But, if they go back to where Phillips was off Spur 119, if they get past security guards in white trucks wearing dark glasses, there isn't much to remind them of what it was. All that's left now besides the refinery, which has mushroomed in size since the town closed, its steel tentacles forever reaching, is the school. The company uses it for office space. And there's Chesty Walker Stadium, what's left of it. The two-story press box is gone, picked clean from the bleachers, and so is the scoreboard.
Trees growing up through the rotting white grandstand pay a silent standing tribute to old memories.
He gave a visitor a tour last week, pointing at scarred red dirt and mangled trees and brush and seeing a house, a store, a church, a town. Unlike some others, he said he isn't bitter about what happened to the place where he lived most of his life. He said he's grateful to the company for making its utopia last as long as it did, as short as it seems now. Still, it would have been hard to imagine 32 years ago on a cold night in Vernon. The Blackhawks were just trying to win a football game then, trying to beat this upstart new football power and make it back to the state title game again.