After reading an article this morning entitled, “Few remain as 1962 Pa. coal town fire still burns“, by Michael Rubinkam, I felt compelled to post a piece of fictional pros writing about this town that was written by D.S. Wallace in the late ’90s and revised throughout 2000-07. While this is a departure from my posts on the various aspects of electronic publishing, I feel that this is a story worth being told: a sad story about the life and death of a ghost town. My next posts will resume with my team’s case analysis of the newspaper industry’s current business model.
Centralia, Pa, 17927
This town, up the line, in northeastern Pennsylvania, with its three street lights out and its natives asleep before ten p.m., except for fans of Black Sabbath and Twisted Sister, sits in time and watches its decline with the face of worn determination, hardened through years of underground fires, lost loves, and blackened realities.
Most of the town’s inhabitants have left this place; a raging underground coal fire has been burning since 1962 and authorities insist that the ground these steadfast residents walk upon will eventually crumble beneath their feet. Even so, some people are willing to call this place home; homes that now stand next to empty, boarded up houses of departed neighbors and friends. On the porch of one home is a rusted out chain-link swing that moves ever so slightly when a breeze passes through its wooden slotted back. There are also children’s toys scattered throughout the sandy yard: a small, yellow dump truck, a Big Wheel with one of the pedals broken off, and a few green action figures.
Thirty miles outside of town, past the one stop sign and scattered street lamps, there is a quarry, an old mining camp, from the times when men died for their wages; faces were often lost in black soot and darkness. A reservoir of water is drying up there. Old, rusted and abandoned cars are submerged underneath the gray water’s surface. Some of the cars are from drag racing, the dare devil drivers having dived out just before their demon cars went over one of the surrounding 40 foot high cliffs. Tires spun and engines screamed before these cars hit this wet graveyard of decaying metal and rubber. Some of the cars are buried deep under sludge and rocks; their murky interiors look like rotted and bloated flesh.
Some cars are from bank heists, guns and money await discovery in glove boxes and hidden compartments. Murderers have dumped other cars there; their victims remain missing. They were either cut-up or laid in trunks and backseats, wearing the same sad clothes as on the day of their vanishing, bones holding shape.
This reservoir is drying up now, though. The sun and lack of mountain spring water is making this place cracked and dry. Soon the vanished will be discovered. This town will continue its bloodless gasps for life, with the fire forever burning, leaving only ash and whispers in its wake.
By: D.S. Wallace
