“Picher Oklahoma”
June 30, 2009
PICHER, Oklahoma (CNN) — Wearing powder blue pants and a plaid fedora, 84-year-old Orval “Hoppy” Ray arrived fashionably late to a celebration in Picher, Oklahoma, a vacated mining town at the center of one of the nation’s largest and most polluted toxic-waste sites.
Former residents, bought out by the government because their town was deemed so dangerous, gathered in Picher’s elementary school to say farewell to a place where kids suffered lead poisoning, where homes built atop underground mines plunged into the Earth and where the local creek coughs up orange water, laced with heavy metals.
A toothpick dangling out of the corner of his chapped mouth, Ray greeted several old friends as if he were in any other small town in America.
“Hello there, Hoppy! How the hell are ya?” one called out.
Gray mountains of toxic gravel loomed behind the school, just out of sight, as Hoppy hobbled past a bundle of balloons and through the front doors, cane in hand. He tipped his hat as he entered.
“Looks like a good crowd,” he said. “Everybody seems to be havin’ a good time. That’s the main thing.”
In a town this tragic and for a person as stubborn as Hoppy, that’s a big statement.
As his abandoned town fades to dust, Hoppy has gone into the business of memories. He wants to remind townspeople, and the world, that a person’s home should always be loved — no matter how toxic.
The buyout plan was seen as a blessing by some scared families.
But not Hoppy.
Hoppy swore he wouldn’t leave his hometown, that he would die before he’d leave Picher, even if his electricity and water were turned off.
He’d grown up there, worked in the mines alongside his father — and all three of his brothers. But Picher was more than a place to make money. It was a place of patriotism and purpose: The metals they dug out of caves deep in the ground were processed and turned into bullets that armed U.S. soldiers in both world wars.
The wars ended, though, and so did the world’s interest in Picher. By 1970, the last mine shut down.
Hoppy’s family stayed.
They couldn’t leave a place that had threaded itself into their lives so deeply.
After making a quick stop in the crowded school cafeteria, Hoppy found a more suitable post on the sidelines of the reunion, in a narrow hallway.
He sat in a chair with a smirk on his face, using his cane to ping friends in the shins, or sometimes in the groin, to get their attention.
“This here’s the last man standing,” one man said, chuckling, as he stopped by Hoppy’s seat.
Hoppy’s son and grandson arrived with several cardboard boxes of books, pulled from the bed of the old miner’s pickup. With the help of another local-history buff, Hoppy has self-published three books. The latest, “Just Call Me Hoppy,” chronicles his memories of a pre-toxic Picher, a time he believes everyone else has forgotten.
The book begins in 1925, when the mines were at their peak — and the year Hoppy was born.
At 17, he left Picher to fight in World War II. After he was injured when his Navy ship was hit by a suicide bomber, Hoppy returned home to finish high school and go to work in the mines.
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Source:http://edition.cnn.com
