A mural of Edgar Allan Poe painted on a project housing unit in northeast Philadelphia.

At the corner of 7th and Spring Garden Streets in northeastern Philadelphia is a non-descript home flanked by project housing and large tracts of commercial space. Between the years of 1837 and 1844, Edgar Allan Poe lived in Philadelphia, writing many of his most famous works during his time here, including The Gold-Bug, The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Tell-Tale Heart. In all, he published 31 stories while living here.

Poe lived at this house for less than a year in 1843.

Edgar Allan Poe's front door.

Despite the critical successes of his masterworks, Poe remained poor up to his death. Publishers of the Evening Post in 1845 paid Poe $9 for The Raven. Four years later he was found delirious on a Baltimore street, wearing clothes that weren’t his. He died a few hours later.

One of two rooms Poe likely wrote in.

Poe likely wrote in this room and slept in the one across the hall. A room on the third floor belonged to his wife, Virginia. Virginia was Poe’s cousin who married him at age 13. They were from Virginia and were against slavery’s abolition. Today, Poe probably wouldn’t much appreciate the rap music coming from the projects across the street.

Virginia would’ve been sick with tuberculosis by the time they moved here. She died in early 1847.

No one knows what he wrote while living here, but speculation has centered on the poems A Tale of the Ragged Mountain, The Balloon Hoax, and Eulalie.

A metal raven greets visitors.

In a nod to his most famous poem, this raven stands watch over the Edgar Allan Poe house, one of at least three homes he rented during his time in Philadelphia. The surrounding neighborhood deters a lot of tourists from visiting and frankly, there’s not a lot to see, except placards full of factoids and an eight-minute video touching on important aspects of Poe’s time in Philly. The 15-minute tour was hardly worth the 40-minute $4 round trip.

At least admission into the empty house was free.

There’s something spooky about a deserted carnival midway just before a storm hits, the canopies whipping in the wind, their colors all the more salient against the darkened sky, and the Carnies huddled beneath the awnings of the game carts waiting for the rain. We hadn’t even begun selling wristbands Thursday when the tornado sirens began wailing in the distance and in the far off sky we noticed the inky black storm clouds rolling our way.

An accurate forecast was elusive. Even though everyone was listening to the same emergency broadcast, we all heard different things. It’s going to pass us. It’s coming straight toward us. It’s moving at six miles per hour. It’s moving at 40 miles per hour. It’s a big storm. It’s a small storm. The only certainty was that the black sky was coming at us.

Most of the girls ran toward the bathrooms, which were locked for the festival. Others professed that if a tornado came, they preferred to die in their bunk while smoking a bowl.

Some time passed and the sun peeked through the clouds. We reached a consensus that it was going to pass us by, that WaunaFest would go on. Then it poured. When it stopped, we waited to see if the rain would hold. Being payday, everyone had a fridge full of beer they were eager to drink. But carnival goers then began arriving, so we returned to our rides. Miraculously, the rain came even heavier the moment Corina kicked on the generator and everyone ran back to stand beneath the Dozer’s awning. There we awaited word from the festival committee about how to proceed, which didn’t come for some time.

Close to 30 minutes passed before Corina, who’d been working through the rain most of this time, told us we had the night off, but first we had to put our height sticks in the Dozer, where they’re kept at night. My roommate, now officially Black Nate, volunteered to fetch my height stick since I’d let him borrow an extra poncho I had, sparing me a long, wet walk to the Fun Slide.

Living, working and hanging out with the same people for weeks on end might sound tiresome, but even privacy and change are easier than you’d think around here. During set up and tear down you’re working on a ride with just three or four guys, if that, with distance between you and everyone else. In the off hours, some guys hang out in their bunks. Others venture into town. Some, like Tony, make the rounds, meaning he’ll stop by each bunk, hang out for a while, then move on. During operation hours, each Carnie ventures toward his or her ride, which I like to think of as autonomous little kingdoms where each Carnie is King.

Once, Jeremy climbed atop the Funnel Cake stand and, while raising the flag like Iwo Jima, yelled, “I declare this Funnel Cake Land!”

But ruling a kingdom isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. In the beginning I liked working the rides best, but now it’s set up and tear down I enjoy most. I think most other Carnies agree with this. Most don’t have great customer service skills, which is fine, because none are that expected. As long as you don’t swear, aren’t too rude or do anything untoward, things will be okay. Sometimes that’s hard, especially during wristbands, those $15 bracelets that mean unlimited rides for four hours. Every Carnie deals with those kids who get off the ride just to get back on it. Over and over again. They’ll ride and ride dozens of times and as much as you want to tell the kid to scram, you can’t.

In this regard, I’m fortunate to work the Fun Slide. The fences are set up as such that riders must exit in order to re-access the steps. During wristbands, I simply keep the gate unlocked. I motion the kids in, point to the gunny sack and watch them come down. When they try to hand me the gunny sack, I point to the fence, indicating to hang it back there. I barely have to speak at all!

One thing everyone likes is not having to tear tickets. I don’t know why tearing tickets is such a chore, but the only redeeming quality wristbands have is that you can simply open the gate and let the kiddies run in. They eliminate a thought-requiring step.

When a Carnie makes a mistake or does something stupid, it’s because he’s still “in wristband mode.”

