there were the abandoned hobo jungles near the railroad depot on neibolt street , where one could sometimes find tomato soup cans half-full of mulligatawny stew and bottles with a swallow or two of beer left in them ; there was the alley behind the aladdin theater , where bull durham cigarettes were smoked and black cat firecrackers sometimes set off ; there was the big old elm which overhung the river , where scores of boys and girls had learned to dive ; there were the hundred ( or perhaps it was closer to two hundred ) tangled trails winding through the barrens , an overgrown valley which slashed through the center of town like a badly healed scar .