As a young girl, my parents would take us to Cairo, West Virginia each summer. We visited my Uncle “Junior” and Aunt Catherine. My cousins, Paul and Mike, were much older; therefore, my sister and I were often left to find our own entertainment on these annual visits. The railroad ran through the town of Cairo. My aunt and uncle lived about 50 yards off of the railroad tracks and directly across the tracks was The Heaton Agate Company marble factory. If I had not seen a marble factory with my own eyes I would have imagined it to be a lovely place that looked like a magical castle with beautiful flowers and giant sized marbles sitting on top fence posts that surrounded a world where fanciful balls of glass in a myriad of colors with no two alike were crafted out of fire and melted glass.
But, the marble factory that I knew was nothing like one would imagine such perfect treasures to be crafted—treasures that would be carried in the small hands of children, tucked inside their pockets, buried in a sandbox as hidden treasures and eventually lost only to be found by some other lucky child to become their treasure to behold.
Having grown up visiting Cairo, West Virginia, I learned that a marble factory is really a small, square building with dirty broken windows and a flat roof. On the outside, mountains of broken green, brown, clear and blue glass lay in heaps near the walls of the building. Overgrown weeds and tall grass so high that it looked like a miniature jungle surrounded the marble factory where the stray cats that made their home there must have certainly pretended to be the king of that jungle. The marble factory in Cairo, West Virginia looks as if it could have been condemned. Even though, as a child, I always thought a marble factory should have been a far prettier place, I realize now just as we should not judge a book by its cover, we should also not judge a building by its exterior. The marble factory in Cairo truly shows that beauty and the treasures one has to offer comes from the inside.
As I sat in my van that morning, the train cars a blur in front of me, my mind took me back to those railroad tracks that ran alongside the marble factory. One of the few things I looked forward to on our annual summer trips to West Virginia was scavenging the railroad tracks for marbles. For some reason, I never really understood why, marbles would end up along the railroad tracks. My sister Elana and I would spend at least a couple hours a day digging through the rocks along the tracks in search of those precious colorful balls of glass. We’d start closest to the marble factory. That was always the easiest place to find them.
“I found one!” one of us would shout. The other one would come running over to see what it looked like. If my sister found one first, I always asked, “What color is it?” as I scampered along the tracks toward her. “Let me see it! Can I hold it?” I would beg her eagerly. There was always something special about the first marble found. Maybe, it was simply because in finding one, I knew they were there to be found again each year. Not knowing why they were there to begin with was such a curious mystery to me. “How did the marbles get from inside the building to alongside the railroad tracks?” I wondered to myself. There was no road that led there. There was no path-- just that thick jungle of weeds and tall grass. I suppose from one year to the next, deep down I was always afraid that we would go to visit Uncle “Junior” and Aunt Catherine and those beautiful balls of colored glass, the treasures along those B & O railroad tracks would not be there anymore.
My sister was braver than I. She often ventured into that jungle of weeds and tall grass. I hung back at the tracks teetering on the rails looking for her as she searched the lower canopy for marbles. I clung to the safety of the perimeter where the bugs and other weed and tall grass critters could not get me. My sister often found some spectacular marbles on those missions. Well, they seemed spectacular to me, perhaps in part because she obtained them through bravery which I lacked, but also because those marbles were sometimes a salmon pink colored one or even a two-toned aqua and blue combination—both marbles which were rare. “Can I have that one?” I had asked desperately wanting the salmon pink one. “No,“ she said, “Finder’s keepers, loser’s weepers.”