Yesterday, Harley told us that Black Nate is the only black he’s seen work here that’s worth a shit. When Nate started a week after I did, I was a little nervous about how it would play out. After arriving in Waukesha, my second day with the carnival, I had breakfast with one of the younger guys. I was telling him about Philadelphia. He said he hates cities, because “I don’t like niggers.”

It had been a long time since I’d heard that word used that way, in person, not to mention over breakfast, but it wouldn’t be the last either. Taylor, who everyone is adamant they’d never fuck no matter how drunk they get, has had her entire womanhood reduced to being a slab of “nigger meat.” Many of the guys have claimed they’d never even touch a girl who had slept with a black guy.

Brian, the pranksta gangsta from Burlington who quit after Corina banished his sex offender friend from the camp last weekend, got Nate the job with the carnival. Brian, who is white, had no qualms with calling Nate, “My nigga,” as in, “You’re my nigga, dawg,” which he always affirmed with a hand shake. Nate hasn’t indicated his thoughts on this, thoughts I suspect he suppresses so as to avoid conflict. The only time we’ve seen him upset is when on the phone with his baby’s momma. But he has to be aware of the chatter. In fact, the sheer volume of racial jokes bantered about make me think it’s impossible for all of the N-bombs to have bypassed his ears.

Because everyone likes Nate – he’s easy to be around, thoughtful and works hard and well – there’s a bit of postscripting these days to the comments and jokes, usually a sophomorically trite distinction between “blacks and niggers.” Nate isn’t a nigger, they say, because he’s not like other blacks who are lazy, loud and prone to fighting or stealing.

I don’t use the word nor do I enjoy hearing it, but it doesn’t make me cringe, either. That a single word possesses the singular power to tap the full spectrum of human emotion fascinates me greatly. Only when considering its grotesque origins and the level of subjugation it still imposes to this day do I feel guilty for finding any beauty in its vileness. I don’t believe for a minute that any of those I work with are filled with the level of hate the word implies. Most of those who’ve used it listen to hip-hop, have black friends, and would never think of assaulting Nate’s dignity on account of his race, except for when it comes to using the most racially violent word to ever enter the lexicon.

Even the kid who professed to me his hatred of blacks harbors a fondness for Nate.

What bothers me is that they see Nate as an exception to his race. But in defense of the indefensible, the blacks being referred to, that the Carnies complain about, are the blacks wrapped up in the gangsta culture, the thugs, the blacks they typically encounter on the streets and in jail. Culturally, the differences here are substantial, as sociologist Elijah Anderson articulated in his seminal essay entitled, Code of the Street. Because Nate isn’t a thug, doesn’t use a lot of ghetto slang and is over all an agreeable person, people like him. I suppose on some level this is progress.

Maybe one day I’ll have the nerve to ask Nate his thoughts on this. But how do you even bring up such a topic without it being awkward or becoming explosive?

Those of you who’ve encouraged to me stay with the carnival a little while longer will be happy to learn that I’m keeping with it until Aug. 17.

Edgerton, WI – Disappearances are like this: here one moment, gone the next. So it was with Aaron, a friend since high school, who quietly absconded from Madison around 2002. No good-byes. No forwarding address. No new number. Simply gone. Poof! Just like that. All connections, severed like arties and left to bleed out.

Back then, we figured the disappearance was only temporary. Aaron fell off from time-to-time, retreating to Edgerton, about 45-minutes south of Madison, where he had family. There he worked with his father, roofing houses, and patronized his aunt’s bar in the off-hours. When he tired of Edgerton, he’d return to Madison, party for a while, and then bounce back south.

He always returned.

Until he didn’t.

Circa 2003 or 2004, a rumor surfaced that he’d gotten married. This is it for information, however. New rumors never materialized. At some point, his present disengaged his past. There were no messengers. No updates. No sightings. No word. Those who asked about him often were answered with a reflexive shrug of the shoulders.

Once it became clear we would never see him again, my friend Life and I began hatching plots to hunt him down. We imagined ourselves driving to Edgerton on a Friday night to scour the bars, beginning with his aunt’s. Like detectives, we’d show his photo to bartenders and patrons, asking, “Have you seen this man?” We guessed that, Edgerton being a small place, we’d find him well before last call. We never followed through, of course. It was a silly plan. Plus, we never actually thought we’d find him.

But they say you never know until you try. They also say your past always catches up with you. These cliches crystallized my resolve. I called Life upon arriving in Madison  to set a date to at last track this kid down. I’ve thought a lot about Aaron, over the years, but especially since beginning this road trip in April. The epochal moments of our friendship centered around road trips and attempted road trips. There was our epic odyssey to Colorado; our co-ownership of a school bus that we never got to travel in; and the countless smaller moments we spent drinking and dreaming. Life and I had too much history with Aaron to let him slip permanently into obscurity without at least a good-bye. He was just as missed in 2010 as in 2002.  After many years of talk, we set out for Edgerton, finally walking the walk.

First, a little bit of that history. In March 1999, Aaron, Life, another friend, Adrian, and myself, threw in on a school bus we planned on converting into a mobile home. For several weeks, we parked outside of Madison’s water utility building, where we removed the seats and began moving in our stuff. Also on board were three large dogs, which complicated our efforts at keeping a low profile on the city street. So we relocated to farmland in Portage.

