west by northwest (by midwest)

The old Fresh Market sign was obliterated first. It happened just after the store closed and the city took over the parking lot. The first time I saw it, I was hurrying around the perimeter of the parking lot, avoiding eye contact with the menacing men that sometimes congregate on that block. I noticed a smudge of black–smoke? an airplane?–hovering in my peripheral vision like a bee or a UFO. I cupped one hand over my eyes, looked up, and there it was: a post-war cityscape with fallen skyscrapers; a secret sentence in an FBI file; a Franz Kline painting.

I didn’t realize I was walking toward the sign until I found myself standing beneath it. It had lured me into the parking lot despite the danger.

I wondered if the Fresh Market corporation wanted to erase all traces of their store in this neighborhood–hence obliterating all signs of their failure. If so, it will never work. Everyone still refers to this as the old Fresh Market–or if they’ve lived here awhile, the old Albertson’s. The place doesn’t lose its association just because someone paints over the sign. Even when a new store moves in, old-time residents will call this the “old Albertson’s” or “old Fresh Market.” That is part of how cities stay alive. I remembered when I visited Rome and I could not understand how a city just kept building on top of itself, covering old ruins. This. This is how.

Or maybe Fresh Market just wanted to stop drivers from turning into the lot, only to realize the store has closed. Since I cannot drive, I forget sometimes how different the city appears from a car. Pedestrians can sense a store has closed without any warning: no lights, no crashing of carts in the front entrance, no sugar scents from the bakery, no employees lighting up on break behind the store, no life inside the store. On the street level, the place feels like a corpse. No need to check the sign for store hours; we pedestrians already know the Fresh Market is dead. Drivers, on the other hand, never know until they turn into the lot and park the car.

But then another blacked-out sign appeared across the street, where an auto shop went out of business. Of course, the sign did not literally “appear”; it always stood there. But I never noticed it–never really noticed it–until someone blacked it out, erased it, obliterated it.

This time, whoever did it obliterated all signs of the store name–no abstract shapes traced around the letters. Something about the intersection of the two blank slabs gives me chills every time I walk past this sign. Is this the crossroads at which Salt Lake City stands? This corner feels ghostly and prescient. From beyond the grave, the store warns us about empty storefronts to come. I imagine every sign on the street blacked out, blank. Even ghost towns don’t look like that.

I try not to feel bleak. Instead, I think of the City Creek revitalization project just a few blocks to the east. It promises a shiny new mall, towering condos and a Harmon’s grocery store. And to the west, there is the new Sunflower Market. To the south, a gigantic new Whole Foods. The neighborhood is alive. But what about these ruins? What happens to a city that obliterates its history–even seemingly insignificant fragments like the name of a grocery store or tire shop? When Roman engineers dug tunnels for new subways, they uncovered the ruins of imperial houses–complete with kitchens–and even an old copper factory. Who back then recognized the significance of those places in Rome’s history?

Granted, an old Fresh Market feels like a far cry from an imperial house, but even still, think about what a grocery store could tell future archaeologists about life in 2011. Think about how the store nourished the neighborhood for so many years. Surely another business will move in someday and crash a wrecking ball into the bricks, and then everything will be gone. But somehow, that feels fundamentally different than blacking out the sign. That would be an act of life, not death–of hope, not failure or shame or denial.

As I walk past the obliterated signs, I find myself clinging to memories of what once was–if only because the blacked-out signs force me to remember. It’s just like the old game: Don’t think of an elephant. You cannot help but picture that elephant, despite your best efforts. The signs say, “don’t think of ______,” but I do.

In the basement of the Salt Lake City temple, Mormon faithful baptize the dead. Living people stand in for the deceased ones, hoping to bring spirits into the fold. Mormons believe dead people’s spirits can learn the Mormon gospel, but without a physical body, they can never be baptized; hence the proxies in the temple basement.

Although I am not Mormon, this ritual appeals to me. It is the ultimate second chance. More than once, I have walked past the temple and wondered if anyone was down inside the baptistry, submerged under the water in the giant elliptical tub. I have wondered what it would be like to do that for someone–to believe that you could do that for someone. I wished that I believed in it–not the religious doctrine, but the faith that I could send a telegraph to the heavens, show a lost loved one he is wanted back in the fold.

This is also why Mormons obsess over genealogy. They need to know the names of lost relatives so they can baptize them. They need addresses, as it were, for those telegraphs to the spirit world.

Once, when I toured the Salt Lake Temple visitor center, I logged onto the genealogy computers and searched for my oldest brother, dead for two years at that time, killed by a heart attack. I got a hit complete with his social security number, and I felt an irrational thrill: I could run a background check. I could find out things he never told me in life. I could learn enough to write his story–stand in for him. Resurrect him.

But I never ran the check. Computer databases, I thought, cannot communicate with the dead. What I really meant was I could not.

A few months later, I was searching online for an underground bowling alley where I spent many a weekend night as a child, watching my parents bowl in leagues. I was desperate to remember its name or even find a photograph of the interior. All I could remember was that it was underground, it had a daycare center adjacent to a video arcade, and it was the only place I ever saw the youngest of my older brothers before he committed suicide some thirty years before. I wanted to visit the alley on a trip home to Iowa. Maybe descending those steps again or touching the dingy wallpaper would help me remember more about this brother, the first one I lost. Maybe sipping a fountain soda at the same table where I shook his hand–just that once, “hi, nice to meet you,” not yet knowing he was my brother–would bring me some kind of closure.

But the alley closed years ago, and the owners sealed the stairwell with cement, like a tomb.

In an online forum, some people from my hometown claimed the alley was still fully operational. One just needed to break into the back service entrance and flip a switch for private underground bowling. One man claimed he had done it.

In my mind, my brother existed only inside that alley, and now it was his tomb. Endless proxies for his friends and family broke inside for illicit bowling tournaments with a ghost. If I had to break in to see the alley again, so be it. I would find a way. I would even bowl down there alone.

And then I found out the truth: someone stripped the guts of the alley long ago. The graphics on the side walls are all that is left. No pin setters. No lanes. Just an empty hole.

I am a refugee from Tumblr. I couldn’t take the teenagers and tech issues any longer.

Please excuse the mess while I clean up internal links and re-upload missing photos.