae on the South Korea coast that I once visited.

Entering the heart of the deserted hillside town, I felt like it's on a set of western movies. As long as the telephone pole and the sparsely built vehicle are removed. The styles of some abandoned red brick buildings are built the same period as those of Brooklyn.

Stepping into a small park by the sea, the old pictures and signs on the busy days of thousands of women working in white uniforms tell the sorrow of the town.

In 1875, the sardine-canning factory was first established here, and at the peak of time, thirteen companies flourished. The industry gradually has declined. And turned into a quiet and despondent port due to the mass exodus of residents. It was as if I were looking at the old days of northern Brooklyn, next to the East River where I lived. When most sugar factories in the south were destroyed by the Civil War, the world's largest sugar factory was located under the Williamsburg Bridge. It was shut down in 2004 after running it for more than 150 years with Domino sugar, like the last remaining dinosaur to die.

The building, with its colorful oval chimneys is waiting for another leap forward. Fortunately, in Brooklyn, many warehouse factory buildings are turning into popular residential areas, but Eastport, located at the end of the northeast, seems to have no alternative plan after the sardine industry. Although it has a clean sea to attract tourists, unfortunately, it is a pity that there is no white sand beach. Perhaps that's why the taste of alcohol I drank on the veranda of my lodging, where I could see the ocean, was bitter.

I approached the redbrick warehouse building standing with concrete pillars in the seawater. In the dark space between the broken pillars, a mixture of shallow wave sounds and seagull cries can be heard. It may be like a sigh of deep wretchedness of a few old people who miss the old days.