In Portage, we painted the vessel midnight blue, grilled steaks and spoke endlessly of the easy living the bus ensured us. Our “plan” was to drive out west and live off the land, but really we just wanted to be bums. Within two months, our big dreams of being mega-hippies drowned in a bottomless jug of Captain Morgan’s Rum. Once our motivation and money ran dry, we sold the bus, having driven it less than 75 miles.

Then, in spring 2001, Aaron moved into the party-pad I lived in on Lathrop Street. Jaded by the prospect of wasting another summer in Madison doing the same tired shit, we decided instead to waste it in Colorado. Problem was getting there. Our uncertainty with Aaron’s car, a Toyota with more than 220,000 miles, prevented an immediate departure. Aaron’s dog, Zoe, scratched Greyhound off the list as well. My car I sold to raise travel funds.

Our only other option was to hop on Further Tour, find a kid with a school bus who’d let us ride tour with him until we jumped off in Denver. For gas money, we’d sell bottled beer on the lots.

To our own amazement, we executed the plan flawlessly. Beer sales were good. Then, at a show in Indiana, we met Chad and Michelle, a couple touring in their school bus, with two toddlers, and two gas riders, a newly-in-love couple they found in Florida. Life knew Chad and Michelle from their days tramping around Arizona, which gave us an in. That night, we gave away Aaron’s car and moved onto their bus. Unfortunately, everything that followed went terribly wrong.

First, Chad and Michelle fought over everything and agreed on nothing. The toddlers, unless wailing, were largely unattentioned left to stew in their soiled diapers, which they often removed themselves. The other gas riders, the Florida couple, laid in the bed most of the ride, making kissy-faces wat each other while Aaron and I did our best to ignore it, being as our seats were five-gallon buckets at the bed’s edge. We kept watch over Zoe, who had a particular dislike for kids, and was also unhappy inside the overpopulated, poorly-ventilated vessel. But for Colorado, we suffered eagerly.

The shows weren’t much better. Aaron and I drank more beer than we sold. A baby died on one lot and for the next three nights the mother’s inconsolable wailing poisoned the air. In Columbus, a middled-aged couple tried stealing Zoe, and would’ve succeeded had we not wrestled the animal from them. After drinking up much of our cash, we bought a couple grams of MDMA, a higher-yield investment. But we never got a chance to flip the dope. Following that show, Chad and Michelle’s fighting led us to Stephensville, Michigan, where they had family. They explained they needed a break from tour. That night, as Aaron and I tossed back beers and the Florida couple found privacy, Chad and Michelle took off with an old friend to reminesce over the yellow rock.

Late the next day, we packed up the bus and set out to catch up with tour, but we never made it. Hours after departing Stephensville, the bus suffered a series of break downs along the Interstate, just outside of Gary, Indiana, each one provoking fierce fights between Chad and Michelle. The Florida couple, impervious to the drama, continued making kissy faces. The kids, cried hysterically, left in the buses rear, swatting their hands at the flies buzzing around their discarded diapers. It took a while for Chad to jury-rig fixes to multiple problems, but the hobbled bus eventually jerked and chugged its way into Gary, where it stopped for good.

As Chad and Michelle waited for the tow back to Michigan, the Florida couple headed in one direction and we moved in another, into Gary, Indiana. With nothing but our backpacks, cash and drugs, we walked hurriedly as the sun set over one of America’s shittiest cities. Like prey in a balls-in survival game, we felt the eyes of tricky people and their deliberative stares as we took fast, frightened steps along the busy but poorly-lit street.  We were the brightest things around. For an hour we pressed on, backtracked  and stopped to think,  before finding a motel with a big flickering neon light. The next day, we caught a ride back to Madison with Aaron’s sister, who came to our rescue from Fort Wayne.

Sure, we were demoralized by being back in Madison, but our determination in getting to Colorado was undiminished. There had to be a way. After hunkering down at my mother’s house for several days, we hatched a new, more brilliant plan, this one not involving school buses. As far as we could tell, its only drawback was that success hinged entirely on lying, lawbreaking and luck.

Our starting point was finding an address for Aaron’s father’s roofing company in Edgerton. We jotted it down, and hit the road, heading south on I-90. During our drive across the sun-drenched farmlands, Life and I began questioning whether seeking him out was a good idea. It wasn’t like Aaron had for almost a decade simply forgotten to call everyone. He chose not to. We mulled the implications of this quietly for a moment.

“What’s the worst he can say?…” Life asked, breaking the silence. “Leave me the fuck alone? If he does, then fuck it, we will.”

There was also the question of whether we’d be glad to see him? He’d gotten married. That’s what we knew, but what we “knew,” we didn’t even know to be true. What if he was in bad shape? Over the years we speculated wildly about his fate, never really giving him the benefit of the doubt. Anything was possible. Drug addiction. Alcoholism. Disease. Prison. Homelessness. These were easy, if not sensible, explanations for why he fell off so completely.  Aaron, like the rest of us, wasn’t above any of  these things. How far he’d fallen or risen over the last eight years was impossible to say. For many in our constellation of friends during the late 90s and early 20s, outcomes like these weren’t uncommon. For some, the tragedies are ongoing.

