My Favorite Industrial-Trespassing Artifact

Transforming a story of death into a flicker of life.

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is not paywalled and is thus available to all. Enjoy! — Paul

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Yesterday I wrote about why I don’t enjoy estate sales and also described how I used to spend a lot of time sneaking into abandoned industrial sites. Both experiences are shadowed by death: For an estate sale, it’s the death of a person; for a derelict factory, it’s the death of a business and all the jobs once connected to it.

As a follow-up to that piece, I want to tell you about an object I once took from an an industrial site — an object I’ve managed to transform into a symbol of life, instead of death. (I’ve previously told this story in several other forums over the years, so my apologies if you’ve heard it before.)

Here’s the deal: In the summer of 1988, when I was 24 years old, I traveled to Youngstown, Ohio, to interview my friend Sam, who fronted a band that I liked. While I was there, Sam brought me to Youngstown’s abandoned steel mill, a huge complex that had abruptly shut down 11 years earlier. It was my first time inside a defunct industrial space, and it was mesmerizing. In addition to the massive, decaying machinery, there were lots of ghosts: clothes in workers’ lockers, time cards that employees had used to clock in and clock out, clipboards with work orders that would never be carried out. It was all very, very powerful.

I knew I wanted a keepsake to serve as a reminder of the experience, but I wasn’t sure what would be appropriate. At one point we were walking down a hallway that had a bunch of overhead light fixtures. Instinctively, without even realizing why, I reached up and began unscrewing the light bulbs and shaking them. When I found one that sounded like its filament was still intact, I put it in my bag. Later on, when we got back to Sam’s place, I screwed the bulb into a socket and found that it still worked — a small living piece of a big industrial corpse.

Nearly 40 years later, I still have that light bulb (as shown in the photo at the top of this post). I usually keep it stored away in a cupboard, but every now and then I’ll take it out, screw it into a socket in my apartment, and use it for a few days. After writing yesterday’s piece about estate sales and industrial trespassing, I realized it had been awhile since I’d called the bulb back into active service, so last night I screwed it into a sconce in my living room. As usual, it lit right up. It’s illuminated right now as I’m writing this, in fact.

The steel mill bulb, reliable as always, on the night of May 22nd, 2025.

I like that I’ve been able to keep this little piece of the steel mill alive. And in my overly romantic, anthropomorphizing way, I also like to think that the bulb enjoys these opportunities to fulfill its intended function. Eventually, of course, it will burn out, but that’s okay. I just want it — and, by extension, the steel mill — to have the dignity of a natural death.

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So that’s the story of the light bulb. If it sounds familiar, it’s because I mentioned it, without going into as much detail, last August, when we had a Show and Tell post about whether vintage items should be preserved or used. That post was guest-written by reader Mike Chamernik, but I added some commentary of my own at the end, including these thoughts about the light bulb:

I’ve been very careful with the bulb over the years — I’ll occasionally screw it into a socket and use it for a few hours here, a few hours there. Then I unscrew it and put it away, because I can’t bear the thought of “killing” it. On the one hand, this lets the bulb fulfill its intended function, at least occasionally; on the other hand, I’m basically keeping it in an induced coma and then reviving it every so often when the mood strikes me, which seems almost cruel.

In other words, contrary to what I wrote earlier, I’m not really giving the bulb the “dignity of a natural death.” It’s more like I’m keeping it on a respirator, or in a state of suspended animation, or some other strained metaphor for extraordinary medical measures. If I just went ahead and used it full-time until it burned out, that would be a natural death. Is it time for me to do that? Or should I keep extending its lifespan because I find its functionality so pleasing? Hmmmm.

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Another rendition of the light bulb story appears in the 2007 book Taking Things Seriously: 75 Objects with Unexpected Significance, which is a collection of short essays by various writers. If you liked this post, or enjoy object-based storytelling in general, you’ll probably like the book as well. Recommended!

Paul Lukas has been obsessing over the inconspicuous for most of his life, and has been writing about those obsessions for more than 30 years. You can contact him here.