It is so depressing to be visiting Kane, Pennsylvania these days

I didn't notice it as much when I was hanging around here in the winter because it was too cold and snowy to do much of anything. Any venturing out of my parents' house had to be completely necessary because it easily took half an hour to get Myles dressed in snowpants and sweaters and boots and hat and mittens . By the time I would make any progress he would need an urgent diaper change. Sisyphus comes to mind. Would that be Sisyphusian?
Anyway, with the weather a little nicer, I've taken Myles on a few walks in the stroller since we got here Saturday. We have walked through the downtown and all kinds of side streets in between. We rarely see a soul. Kate and I noticed this last year, too. We'll see a house with evidence of kids, like a tricycle haphazardly parked by the steps, a swingset in the backyard, but no kids anywhere. Even when I am walking uptown, where once high-school aged kids would loiter, there barely anyone. Sometimes I feel like I am on the set of a movie or tv show, one that looks and feels like a real town, but really is just a manufactured street full of false fronts with fake lawns and no one is filming there right now. Most of the stores in town are empty.
Saturday afternoon we did see some mud-caked trucks leaving the "R-Rated Mudraces." Move over, Amy Welborn; one of my mom's 16-year-old students proudly told her she won the Wet T-shirt Contest there. She gave the $500 prize money to her 23-year-old boyfriend who needed it to pay his rent.
The old Stackpole is finally closing (mostly) later this fall. This was the factory where I held my first engineering job. For a brief and glorious time before Christmas Randy and I were entertaining relocating here again because he was about to be recommended to be brought in to run the plant, to turn it around, to make it profitable and a center of excellence again, perahps even a growth enterprise. However, the vision of the board clashed with the vision of the then-CEO. Instead of focusing on rescuing and growing these operations which were, in fact, once amazing testaments to what American manufacturing could be in the face of intense Chinese-led price pressures, nearly everything is going to Mexico. Some limited operations are remaining in Kane for the time being, but that cannot be the long-term goal.
Every block has a house for sale on it, many of them listed for years without moving. The house next door to my aunt's has been dropped to $15,000 or best offer.
It feels so strange to be here more regularly. For the last several years I would only come back at holidays and Alumni weekend when a lot fo my friends would be home. It wasn't easy to notice the downturn when you are busy. I would flip through the paper, read a few stories about this going out of business or some other uncertainty placing the town's future in jeopardy. And at least we don't live in Mt. Jewett, the next town over. They may lose their elementary school even after a huge fight to keep it open because there are only seven kids in the whole town enrolled in kindergarten.
I guess it isn't all doom and gloom. There are people trying to make life livable here. This weekend is the annual Flickerfest at the Flickerwood Wine Cellars. The Zampognas have turned their wine hobby into their business and it is going so well. I am really looking forward to going to some of the Flickerfest. And Janine Greville and her husband have been working with some of the area kids on art projects outside of school because there is no art teacher at the elementary school. This was in the paper today about the Fifth Grade Art Club that almost wasn't and the unveiling of a mural they have been working on that is scheduled for tomorrow. If the weather isn't too crummy Myles and I will try to attend that.
It just isn't the same as it was, and even then it wasn't as good as it had been. My mother, my aunt Millie, so many of the over 50 crowd remember a much different Kane, larger and more active, something out of Father Knows Best. Alumni weekend is next month. All of the Kane High reunions are held simultaneously, smart move for such a small town. I always wonder when I see people coming back, in their expensive cars with out of state plates, if returning to Kane confirms their decision, if they ever faced it, to leave home for good. Did they know that opportunities would dry up here? Do they say, Thank God I didn't choose to stay? Or didn't have to?
It isn't easier to think about these things when I know that in the next few months Randy and I will be faced (yet again) with the question of where we want to live. We're not quite sure how it will come about--will he be offered a transfer to North Carolina, which was so certain only a few months ago, or will we have to start looking anew? What is important to us? Would we want to live somewhere like here? Or here? Make a new here?
Big exasperated exhaling noise.