Around 11 a.m., we arrived in Edgerton and quickly located the roofing company, which was actually a residence, without cars in the driveway, but through the drapes shone a light. We made a couple of passes before pulling into the driveway. Inside the house, dogs barked maniacally as we approached. After knocking several times, a young girl answered the door.

“Is Aaron around?” I asked.

“He’s not here right now.”

“Do you know where I can find him?”

When the girl stepped back inside to get Aaron’s phone number, Life and I looked at each in disbelief. Was it really going to be this easy? The girl was scrolling through the caller ID when she returned. We asked where Mallwood was. She only knew it was near Culver’s, but didn’t know how to get there, either. We thanked her for the number. Even if we couldn’t find him completely, we now at least had his ear.

Edgerton is small, but still I had to stop for directions to Culver’s. In my effort to remember them, I forgot to ask “what” Mallwood was. Life guessed an apartment complex. I agreed that sounded right. As we cruised over the Interstate bridge, the big blue Culver’s sign peeked up over the arcing road. “Mallwood!” Life shouted suddenly, her pointing finger locked on it as I passed it by. “It’s a street.”

Mallwood Road leads into Mallwood Estates, a collection of tree-canopied homes in various stages of disrepair. Some distance down we spot a roofing crew busy at work. Parked on the site was a truck emblazoned with the name of Aaron’s father’s company. They all wore baseball caps, wife-beaters and work boots, their faces indistinguishable from the road. So we crept by again and again until we saw a pair of workers climbing down the ladder. They were out of range by the time I backed up.

Now stopped in front of the house, work on the roof all but halted as the crew stared down at us. An older man, who looked an awful lot like Aaron, climbed down and approached us. “What can I help you with?” he asked. I waffled nervously before asking if Aaron was around.

“Aaron? He’s in the back,” the man said. “You can go talk to him if you want.”

We couldn’t believe it. Within an hour of leaving Madison we’d found him, in three simple steps. Now to shatter eight years of silence. I parked Purple Thunder and we strolled alongside the house. There, pounding nails in the corner of the roof, was Aaron. He looked our way, but then resumed his work. We stopped to stare up at him. He did a double take,  his expressive blues growing wide with surprise.

“Oh, wow,” he laughed, awkwardly. “What’s going on?”

The clerk at the Ryder depot explained to us that a couple moving to Connecticut the next morning had reserved the last available small moving truck. We could use it that afternoon, but couldn’t keep it overnight. We told him that wouldn’t work, that it was an emergency, that we had a lot of stuff. “We’ll have it back first thing in the morning,” we promised.

After much pleading, the clerk relented, took our $150 deposit, Xeroxed my suspended driver’s license, and handed me the key. “Just drop’er off around eight,” he instructed. “There’s a short check-in process.”

Back at my mother’s, we grabbed our packs, hit the road and drove straight through the night. By 8 a.m. the next morning we were cruising across the Nebraska plains, just north of Denver.

We figured that in a matter of hours Ryder would report the truck stolen. Even if for some reason it didn’t, we still were riding dirty and without a valid driver’s license between us. A traffic stop would get hairy. Complicating the situation was that we hadn’t really thought about what to do once in Colorado, where even to go. I’d been to Denver. Aaron had been to Nederland. We casted our votes respectively. Then we remembered a mutual friend who supposedly worked at an ice cream shop in Silverton, a mountain town in the southwestern part of the state. However, Silverton meant keeping the truck for at least two more days. Though neither of us had heard from Greg in several years, the option at least had promise.

By the time we arrived in Silverton late that night, our eyes were fighting for sleep. We stopped off for the night, relocating to the truck’s storage container and rigging the door clasp so we could close the door without becoming locked-in. Despite our fatigue, sleep that night came in fits. In our blankets, too thin to protect against the frigid mountain air, we shivered violently, our only warmth coming from Zoe, who slept soundly between us.

The next morning we discovered that our friend, Greg, was no longer in  Silverton. When the ice cream shop never opened, I phone his mother back in Wisconsin, who gave us a phone number to the place he was staying in La Salle Creek, four miles from the Utah border. We called several times throughout the day, as we drove west toward Utah, but no one picked up.

By late afternoon, panic over having the truck began setting in. Our stomachs sank each time we spied a cop, our MDMA at-the-ready for ingesting. Driving along southwestern Colorado’s red dusty highways, which seemed to stretch forever across an expanse of hot, barren earth, made the situation seem all the more hopeless. Regret began to consume us. Hungry, tired and with nowhere to go, we pulled off in a sparse little desert town. We found a payphone, called, waited around and called again. And again.

At last, an answer; it was Greg, who thought, when informed Aaron and I were about an hour away from La Salle Creek, that I was fucking with him. I assured him I was not. He gave us directions and within the hour, we turned onto a little crooked driveway in the middle of nowhere. Greg stepped out to greet us with a big, goofy grin. “I can’t believe you guys stole a moving truck,” he laughed. “You’re fucking nuts!”

First thing first, Greg dug out a phonebook so we could find the nearest Ryder depot at which to dump the truck. Moab, Utah was closest, but it was already late. Since we’d have to hitchhike back, we decided to wait until the next day.

