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and didn’t talk much about it; a town

where you went sledding in winter

and huckleberry picking in summer

and ran home after school to catch

Roy Rogers or Dick Clark’s Ameri-

can Bandstand on your family’s new

black-and-white TV.

“It was a good time to grow up,” she

says. “It was a nice town. People were

friendly.”

And then the town caught fire.

N

o one knows for sure how or

even when in 1962 it started,

but the best guess is that it was

after town workers burned some trash

at the local dump.

The next day, something was still

burning—an exposed seam of coal.

There was little worry at first; such

fires are common in coal country.

But Centralia’s blaze proved relent-

less as it fed on other coal seams and

long-sealed tunnels full of broken

timbers.

Slowly, the earth began to heat up

and hollow out. Smoke belched from

cracks in the ground. A long stretch

of Route 61 buckled and crumbled,

glowing red at night. Residents re-

ported hot basement walls and

noxious fumes; one got knocked un-

conscious while watching TV. Local

and state government spent millions

trying to douse the fire, without

success.

Finally, on Valentine’s Day 1981,

the earth buckled in Todd Dombos-

ki’s grandmother’s backyard, almost

Rockin’ Around

reader miracle My stepfather,

Marlin, bought a dancing

Christmas tree in the mid-

2000s as a gimmick decoration.

Marlin passed away in 2014,

and my sister, Stacy, took

possession of the tree. Stacy

got engaged to her longtime

boyfriend on Thanksgiving

night. The tree was unpacked,

but it had no batteries. Later

that evening, with all the ladies

sitting around talking, the

tree lit up and started to dance.

The empty battery pack was

in hand, and the only

conclusion we could reach

was that Marlin was sending

his blessing and dancing a jig.

—Norman Powers

sheffield, alabama

Marlin’s spirit lit up his

61

Cover Story Reader’s Digest

courtesy norman powers