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My first apartment was a
small garage apartment behind the hardware store on
Seventh Street
in Parkersburg.
My apartment was downstairs; the part that used to be the garage. The
view from my front window and door stoop included a gravel parking lot,
the alley, and the back side of the hardware store--a long wall of
cement blocks.
There was no
porch, and there was no grass, so there was no sittin’ on the porch
watchin’ the grass grow.
The
apartment was two blocks from city park, so at night, after I got home
from work waiting tables (about 11:30 p.m.), I would hop on my mountain
bike and ride around the flat, paved, park road in the dark after the
park closed. I had that 12-speed bike for four years, and never changed
the gears--not once, and I never encountered another soul in the park in
the dark--not once. I always had the whole park, and the dark path, all
to myself.
My second home-on-my-own
was a little one-bedroom house on Southside,
Parkersburg,
down the road from Overhead Door. Actually, it too was a garage
apartment, but this time I was upstairs, and I also had a two-door
garage at my whim downstairs. I thought I was very lucky to have rights
to the empty lot next door on the corner. I had a porch, and a swing, a
cat, and grass to mow. When you’re 23, single, and waiting tables in the
city--a porch swing with a porch light where you spend evening hours . .
. that’s “sittin’ pretty” I thought.
When I moved
to Gilmer County to finish college at Glenville State (my father’s idea
by the way, not mine), I chose an apartment 17 miles from the school;
apartment upstairs, garage downstairs, with a pond and 11 acres and a
porch. No swing, but there was a good garden spot and two bedrooms. I
used the spare as “a study.”
The location
worried my parents and made them shake their heads. Had I considered gas
costs? Wouldn’t I be afraid, alone, in the middle of nowhere? Of course,
the fact that my parents disapproved made the place even more perfect.
The week
after I moved in, someone wrecked on the bridge to our road, and the
bridge was thus declared unsafe and closed. So, for six weeks of my
first semester at GSC, I got up, rode my bike two miles to the bridge
where I had to leave my car; locked up the bike and warmed up the car;
drove 15 miles into Glenville for my 8 a.m. class; and reverse on the
way home.
When clocks “fell back”
that year, and I came home in the evening to climb on my bike, I
discovered the true meaning of darkness. I could not see a thing.
You see, all those years
I rode around
Parkersburg’s
city park at night, there was no true darkness. Even though the park
lights were mostly off or dim, there were porch lights right nearby,
and Seventh
Street two
blocks away. In the middle of the city, there is no true dark. I
shivered and spooked at every creak, hoot and crackle along that two
miles of road for a week before I got over my fear. I hear people talk
of “night blindness” and realize that I have still never developed any
“night vision” to begin with.
Even now, on
the farm, after 14 years in the country, I can’t see a darn thing in the
dark. Frank
will walk hither and yon across the property at night without a thought
or care, but I get 40 feet from the porch light, and I’m blind. I can
see where the night sky ends and the silhouette of the hilltops begin,
but from there on down, it’s just plain dark.
Locals are used to this
deep darkness, but as a transplant, I still find it unsettling. Sunday,
we “fall back,” and darkness will reign over the evening hours. I will
lose my evenings on the porch watching the lake, and I dread the
darkness, but I try to remind myself it is that darkness that makes the
stars here seem brighter.
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