It was great to see Greg, another high school buddy who’d been tramping around out west. He prepared a dinner, which we ate greedily. After, we began talking about what to do with the MDMA. Worried that we’d be pushing our luck by hitchhiking dirty, we cut up three even piles, one for each of us. That night, the three of us sat on the porch, swapping snippets of our lives, all alone in the desert. We rolled hard beneath a black open sky dotted with billions of stars, banging drums and strumming guitars, laughing hard, belly laughs and smoking cigarettes until our throats hurt.

It felt great to be in Colorado.

As Aaron climbed down the roof, Life whispered, “He doesn’t recognize me.” Indeed, he didn’t. The last time they’d seen each other, Life, who has her own long history with Aaron, had long, gnarly dreadlocks, generic state-issued glasses and dressed in baggy skater gear. These days her hair is salon cut, her glasses fashionable and her clothing straight off the women’s rack. He’d barely given her a fleeting glance.

Once he was on the ground, I asked, “You remember Life, don’t you?”

Again, his eyes lit up. “Man, it’s been a long time,” he said.

For several minutes we chatted about our recent lives, what we’ve been up to, how things are going, giving updates on mutual friends. Before long, Aaron’s dad called him back to work. Aaron invited us to meet him back at the site in 30 minutes, explaining the work day was almost over. Of course, we said, and spent the next half hour tooling around Edgerton, grateful that Aaron seemed well, happy and glad to see us.

He seemed like the same old guy, only older, healthier and more domesticated. The marriage rumor was true. All those years ago he did meet a girl, got married and became a father. One-by-one, he lost contact with friends in Madison while settling into family there in Edgerton. That, of course, wasn’t the entire truth, but it sufficed. We weren’t there to drill him, but to say ‘Hello.’

There was so much we wanted – needed – to share with him, but when we arrived back at the job site, no one was there. We called the number the girl had given us, but there wasn’t any answer. We tried again with the same result.

Maybe Aaron wasn’t that glad to see us, after all.

Greg went with us to drop the truck off in Moab so that on the way back he could teach us to hitchhike. Not that hitchhiking needs much explaining, but he had traveled that way many times, and we maybe we were a little worried it wasn’t as easy as he claimed. We also had more questions about Telluride, a little mountain town he receommended to us the night before, located not far from La Salle Creek. With Greg and Zoe crouched between the two cab seats, we roared through Utah’s red canyons on the final leg of our daring mission.

But washing our hands of the truck required finding a real Ryder station. In Moab, at the address the phonebook listed, in real life stood a Holiday Inn. We couldn’t believe it. I stopped out front as Aaron double-checked the address. We must’ve written it down wrong, so we cross-referenced using a metal-covered phonebook dangling from a payphone. According to that one, we had the right place. After a bit of head scratching, we realized that the phonebook was outdated. Ryder no longer did business in Moab.

Leaving Moab, we felt even more helpless than the day before, certain that at any moment we’d be pulled over and arrested for felony grand theft. Making the most of it, we got some beer and hiked around in Utah’s canyons before returning to La Salle Creek.

The next morning, Aaron and I headed to Montrose, Colorado, about 120 mountain miles away, hoping the Ryder depot listed there actually existed. It was a long, quiet drive. After the school bus, being stranded in Gary, spit back to Madison, and almost week in a hijacked moving truck, neither of us felt like talking. We held our breath and hoped for the best.

Late that Sunday afternoon, we passed by the Montrose Ryder depot. After ensuring it was closed, we pulled in and parked alongside the building. I dug a Sharpie from my backpack. On a torn piece of cardboard I wrote, ‘Sorry,’ and affixed it to the steering wheel. We grabbed our backpacks, unloaded Zoe and, as Greg had instructed, walked a few miles to the city’s southern edge. There, for the first time in our lives we stuck out our thumbs, hoping to catch a ride. As Greg said, it was easy. A short time and two rides later, were were in Telluride. Our summer had finally begun.

A brief game of phone tag later, we all met for lunch at a nearby diner, where we spent the next hour catching up on our combined 24 years apart. Later, at his house, we rehashed old adventures, crazy times and memorable moments. It almost felt like old times, but we were now adults. Life had twin boys. Aaron had two children, a wife. Me, I was living in Philadelphia, no kids and still looking for “the one.” We had jobs, responsibilities, and new friends who could never relate to these fantastical stories from our pasts. It’s only those with whom you go through the shit with that ever really get it.

“Remember when we took that Ryder truck to Colorado?” I asked.

He laughed. “Yeah, didn’t you leave a note for them or something?”

Then we asked Life about Chad and Michelle, the hippies with the school bus that broke down in Gary, Indiana. She hadn’t heard anything from or about them in years. We updated him on other old friends and others from the past as best we could.

We encouraged him to get on Facebook.

“There’s a few people from Telluride on there,” I said, knowing it probably didn’t matter to him. But it reminded me that I had e-mailed with Greg recently, an exchange set in motion by an old Telluride connection I found on Facebook. He was working as a mechanic in Washington, but moving soon to Montana. Said he doesn’t e-mail much, but to look him up if in the area.

