In 1981 I was living with my grandparents in Front Royal, a small Virginia town that was making the rough transition from 'factory town' to EPA Superfund Clean-Up site- this somewhat rosy portrayal of the Avtex plant mentions the loss of jobs, but it omits the fact that for decades the Shenandoah River ( brown stripe to the right in pic) was so polluted that you couldn't swim or fish in it.
( The baseball diamond in the upper-left corner is my old school- the factory is gone, but you can see how large it was)
Owing to an unlucky combination of corporate greed and small-town desperation, the plant operated for several years after it was declared an environmental disaster site. Some of the life-long residents of Front Royal went nearly berserk when the EPA finally announced it was closing it forever- I believe one woman actually chained herself to the smokestack, ironically adopting 'Green'-style protest tactics in her zealous support of PCB emissions and the airborne dispersal of asbestos fibers.
I remember having an argument with Russ, the kid down the street, about moving away from Front Royal.
I was going to move as soon as I could and wouldn't shut up about it.
( In truth, I was to move at least once a year for my 12 years of public school, but I didn't know that then)
Russ was going to get a job at the Plant, just like his dad and his uncles and his brothers- I forget the family details, but Russ' home was a factory home through and through, right down to the wall clock. It said 'Avtex' where one would normally have seen the'Timex' logo.
Clever fucking clock.
Like most factory homes of that place and period, it was inhabited by sick and dying factory employees. I think it was his dad, but it might've been his granpa- maybe it was both.
By sheer coincidence- or perhaps due the excessive amount of PCBs, arsenic and heavy metals in the groundwater- the occurence of brain and other cancers was much higher in Front Royal than other nearby counties- at least until the infamous Winchester Tire Fire of 1983 evened things up a bit. Nothing like millions of tons of burning rubber to boost those disease statistics into the upper percentiles.
Hooray for laissez-faire free enterprise!
When I asked my grandmother why someone would choose to work in a factory that was going to eventually kill them she just looked at me like I was an imbecile. I had clearly spent too much time around city-folk.
"Because that's what people do", she said.
Plain as that.
They work and eventually they die. In between the working and dying, they have kids like Russ.
If you have my grandmother's country-style common sense you bring the survivors a casserole and a couple of pies, because that is what people do. The women busy themselves with making sure everyone gets fed.
Covered dishes and the muted exchange of gossip- the Lutheran wake.
The men's role is to tell the son how sorry they are, but hey, at least the kid's next-in-line to get promoted into his late father's job.
Like father, like son, right?
A golfball-sized brain tumor at age 51.
A pat on the back, a not-faint smell of whiskey and an arm around the shoulder.
He was a good man, you remind the mourners.
Say this even if you aren't sure what kind of man he was.
Tell the bereaved a story about something trivial you and the departed once did together.
Murmur. Mmm. hmmmm.
Another story and then it's time to go.
Firm handshake, because that is how men shake hands.
Your father is dead, son. That makes you The Man.
Real silver lining stuff, that.
Here's fifty bucks in an envelope to be opened later.
Because that's what people do.
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