The View From Scranton

Another Stain

Another town. Another stain. This one a bit larger, milkier, muddier than the last just past. Greasy. Like the puddle left by a trashed vehicle that's sat for thirty years. Effulgent. Like the remains of a mottled corpse. It deserves a chalk-line but lacks the wherewithal even to note its own demise.

They call the stain Wilkes Barre and neither Wilkes nor Barre would approve of what it's become.

The town looks like someone came along and kicked the living shit out of it. With few exceptions, the buildings all have been capped at the knees. The few exceptions are entirely unexceptional. A Times Leader tower that shrubs. A Radisson that hedges. Something else that someone slow stopped at a sprout. Everything, everywhere, standing squat, stunted at birth, denied the necessary nutrients for growth.

The locals say that things were never the same after Hurricane Agnes hit in '72, when the levees broke and the water rose chest high. When hope ran away like so much silt. Mulch meat. Boo hoo. Leave it to the excuse-ridden to find an excuse for their own malaise, the die-slows to stick up for a town that won't stick up for itself. 33 years ago something wicked that way came, and they're still licking their wounds.

Let's hope the Big Easy won't play it so hard.

posted by John Hood. @ 11:22 AM