Riding on an Amtrak train in west-central Pennsylvania. We just passed through the Norfolk Southern yards in Altoona. Stretching for a couple of miles, these yards appear to be almost abandoned. Here and there a newish locomotive sits on a well-used siding, but most of the engines in the lot look as though they might be rusted to the tracks. Each workshop has a few windows broken out, and they share a look, a feel, of emptiness.
I’ve had a lot of time over the past few days to think about the abandonment of former industrial cities through western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. There are some — Pittsburgh and Erie, the larger cities, the places that have universities and medical centers and other fundamental elements of the “new economy” — that are probably going to make it. They’re looking for their savior, to be certain, but someone is going to come along who is going to lead them in a revival. They haven’t had their last moment in the sun.
There are other cities, though, that are almost dead. They look and feel as though they’re ready to keel over, to just give up; but they think that they have to go on, have to push through. No one has told them that it’s okay to just stop, to figure out a different way or, possibly, a different place.
The train just made a momentary stop in Tyrone, Pennsylvania.
I think the city that made more of an impression than any other was Beaver Falls. There was clearly a time in which Beaver Falls was busy, and possibly even prosperous. Hints of past infrastructure abound: streets that are wide enough for a streetcar line or a railroad right-of-way down the center; massive brick mill or factory buildings that once had a company name carved over the door; block after block of storefronts that once displayed appliances or cars.
Today the storefronts are empty — all of them. With the exception of a single block, the entire commercial section of the city has been wiped out. The buildings themselves would cost more to tear down than they do to own, so they’ve been left standing. In most cases they aren’t even boarded up, just left to sit; after all, there isn’t anything inside worth stealing.
The once-proud factory buildings are monuments to a past time. Some are still operating. These can be identified by the cheap plastic signs identifying their current owners. Little or no money has gone into external renovation, though I imagine that “cold press products” require some investment in the actual production lines. Most of the factories, though, have no signs on the outside. They have no guards to prevent unauthorized access, because there isn’t anyone to sign the authorization anyway. The locks on the gates wouldn’t open even if someone did have the key.
More distressing, though, was the fact that the streets were empty on a warm Sunday afternoon. With the exception of a single police officer getting a hot dog at the lone fast food place on the main drag, the streets and sidewalks were void of traffic. The church parking lots were empty (and Beaver Falls has a lot of church parking lots).
There were no children, at all. Not playing in yards, or in playgrounds, or walking down the street or running through a sprinkler or crying while being dragged along by an angry parent. There just weren’t any.
And in the life of a city, that has to be the death knell. Places like Beaver Falls began when a mill opened and people immigrated looking for work. They survived because that first wave could make a good life for themselves, and their children could follow in their footsteps. And once there is no life to be made, and no children with a reason to stay, these cities are going to fade away.
The great hope for these places is education. That’s the entree into an economic world that doesn’t value muscle. The cost of living in Beaver Falls is miniscule, compared to Boston or New York; it’s accessible; it has the fiber-optic lines and long-run data cables that business demands in this day and age. It has almost everything it needs to suddenly spring to the forefront of technology business, silicon taking over where once coal was mined and steel was poured. Except people to run the computers.
One of these days a town like Beaver Falls is going to toss the cult of manhood, the “value of hard work” stuff that’s been passed down, and they’re going to find themselves riding at the very crest of a massive wave. There is a slap in the face that’s implicit here: it’s a rejection of a way of life that served the town (and the people in it) well for years.
But on the other hand: can you really reject something that doesn’t even exist any longer?