-from Little Worlds
We rent an old warehouse space on the third floor of a building across from the courthouse. Our large open room is filthy and in need of rewiring and plumbing. There’s no heat or cooling. The county jail is right behind us, and there’s a lawyer on the floor below us and a game room below him.
Marshall is small, contained on one side by the river and the other side by a mountain. There are people on the street during the day: shopping, banking, brokering real estate, or sitting on the benches in front of the courthouse. One of Laura’s cousins owns a home-furnishings store here. There is a library, and the librarian has asked me to hang my pictures in the front window.
But the town has been on a downhill slide since it was bypassed by a new road in the late 1960s. Shuttered buildings are becoming more prevalent, and ours is the first new business in town in many years. Old people talk about the time before the bypass and I-40, when the town was on the most direct route between Asheville and Knoxville. Then, it was so busy there wasn’t room on the sidewalk for everyone. For me, it’s funny and unsettling to think about trying to figure out my life in a dying town.