We spent that entire summer there, in Telluride, though we fell in with different people, insofar as one can in Telluride. For a while we resided among the forest dwellers, known locally as Woodsies, but Aaron eventually moved into town. By August, he’d tired of it. When Greg scored a free station wagon, Aaron hopped a ride with him back to Wisconin. I stayed for a while longer, hitchhiking toward Oregon, but getting only to the border of Wyoming. I came home, put in a semester at college, and returned the following year. A fledgling reporter, I lived in the woods for four months, while writing for The Telluride Watch, and came to be known as the ‘Woodsie journalist.’ 

I can’t remember if Aaron was still around when I returned to Madison, but if so, it wasn’t for long. One day he was gone. Poof!

Just like that.

Now, here we were, eight years later, in his living room, talking about that odyssey for the first time. “Ryder never tried to collect on that truck,” I said, to Aaron’s surprise.

“Man, I thought for sure they’d send you a big bill,” he laughed.

Before departing, we made tentative plans to hang out again, meet his family, maybe even go canoeing, tentative being the operative word. Even if we don’t meet up anytime soon, I doubt it’ll be the last time our paths cross. I have his number, plus he’s now on Facebook, where everyday is a reunion. He is no longer missing and we can stop wondering. And that’s where we left it, the future, up the in the air, just as it has always been.

Carlos Vega says indicted Shenandoah police officers killed his son in 2004.

Shenandoah, PA – For more than five years, Carlos Vega has fought to bring the police officers he believes are responsible for his son’s death to justice. “They killed my boy,” Carlos told The Feral Scribe late last month. “I’m going to get justice for David.”

David Vega was an 18-year-old high school student on Nov. 28, 2004, when he and his younger brother fell into a heated verbal argument on their porch. Hearing the commotion, neighbors began stepping from their homes, one of whom called police. Two officers arrived and David began mouthing off. He was arrested. Two hours later he was dead. Police told his parents that he’d hanged himself in his cell. “That’s bullshit,” says Carlos, a former chef who was disabled in a 2000 car wreck. “David was going to college. He had a girlfriend. He had everything to live for. They beat him until he died.”

David didn’t have a shirt on when he was arrested. “There are 20 people who say he didn’t have a bruise on him when they cuffed him,” Carlos said. But when Carlos viewed the body, David was covered with bruises. The Schuylkill County coroner accepted Shenandoah police chief Matthew Nestor’s explanation that the bruises resulted from David’s resisting arrest. Carlos promptly hired an attorney and filed a lawsuit against the officers and the borough of Shenandoah.

According to the lawsuit, a second autopsy confirmed David “suffered extensive, massive injuries consistent with a profound beating… The defendant did not die of hanging.”

Further, the suit alleges that “while in police custody… [David] was beaten to death and then hung from the bars of a holding cell to make it appear as if he had committed suicide.”

Matthew Nestor or Capt. Jamie Gennarini, the other officer named in the suit, have never been charged criminally with David’s death. However, Nestor, Gennarini, and two other former Shenandoah police officers were indicted last December on charges they helped four teens cover-up the fatal beating of an illegal Mexican immigrant in 2008. Nestor and Gennarini were also indicted separately in a scheme to extort money from illegal gambling operations and for trying to extort money from the family of a local businessman in exchange for his release from their custody.

Police, according to the suit, “acted as feudal warlords in this coal town community that people were afraid of.”

Through their attorneys, the indicted former officers, deny any wrongdoing.

Others disagree.

“You have to watch yourself with these cops,” said Carlos, who can rarely go out in public without encountering those he believes killed his son. “You have to follow the rules of their kingdom. The consequences can be very serious.”

Shenandoah, located about 100 miles northwest of Philadelphia, is nested in Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal region. A Civil War-era boom town, Shenandoah enjoyed many years of prosperity, with a thriving business district, strong Polish and Italian heritage, and a population that, at its peak, approached 27,000. Leona, a local woman I met while visiting, said she moved to Shenandoah in 1959. Her fiance owned a dry cleaning business on Main Street. “On Saturday nights, everyone used to get dressed up and went out. Main Street was filled with people dining out or going to the picture shows,” she recalls. “It was a lovely community.”

But slowly, Shenandoah slipped into decline. In the 1960s, the coal mines shut down, followed by the textile factories in the 1980s. Interstate 81 re-routed much of the through traffic Main Street merchants relied on for business. Merchants that weathered the traffic decreases were eventually forced to close once malls in nearby Hazelton and Pottsville opened. According to Leona, who asked that he last name be withheld, most of those raised in Shenandoah during this time left for college and never returned. Older residents died off, leaving a huge surplus of vacant housing and commercial space. Over time, Shenandoah became a sort of repository for Schuylkill County’s poorest residents, most of whom work low-wage service industry jobs.

Today, empty commercial space blights Shenandoah’s main drag. “Everything has deteriorated so much,” says Leona, who recently turned 79. “It makes me so sad, but I’m too old to move.”

Over the last decade, Shenandoah’s Spanish-speaking population has swelled. When Carlos, a Brooklyn-born Puerto Rican, moved here 19 years ago, there weren’t any other Hispanics in the area. But now, there are a few Spanish restaurants and food stores. Of Shenandoah’s remaining 5,000 residents, 10 percent are Hispanic. With the shifting demographics has come considerable racial tension.

Carlos, 45, says he received a chilly reception when he moved here to be near his then-girlfriend’s ailing father. But not until his three sons started school did the racism become confrontational. “They were called names, bullied,” he says. “They’d get into fights, that sort of thing.”

