The Bluestone Review 2025

Prose

“Okay, Mom, but you know what you doctor said. You are supposed to stay on the ground floor with no wandering around inside or outside without someone with you, don’t you remember what the doctor told you?” “Yes, but you weren’t here and I wanted to remember some things that went on in my life that I forgot about until I saw the items in the attic. Please don’t be mad at me. If you are mad at me, get over it now,” Ellen said loudly. “Mom, don’t be like that, I’m trying to help.” “Getting older is no fun, Melissa. Your mind leaves you and you don’t have any of your great but fading memories left.”

“I know, Mom, and it is called Alzheimer’s.” “I don’t care what it’s called. It is no fun.”

The End of a Boom Town Gene Dunford

My hometown of Ivanhoe, Virginia is located between Wytheville and Galax. They are twenty miles in either direction of our town. From the years 1920 until 1981 we were a boom town. We lost all employment jobs to major shutdown. In the earlier years when it was booming, we had five stores. We had stores, banks, schools, theater, Funeral Home, and anything that a community needed. Our jobs that closed us down were the National Carbide Company, which employed 300 people, and the New Jersey Zinc Company, which employed 400 people. We were a tight knit community of around 1200 people. We were called “the town that never sleeps.” The Carbide and New Jersey Zinc worked three shifts. That kept our businesses booming. Now we have lost everything in town, no jobs. I mean this ghost town is nothing like I remember it in my 83 years. What a sad picture for such a nice town that I remember.

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