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Comments:
raymond - 2004-07-09 08:24:17
When the State of Michigan was getting out of the mental health business in the 80s, we attended several auctions at Ypsi and Pontiac. We hauled truckloads of weird stuff away. Standing even now in the kitchen is YSH medicine cabinet #24853, filled now not with needles and Thorazine but pink elephant and Black Label drinking vessels.
I designed and directed a nutty production of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" in '84. I used furniture, appliances, and decor from the mental hospitals for the stage set. That material helped me to reduce the actors to states of mental distress resulting in bizarre though questionable performances.
Some parts of the hospitals remained open even as the auctions went on. Trustier inmates mingled with bidders. While taking a break in front of the main building I watched a man leaning against a tree while he mumbled imprecations and peed his pants. A leering man approached me and sat on the grass while he stared into my eyes. "I'M NOT FROM THIS PLANET!" he announced, whereupon he drew from his belt a mimed Ray-Gun, pointed the would-be weapon at my chest, and pulled the trigger which he surely felt with his finger.
I felt waves from the gun penetrate my chest. I wonder to this day if was not the million cigarettes I smoked but that one shot from the Alien's handgun that gave me lung cancer.
Among the treasures (sic) which still haunt us are pieces of furniture from the "Michigan Industries" system. One chair, ca. 1942, is of the pattern used in the Willow Village hastily-built-of-green-wood-milled-on-the-spot flimsy shacks.
I also bid on and won the remaining wood from the well-equipped woodshop. Among the pieces of furniture grade birch, maple, and oak is one board 20 feet long by 2"x16".
Unsettled invisible spirits lurked throughout the dank rooms and stinky corridors of those horrible buildings. Unknown to us then, a former resident of our present house unwillingly inhabited Ypsi State for observation and evaluation after he stabbed a man twenty-some times on Cross Street.
May all human essence be calm some day.* * * * * * * * * * * *
Laura - 2004-07-09 09:20:39
I read all of that with the greatest of interest. Thank you so much, raymond, for another look at the building. When I pass by on my way south on the back roads to visit my folks in Toledo, the potency of its black-windowed desolation kind of washes over you as you pass by.* * * * * * * * * * * *
Anna - 2004-07-13 19:16:10
I think that's where the book "The Three Christs of Ypsilanti" is set...
(a psychiatrist decides to introduce three schizophrenics to one another to see what will happen to their worldview when confronted with two other Jesus Christs. The patients decide it makes perfect sense that there are three because of the whole father-son-holy spirit thing).* * * * * * * * * * * *
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