Motored

Writer and humorist James Thurber, having been born and raised in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio, once said “the clocks that strike in my dreams are often the clocks of Columbus.” I can’t recall the striking of any memorable clocks during my Ohio childhood, but it seems I’m haunted instead by the cars of Columbus, finding them evocatively indicative of the kind of neighborhood where I grew up and my parents continue to live.

It’s not uncommon to see wrecked cars parked in my parents’ neighborhood. On-street parking is free and ample in my parents’ neighborhood, few folks have garages, and even fewer can afford expensive repairs. If you live in my parents’ neighborhood and your car gets totaled, you probably have to wait for an insurance check–if you even have insurance–before you can make repairs or buy a new ride. In the meantime, you and your family might have to rely upon a different kind of wheels to bring your groceries home.

When I walk Reggie in my parents’ Columbus neighborhood, I take far fewer pictures than I take in either Keene or Newton. It isn’t an issue of Columbus being less interesting or photogenic since I’m convinced my penchant for the old and abandoned was born in the gritty neighborhood where I grew up. Instead, I take fewer photos in my old Columbus neighborhood because I, unlike Thurber, haven’t yet discovered how to bridge the space between the world I come from and the world I now find myself.

Being a wandering photo-blogger is strange enough in New England, where my neighbors have both computers and Internet access. In a high-crime, low-income, digitally-deprived suburb of central Ohio, my laptop finds No Available Networks when I try to pirate free wifi, and wandering with dog and digicam is outright strange and possibly dangerous. As a result, I try to be extremely discreet as I explore my old neighborhood, pulling out my camera only when no one is around and something is odd or unusual enough to scream “snap me.”

My old neighborhood, after all, likes to keep its secrets as well as its treasures hidden, and as a former-resident-turned-outsider, I try to respect locals’ sense of both privacy and pride.

More than anything, I think, it is culture shock that makes it difficult to photograph, make sense, and then blog the world I come from now that I’ve returned to this, the very different world where I now live. Yesterday morning, I packed my car in a gritty Columbus alley; this afternoon, after driving all day yesterday and now finding my feet after a good night’s sleep, I unpacked the same car here in Newton, a tony suburb of Boston. Here in Newton, I needn’t fear the neighbors’ chained pitbulls and Rottweilers will attack me or Reggie when we go for a morning stroll; here in Newton, people don’t park wrecked cars in front of their houses. When I walk my dog in my parents’ neighborhood, I am acutely aware that I am the only lone white woman walking a street where brown faces are the norm; when I walk my dog in Newton, I am acutely aware that I couldn’t on an adjunct instructor’s salary afford to live here.

How far, then, is it from my parents’ neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio to the lush and leafy streets of Newton, Massachusetts?

A long day’s drive will take you from one world to another, the divide between them being more than miles.

 

Uninspired

I’ve been largely offline this week, losing patience with the dismally slow dial-up Internet access at my parents’ house and checking on my online classes during trips to Panera that are limited by the staying-power of my laptop battery. Even if I had a lightning-fast Internet connection at my unlimited disposal, though, I probably wouldn’t be blogging much, feeling singularly uninspired. Columbus, Ohio is the place I grew up, but it’s also the place I left when I went to college in Toledo, moved to Boston for grad school, and then settled “for good or the time being” in New Hampshire. Columbus is the place I’ll always call home, telling folks who ask me where I’m from that I hail from Ohio, not New Hampshire…but it’s a place that no longer feels like home, life here in the quietly monotonous flatlands feeling exceptionally far removed from the hubbub of stimulus that is my life in the hilly Northeast.

It’s not so much that I’m bored in Ohio since I brought plenty of papers to grade and other things to keep me busy. It’s just in the presence of so much homework, I feel simultaneously tied to and entirely separate from home, wherever that is. I’ve written before about the curious sensation of being betwixt and between I feel whenever I leave my New Hampshire home to visit my Ohio one, and this trip is no different. Although I thought that coming “home” (or to my “home home,” as I started calling Columbus when I was an undergraduate in Toledo, thereby distinguishing it from the “home” that was my University dorm room) would provide a much-needed jolt of inspiration to the NaNoWriMo “novel” that I’d turned into a spiritual memoir, the exact opposite has happened: now that I’m “home home,” the last thing I want to do is think and write about the weirdly wending path that led me to my curiously Zennish existence in Keene, NH. Feeling uninspired to blog, I’m also uninspired to write, figuring I might shelve this current memoir-ish thing until a time when I actually feel inspired to write something rather than continuing a vain attempt to make-up word-count to meet an admittedly arbitrary goal.

Given my current uninspired state, it seemed fitting to post the above picture of a trashed sofa. Whereas in the hilly Northeast, we stash our unwanted couches in front of our homes, here in the Ohio flatlands, we stick unwanted furniture in the alleys out back. Maybe a forgotten back alley is exactly where I should leave my currently inactive Muse.

 

You might be…

To borrow a phrase from comedian Jeff Foxworthy, you might be a redneck if you park one or more junked cars in your front yard…and I’d add you might be a working class Ohioan if you park a junked car in the street in front of your house.