My hopes often rested in the chance that when Mom took us walking up the railroad tracks later during our visit, I would find some special marbles of my own. Usually by the end of the first day of our visit, I had asked her the required 1572 times for Mom to finally say, “Yes.” The three of us, Mom, Elana and I, would start walking up the tracks shortly after dinner. Usually, I would skip along the railroad ties when we first started out on our journey. I could afford carelessness in the early parts of our walk because it was in those segments of the track that I had already scavenged for marbles. The railroad ties were not evenly spaced. Sometimes my legs could stretch from one tie to the other, my toes barely reaching. Other times, I had to take a small leap and landed with perfect ease. Arms outstretched to my sides like a bird in flight I would from tie to tie until suddenly there was a tie too far to reach with ease and grace I would propel myself forward not wanting to break my record of how many railroad ties in a row I had skipped across without touching the rocks in between. Sometimes I landed on that just-out-of-reach tie and other times I crashed into the rocks that filled the gaps in between the ties skinning my knees. Mom would stop and use a napkin she kept in her pocket (probably in anticipation of this event) to wipe the blood from my knee and another one to dry the tears from my eyes. Once, my knee and my pride seemed healed enough to continue, we continued up the railroad tracks, the three of us side by side. Inside my mind, I decided that a new game was to count how many railroad ties I could not touch. Once we entered newer territory, I slowed my pace, often balancing on the rail of the track as if I were a gymnast on a balance beam.
Some of the marbles I found were barely peeking through the dirt at the base of the Appalacian Mountains, the sunlight hitting them just right so that the light reflecting off of them was just enough to capture my eye. “Look! I see one!” I’d call and dash off toward it as my sister would follow behind asking, “Where?” Sometimes, I’d get really lucky and as I dug through the dirt with my small eager hands working their fingernails to uncover that one small piece of treasure, I would actually find two playing peek-a-boo.
As if the fact that marbles seemed to mysteriously get from inside the marble factory to along the tracks outside of it was not curious enough, that marbles could be found as far away as a quarter mile of that marble factory was even more puzzling. Marbles would be scattered along the railroad tracks lying at the base of the mountains. I wonder if someone put them there on purpose just for children like us. Maybe he knew there were kids who liked to search for hidden treasures. Maybe he knew that there was a girl like me who would grow up to think back fondly on those beautiful balls of glass. Maybe they were put there for just the right pair of eyes to see.
By the end of each visit, my sister and I were usually lucky enough to have collected a small Zip-loc bag containing about ten marbles each. Occasionally, one of us would find a shooter. Quite often, we would sit on Aunt Catherine’s sunlit couch and look at our marbles trying to decide which one we liked best. Perhaps we might even work out a trade between ourselves.
The train cars in front of me passed by in a blur and as the caboose went by, the signal alarms and lights turned off, the crossbar raised and my mind refocused. I shifted my van into drive and slowly accelerated. As I drove, I thought of those marbles I found as a child and how I wish that I still had them. But, perhaps they are in the hands of a child or in a pocket, or in a sandbox as a buried treasure. Maybe the marbles I uncovered as a child have been uncovered countless times since then in countless other places.
I may not have the marbles from my childhood to remind me of those family trips to visit my father’s family, but I do have something else that may be just as good. My father moved back to Cairo, West Virginia when I was 30. Eventually, he bought the house that was next to the marble factory. When visiting my father, he and I would sit on his back porch around which chunks of red and yellow swirled marble glass dotted his flower beds. Because my father was an alcoholic and he and I did not have a close relationship those talks were some of the best we’d ever had. On his mantle sat a small jar of marbles. Prior to his death, my father asked me what I wanted of his. The only thing I told him that I wanted was the marble glass from his flower beds and the jar of marbles from his mantle-- raw marble glass like the mountains of broken glass outside of the marble factory and beautiful, perfectly round treasures. Together, perhaps, in my mind, they represent that the beauty that lies within. And even as I write this, I have to wonder, if somehow the raw marble glass and the jar of beautiful, colorful marbles somehow represent my father and me…
http://video.answers.com/the-marbles-making-in-cairo-west-virginia-259884824
Thanks for this memory. I have another West Virginia marble story . . . . http://www.breezeborne.com/sleepy-creek/
ReplyDeleteBryan Dubois
Brevard, NC
bryan@apprenticetown.com