the old neighborhood

Driving around the old neighborhood on a recent Saturday morning with the whole town still asleep I felt sad that the place looked down at the heels, small, tired -- like the survivor of a protracted struggle that might succumb at any moment to accumulated exhaustion.

When I was a boy our big front lawn seemed a chore to mow. It has shrunk to a narrow patch of turf crowded on two sides by concrete driveways.

For a boy raised in a strict family, raking was a job that came with the pay-off of being trusted with matches. We would rake the leaves into a large pile on the apron of the driveway and burn them just one foot away from the busy thoroughfare that Berdan Avenue was in the 1960s.

I remember when the city came through and cut down the towering elms that lined our block. In place of those old friends were planted 10-foot high saplings with leaves that were supposed to shrivel in the autumn before falling. Those re-plantings now overarch my old block between Roanoke and Bellevue just west of the railroad tracks. Except that the railroad tracks -- there used to be dual tracks -- have long since been torn up.

You know you are old when you can remember when these trees were planted as saplings.

As a boy lying in my darkened bedroom at night awaiting sleep I would watch the automobile headlights play across the walls of the room from the road below as the cars drove over the mound made by that railway crossing.

I would listen for the mysterious and forlorn train whistle. Eventually that sound in the night comforted me. It became a part of my world. The train was wishing me sweet dreams as it barreled past our house on its way to Detroit, Chicago, or maybe St. Louis.



This rise on Berdan Avenue just west of Bellevue used to be a railroad crossing.

happy hour

The writer limped into Bar Louie. His foot was bothering him. He couldn’t remember if he had injured it. He was almost 60 years old. Maybe just age, he thought, fearful, and quickly crawled up on a barstool away from all apprehension.

A female voice said hello. It didn’t immediately occur to him he was the one being so addressed. But after a pause he turned to his left and saw a 20-something, skinny babe. She looked at him almost smiling. It was more a promise she wore on her face than a grin. She was sexy. That was the immediate impression made by that perky countenance and the way she dressed. Sleeveless top and short shorts. Stockings. Christ she was all legs and lips, the old man thought, with luscious light-olive skin everywhere in between.

She told him all kinds of lies. The old man thought she acted like she wanted to hook but wasn’t sure how to take that first step. She seemed to be broke and was neatly stacking the small change she got back after buying a bottle of Budweiser. If she were already hooking surely she’d have plenty of green to flaunt. But maybe that was her play: the vulnerable waif. She was almost anime looking. A fool's fantasy, he thought.

She told him she just wanted to party somewhere and be left alone by the cops. Said she was rousted in the Wal-Mart parking lot where she claimed to have been reading a book in her car. The old man just following the conversation. Said she owns a house in Toledo but her mother rented it out while she was away in South Carolina. She was in South Carolina because she had wanted to get away and that was as far as she got. The old man liked that part. It was about the only thing she said that rang true, he thought.

She was a brunette with a sassy haircut and a titanium barbell through the helix of her right ear. Nice eyes, a piercing gray. She was long and lean and he could not help imagining her flopping uncontrollably like a hooked fish in his selfish embrace.

In conversation he was extremely cool and noncommittal. He certainly was not on the make for some 21-year-old. He figured he had no need to act like an even bigger fool than he must already seem to the youngish female waitstaff watching their odd twosome.

Then this ‘dude’ sitting on the young babe’s left, and who had been giving her the hungry up and down, starts talking to her. The old man contents himself with looking at the TV above the bar. The dude was maybe 30-something. At first glance he was kind of cool looking. But his rap faltered and his looks didn’t hold up to extended scrutiny.

Now the old man thought, was this dude brazenly cutting in on his action? Should he get the sweet babe to turn back his way and talk to him some more? But what did he care. He told himself again he was not going to make her, no way it would ever happen and even as he was forcing those rational thoughts through his mind he scrambled for any experience or memory or sign that might tell him otherwise. It could be possible, couldn't it? Would he even really want to? Dumb question. If she whispered in his ear he knew he would follow her but would only expect to be rolled. It was that kind of situation. Still, he didn’t like this dude thinking he could push him aside. The dude offered to buy her a beer. She said she had a fresh one but would accept another when she was ready. Then the dude got up and headed to the john.

The old man considered following the dude and setting him straight right there in the cramped men’s room. Bugger off, Buckeye boy before I teach you the Japanese word for elbow.

But instead the old man just slouched on his bar stool watching “Around the Horn” on the muted TV, trying to read the slate behind Woody Paige. It had words on it to the effect of “Why do you keep staring at me when I am invisible?” Good question.

The dude came back, settled his tab and walked out. Great, the young babe said, talking to the old man again. There goes my free beer. That guy said he would buy me a beer. But I already had one. Now he’s gone.

