Wakening

That familiar rise in the road loomed ahead — the one that seemed to bridge the two massive parts of the tandem mill. He could see the lights of the stadium off to the right where they had been for fifty, no, maybe seventy years. The lights had been there for as long as Marc could remember, but it had been years since he had seen them all lit.

He could not see all the stadium lights from the road. The towering roofs of the tin mill still blocked the view of the ones on the west side. The foggy glow from the stadium created an eerie effect as the darkness of the mill and the rising hillside behind the stadium dominated the scene and dampened the bright lights even though they reached eighty feet into the air. The lights were only visible for a few seconds as his car reached the flat peak of the overpass and started down the incline on the other side towards the town's main thoroughfare.

An unmarked mill gate on the right side curved towards a large corrugated building and back again under the bridging road. The landscape was dark and haunting. The blue-gray coating of a steel mill talcum powder bath had fallen on the buildings and roadway at the gate for many years giving the scene a touch of homeliness and despair. How could anything be that dusty? It was a bleak, three-dimensional lithograph of the industrial revolution.

It hasn't changed, Marc thought. It's still the same as it was in the late 50s. The short stretch of four-lane road — about two miles — still merged into two lanes as he reached the number five-mill gate and the start of downtown Weirton. Downtown? Yes, this was downtown Weirton. A row of one-, two-, at most three- story buildings on the west side, and the mill, — rising like a big, dark mountain of steel, mortar, brick, and fencing on the east side.

Could Marc find his way to the football game? He turned off Main Street at Virginia Avenue, and then drove up the hill for a few blocks to the high school. Well, it's no longer the high school. Marc wondered if there was anything still there. At one of the class reunions a few years ago, he had bought a brick, supposedly from the old school. At the time, it was being torn down, and Chris Barrie had brought some souvenirs from the demolition site. Marc had paid $10 for what he trusted was his piece of Weir High School history.

Virginia Avenue was still there; however, there were more empty lots, boarded-up buildings and parking lots for mill employees than Marc remembered. The area looked old, real old. There was the telephone office. He remembered the telephone "operators" who would go in and out of the building as he came and went from the high school. The young women in their nylons and high heels enchanted him. At the time Marc regarded them as women because they were older and out of high school — women who worked at the "romantic" job of telephone operator. All around the dilapidated telephone building, which now had a sign indicating the ISU (Independent Steelworkers Union) occupied the premises, was the discarded and unusable waste of a struggling industry and its people. Obviously, the telephone company had long since moved.

Marc reached the end of the next block. The pitch of the road was steep, at least that is the way it seemed tonight. When Marc drove these hilly streets at sixteen, they did not seem to be any more than slight rises in the road. It's all what you get accustomed to, he thought. Now his Jeep Grand Cherokee seemed too big for the road let alone being able to make the turn into the parking lot outside the stadium. Marc suddenly stopped the light brown Jeep. He was confused and unsure of himself and felt he was driving into a tunnel as the road ahead grew narrower and darker.

The parking lot was gone!

No, it was just so dark that at first glance he didn't see the barrier at the entrance: a rickety, one legged wooden horse holding up a partially broken two-by-four.

The lot, or what appeared to be the remains of the parking lot, was packed with cars, trucks, and buses parked haphazardly. The few gray cloudy figures standing behind the temporary gate were simultaneously motioning for him to turn away and go down the street to his left or continue up another block to the very top of Virginia Avenue. Marc was confused by the traffic controllers. He knew that climb ahead was steeper yet and he didn't want to take that vertical trip.

He turned the steering wheel sharply left, but he was already committed to pulling into the lot. He hit the brakes to avoid going any farther and in fear of the unknown darkness. As the Jeep came to a sudden stop, Marc shifted into reverse. Before he could start to backup, a horn honked and honked again. With a jolt, he slammed the brake pedal down with a forceful drive of his right foot. The red glow of the Jeep's brake lights mixed with the headlights of a car behind created a murky violet-gray collage that made forms and objects indistinguishable.

"Hold it — you can't back up. Give him a chance to get out of the way," a sharp, husky voice called out coldly and somewhat angrily from the rear.

Marc sat still for a moment as he realized that a car behind him was going to be allowed into the parking lot. The barrier was being moved aside and the car turned right into the lot and proceeded down the narrow drive between uneven rows of parked cars, pickups, and school buses. With the gray darkness hanging over the passageway through the motionless vehicles, it reminded Marc of a quick view of a cemetery corridor of large crypts.

"Okay. Come on back. Cut it hard. You have plenty of room," the rough voice said again.

Marc did exactly that. He continued at a slow, cautious pace until the voice yelled, "Okay, okay."

