Forgotten Memories

Forgotten Memories

Some apartment buildings have names, like the Vendome in Brooklyn or Malden Towers in Chicago. But here at 1307 Overlook Street, where I spent my childhood in the blue-collar town of Burnside, there was just a three-story red brick building of apartments. Only the four-digit street number identified it, visible as well-patinaed copper numbers anchored to bricks above the double wood entrance doors.

The rents here were the highest in Burnside because of the dramatic view out back. The backyard lawn ended at a chain link fence, and ten feet beyond that, a hundred-foot shale cliff dropped to steeply sloped woods, then another cliff further down, and finally to the Mon River, as it flowed to join the Allegheny in downtown Pittsburgh.

Decades ago, my family moved out of 1307 when I was just ten years old. My how the place had gone downhill - the soot-stained red bricks, the hazed-over windows, the tall weeds sprouting up through cracks in the cement.

Inside the building, the old wood stairs were gone – replaced with dull, gray linoleum and metal railings painted black. But there was still the scent of mildew, the air clammy in winter. Dust motes swirled in a blinding ray of sunshine beaming from above. Without seeing it, I knew the window through which it shone – gray paint chipped around the edges, twelve square panes hazed with factory soot from across the river.

“Can I help you?”

A woman’s voice echoed from the darkness above. She sounded elderly, with that slight crack in her voice as her pitch rose on the last syllable.

“Hello,” I said. “I used to live here. Just wanted to see the place again.”

From the second-floor landing, the woman’s shins and shoes were barely visible in the dimming light. A door hung open behind her. Unit F, I knew.

“Which apartment?” she said, and she started hobbling down the steps toward me, her hand tight on the rail.

The ray of sun faded as a cloud moved over, and wind whistled through a gap between the tall double doors behind me. Despite several updates to the building, they’d never replaced those heavy oaken monsters. What a battle they were to open on a windy day. And up here, beside the towering cliffs along Overlook Road, it was always windy.

“Top floor,” I said. “Hey, I'm sorry, I didn’t mean for you to come down the steps.”

“It’s okay,” she said, a little breathy, then I finally recognized her.

“Mrs. Henge! My God, it's great to see you again!”

I spoke too loudly, my voice booming, and I almost hugged her. Her bespectacled eyes, still their shocking shade of blue but now heavily pouched with age, widened in surprise.

“Do I know you?”

“Richard Miller, though you probably remember me as Rick, or Ricky. From about twenty years ago? I know it's been a long time.”

I yearned for a fond smile of recognition. Instead, her face hardened, mouth pinched shut in a line. Had she forgotten the times we’d shared? How she handed out cookies every time she baked? And each summer, when she let us kids find and pick the biggest beefsteak tomatoes in her garden?

The happiest memories of my life were from back then, when we lived in this building, perched on this hill – the highest point for twenty miles. Everyone knew everyone, and we were all friends. Mom held potluck Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners in our apartment that filled the whole top floor. Oh, and Independence Day cookouts in the backyard, the dads drinking beer while they played horseshoes.

“Yes, I remember you. Your dad owned the place back then. In fact, you folks took up the whole top floor.” Her last words had a tone of veiled disapproval.

“Until we moved away,” I said. “In 1940, dad joined a law firm downtown. Gosh, how I missed this place.”

She never smiled, just nodded slightly, her eyes unblinking as she regarded me.

“What brings you back here,” she said, not as a question but a statement of fact. Did she doubt my sincerity?

I explained how I’d been in town for the past week for my dad’s funeral. Mom wasn’t doing well, either. With no siblings, I’d be caring for her myself from now on. Tomorrow, I was headed back to my New York City flat.

When I asked who lived on the top floor, Mrs. Henge said it now held four separate apartments. Not long after we moved out, a rental company took over and made the changes.

“At first, they tried leasing out the whole top floor, but the rent was way too high. We aren’t rich folks, you know. Not many of us, anyway.”

Then she pretended to glance at her watch, though all that showed was her bare, thinly wrinkled wrist, and said she had something cooking on the stove.

“Have a look around. Goodbye then,” she said.

She turned and slowly climbed the stairs. When Mrs. Henge hobbled through her door and it closed, part of me slipped away into silence.

I left through the rear doors and walked across the lawn, my eyes trained on the ground. I was waiting ‘til I reached the fence to take in the dramatic view - one I’d remembered for twenty years, in this realm of cliffs and river and sky and industrial fire and smoke. Once my hands rested on the fence rail, I raised my eyes and took in the scene.

Across the river stood the immense three-mile stretch of iron and steel works, their line of eight smoke-belching blast furnaces hissing and roaring with heat. And numerous smoke columns – some black from burning coal, others rust-brown and occasionally orange as ore impurities poured from stacks. The noxious smoke usually blew along the mill’s length, though today it floated toward and over where I stood. Over ten thousand men and women toiled in those works – the most of any mill in the steel valley region, where close to three quarters of the families in Burnside earned their livings.

I’d forgotten the gloom and grime, especially in winter, where once-white snows blanketing the city of Steelport, spread out far below me, were tinged in varying shades of gray and brown. Large sheets of ice flowed lazily downriver, right to left, the water between them green-black and sharply ridged from wind.

Life here had been great – playing with the other kids from school, hiking the cliff edge for miles, and watching the goings on at the steel works, especially at night, when immense tongues of blue fire lit the backyard – bright enough, along with the lights of Steelport, by which to read in the dark.

The wind continued to rise, the air warming, so I unzipped my coat. From across the river, in Steelport, came the frequent sounds of police sirens, far more than I remembered from childhood. Flickers of blue and red light sped on their ways down avenues and through backstreets. Now and then, an ambulance flashed red, its siren wailing as it hurried toward Steelport Hospital, the place where I’d been born.

Then a cloud of orange-brown smoke belched thickly from Furnace Number 4. The cloud swelled enormously, then blew toward me like some immense chunk of colored cotton candy. Soon, it filled my view, so I turned my back to it. The smoke engulfed me, the yard, the entire building, in a noxious, chemical fog. I tried holding my breath, but I eventually had to inhale before the cloud began to thin. The stink of rotten eggs, along with the scents of various metal oxides, assailed my nostrils, but at last it blew clear.

I’d held memories of these smoke clouds, but being enveloped in one, here and now, made me wonder at the innermost condition of my lungs, and especially those of people like Mrs. Henge, who had lived here for decades.

And the backyard, with its cracked cement bird bath, its tall weeds growing along the fence lines. Had it always been that way? From above, behind a second-floor window, Mrs. Henge stared down, expressionless, unblinking.

Once back in my car, I drove up and down the streets of Burnside. Minute by minute, many long-forgotten memories flooded back. There's where Chippy and Rickie had lived – the neighborhood bullies who were always causing trouble. And the Kohler house, all the kids grown and gone. One of them, Mark, had committed suicide a few years back, Mom told me. Two more were chronically in and out of jail.

A few blocks further stood old Harvey’s Tavern, its front neon sign still half burnt out. Beside that stood Dairy Delite, its bright pink paint faded, the parking lot so worn that the pavement was now more black-gray gravel then asphalt. Taft Pharmacy, with its big candy counter back in the day, had two windows boarded.

On and on I drove, on a slow tour past the homes of childhood friends, all of them gone, some of their homes vacant, others with poorly kept yards, rusty cars parked out front, and strangers inside.

By then, I'd become too haunted by the past. I sat for a few minutes to collect myself, then sped off from town, Burnside vanishing in my rear view mirror as afternoon gave way to dusk. Now, it was just the road ahead and the long, lonely drive home...