Aggressively Bleak

Friday morning, when we landed in Pittsburgh, there was a light but steady drizzle. Of course there was. It rains every Friday in Western Pennsylvania. You can count on it.

Jen and I got in our rental car, a sweet little black Jetta, and drove east on Route 376 (pronounced ‘rowt’ in this part of the world). We’ve driven this road a zillion times now and it is always jarring and depressing. Why? It’s the seemingly endless rows of strip malls, big box stores, big box ‘christian’ churches, screamingly offensive billboards and adult video shops. All the buildings, it seems, are belligerently functional. There’s not a shred of lilting grace or beauty to be found.

heartland.org—a subsidiary of blindinglystupid.com

Home!

The shattering ugliness is broken up by the brief buzz through Pittsburgh proper and then, finally, by an all too brief stretch of rolling, pastoral farmland.

When we reached the more populated area between Blairsville and Indiana, the aggressive repulsiveness started up again with Sheetz gas and quickie food marts, Walmarts, industrialized ‘churches’ (AKA republican indoctrination centers), followed by houses, mobile homes and trailers, all in advanced stages of dilapidation.

Paint weather worn down to bare, defeated wood. Aluminum siding peeling off the sides like so many shed snake skins. Screen doors hanging at drunken, not rakish, angles. So many boarded over windows.

Christ almighty it’s sad.

Indiana, the town where my father lives, is less grim. Yes, there’s a big fat glut of strip malls and so many once glorious homes—now reduced to funereal ramshackle-dom from too many years as student housing. Big chain stores and restaurants abound. Still, there are pockets of charm—parks, a sprinkling of independently owned shops (even an art gallery!) and dwellings not used and abandoned like condoms on a Saturday night.

There IS beauty in this area. My friend Michal lives in a profoundly rural spot—a glen surrounded by gorgeous, tall trees, farms and rolling hills. It is exquisite and peaceful.

My feelings for the area are greatly influenced by the painful, bullied, bleak high school years that I endured there. I know that. Still, even without those very hard years, I’d have moved here, to New England. This is my DNA encoded home.