After David’s death, rumors swirled that police had killed the boy, but nothing came of it. It wasn’t until four years later, after the fatal beating of 25-year-old Luis Ramirez, did the justice Carlos sought seem likely.

Late on July 12, 2008, Luis Ramirez, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, was walking home his girlfriend’s sister on a residential street when he encountered four teens, players on Shenandoah’s high school football team. According to the criminal complaint, the teens, each of them drunk, began hurling epithets at Ramirez, calling him a dirty spic, among other things, baiting him into a fight. A brawl ensued, with the four teens punching and kicking Ramirez.

The fight soon dispersed, but when one of the teens shouted, “Go home you Mexican fuck!” Ramirez turned to attack him. The teens unleashed a series of blows on Ramirez, knocking him to the ground. As Ramirez struggled to get up, Brandon Piekarsky, then 17, delivered a fatal kick to Ramirez’s head. The teens fled as the father of two lay convulsing in the street. Doctor’s noted that Ramirez had been so badly beaten that when he was opened up for surgery, his brain literally oozed from his skull. He died two days later.

Piekarsky was charged with third-degree murder and ethnic intimidation. Three other teens, including 19-year-old Derrick Donchak, were charged with aggravated assault and ethnic intimidation. In May 2009, all were acquitted by an all-white jury of the most serious charges. Pierkarsky and Donchak received six month jail terms after being convicted of misdemeanor simple assault.

Following the acquittals, the teens’ supporters organized a “victory celebration.” The party was canceled following the June 2009 shooting at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. The celebration’s keynote speaker was to be neo-Nazi John de Nugent, the best friend of the museum shooter, James von Brunn.

The Feral Scribe contacted Ramirez’s girlfriend, Crystal Dillman, who is also the mother of his children, but she was unable to comment without approval from her attorney.

Schuylkill County prosecutor James Goodman also wouldn’t speak with The Feral Scribe because of the upcoming federal trials, but he told other media outlets last December that he knew early on that his case against the teens had been compromised. He contacted the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Scranton, concerned about a potential cover-up, and asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate. “[Police] didn’t interview… the boys,” Goodman told CNN last December. “In fact, not only did they not interview them, they picked them up, gave them rides, helped them concoct stories, brought them back and told the boys what to say.”

According to Goodman and the federal indictments, after beating Ramirez, Piekarsky contacted Shenandoah police officer Jason Hayes, who was dating Piekarsky’s mother, and Lt. William Moyer, whose son played football with the teens. Together they went to the scene of the brawl. Piekarsky then went to Donchak’s home and, with the other assailants, “created a false version of events to be incorporated in official police reports which omitted references to Piekarsky kicking [Ramirez] to authorities in official statements.”

The officers are accused of instructing the teens to dispose of their shoes, mischaracterizing witness accounts and creating false and misleading investigative reports, according to the indictment. Piekarsky and Donchak have been charged with federal hate crimes. Both remain jailed, as does former police chief Matthew Nestor. The other officers are free on bond while awaiting trial.

Even being the target of a federal investigation didn’t deter Matthew Nestor from reigning in his pervasive hostility toward minorities. In March 2009, two months before the acquittals in the Ramirez case, he arrested David Murphy, Sr., on simple drug possession. According to a handwritten affidavit, Murphy, who is black, alleges that after his arrest, Nestor refused to let him take his blood-thinner medication, then punched him in the back where he’d recently undergone spinal fusion surgery. According to attorney John Karoly, who also represents Murphy, Nestor left Murphy alone overnight in the police station, during which time he suffered a heart attack in his holding cell.

Nestor returned the next morning to take Murphy to his arraignment hearing, but the judge, seeing that Murphy needed medical attention, ordered Nestor to take Murphy to the hospital. Instead, Nestor took Murphy to the Schuylkill County jail, which refused to admit him. Finally, Nestor dropped Murphy off at the hospital, telling Murphy that if he made it out alive he’d end up “like that Mexican who ‘hung’ himself,” referring to David Vega, who was Puerto Rican.

Upon being released from the hospital, Murphy filed a handwritten affidavit detailing his ordeal.

According to Karoly, criminal charges are still possible, especially in the David Vega case. “There is no statute of limitations on murder,” he said.

Carlos Vega hopes that with the arrest of Matthew Nestor, and the indictments of the other officers, that Shenandoah will be safer for minorities, especially the area’s Hispanics. “I hope we get it to change,” he said. “People should be treated the same way. And when you’re in police custody you should be safe, all of the time.”

David’s birthday passed on May 5. “My boy would’ve been 26,” Carlos said. “I miss him. I don’t feel safe here, but I’m not going to let them chase me. If I leave, then they win. I need to stay here and fight for David. I’ve been through a lot, but I’m still standing.”

Philadelphia has been described as a grid surrounded by industrial clutter.

Philadelphia, PA – I had never stepped foot in Philadelphia prior to moving here in 2008. Had been to the east coast just once, in the 6th grade for a school trip to Washington D.C. But at 31, I was itching to get out of Madison and my girlfriend billed Philly as a place where opportunity flowed like beer from a tap. A crack survey of Craigslist and some local blogs all but confirmed that Philly was indeed a happening place. A few months later we loaded up the Penske and set out to catch some of that brotherly love.

