Backup: what i didn't write about Centralia, PA, (POP: 10, home of underground coal fire that has been burning for over 40 yrs)

Sorry. need to go back and fill in some blanks.
Centralia:
We approached Centralia with the idea of finding a burned city, a town laid to waste an underground fire burning for years through veins of coal beneath the surface of the town, a village where at any time the earth might melt and suddenly drop in on itself. That's what the docents at the Ashland coal mine had told us, as well as villagers in nearby towns. Be CAREFUL, they said. "It's not funny," one lady warned from out of her truck, followed immediately by, "Is that a hybrid? Honey, we gotta get us one of those..." So, we started out looking for the "hotspots" that we had heard about - pits or cracks in the ground where the earth hisses out fumes from the fire still smoking underground. But that wasn't all we found.

Don't have many pics of Centralia available yet but must say that what we saw was wildly gorgeous, lush, and rather surreal. Only a few resident houses remain. The sidestreets appear to get swallowed up by bushes, grasses and flowers. The sidewalks are completely grown over with bushes, grasses and trees. At the top of the hill, just before the cemetary, we found a closed road that could be entered by skirting a hill of dirt. We left Rachel Car and started down the old road with camera in hand. At first the road seemed odd simply for its being deserted but, as we walked along, we were amazed by great bushes growing from its belly, ash trees, with trunks 8-9" in diameter, blooming right through the pavement where the double yellow lines would be. We felt like we arrived at the end of time...and then we reached the great gaping crevice that I had seen in photos, a steaming rift littered with garbage and sprayed with graffiti, witness to the human need to leave a mark. We put our hands into the steam but for only a second. The heat coming from even those tired vents was enough to cook the two eggs someone had thrown in to fry.

A retired man on a moped with his poodle, Jink, in a basket on the back drove by. We asked him if he know much about the town and then about the environment but he seemed much more worried about the state of the world's rape and murder...and encouraged us to talk to one of the residents of the town.

So we found one. A handsome young man was sitting on the front porch of the first house we passed, so Ben got out and went to see if he might consider talking to us. After we chatted with him on his front steps a bit, he said, "You know you're talking to the mayor." Mayor of ten. He inherited the house from his grandparents and has been taking care of it ever since. He would love to see the town come back to life but does not believe it will happen. He and the other 9 residents are holding out against a government mandate to relocate. Centralia was built over what is believed to be one of the largest coal veins in the world - a massive artery of coal called the Mammoth Vein, with many veins throughout. Years ago, the US government declared the area unfit bc of the fires and in need of immediate evacuation but not everyone agreed to go. And now the fire has nearly stopped and the remaining villagers see no reason to leave. There is only one spot that remains barren from the heat below, about the size of half a football field. Mayor John believes that the coal companies are just waiting for the last of the residents to die off so they can just strip the whole mountaintop and mine the mammoth vein. Sure does seem like it would be lucrative...

but I am sending up a wish in for Mayor John and the good people still left in the beautiful little town of Centralia, PA.