Maybe he went to the ATM, the old man joked. He was in his element now. He had dollars. I will be happy to buy you a beer, he told the young babe and she smiled back at him.

There was nothing like a cute girl to make the world a real place, he told himself. She had a turned-up nose and her whole face seemed turned upward. That was a very sexy attitude for a girl, he thought, to be looking up at the man. A mix of admiration, expectation, willingness. It was all there in the upward tilt of the neck, the angle of the eyes.

She liked Hunter Thompson, she said, and the old man told her about duke's derby day story. She corrected him, claiming the derby is run in Lexington, trying to pass herself off as knowledgeable about that part of the country, he supposed, or just knowledgeable about the world in general, as if to say, hey, I'm not just some lost little Toledo girl. I know things. I know about (and long for) the big bad world out there.

The old man didn't argue but of course she was wrong. So young, yet already so full of bull shit. Sad young American. Still he was seduced by her small mouth and her lips like filigree. But she had definite problemos. Was totally mental.

How about writing a story where such a babe does in fact hook up with an older writer guy, himself lost to society anyway. They high-tail it to South Carolina together, running away from boredom, running toward deeper troubles. He liked the idea. Maybe too derivative. But it was one thousand times more real than his manuscript about student hijinks from the 1970s, the old man thought, and realized why he was stalled in the middle of that tale. Compared to this young, sexed up and pathetic babe, it was crap.

Buckeye chic

Recently I visited family in northwest Ohio and southern Michigan. While the latter is rightly celebrated in rock 'n' roll music, the subtle charms of the former may be less familiar to those who live in other parts of the country.

The weather this summer has once again been brutally hot. The key to survival outside the AC is simply to move slow. One unintended consequence of all that 100-degree heat is that no one dares to look at you askance if you are drinking a cold beer.

The landscape is flat, dotted with quarries and lakes. Don't be surprised to see the green stalks of an Ohio cornfield stretch for miles in each direction. Often, if a road or lake appears on the horizon, it proves to be but a thin caesura to Ohio's cash crop. On the far shoulder or shore, the corn rows resume their emerald monotony.

In order for people to pass by those miles of cornstalks and get where they're going, the speed limit on Ohio's highways is set at 65 mph or 70 mph. And if you're on a motorcycle you can let your hair fly in the breeze: there is no helmet law in the Buckeye State. That nickname by the way is taken from the state tree, which is characterized by inedible fruits similar in appearance to chestnuts. The buckeye also lends its name as a slang term for a resident of the 17th state. And just so you know, at least according to a trucker traveling along I-80 near Youngstown, and known by the CB handle Paper Bag, the definition of a buckeye is "a worthless nut."

As for angling, that hobby is just as popular on the shores of the Great Lakes as elsewhere around the country. And while freshwater fishing means smaller catches than saltwater angles may be accustomed to, the dietary rewards are not necessarily less toothsome. Lake Erie yellow perch, priced at $10.99/lb. by Toledo-area fishmongers this summer, make the sweetest filets you'll ever taste.

Some may claim Toledo is but a shadow of its former self. While it is still home to Jeep, one of the world's most distinct automobile brands, Toledo was once a more bustling Great Lakes port, often called Hood City — a reference to the impact of organized crime from nearby Detroit. Now the primary nickname that has stuck is The Glass City, after the bottle and glassware manufacturers that were based there. Toledo used to be home to an array of international companies that have since moved away — even Toledo Scale is now based in Columbus. Toledo was also known around the region for its hometown Buckeye beer. "When you're dry," the slogan went, "Drink Buckeye." Perhaps not quite catchy enough--the brewery closed in the 1970s. In recent years, however, the Buckeye label has been reborn by a local craft brewer.

Back in the day, T-town also boasted memorable entertainment venues like the Town Hall, a burlesque palace where Irma the Body was queen, and the Agora nightclub in West Toledo, where a young Bob Seeger gigged on summer weekends before hitting it big. Of course there is still plenty to do in Toledo today. The city has more summer festivals than Klinger had dresses. (He was from the east side.) The university offers sports programs and cultural performances. The world-class art museum has Van Goghs and mummies in its permanent collection.

The famous Toledo Mud Hens baseball team plays its home games at a beautiful stadium downtown. I paid $9 to sit three rows off the field behind first base. The price of admission included dogs catching frisbees in the outfield between innings.

Then there is the Toledo Zoo with a large array of exotic animals, including a juvenile giraffe, yearling tigers, some very buddha-esque ourangs, and a killer elephant. A pair of bald eagles, the very symbol of our free country, provide an incongruous and sad site in their cage.

Hood City even has is own brand new casino, built along the Maumee River. And if all that's not enough for you, in Ohio you can buy wine and booze at the grocery store. Talk about civilized.