&uot;It was a way of life at one time. It was our identity,&uot; Albert Lea Mayor Jean Eaton said, reflecting on the city’s history of meat packing.

Two years ago last night, sparks from a cutting torch lit some cardboard boxes on fire. It was a fire that would burn down one of the oldest and most visible industries in Albert Lea.

For almost a century, the red brick factory in the middle of town churned out meat products as hundreds of workers slaughtered livestock, packed the meat up and shipped it off.

The name changed over the years &045; from Wilson Meats, to Farmstead Foods, to Seaboard Farms to Farmland Foods &045; but through it all, Albert Lea was, and still is to some extent, known as a meat packing town.

&uot;When I was the (Convention and Visitors Bureau) director, five or six years ago, people would say to me, ‘Oh, you’re from that meat packing town,’&uot; Eaton said.

But in the 2001 fire, some of that stigma burned as well.

&uot;It has changed our identity,&uot; Eaton said. &uot;I’m not sure we have our identity back yet, or who we are going to become.&uot;

Like Austin’s Hormel, the Farmland plant represented a core, focal industry for the town.

According to former Farmland employee and current workforce development coordinator Brian Vairma, that’s about the only way in which Hormel and Albert Lea’s packinghouse were the same.

&uot;It was a real love-hate type relationship,&uot; he said about the town’s association with the plant. &uot;All of the companies that were in that building weren’t very good corporate citizens. There isn’t a Wilson Park, or a nature center or anything like that. They provided us with steady employment, but that was about it.&uot;

When Farmland took over the plant after a string of shaky owners, the workers felt they had an employer that would be in the city for a long time to come. But after the fire, those hopes were. Those workers had to look for other employment.

Vairma’s current job lets him see the repercussions of the fire from another angle. After the fire, he went to work for the Workforce Development Center, finding jobs for people. He said the economy now is the worst he’s seen, and said the consensus in his office is that it is the hardest time to find a job in Albert Lea since 1982.

While Vairma said most of the skilled employees have found other work within the past two years &045; some have jobs in the city, others commute and many others have moved away &045; he said that many of the immigrants and unskilled laborers are still struggling.

&uot;A lot of those guys got those jobs before they finished high school,&uot; he said. &uot;They just don’t have the education or training they need for other jobs.&uot;

Still, Eaton believes that the city is laying the groundwork for workforce growth.

&uot;I think things are going well in this city despite the economy and Farmland,&uot; she said. She mentioned new businesses coming in to provide jobs, such as Green Mill Restaurant and the Wal-Mart Supercenter. Still, she said high paying jobs are needed.

Tuesday, the final piece of the third story of the old plant was knocked down. While the skeleton of the first floor of the main building remains, it could be gone by the time readers pick up this newspaper.

During the demolition process, the parking lot of the plant has usually been sprinkled with cars. In them, men and women sit, many watching as the building where they worked their whole life is broken into concrete pieces.

John Haines, of Albert Lea, stood outside his car Tuesday, like many others, quietly watching the cranes take the last pieces of recognizable building down. Haines retired before the fire burned the plant down.

&uot;I worked there 33 years,&uot; he said. &uot;It didn’t mean all that much to me, but it bought my house and raised my family. There are a lot of memories in that plant.&uot;