Route 47-A
david staton
Route 47-A slips through the Wizner Valley before hooking into l-15 at Siler on one end and Route 111 in Gabner at the other. Two country lanes ferry tourists past quaint houses, a scenic river known for its steelhead, the Glenn Creek Steam Locomotive Museum and an umber-colored covered bridge. The same road carries other drivers past seasonal roadside fruit stands, low-lying pasture land and crops. For valley residents, the path brings them to jobs and houses in Jefferson, Siler and Brouchard counties. They call 47-A the main road.
People who live in the valley don’t care for living along the main road. Out-of town gawkers craning for a view of the Wizner either tied up traffic or, racing through on their way to a connecting highway, left red and brown fur humps of deer, raccoon and skunk mashed into the road. And the bait-and-beer shops and the taverns - the C’mon Inn, the Evergreen, the Rusty Reel - turned the asphalt into a hot rod daddys’ delight on Friday and Saturday nights with tail pipe sparks casting orange stars into the black. The corrugated guard rails separating river and road were splashed with blazes of GTO yellow, Mustang red and Super Nova black from drag racers who couldn’t keep it between the lines.
If somebody got off the main road to go into Gabner they’d be on Sixth Street and motor by a handful of banks, a few cafes and filling stations, a half dozen stores, a dress shop, three groceries and four churches, during its eight-block run through the heart of downtown. Seventh Street, headed the other way, they’d find pretty close to a mirror image; a flat, gray, squat view.
Gabner was more than a wide spot in the road, but not by much. Maybe a double wide spot in the road. Most all the storefronts and what industry that was there seemed to have made some sort of unspoken agreement to stick to some kind of bad dress code. Most buildings looked to have been poured right out of a cement mixer, the rest of them looked as if they were made from cardboard and popsicle sticks. And the houses were a big vat of Quaker oats shaped into doughy boxes where people slept and ate. Brown and gray. Low and squat. It all kind of slipped into the road, slipped into the light posts, slipped into the sky. A brown paper bag of a town.
One main street into Gabner. One out. Both of them cross the river, which divides Gabner East and West. Street names of dead presidents, old money and freshwater fish snake north toward the foothills and south to farming communities.
Mostly what folks would see, or what they’d later remember seeing, were all the middle-aged men in khaki work shirts, Red Wing engineer boots and bright, blue jeans sitting under store canopies and on the post office steps, leaning against mail drop boxes at midday cradling bags of popcorn. A relaxed flow of yellow nuggets and Styrofoam cups of coffee moving from tattered leathery hands to Polident smiles. Usually the clumps of sway-backed men were surrounded by pigeons, stooping, pecking and pawing at the kernels that missed mouths between preening their gray, watery rainbow bands.
Most of the men had lived in Gabner all their lives. But they hadn’t always lived on the main road. They’d had to move there when Southern Pacific had moved its operations north leaving them, as they put it, ³without a paycheck, a pension or a pot to piss in.²
Along 47-A, rent was cheap. Most of them had been at work for the railroad for so many years that the noise from the passing cars didn’t bother them; your hearing usually started to go bad at the S.P. switchout and loading station right after your back went.
People passing through could still see the old station and staging area just off Sixth Street, the yellow Southern Pacific logo big as a house, faded a mousy yellow on one side. A few boxcars, graying wooden pallets and a collection of fuel tanks cluttered the area and nearby two engines hunkered down, steel dogs in the weeds, rust bubbling and coursing over their hips.
The former railroaders would sit eating and drinking, watching the cars drive by noticing the license plates and the dealer’s frames to see who was coming through. They’d always crack a funny when they saw a plate from out of state or saw somebody with a crazy hairdo. They loved to flick shit at the hippies.
These exchanges were the one way sort. No one driving by ever heard the words the men said. People hardly ever rolled down their windows when they passed through Gabner. One street in. Left. One street out. Gone.
But every once in a while, a strange car would stop at the one-time railroad crossing by the old station, roll down the window and listen for noise coming down the track. Through heavy moist air, the smell of buttered popcorn made their teeth sweat.
