A Little Girl’s Terror

Here’s this week’s reflection. I hope it resonates with you and ask that, if you enjoyed, please comment and share on your social media. Heartfelt thanks for all your support!

Keeping the light on for you,

Carol

A violent, deafening roar shatters the calm. Time stands still. Frozen in place, a child lets out a bloodcurdling scream. A brutal boom penetrates brain and bone, obliterates any thought but sheer horror. The apocalypse has arrived. Parents out of grasp, she clings to the tall poplar trees lining the road where she stands. Panic stricken, she holds tight, trembles and shrieks. 

A brother, hearing her, scrambles up the hill to where she stands immobilized, wraps his arms around her, cocoons her in warmth, bathes her in reassuring words. When the thundering turbulence ends, she is back in nature, back among the soft rustling leaves, and the birdsong, and the quiet. Exhausted, the young girl tearfully succumbs to her protector as he gently guides her home.

This scenario repeated itself with some regularity for what seemed an eternity to a 4-year-old, violently interrupting an otherwise serendipitous existence, and triggering deep anxiety as to exactly where and when mayhem might rear its ugly head again. 

I was that terrified child on the hill a few miles across the river, and it took some time for me to fully understand my young mind’s patchy ability to handle fear. This was also a time before stress, anxiety and “post traumatic stress disorder” were clinically diagnosed and safe topics of household conversation. All I knew was this unexpected blast paralyzed me to my core every time it erupted. 

The culprit of my torment was just across the river from our family hill: a coal-fired electrical plant that would periodically release accumulated steam with a disturbingly high decibel prolonged wail. It rattled windows, made the neighbor’s beagle howl, and forced many of us to cover our ears until internal order was restored at the facility. 

I have been a worrywart since childhood. Looking back, I can’t help but wonder if that facility’s ear-splitting racket somehow contributed to my anxiety and to my long-held quest for quiet. Was waiting for the sky to fall, as it surely seemed to do when that steam erupted, prenatally hardwired and coaxed to fruition with that damned power plant? Or did that continuous, steam-erupting roar heard across hills and valleys sow a seed for life-long anxiety?  

Admittedly both parents were a tad OCD, so my DNA was likely tainted in the first place. What I DO know is that the power station memory (despite a plethora of wonderful childhood memories) remains high on the suspect list. Those episodes of gut-wrenching fear certainly didn’t do my immature nervous system any favors.

Exposure to excessive decibel levels can contribute to hearing loss and mental trauma, and I highly doubt that government regulations on industrial sound limits were firmly enforced in the late 1960s. Thankfully, our modern era has addressed such things. 

That particular plant was built in 1920 and was the last coal-fired electrical generating station in Allegheny County. Lawsuits over many years addressed egregious air and water pollution, especially the station’s abhorrent level of greenhouse gas emissions. As new government regulations would have severely limited its production capacity, it closed in 2022. In a world of new energy solutions, it was time to put this environmental monster down.

Despite these facts, area folks waxed nostalgic when the stacks came down last April 2023. Some even hosted watch parties. After all, parents, grandparents, siblings, and friends had been employed there for decades. It was familiar. And many of those hardworking folks unknowingly took it for the team, enduring nasty health issues that, modern medicine now knows, contributed to, or caused, their demise. The controlled implosion of the stacks shattered windows, dislodged utility poles, and propelled a river of dust and debris along and within the Allegheny and surrounding neighborhoods. An ironic and perhaps befitting end to a very dirty and LOUD era. I, for one, will be trying to bury my fearful memory along with those filthy flues.

Though a town I called home has sadly gone to the dogs, my idyllic hillside childhood outside of town remains a fond memory. Even when those pipes roared, the love and support from family comforted me. With much patience, my family finally convinced me that we were assuredly NOT going to die. With those stacks now absent from the skyline, may we ALL now rest – and LIVE – in cleanly peace.