Illustration via Unsplash

Queens Plaza, Check 'n Go, and the London Road Laundromat. Cold blue asphalt at nine P.M. on a Monday night in October. Me and the car radio and the windows cracked open. Cold air and warm vents.

All these dim signs along the road and their half-assed cries for attention. Their fluorescent haze snoring into the night above.

Look at me. Or don’t. It’s totally up to you, I guess.

I look. All these bright signs darken around the edges, because they’re packed with oily black cobwebs, stuffed into the corners, cradling the ancient husks left from decades of panicking moths.

London Road is barely lit by tail lights and street lamps and Tokyo Japanese Restaurant. Taqueria La Poblanita. Wisconsin Auto Title Loans. And this month there’s a Halloween Express tucked in tight by the oldest gyro place in town.

But there aren’t any ghosts out here tonight.

”

REMEMBER WHEN EVERYONE IN TOWN HAD AN OPINION ABOUT WHERE THEY BUILT A PANDA EXPRESS? LIKE IT MATTERED?

Ghosts much prefer the attics and stoney basements in the big, elderly houses near downtown. The abandoned floors of the old high school on the hill. The empty hospital up on Clairemont Avenue where all you can hear is the wind wailing against the highest windows. They like the hollow church walls standing in our cemeteries and the trees along our rivers.

I’m alone on London Road. No Big Ben and no Jack the Ripper.

Remember when Panda Express opened on London Road and it caused traffic jams? It was on the TV news. Remember when everyone in town had an opinion about where they built a Panda Express? Like it mattered? And now there’s a little coffee shop backing up the streets, kinda over by Walmart. Who’s in charge of these decisions?

Well, tonight there’s plenty of elbow room on London Road. No headlights in my mirrors. No wait at the 4-way stop. Soon I’ll be parked next to a light pole, waiting for my son to finish his shift. If work was good, he’ll talk. If it was bad, he’ll talk. If it was neither, he’ll look at his phone as we cross London Road and drive home in the dark.

But remember when all we had was a cassette deck? Remember when my dad would drive me home in the dark and all he’d play was Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Chronicle: The 20 Greatest Hits on cassette? That tape had a version of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” that lasted for over 11 minutes. Remember me and my dad, sitting in silence, staring at the lamplit streets of Eau Claire while his pickup truck speakers droned “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” for over 11 minutes? Right now, there’s a never-ending swamp rock bassline drifting on the Autumn breeze, stretching off into the black sky and all the way back to a cassette deck in 1992.

I lied. There is most definitely a ghost on London Road tonight. He sits next to me, staring at the asphalt. His mind is five billion miles away. Reflected in his glasses, I see the signs.

Queens Plaza, Check 'n Go, and the London Road Laundromat.