The Drive Home, Part V: The Scar

On October 13, 1962, John F. Kennedy stood in the parking lot of the A&P Supermarket at Donner Avenue and 6th Street in Monessen, Pennsylvania and stumped for his fellow Democrats who were running in that year’s mid-term elections. All of Monessen turned out to see JFK, it seemed—actually rather more than that, if the quoted number of 25,000 is to be believed, packing themselves like sardines into the streets of the mill town that could claim roughly 18,000 residents at the time.

For almost a century, a perfect convergence of natural resources, innovative minds, and American exceptionalism had made this region into the nation's industrial powerhouse, effortlessly spawning secure middle-class careers and the relative financial comfort they provided. But even during that fairly prosperous era in the history of Monessen and the nation at large, JFK's speech hinted presciently at troubles looming on the horizon as he spoke of "towns which have been hit hard by all of the technological and industrial changes that have come in this country."

President Kennedy, as we know, would not live long enough to see just what a grave harbinger his words really were. Most of the population of Monessen, on the other hand, would have to suffer through three decades of cutbacks and layoffs as heavy industry gradually packed up and left. The mortal blow was dealt in 1986, when Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel, the town's largest employer, finally terminated nearly all of its operations there. A solitary coke works is all that remains, run by a skeleton crew of under 200 employees. It still belches its vaporous refuse into the sky, a more incongruous visage today against a much bluer backdrop than could be seen a half-century ago in this part of the world.

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Photo from John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

It's the same tale that was writ all up and down the valley of the Monongahela River as it slithers through southwestern Pennsylvania from Pittsburgh to Point Marion. Plants and factories shuttered like dominoes, the phenomenon that led to the coining of the "Rust Belt." Driving through Monessen or much of the Mon Valley today can be an anguishing experience, especially since there's no obvious answer to the question of where ample recovery might be found.

Colloquial definitions of the Mon Valley vary somewhat, but a reasonable amalgamation begins just upstream from Pittsburgh in the brownfield boroughs of Homestead or Braddock. The latter served as an experiment in attempting to resuscitate a forgotten, moribund town when a self-styled celebrity mayor attracted a gimmicky restaurant, a nationally televised blue jeans ad, and a handful of starving artists. He could not manage to attract much in the way of viable long-term economic opportunity, however, and eventually moved on to bigger and brighter things for himself.

Nor have larger-scale policy and infrastructure measures been able to concoct a winning formula. A new tolled highway was supposed to facilitate economic progress, but instead—it seems to me whenever I find myself on it—it's just helping motorists move through the area even more quickly and with even more of a force field between themselves and the disintegrating municipalities they're flying past.

At any rate, I prefer to traverse the Mon Valley at ground level, as a reminder of the affection I have for the region, warts and all, for I spent four collegiate summers working at an amusement park down there. My fellow low-wage hostages covered a diverse spectrum of people, most of whom I would never have had reason to cross paths with, let alone forge enduring friendships with, were it not for the coincidence of our shared servitude in that oasis of mirth within these troubled environs. Many of them hailed from the immediate vicinity, and I'd be lying if I tried to pretend that those dog day nights roaming the Mon Valley, often in their company, didn't leave an indelible impression on me.

Catching the back half of a double feature at the Brownsville Drive-In off the Old National Road. Emerging bruised and bloodied, yet invigorated, from pickup games of parking lot street hockey. Backyard bonfires down the endless cul-de-sacs of milquetoast 1960s ranch-style subdivisions. Ghost hunting among the ruins of once-regal McKeesport mansions, now making last stands against the advance of urban prairie. Three a.m. pancakes at defiantly shabby round-the-clock diners. Crossing the train tracks to Dravosburg, getting lost in Charleroi, stranded by a flood in Glassport. It was the ennui of an uncertain future juxtaposed against the heady immortality of the present moment, never failing to summon a second wind even after a thirteen-hour shift at the park.

And then there’s the green—oh, the green! The Rust Belt conjures an image of soot and gray, but in truth it’s the verdancy that is the most loyal of compatriots while winding from crest to gully, along decrepit Main Streets and betwixt hulking industrial apparatus. From the springtime soak through the return of autumn's benign reign, it is limitless in its abundance. Every conceivable shade is on display, even as brand new ones are tirelessly being invented, awaiting discovery the next time I'm swallowed in this world that tries to hide its unkindness behind such soft, plush velour.

The new, usually empty highway be damned, Pennsylvania Route 51 is the true vehicular spine through the Mon Valley. You know it's a real road because it still carries names for most of its course, names that whimsically change every few miles as invisible municipal boundaries exact their authority (though, naturally, the locals will only ever refer to it as "51").

For an extended period of my life, I routinely had to interact with the portion known as Clairton Boulevard. Circumstance and distance have since dwindled that ritual down to scarcely an annual one, but here it is, a late Saturday afternoon as summer teeters on the brink, and I find myself in the clutches of Clairton Boulevard once again.

I'm not sure what compels me to do it, but I suddenly veer off 51 and into the maze of service roads that leads to the sad husk of Century III Mall. In its heyday it was a true monument to runaway consumerism and the industrial behemoth that made it all possible—literally, for it was built on top of a U.S. Steel slag heap. Upon completion in the late '70s, hubristically stealing its moniker from the passing of our country's bicentennial, Century III was purportedly the third-largest enclosed shopping center in the world.

It's a staggering notion to consider now as I navigate the moonscape-like driveways, barely fit for an ATV, and pass by a crumbling two-story parking deck that has been completely barricaded off. No repetitive spiral around the lot required; vacant spaces can be found within spitting distance of any entrance.

