#nerdburgh

I'll never forget that trip. How quiet it was, the small occasional plumes of vapor coming up from parts of the ground. We were waved down by an old guy selling souvenirs out of the back of his pickup truck. He talked to us about living here, gave me a wooden nickel from events the fire hall used to host - I'll have to see if I still have it somewhere so I can add a picture to this post - eventually he talked my mom & I into buying a huge lump of coal that had "Centralia Pennsylvania" spelled (might have actually been misspelled iirc) out in colorful metallic stickers (themselves covered by clear tape to help them stay on)

We both knew it was probably not "genuine Centralia coal" like he promised - all of that was currently burning under our feet - but we bought it all the same. We told ourselves we bought it cause he probably needed the money more than us, not because we had been so charmed that we couldn't help buying a literal 10lb chunk of flammable rock.