I'll always remember Centralia fondly as the post-apocalyptic wasteland of my childhood. Before the state was forced to close off the section of Route 61 that l

I'll always remember Centralia fondly as the post-apocalyptic wasteland of my childhood. Before the state was forced to close off the section of Route 61 that later became known as the "Graffiti Highway," you were likely to encounter abrupt drops and ridges in the pavement as you drove through, the result of subsidence caused by the fires burning through the coal veins below. You were also treated to the sight of smoke wafting up from fissures in the ground, and sometimes even flames. I took my girlfriend for a visit 7 or 8 years ago. At that point the town had been almost completely razed. Without explanation to an uninitiated viewer, curbs and fire hydrants bizarrely poked out from a field of weeds that had grown over much of the town's streets, the houses behind them long bulldozed and abandoned. The strangest thing to me, though, was the juxtaposition of the newly-constructed Locust Ridge Wind Farm high on a neighboring mountain, its enormous windmills plainly visible from the rubble on the hill in town, all offering a stark and beautiful reminder that even after the apocalypse things can get better.