By Walter Moore,

West Blocton isn't on the way to anywhere. Two major highways pass within a few miles of it on the other side of these hills, but you'd never know that. The Cahaba River is just a few miles east, down in some ravine that you can't see. In fact, even the road that goes right next to the town doesn't show you much, all you glimpse are the tops of houses set back on a plateau.

I turn the Tracker back onto the old main street, and drive into a hidden world.

Low brick buildings line the street, more than half of them empty and dusted-up inside. There is the United Mine Workers of America hall. Here is the police department, silent. I imagine cops with scarred knuckles sitting inside. A drug store still does business during the week, with a notice that they will no longer be able to cash Workers Compensation checks without proper ID. Small frame houses pick up where the business district leaves off, rising and falling with the land.

I turn into a parking space in front of the cafe.

The girl with dark blue eyes at the register would be pretty but worry has already started weighing her down. She keeps herself turned inward. I sit in the no-smoking section by myself and sip the giant mug of coffee she brings me. In the next room people with tired ash-tray expressions start to gather, eat, and talk.

The walls are covered with old photos of railroad tracks leading into the sides of hills, coke ovens, various dirty-and-dangerous-looking mining scenes. That would have been this place, once. It's all green and silent outside of town now. There are mining tools leaning here and there that somebody's grandfather would have used down under the ground. The other wall has photos of various Nascar drivers, brightly-painted half-scale car-hoods hanging like heraldic shields.

The big-screen TV at the other end of my empty non-smoking room is showing a race. I am too sophisticated to be interested in it. Then I watch it out of boredom. Then I lean forward as the crews swarm their cars. Unbelievable! Near-collisions as the drivers jerk out of the pits, fighting back onto the track. I pick a car. Go, dammit, Go!

I look at the photos on the walls again, and I see knights. Well.

The girl comes back to give me my food.

"Why is West Blocton 'west'? Was there a plain old 'Blocton' Blocton once?"

"I... never thought of it," she says. "Maybe it's in our city book over there."

(Go east out of town, past the sign telling all the businesses that used to be there. Cross the low spot where the railroad tracks once ran. Find the sign that tells you where the coke ovens were. Imagine the field full of rows of company housing, a company store. That was Blocton. Gone.)

My breakfast-served-all-day is pretty good. The girl asks me what else I need, and I say I'm fine. Maybe that's all she wanted to hear. Maybe I'm just funny looking. Who knows why. But she lets a movie-star smile out of hiding, and her dark blue eyes flash as happy as daylight seen from the bottom of a mine-shaft.