Marc stopped. Why is it so dark? He wondered. "I can't see a damn thing. Are my headlights on? I see fine in front. Must be these new glasses — damn bifocals. It gets worse with every new prescription."

He turned the Jeep into the side street running ninety degrees off of Virginia Avenue. The road was narrow with cars parked on both sides of the street; there was only room for one car in the center of the road. This is like driving through the hedgerows of England all over again, Marc thought. The one lane created a tunnel effect that the night darkness only intensified. If he met someone coming from the opposite direction, it would be a game of chicken to see who would back-up first to an unoccupied area and pull out of the way.

"God, this street hasn't changed either," Marc mumbled to himself.

The small houses seemed tinier than he remembered. But their appearance of clinging to the side of the hill was still the same. Their fragile foothold left the impression that they could let go any minute and tumble down the hillside in unison.

On the right side of the street the houses were well above the road level and towered over everything on the downward side. They seemed to hang on edge and lean unstably forward. The slightest disruption of their perch would cause them to rumble over everything in their path like an avalanche.

The left side of the street was just the opposite. As Marc drove at a snail's pace through the urban burrow of parked cars, trucks, and an occasional RV, he looked directly into the second-floor windows or at the porch rooftops of the houses on the downside of the hill. The houses had steep stairs leading off a sidewalk that went down to a porch or directly into the front doorway. In the darkness, pendent houses appeared to be sliding away.

What an odd sensation, Marc thought: One side falling on top of you and the other falling away. These homes had been here since he was a little kid and had parked on this street with his dad. Was it always this dark, this tight, and this unstable? Probably so, but it certainly seemed to be at the extreme tonight.

Regardless of his feelings of familiarity and uneasiness, Marc still had to find a parking place if he was going to get to the football game. He had already come a block and a half from Virginia Avenue without finding a place to park. Must be a big game tonight and a good crowd, he mused. Fans were walking on the sidewalks on both sides of the street headed toward the stadium, so there had to be parking further down. But how far? This is going to be a long walk back to the stadium, he groaned.

Marc had left his mother's home late and this unexpected search for a parking place was going to make him late for the kickoff. Oh well, he thought. So what — I'm not really here to see the game. He didn't even know who Weirton was playing. He had come to — to just what? Why had he come?

Marc was having trouble thinking of the right words to describe the reason he — at fifty-two years old — had decided to return to his alma mater to go to a high school football game. But he was alone, on a misty night, dark as a coal dungeon.

"Oh well, I'm here now," he rationalized to himself in a subconscious whisper.

"Now, I need to get parked and to the stadium."

He drove another block. The headlights revealed the end of the parking bottleneck and an abundance of parking spaces. He seemed to have reached the end of the fan parking. He pulled straight into a curbside parking spot, got out of the Jeep, locked the doors and stepped up on to the sidewalk. He could see the dim lights of the stadium far off in the distance. It was that same dull grayish glow he had seen as he approached downtown between the tandem mill buildings, structures and piping. The destination now had a shimmering quality about it, as if he were looking through water goggles.

As he sauntered towards the stadium, the entire atmosphere took him back to another time. He had walked these streets often as a kid going to the game with Dad, Uncle Len, Paul, Vince and whoever was available on game night. The swells, the sights, the voices, the memories all mixed together.

The view from this elevated sidewalk was even more revealing. The houses on the steep incline setting were both unique and monotonous. Their ghostly appearance on the lower side left him numb and his skin slightly goose-bumpy. The houses seemed to be foreboding shells with an occasional light-filled window protected by heavy drapery that caused the rays to appear as shadowy blotches of dull whiteness. Voices from these lower tiered dwellings floated upwards clearly. The sounds seemed to race uphill, and he could have eavesdropped on selected conversations if he wanted to.

The higher side homes seemed to be like rock-ledge overhangs. They were hanging precariously overhead with their porches and entrances beckoning only the sturdiest climber. The stairs were built at such an angle that you were required to hold onto the handrail to avoid tumbling backwards and to aid in moving perpendicularly. Even with this overwhelming appearance of a jutting overhang, the homes presented a hint of comfort and warmth. Those homes with outside lights or lights in windows provided the only illumination.

As Marc moved past these contrasting houses and their settings, they took on a life of their own. With no one to talk with, he was lost in his thoughts, imagination, and memories. The soft, almost undetectable voices of the other football fans walking ahead and behind him on both sides of the street only added to his loneliness. He thought for a moment that he must seem odd to the other shadowy figures journeying to the misty bright lights and faintly audible high stepping music of the school bands. But odd or not, he had a "right" to be here. He was part of this Friday night scene. The preoccupation with his "belonging" question lasted only momentarily.