I’m not sure what I expected exactly, but not long after crossing the city line did I realize the reality I entered was not it. Entire blocks of vacant buildings. Trash-strewn streets. Brothers – lots of brothers – in white t-shirts and denim shants making commotions on what seemed like every street. Except for a pair of cops in a cruiser keeping watch through their aviator shades, there wasn’t a white guy to be seen. Then there was me, navigating a big-ass truck down the narrow city streets, feeling as though I’d stumbled upon the set of The Wire – only this wasn’t television, dawg.

A vacant building at 47th and Chester in West Philadelphia.

The city shocked my Midwestern senses. Everything about it – from the freestyle driving and unkempt yards to the broken sidewalks and burnt-out traffic lights – signified chaos and disorder. Philly seemed lawless, unsafe, and the newspapers reinforced this perception with sensational stories of crime, racial strife, police brutality and political corruption. The city, it appeared to me, was rotting from within.

So it was more than a little surprising when the people I met talked about how much better Philly was than a few years previous. Police beat fewer people, rapes and murders were down, abandoned cars were being towed off the streets and the city was aiming to raze thousands of vacant buildings blighting almost every neighborhood.

Still, people were cautious. Upon learning I had come from Wisconsin, some were quick to offer tips for surviving in Killadelphia.  Don’t wear headphones when out at night. Stay below 50th Street. Stay out of the northern sections. Try to avoid the subway late at night. Flipping off other drivers is akin to playing Russian Roulette. So casual everyone was about the violence that when I discovered a mile-long blood trail outside of my apartment it intrigued no one but me. “Feel fortunate it wasn’t your blood,” I was told with amused indifference.

And those opportunities? Well, whatever tap they flowed from had run dry long before I arrived. Moving to Philly was like to diving head first into a stew of simmering social woes that were more accepted than addressed. It’s hard enough moving to any new city, but Philly was on a different plane entirely. The decay. The destitution. The danger. I was captivated by all of it.

This car just randomly appeared on my street one morning.

Unlike cities such as Cleveland, Boston and Atlanta, which have over the last decade undergone highly successful urban renewal projects, Philadelphia remains on the brink of prosperity or collapse, depending on how you look at it. According to the Pew Charitable Trusts’ annual State of the City report, the city has made great strides in some areas since 1999, including significant reductions in crime, implementing modern police practices, beautifying neighborhoods and weeding out corruption, issues residents rank among their top concerns. The report credits a new generation of civic and political leadership for much of this turnaround, which has boosted residents’ morale and optimism about the future.

But beneath these quality of life issues, deeper  problems persist. With poverty at 25 percent, climbing unemployment, rising rates of smoking and obesity, a full generation of sustained job and population loss, public schools that have been described as “wastelands of human potential,” drug use and alcoholism, increasing homelessness due to the housing crisis, it’s difficult for a newbie like me to understand the optimism, especially given that the city’s projected $500 million budget deficit over the next five years could easily wipe away the decade’s modest gains.

In short, the urban renaissance will be postponed.

“Nothing good comes easy in Philadelphia, but Philadelphians seem to accept that,” noted the authors of the Pew report, which draws on information culled from government and non-profit agencies. “Their attitude towards the city mirrors their attitude towards its sports teams – a mixture of exasperation and deep affection rooted in an understanding that the lean years make the good times feel that much better.”

Of course, these problems aren’t unusual for cities like Philly – America’s sixth largest – but unlike most urban areas, which have clearly demarcated rich, middle-class and poor sections, Philly has only pockets of affluence scattered about the city. The city everywhere looks and feels poor and tired. Good thing, I guess, that it’s always sunny, otherwise things might really get depressing.

Street vendors in Chinatown.

When people back home ask how I like living here, I’m usually at a loss for the right words. In the beginning, my instinct was to get the hell out of here, fast. Needless to say, the stories and warnings put me on edge. “Living in Philly you can expect to be mugged at least once,” a temp agency recruiter informed after sharing how she’d been whacked on the head with a chain early one morning while walking to the gym. Being white in a racially-tense city that is almost 50 percent black and 10 percent other minority was an awkward head trip. Finding an affordable apartment, in decent shape, with an honest landlord in a neighborhood that wasn’t too dicey was also challenging. Landing a job was a four month exercise in humility and rejection. Some days I cursed myself for ever leaving Madison, where things were easy, safe and familiar.

Nothing good comes easy in Philly, indeed.

Residing here now for two years I can say my love-hate relationship with the city errs on the love side. Time has brought clarity to the city’s confounding contradictions. Trepidation has given way to reverence. I don’t think all that much anymore about being a white guy in a black  city. I’m no longer honked at for driving slowly. I have friends and favorite beer, grinder and coffee spots. I have a job where I have summers off. And if today I happened upon a blood trail outside of my apartment, it probably wouldn’t seem any more extraordinary than sunshine. Philly is a true underdog city, befitting of the grit and grime, guts and glory of place that seldom makes national headlines for good news. The crime, the violence, the poverty, it just takes some getting used to.

Ill State of Mind, Philly rapper Neeko’s answer to Jay-Z’s Empire State of Mind.

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