I am of the right age for mall culture to have been a major plank of my formative years, but I happened to mostly avoid it by virtue of a predominantly urban youth. My childhood relationship with malls is largely restricted to hazy but fond memories of my grandparents escorting me and my brother to a nearby one whenever we were foisted on them as kids. Grandpa would host trivia as we gorged on oily offerings from the Potato Patch, fattening a prize pot in single-dollar increments as we answered what he believed to be increasingly difficult quizzes. Our winnings would invariably and immediately be spent on whatever off-brand action figures caught our eye at the on-premises Dollar Tree.

And yet those meager, long-ago anecdotes must be sufficient to explain the pang of what could only be described as nostalgia as I stroll into Century III’s air-conditioned confines on this late summer evening. That involuntary emotional reaction quickly drifts in the direction of sorrow when I see how forlorn the place is.

Storefronts sit unoccupied, an unsettling number of them. Depressingly desperate “FOR LEASE” posters plaster the wall-to-wall windows, behind which reside nothing but blank ecru drywall and dusty beige carpeting. One whole wing of the mall has been blocked off to public access by a row of unused kiosks that in a past life would have hawked cheap jewelry and sunglasses.

I can do a full 360-degree turn from the middle of a second-floor mezzanine and see virtually nobody else. One young mother and the toddler she grips by the hand are my sole accompaniment in this veritable George Romero homage, apart from the Steely Dan tune that wafts from hidden speakers and reverberates through the empty space:

I've seen your picture / Your name in lights above it / This is your big debut / It's like a dream come true

The track is randomly pulled from some pre-packaged yacht rock Internet radio station, but the accidental metaphor is not lost on me. It's a cheery, upbeat ditty that upon deeper lyrical examination is actually a cynical commentary on the sinisterly spurious optimism of the entertainment industry. Like the fate that is implied to predictably befall “Peg,” the song’s eponymous starlet, the mall was unceremoniously kicked aside when the vogues dictating what passed for the vaunted American lifestyle kept on mutating.

On some primordial level, the suburban enclosed shopping mall was designed to emulate the traditional Main Street shopping experience and then, theoretically, perfect it by adding ample parking, protection from the elements, and its own police force. But then strip malls and big boxes became the craze. A wider variety of products could be aggregated into fewer but larger stores, necessitating shuttling from errand to errand in the bio-hazard suit of a private vehicle, drastically reducing the chances of any interpersonal interaction.

Though the very idea of the indoor mall is antithetical to concepts I hold dear such as urbanity, environmentalism, and independent business, from their inception malls were at the very least trying to foster a quasi-social setting. The man credited with their invention, Austrian architect Victor Gruen, was a self-professed socialist who considered cars "[a] threat to human life and health just as great as an open sewer." He saw his groundbreaking theory of enclosed shopping centers as a Trojan horse with which he could sneak “the needed place and opportunity for participation in modern community life” into the contemporary planning trends that he felt were growing ever more inhumane.

Gruen would come to bitterly rue the unintended (to him, at least) consequences of his creation, as malls ended up aiding and abetting the dominance of sprawl and the decimation of downtowns, but perhaps the spirit behind his original dream is still contributing to my perverse sympathy for this terminally ill mecca of excess. Reflexively I search—ultimately in vain—for the little coffee shop that was an obligatory stop when visiting this mall with an ex-girlfriend of the ancient past, or the pop culture store where we would buy Japanese candy, and it occurs to me that the mall, too, comprises a thread in my tapestry of plaintive fondness for this land of obsolescence.

In fact, after completing a lap around the deserted concourse, I can count on one hand the number of still-functioning commercial enterprises. A couple of them, like the well-stocked comic book and hobby shop still plugging away on the lower level, fill a niche unique enough to make them destinations in and of themselves; they would probably be viable wherever they happened to set up.

A generic athletic wear outlet, on the other hand, is hardly staffed and thoroughly picked over, as if it were simply counting down to the last item leaving the shelf before closing its doors for good. I feel strangely obligated to purchase something, as if the fifteen dollars I fork over for a pair of gym shorts might make a material difference in arresting the mall’s march towards extinction.

While I may very well have been initially coerced inside by morbid pity, a hollow rumble in my stomach reminds me that I can also plead hunger as a more rational excuse for my presence in this living mausoleum. One of my guiltiest culinary pleasures is cheap mall or airport-caliber Chinese food. I am constitutionally incapable of turning it down when presented with the option, and my recollection—albeit possibly apocryphal—is that Century III boasted a version that could hang with the very best of them.

So imagine my dismay to find the food court darkened, with most of the stalls abandoned—including, tragically, the once-irrepressible Chinese takeaway counter. A lone custodian is engrossed in the tedious process of overturning each chair and balancing it atop the nearest table, one by one. He cuts a doleful figure that belongs in its own “Eleanor Rigby” verse, considering how few of those chairs had likely been utilized over the course of the day.

I've seen enough. Overwhelmed by the seemingly inescapable reality facing this ignored corner of the nation, I begin to beat a hasty retreat so that I can return to my current safe, comfortable life in a relevant city with no danger of fading into nullity anytime soon. Though I can't know it with a hundred percent certainty in the moment, the writing is unmistakably on the wall; it's the last time I will ever set foot inside Century III Mall.

As I depart, the music floating through the cavernous hall is now Stevie Nicks’ “Edge of Seventeen.” Again, it's somehow perfectly fitting: a song about death.