I faced the downhill grade in front of me and tightened my grip on the back of David’s wheelchair. The clerk at the Lackawanna Station Hotel had recommended THIS STREET for pedestrians headed to Steamtown? Could I even maneuver my husband down this hill without duplicating a comedy cliché?
“Do you think we can make it?” David said. He sounded unsure we’d survive to attend his grand-nephew’s wedding in the Poconos this weekend.
“I’ll lean backwards,” I replied. “That should help.” I’d only need to hoof it one way. Once we finished touring Steamtown, we’d catch a taxi back to the hotel.
I played counterweight and inched down the hill, heart thumping and palms sweating. The uneven sidewalks in this part of Scranton sure left a lot to be desired. David and I had always loved to take walks together when we traveled. We couldn’t dance together anymore. Just because a poltergeist now inhabited his knee replacement was no reason to stop all our strolls, too. We reached the base of the incline without me tripping or wetting my pants. Then I steeled myself for the next exercise: crossing the railroad tracks.
Now, I’ve crossed many a railroad track in my day. The trick is being sure there’s no train coming and, of course, not getting stuck. The “Wheelchair Management 101” data base program in my brain performed a quick computation. I’d pull David and the chair over the tracks instead of pushing.
“Ready, set, go!” I said.
Except we didn’t go far. We stalled on the tracks. David couldn’t walk and I couldn’t push or pull him. And I heard the horn of a diesel locomotive.
Okay, we were close to Steamtown. They ran tourist excursion trains there. Diesel trains, usually. Not far up these tracks, a closed barrier sat across the rails. The train we heard probably wasn’t headed in our direction. However, the police car rolling by screeched to a halt.
“You can’t go this way,” the policeman shouted.
Tell me about it.
“We’re trying to visit Steamtown.” I put on my best little-old-lady-stuck-in-a-stupid-situation expression. “The hotel people told us to take this route.”
Another diesel horn sounded. The concerned policeman freed David and the wheelchair from the tracks.
“You’ll have to go back up that hill,” he said. “Go over to the shopping mall. There’s an entrance there.”
“THAT hill?” How the heck would I manage?
“I can’t help you,” he said. “I have to get back to my car.”
I thanked him. I pushed. I pulled. I prayed. A small audience gathered, some people asking to help, others staring like they’d now seen it all. I would have handed out business cards directing them to my author’s website, but I didn’t dare relinquish my grip on David’s chair. I didn’t even dare change drivers, despite offers of assistance. By the time I reached the top of the hill, I sweated like a marathon runner in the Mojave Desert.
The next blocks were flat, if not entirely wheelchair friendly. Passers-by rendered aid at street corners, assuring us we could reach Steamtown through the mall. I checked my little map. The passage from the mall to the historic museum appeared short and straight. Why had the staff at the Lackawanna Station Hotel not directed us this way in the first place?
I found out why when we reached the door to Steamtown in the mall’s food court. The elevated pathway looked like a combination of a roller coaster track and a third-world foot bridge. Plus the Scranton Police Department had recently closed the route for safety purposes.
So much for local police intra-agency communication.
Maybe if I pushed David a few blocks past the mall, we’d find a real entrance to Steamtown. More nice people helped us to navigate more defiant street corners.
“I’m afraid there’s no safe access to Steamtown for a wheelchair,” a kind woman informed me. “Right now you have to drive there.”
Plenty of pork was spent to build the place and no ADA access? By the time we went back to the hotel it would be too late to call a taxi and return here before closing time.
“We made this side trip to Scranton for nothing.” David sighed. He sounded as disappointed as I was.
“Not for nothing,” I replied. “Scranton has a lot of great people and we got to meet some of them.”
Dandy & Bandy Gandy Dancers
I rested my hand on David’s shoulder. As one, we listened to the horn blasts of locomotives from Steamtown. We watched a train pass in the distance. We took photos of some historic buildings. A warm breeze carried the aromas of diesel and days gone by.
“How about we dance at the wedding reception this weekend?” I said. My brain already calculated a way.
May you encounter wonderful people this holiday season.
Laurel Anne Hill (Award-Winning Author of “Heroes Arise.”)