I drive by the former Dixmont State Hospital every day on my way to work.
A year from now I may be saying: I drive by the Wal-Mart Supercenter every day on my way to work.
They have already torn down the old buildings, removed all the trees, plowed and bull-dozed the hillside and sprayed it with green grass seed. The big white sign says: “Site of Future Wal-Mart Supercenter.” Still, no one is quite sure if they are really going to build the behemoth or not.
Back in September, a mammoth landslide spilled across both sides of Route 65 and all the way across the innermost railroad tracks. It was a miracle that no cars were on the road when the tons of dirt and mud and shale and rock cascaded in a murky, muddy rush. Cargo rail traffic was halted in one direction. Four lane Route 65 was closed for days, weeks, snarling commuter traffic that had to re-route onto smaller roads or bigger highways.
There was a hue and cry from more than just “Communities First,” a fringe group of concerned and vocal local citizens vehemently opposed to a Wal-Mart Supercenter on the outskirts of Sewickley.
The cause of the landslide was debated. Was it due to overzealous dynamite blasting the day before? The collapse of the underground tunnels that used to connect the maze of outerbuildings of the former mental hospital? Shoddy leveling of the hillside in an attempt to save money instead of insuring a stable platform for the giant store and its accompanying parking lot? Failure to take into consideration the inherent instability of Pennsylvania redbed rock, which was prevalent on the site and perhaps unwisely used as on-site fill? This unstable rock had the characteristic of crumbling and turning into mud when exposed to water, and there had certainly been many days of rain leading up to September 19th.
I did not particularly look forward to there being a Wal-Mart Supercenter smack dab in the middle of the route between Sewickley and Pittsburgh.
More so than this, though, I missed the old Dixmont.
Growing up, I had always known about Dixmont, the state mental hospital up on the hill above Route 65. It closed down a few years after I graduated from high school, but you could see at least one building (a power plant perhaps?) from the road as you drove to and from Pittsburgh. I had not realized that in its time Dixmont had been a rather elaborate compound with multiple buildings and well-groomed landscaping.
I had always sort of envisioned a gray, Soviet-style, cement block building with padded rooms and bars on all the windows. A sterile, cold forbidden structure that people only referenced in passing.
Dixmont, the oldest mental hospital in Western Pennsylvania, was started way back in 1862. It was named after Dorothea Dix, a pioneering advocate for the humane treatment of the mentally ill at a time when mentally ill people were routinely thrown into jails, cages, or other sordid lock-ups.
When I was growing up, people would use “Dixmont” as a synonym for mental hospital. Instead of saying, one was going to end up in the nut house or the loony bin, people would say, one was going to end up at Dixmont. It was the Kleenex or Coke of mental hospitals, Pittsburgh’s version of Bedlam.
I did not know that Dixmont had once been a small, self-sufficient city. With gardens and orchards and livestock, its own post office, bakery, chapel, train stop, and cemetery. I did not know that wealthy people went there to dry out for a few months in pampered luxury paid for by their extra money. I did not know that early patients gardened and raised livestock and hooked rugs and sewed clothes and canned vegetables and fruits and went to quarterly dances. They played croquet and baseball and tennis, and in winter went for sleigh rides.
I did not know that hydrotherapy and electric shock and lobotomies and drugs had all been tried there as therapies, after the “work therapy” of its longtime head was deemed cruel and unusual punishment. You could not make patients work for no pay. You could, however, submerge them in hot or cold tubs of water for hours on end, send electric shock waves through their bodies, chop out parts of their brains, and turn them into zombies.
Dixmont started having financial trouble by the mid part of the 20th century. It went into a long slow decline and finally had been closed down. The state had had a hard time trying to sell off the 407 acres of land encumbered by crumbling, asbestos-ridden buildings.
Not long after I moved back to Sewickley in 2003, developers came in saying they were going to tear everything down and build a Wal-Mart Supercenter. The level of horror among certain residents of Sewickley was profound, never mind that most of them already frequented the Wal-Marts, Targets, Sams Clubs, and Costcos on the other side of the river. Having such a tacky discount behemoth right down the road from Sewickley was a bit much, however, and people protested that a Wal-Mart would put all of the small businesses in Sewickley out of business. And create a traffic snarl on the major road between Sewickley and Pittsburgh.
There was no stopping progress it seemed, not even contentious progress, and wrecking crews began to tear down the buildings. Once they took down the trees on the hillside and the dilapidated power plant building, you could see the structures of some of the other larger outbuildings. I was stunned that they looked so architecturally attractive.
When crews started tearing down these buildings, I was saddened. I was not sure why. It almost seemed like they were desecrating a sacred spot.
Every time I drove by, I swore I could hear the screams of anguished mental patients. High-pitched, drawn-out, agonized screams. They were all women. I imagined them as the tortured souls of women who had never been allowed to pursue their own talents and interests; been forbidden higher education; or if given the opportunity of higher education, never been allowed to put it to use. Frustrated, overworked mothers and wives who led quiet lives of desperation while doing the biddings of men. I didn’t hear any men’s screams, yet I knew Dixmont had housed both men and women. This wailing sounded eerily like what I imagined my own screams would have sounded like, if I had been a former inmate ghost at an abandoned mental hospital.
Once the buildings were gone, they began plowing away the side of the hill. It was remarkable, sort of what I imagined strip mining to be. The only problem was that the ground under the former hospital was an incredibly unstable mix of shale and limestone and sandstone and mud. Add in a lengthy spate of heavy rains and the fact that all of the trees and underbrush had been removed, and it was a recipe for disaster.
A massive landslide of mud and shale and debris fell down the side of the hill, all the way across the four lanes of the highway, and across the railroad tracks. It was a miracle that no cars were on that stretch of road at the time of the slide. The cars would have surely been swept under the debris and any occupants buried alive.
Hubris was the word that popped into my mind. Developers who wanted to make a ton of money, Wal-Mart coming in to create yet another outlet. Not listening to anyone else, not listening to concerns about the environment or the impact on local economies. Just plowing ahead. Posting their sign with a projected “Opening Soon!” proclamation. Trying to level the hillside so as to make the largest parking lot possible, instead of being worried about making a stable foundation for their store. That sort of thing.
Sometimes, when I am feeling out of sorts or in a funk – and I can’t always tell what is causing this depression -- I feel like my insides are shifting. I am all alone on the unstable slatey, muddy mass of the Dixmont hillside. I feel like I am hanging on by a thread, that the world as I know it is shifting precariously beneath my feet. I feel raw and on edge. Exposed. Waiting for everything to come crashing down all around me and inside me and all over.
The sound that accompanies this feeling is fingernails scratching down a chalkboard. I hear it constantly.
I wonder if other people ever feel this way, too. I mean, I figure they must. But then you never know. Maybe not.
It is not too much caffeine, too little sleep, or hormone imbalances. It is not PMS. It is not an odd alignment of the stars and planets.
I don’t know what it is. And that causes part of the paralyzing fear.
I do not know what is causing this feeling; when it is going to descend; or how long it is going to stay. External events can exacerbate it, and when the fingernails are screeching like frenetic, out of tune violins, I feel at a loss to find any kind of optimism or “positiveness” in my life. Even if I want to. Which normally I do.
I pretend that I am made of granite.
Scratch the surface, though, and I think you might just find a strata of Pennsylvania redbed rock instead.
