advertise burger baskets, corn dogs, and a couple of untruths—”Last Place in Picher!” and “Yes, We’re Open!” When it closed in March, the Gorillas Cage was the only restaurant left in Picher, Oklahoma. Roberts is here to make sure the owners have cleared it out for demolition. Roberts, the operations manager of the Lead-Impacted Communities Relocation Assistance Trust, works about 10 miles away in the town of Miami. His job is to inspect contaminated buildings that the state of Oklahoma is going to buy and tear down. A retired state representative, he has a rosy face and sports a pressed plaid button-up. He rolled up his car windows before he hit the city limits. “There’s still dust in the air,” he says in a laid-back Midwestern drawl. “And I wouldn’t drink the water.”

Climbing out of the Mercury, Roberts notices an uprooted mailbox leaning against the side of the Gorillas Cage and a pickup truck loaded with restaurant equipment. Up and down the street, storefronts are boarded up, empty, dark. Mounds of fine white grit called chat—leftover minerals from mining operations—loom over the town, 200 feet high. Roberts grabs his clipboard. “Let’s get this over with,” he says.

The Gorillas Cage—named for Picher-Cardin High School’s mascot—has been gutted. The tables and chairs are all gone. In fact, there isn’t much of anything inside except for a walk-in refrigerator. “We didn’t have anyone left to sell food to,” co-owner Gary Cox, 69, tells Roberts as he follows him around the room. Roberts ticks a few notes on his clipboard as Cox’s sister and business partner, Joyce, 75, shakes her head and tears up. They both grew up here, she says, and have never been sick. Now they feel pushed out. “It’s an outrage,” Joyce says. “But we can’t change it, so we are moving on.”

Picher sprang up as a 20th-century boomtown—the “buckle” of the mining belt that ran through Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri. The earth underneath it produced most of the lead for US bullets in World Wars I and II and enough zinc to literally galvanize construction of the American suburbs. These raw materials were used to create stronger, water-resistant metal alloys, better batteries, and dietary supplements—the base materials of a modern society. Population peaked at 14,000 in 1926. When the lode ran dry in 1970, the mining companies moved out. Picher eventually became a Superfund site, and half a decade ago the state government offered residents an average of $55 per square foot to evacuate their homes. By September 2009, the police force had disbanded and the government dissolved. Picher was a dead city.

Except that a few people refused to leave. They call themselves chat rats, a loose and increasingly self-reliant colony armed with cell phones and Wi-Fi for communication and guns for driving off scrap-metal scavengers. It’s a life bordering on squalid—on the way out of the Gorillas Cage, Roberts spots shovel marks around the base of the burned-out signpost, the beginning of an attempt to steal it. Across the street, a former auction-house parking lot has become a dumping ground for tires. On the drive back out of town, he passes the abandoned high school and notices that the arts and crafts building has burned down. A man appears to be helping himself to bookshelves from an open classroom. Roberts can’t figure out why anyone would turn down the relocation money he’s offering. “Most people have bettered themselves through this process,” he says. “Now there are only radicals left.”

The apocalypse is already here; it’s just unevenly distributed. Urbanization has lured more people to bustling metropolises, but precious little thought has been given to what happens when these cities fail. Over time, the underlying systems and processes of civilization—from lead mining to offshore drilling to car commuting—slowly poison us. Power grids brown out, the climate heats up, and industrial accidents ravage ecosystems and cities alike. For all the famed cities with thousands of years of continuity—Paris, London, Cairo, Athens, Rome, Istanbul—most cities just stop. Picher isn’t simply another boomtown gone bust. It’s emblematic of what happens when a modern city dies: A few people stay behind, trying to hold on to what they can. They are the new homesteaders, trying to civilize a wasteland at the end of the world.

Roberts, for his part, wants nothing to do with them. He accelerates the Mercury south on US 69, trying to get out of town before dark.

Pages: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 | Full Page | Next

Authors: Ben Paynter

to know more click here