By Andy Mitchell
Taking the back way to Circle K
I cross the tracks and turn down Railroad Street.
I feel like a drifter in a Fifties film
(one you might watch late at night
when you can’t sleep) great heaps
of ties beside the tracks, each
with the makings of a bonfire.
A couple of codgers smoke by a rusty
Dodge pickup outside the Eli Bridge Company.
This makes me think of Eli Wallach
which in turn makes me think of
A Streetcar Named Desire
and then I realize it was Karl Malden,
not Eli Wallach. Never mind.
Somewhere along the way
Railroad Street becomes Wolcott Street.
Wolcott? Who was Wolcott, I wonder?
Must have been Somebody to have
a street named after him, even on
the wrong side of the tracks.
All the same, walking down Wolcott
doesn’t have the same ring to it
walking down Railroad does.
After making my purchases
at the old Wareco station I pass the defunct
Andrews lumber company building, where
today the only lumber left is the building itself,
still standing with its regal – even Biblical –
name yet standing as well, climbing down-
ward from the rooftop grandly
to the sidewalk
where I, beneath it, lumber on,
making my own way, moving out from under it,
claiming no relation.
