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Even before the disaster, Times Beach people often felt ostracized, were called river rats and worse. But once the news of the town's contamination was out, some uplanders began treating them like white trash from hell. Dry cleaning was refused, at least one restaurant emptied out when a Times Beacher came in, out-of-town friends stopped calling. Now, says Leistner, "when you say Times Beach to people, I think they look you up and down to see if you're green or glow in the dark." If you lived in Times Beach, says Rose Eisen, "you're the scuzz of the earth."
At least they had a sort of solidarity in Times Beach, a tight-knit community. "If I was weaving down the road," recalls Clyde Adams, "they'd call my wife Butch and say, 'Clyde's loaded again.' " In just a few weeks, that social foundation was yanked apart. Says Adams, a resident for 36 years: "I have to drive by there every day to get here, and that's the toughest thing. I get home all melancholy." Perhaps half of the refugees live in the area, and several say they sometimes take the old Times Beach interstate exit by mistake.
"Down in the Beach," says Joe Capstick, "everybody knew everybody's business." The Capsticks have moved to Hilltop Village, an assertively middle-class subdivision. "Up here it's a totally different life-style. They barely say hi. I swear to God, I'd be surprised to find 20 people around here at 10 in the morning. Back in Times Beach, why, you could go down at 10 in the morning and find half the town fishing. It was fun."
Cindy Reid lived in the Beach from childhood. Now, she says, "we're not allowed back there." "You have to have a good reason," explains her friend Ruth Yarborough. "My mom wanted to go down and take pictures of our old houses," says Reid, "but they told her, 'That's not a good reason.' " The Reids, the Yarboroughs and three other families were neighbors in Times Beach, and they are neighbors today. To the west, on 15 acres of virgin forest, they have put up four big log houses. It is the march of history in reverse: displaced by the backsplash of modern technology, Americans head for the wilderness and build with logs.
The checkpoint at which the unspoiled world meets Times Beach has the no- monkey-business aspect of an international border crossing: warning signs, unsmiling uniformed guards, papers to be signed. Former Mayor Leistner remains as the state's trustee and keeps an office in the trailer at the checkpoint. There are loose ends to oversee. The Kleins, for instance. An older couple who still live on the less contaminated southern edge of Times Beach, they have refused the Government's offer of $47,500 to clear out.
The dead town is not altogether useless. Two particularly poisonous blocks have become a valuable research plot; five companies, working on methods of detoxifying dioxin, have paid some $80,000 to rent out bits of Laurel Street for their experiments. The state of Missouri has no plans for the land. Some former residents would like it to become a park. Not Rose Eisen. "I wish they'd blow it off the face of the earth," she says.