His attention was directed back to the scene of the houses both towering above and lying below. As he glanced upward, the brick, stone and cement walls that kept the trees and the postage stamp lawns at bay, created a sense of importance, achievement and protection. The steps were climbing to terraces, and the doors opened into artistic homes and warm firesides. But the lower dwellings seemed to be merely temporary and precarious domiciles with porches, few domestic comforts and a vague uncertain future for those that would enter. Funny how light, shadows and perception influence your mood, Marc thought.

One of these had belonged to Aunt Ida and Uncle ...? God, what was his name? He was a strange, unkempt and mysterious man. He always had a dark, rumpled suit coat on and that pipe in the side of his mouth that dangled on the edge of his purplish-black lip. You waited for it to fall, but it never did. He could talk and eat, and the pipe never left its perch. Their house was near the alley that cut through these houses. But that was a long time ago. They were gone before I finished high school, mused Marc.

"Hey Bobby!"

"Wait up. Hey Bobby, BOBBY! DAMN IT WAIT UP," someone yelled from the shadows across the street, and began running with the lead feet of an elephant and the gate of a large, overweight Great Dane. As each stride hit the black top, it resonated with the steely sound of studded army boots.

"HEY, I'VE BEEN TRYING TO CATCH UP TO YOU FOR A BLOCK," the runner shouted, as he got closer.

"I THOUGHT ... OH ... sorry. I thought you were ... Sorry. I guess it's not you. I mean, WOW, I ran all that way," he gasped for air between every other word. With a shallow, almost breathless whisper, he grunted, "Sorry" again and moved ahead of Marc in a slower but still hurried pace.

Marc watched the interloper scurry off in the direction of the stadium. His figure became faint in the limited light of the evening. Even though Marc could only see his fading silhouette move quickly away, he was fascinated by the odd, almost laughable stride. He looked like a two-legged pogo stick. The entire body was in the air like a floating plump potato, with one foot hitting flat-footed and propelling the "potato" into the air again to repeat the sequence.

Very strange and funny.. .I have seen that stride before, thought Marc, when something else caught his attention, Permian's Grocery. Not much of a grocery store, but more like deli. It sat on the street corner of Virginia Avenue and across from the entrance to the high school campus. You could buy just about anything that a teenager would want, from sandwiches to cigarettes. You could also "play the numbers."

Marc stopped to look at Permian's. The building was empty, the sign was worn so badly that only the first three letters were visible and the GROCERY was gone completely. The large twelve-foot high store front windows were filthy, cracked and partially boarded. The spacious front concrete slab that had once served as a rendezvous for students, was uneven, heaved and crumbling. A congregate of leaves, papers and trash was tucked up against the fence that bordered the left side of the building.

Permian's Grocery had long ago given up the ghost. Only its legacy remained.

Marc turned away from the depressing scene and took the few steps to the street corner. He glanced at the rickety partition between Virginia Avenue and the stadium parking lot. It was his first unobstructed view of the assembly of traffic wardens as they meandered around the entrance. The group was task-less now as the stadium-bound traffic was coming to an end. Their voices pierced the muffled sounds of the early evening as they lamented with each other about the growing coolness. The light from the distant stadium and the few pale streetlights cast them in a devious role. I bet that group is like a fraternity. You can't just join; you must be voted in, Marc thought. A band of merry gatekeepers.

He crossed the road and semi-sprinted up the sidewalk until he reached the divided walkway of the high school campus. This was the promenade between the school buildings and the amphitheater for much of the socializing that came with the teenage scene. Even on this dark and chilly evening, the parade ground had a charm. Most of the large, half-century-old maple trees were still standing in between the two corridors of pavestones on either side.

Entering the boulevard-like passageway, he could see the almost leafless canopy stretched ahead creating a funnel-shaped walkway. With the light brighter at the far end, the sounds of the stadium were rushing toward him with a megaphone-like effect.

His step was quicker. Adrenaline from expectation sharpened his awareness. Fellow journeyers in small groups also picked up the pace, like some prod was suddenly being used to heighten their interest. The goal was in sight and the sounds were creating an almost adolescent-type excitement. But even as Marc's enthusiasm quickened, he sensed a feeling of emptiness. Gone were the buildings — the high school of his youth was gone!

The freshman building, the band Quonset hut, the shop complex and senior high buildings were all gone. They had lined the walkway with intersecting paths that crisscrossed the green. Buildings that had been symbols of stability, security, comfort, joy, excitement, frustration, boredom and education were gone. The ground where they once stood was empty and functionless. Even in the dull evening, the overgrown stubble of weeds, saplings and deadwood intertwined with the littered debris. Disuse and misuse was evident, and the void it depicted was the quality of an abandoned strip mine. The message was depressing to anyone who recalled that former landscape in its prime, and disappointing for those who would be hopeful of renewal.