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Adam Schaeffer
Dr. Bailey
Eng. 207
3/5/07
Stairs to Nowhere
They were old stairs. All of them had cracks and most of them were rounded smooth on the edges. Years of rainfall and feet had worn them down, making them look tired and soft. Cautiously, animals would creep around on them fearing collapse while the plants cleverly wormed their way through the dry, gritty concrete. Grooves had been carved into the dirt next to the stairs by water descending from the street above, making me wonder how far the surface underneath the stairs had been cut. These details were just bonuses to what had really caught my attention about the stairs. I was walking to old Callier’s Deli a few miles from my house when they caught the corner of my eye. Most of the time, when stairs are built they connected one area to another area. The first area had a logical reason for being connected to the second area. With the stairs on the side of the road, this concept seemed to have been overlooked. These stairs, while apparently of good, caring, and sturdy construction, didn’t go anywhere.
On the side of Manchester Road in Manchester, Missouri where it intersects at Reis Road with an old apartment complex, a gas station, a family owned furniture store of three generations and the government building for Ballwin, Missouri there lies a quiet and almost totally ignored oak tree in a very small but tidy patch of green Kentucky grass. Leading down to this tree on the other side of the small clearing are the stairs. The stairs lead up to Manchester Road where hundreds of cars and minivans rush children back and forth from baseball practice and bored mothers and fathers from bars and stores where they find creative ways to battle their collective loneliness. What I notice is that these stairs are older than the road. They are older than the tree. They are older than the apartment complex and the furniture store and the government building. They are older than all of the people rushing back and forth in their cars and S.U.V.’s on the road above it. I decided that there was something to learn here. Maybe if I sat down and looked really hard I could learn something from these stairs. How much can one learn from ancient concrete? Certainly there must be a way for it to speak. I pulled out a piece of paper and started drawing them. I drew the cracks and the smooth edges. I drew the funnels of dirt on the sides of the stairs and the plants slyly sticking out from the weak areas of the edges and sides. I drew the missing pieces and the pieces of the stairs lying next to the stairs. After drawing for a few minutes, I got up slowly and walked over to the stairs. Carefully I walked up and down them and around them. Who else had walked on these stairs before me? Where were they going? What used to be here that was so important as to need these stairs? Again I sat down between the stairs and the kindly oak tree. I had learned something. What was it? Words assembled themselves into ideas and presented themselves for approval. Each thought was getting closer. There was a great truth to be gleaned from where I was. Without having to search I was going to learn something important that I could take with me to old Callier’s Deli and mull over while eating a half Carpenter roast beef sandwich with Cheddar cheese. Those steps were there when old Calliers Deli wasn’t and Callier’s Deli was old. There, that was it. My brain assembled a few words quickly into a short thought and rushed it to me.
“The passage of time is subjective to the observer.”
Old and decrepit, the stairs had told me something that took them decades to learn. Time was relative to the observer’s perception of it, but regardless of how it was observed it still continued to pass. The stairs did not know about years or minutes. They were encountering season after season, sun after moon after sun. While both of us were experiencing time, we both experienced it differently. Those stairs were demolished a short time later. They only exist now in a small drawing in my little black book. I like to trace them with long fingers some days when I need to remind myself of what the stairs told me.
