"But we can't change it, so we are moving on." They both grew up here, she says, and have never been sick. Roberts ticks a few notes on his clipboard as Cox's sister and business partner, Joyce, 75, shakes her head and tears up. "We didn't have anyone left to sell food to," co-owner Gary Cox, 69, tells Roberts as he follows him around the room. In fact, there isn't much of anything inside except for a walk-in refrigerator. The Gorillas Cage-named for Picher-Cardin High School's mascot-has been gutted. Mounds of fine white grit called chat-leftover minerals from mining operations-loom over the town, 200 feet high. Up and down the street, storefronts are boarded up, empty, dark. "And I wouldn't drink the water."Ĭlimbing out of the Mercury, Roberts notices an uprooted mailbox leaning against the side of the Gorillas Cage and a pickup truck loaded with restaurant equipment. "There's still dust in the air," he says in a laid-back Midwestern drawl.
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He rolled up his car windows before he hit the city limits. A retired state representative, he has a rosy face and sports a pressed plaid button-up. His job is to inspect contaminated buildings that the state of Oklahoma is going to buy and tear down. Roberts, the operations manager of the Lead-Impacted Communities Relocation Assistance Trust, works about 10 miles away in the town of Miami. Roberts is here to make sure the owners have cleared it out for demolition. Hand-painted placards in the windows advertise burger baskets, corn dogs, and a couple of untruths-"Last Place in Picher!" and "Yes, We're Open!" When it closed in March, the Gorillas Cage was the only restaurant left in Picher, Oklahoma. The restaurant's red and white metal trim is faded and rusted, and the lightbulb-lined roadside sign has been dark for years. Larry Roberts angles his white Mercury Grand Marquis into the empty parking lot of a tiny café, G & J's Gorillas Cage, and cruises into a space near the front door.
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