understatement: bluefield, west virginia is not the most interesting place in the world to grow up. I've always thought that it would make a fine place to raise kids until they hit about ten years old--that's when they'll start to get bored. but even when I was young I recognized what a fascinating place the 'field must have been in its heyday.

it's hard to explain unless you've been there. all the old downtown department stores are gone but most of the buildings remain. same for the old theatres. the big old victorian houses in north side, gone ghetto but with gingerbread intact. the shell of the matz hotel. what's left of "vito's alley"--once a disreputable strip of ginmills near the railroad tracks. bluefield was THE place to go for a hundred miles around, back when the mines still boomed and no one had conceived of malls or interstates.

I think what's really been lost is that underlying feeling of depravity that must have accompanied the small town charm. in it, stephen king discourses on the lumberman's town of derry, maine. how it was where all the tough guys converged to drink, whore, and gamble. bluefield served the same purpose (although I'm sure the chamber of commerce wouldn't care to hear me say it), only for coal-men rather than woodsmen. I've heard more great stories about floozies hanging out of windows in the drake hotel, the goings-on at the old bus terminal, the badasses at the overlook. I just hate that I missed it all.

I dream about this gothic conception of bluefield, and my dreams always take place in the early half of the previous century. the sidewalks teem with people even after 9 p.m. the high schoolers mob the woolworth's luncheon counter and drugstore soda fountains. in the shadows are still darker shadows that you look away from and hurry past. and over it all looms the big appalachian power clock, visible all over downtown from its perch on the hillside.

I thought of all this after reading a poem by rick mulkey, a bluefield resident and poet. it's called "cain's apology," and this is the verse that grabbed me:

"We were only boys, fifteen and ten.
But I used the man talk. A kid
apprenticed to movie tough guys,
I imitated the slurs of punch-drunk boxers,
spit hanging from my lip,
or the bound-for-hell curses of rednecks
at the Milner Matz lounge,
welts and scars on their cheeks.
I spat bruising words tongued in rail yards
where peroxide whores, numb from Mad Dog,
waited for Norfolk & Western brakemen."

I think that just about sums it up.