“There lies another Ozymandias of consumer capitalism,” writes Andrew Mayeda, Bloomberg journalist covering global economics in Washington, “(But) where will grandfathers take their grandsons for ice cream?”
Mayeda was reminiscing about his boyhood visits with his grandfather to the Century III Mall in the early '80s. His taciturn grandfather would take him to the food court there and get him a scoop of blackberry ice cream.
The Century III Mall, as all expat Pittsburghers know, is 10 miles southeast of the Burgh on Route 51. It was constructed in 1979 on a former slag heap by Edward DeBartolo (then owner of the San Francisco 49ers).
At one point, the 1.3 million-square-foot complex housed anchor stores like Sears, JCPenney, Macy’s, Lazarus, Kaufmann’s, Gimbels, and Montgomery Ward (remember these?) and hundreds of smaller venues, like Auntie Ann’s Pretzels and a host of keygrinders and leathergoods kiosks.
As of 2019, Century III is defunct.
Hence Mayeda’s nod to Ozymandias. It’s a reference to Percy Bysshe Shelley’s spooky poem about Egyptian Pharoah Rameses II, the infamous tyrant who arrogantly (and insanely) said no when Moses said “Let my people go.”
Rameses had a much cooler Greek nickname, Ozymandias. As an expression of his overweening “full of himself” pride, he commissioned a 26-foot-tall statue of himself. And just in case his point wasn’t already clear, he had inscribed at the base, under his granite feet, these words:
“King of Kings Ozymandias am I. If any want to know how great I am and where I lie, let him outdo me in my work.”
When Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, his team of scientists and archeologists unearthed fragments of this statue, now a pile of broken stones, the inscription barely readable.
By 1798 (and long before), the statue of Ozymandias — despite his self-anointed greatness — is defunct. The great Egyptian empire of three millennia now lies mummified in history books and museums. Ozymandias looks now like a liar and a fool.
Shelley memorialized this, because that’s just what poets do:
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
I’ve loitered for hours in the heyday of the Century III Mall, in its halcyon great years. But now, pictures from the newly published “Abandoned Malls of America” by Seph Lawless reveal a graveyard of dim eldritch halls, empty and decrepit escalators, echoes of muzak mourning in the distant spaces, wispy shadows of middle-aged shoppers and mall rats and gunless mall cops, all lingering by the dry fountain, waiting for the '80s to call. It is now, as Shelley says, a “colossal wreck.”
It sure didn’t seem that way back then, did it? Remember, decades ago, ascending in those grand escalators, like the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, where you saw rising with your cohort of fellow shoppers up and up, inside a dizzy panopticon of your many selves reflected on both sides and in front of and above you? Recall the constant drone of far-off familiar music that you once loved but was now bowdlerized into a thousand strings and a tired band? Can you still smell the smells of sprayed parfum de French-something-or-another, spritzed on little cards by young women coiffured in the second-latest couture? It was convenient, safe, gauche but comfortably numb, protected from aliens and enemies, all in the mall of another and safer world.
Truth be told, it was all a bit tacky, no? Look at Century III Mall now. Look at many other edifices to obsolete (and ugly) visions of greatness. “‘Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ Nothing beside remains.” Despair indeed.
You’ve heard the saying “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions”? That is not true. Good intentions must precede good works. That misbegotten aphorism likely comes from someone who was not only putting down good intentions, but also was rationalizing his unwillingness to do any good at all.
Heaven’s road is all about good intentions and works. True Christian influence only comes about through meekness and service. It is all about the road of Jesus Himself, of feetwashing, of bread-breaking and cross-bearing, of giving and not taking, of forgiving and not avenging, of persuading and never forcing.
Rather this: The road to hell is paved with intentions of domination and power. It rises, like a golden stairway climbing up mountains of influence. It is paved with the shards of Ozymandias, the detritus of every tawdry mall reverie, every edifice complex and ego fever-dream, every ecstatic vision of dominion. “For wide is the gate,” Jesus said in the Gospel of Matthew, “and broad is that road, that leadeth to destruction.”
“But where will grandfathers take their grandsons for ice cream?” I know a place. It’s not in a mall, but simply called “The Freeze.” It’s outside, right off Broad Street, in a town untouched by shopping malls or even big box stores. Not a single tower. The tallest building is the 1758 Cupola House. Jazz and country jams with Chris on some Thursdays, Trivia on Wednesdays and Vinyl Nights on Saturdays at Edenton Bay. Small shops up and down the main, and they all shut down on Sunday mornings.
After all, there’s something else to do then, someone to pray to, someone to follow, someone to be friends with.
Not Ozymandias.
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