And you’re definitely a Vermonter if you park a Subaru ‘n’ canoe in downtown Bennington.

Yes, I’m back in perpetually-rainy New Hampshire after yesterday’s all-day drive from Ohio…and no, neither one of these is my car, just two random pencam shots I took while walking Reggie: the first in my folks’ neighborhood in Columbus, OH on Saturday, and the second on our last rest-stop in Bennington, VT yesterday. And yes, the saying is true: Be it ever-so-rainy, there’s no place like home.

 

Stairway to somewhere

Ever since my first trip to Findlay, Ohio last summer, I’ve been fascinated by the old rusty staircase that ascends one of the brick buildings at the corner of Main and Front Streets. Yesterday was a bright, partly cloudy day, giving me a great opportunity to capture the lines and curves of this stairway’s antique form.

I’m not convinced this is a stairway to heaven…but it’s surely a stairway to somewhere.

For two more images from yesterday’s partly cloudy day in downtown Findlay, Ohio, check out my most recent post on Area 603.

 

This is…stupid

This billboard of Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback and Findlay native Ben Roethlisberger has been hanging on Main Street here in Findlay, Ohio since last summer, before Big Ben became the youngest quarterback in NFL history to win the Super Bowl. You’ll notice that in his high school football portrait, Big Ben wasn’t wearing a helmet, a habit I hope he’s reconsidering now that he’s been seriously injured in a motorcycle crash.

Both Steelers coach Bill Cowher and lengendary quarterback Terry Bradshaw had tried to convince Big Ben that riding without a helmet was just plain stupid, but apparently Roethlisberger has a really hard head. Witnesses say Big Ben’s noggin hit the windshield of an oncoming car before hitting the pavement, and it subsequently took five doctors seven hours of surgery to repair Roethlisberger’s mangled jaw and nose.

When it comes to wearing a motorcycle helmet, Nike has the proper slogan: Just do it.

 

Fire & rain

Yesterday in Findlay there was a brief break in this week’s rain, giving me the first chance since I arrived last week to walk around with my camera.

The last time I was in Ohio, the fire-gutted building at the corner of Main and Sandusky Streets in downtown Findlay was still standing. On the sidewalk outside was a plastic bouquet of flowers with a note mourning the three men who died in the February fire that destroyed the first floor offices of the A.G. Edwards Investment firm and several upstairs apartments. (Gary already blogged pictures of the fire and subsequent demolition.)

There’s something more than a bit morbid about snapping pictures of a building gutted by fire, demolished, and now bared to rain and sun. Like Ground Zero in New York City, this urban intersection is a place where people made an unforeseen crossing to the Hereafter: surely none of the three men who fell asleep the night before had any notion that they’d not wake up the next morning.

I guess there’s something more than a bit morbid about any sort of photography, at least if you see pictures as slowing the hands of time by freezing particular moments for eternity. Photography doesn’t make sense in a world where people are immortal and nothing ever ages: why snap a picture of a baby or a brand-new building if you didn’t know the child would grow and the edifice settle? Now that there isn’t a building at the corner of Main and Sandusky Streets in downtown Findlay, I wish I had snapped a picture of the structure that once was; had this week’s storms in New England ventured slightly more westerly, dousing Keene with a unwelcome repeat of last October’s floods, I would have cherished the months’ worth of pictures I have of what Keene used to be.

Both fire and flood come suddenly, like a proverbial thief in the night, to lay bare that which was previously hidden: how eerie it is to see locked mailboxes that once lined an apartment entryway now exposed to the elements above a now-invisible stairway to heaven. The Postal Service doesn’t forward mail to where those three men relocated; what sort of broken dreams and foiled promises are contained within these dead letters?

Not knowing where fire or rain will next strike, we’d be well advised to pay attention always, taking mental snapshots of buildings in our midst as well as the people who pass us by. Investment advisors would be the the first to intone that past performance does not predict future results, so why do we blithely assume today’s buildings will be here next time we pass by and people who fall asleep tonight will be alive to awaken tomorrow?

You don’t need an investment banker to remind you that NOTHING IS GUARANTEED, and yet we so easily forget, sinking our trust if not our treasure in the things of this world, where moth and rust destroy, thieves break in and steal, and fire and rain inevitably point to the impermanence of all things.

 

Masterpiece

Today’s Photo Friday theme is Masterpiece, so here’s a rerun of an image I posted in March after a sight-seeing trip to the Short North district of Columbus, OH. I’m in Ohio this week, so maybe I’ll capture some more midwestern masterpieces during my visit.

 

Not my Daddy’s Flytown

When my Dad grew up in Columbus, OH in the neighborhood around High and Goodale Streets, they didn’t call it Italian Village. Back then, when this neighborhood was an ethnically-mixed, working-class ghetto you wanted to get out of, the poor folks who lived there called it Flytown.

Last weekend while day-tripping in Columbus, Gary and I took a stroll through the Short North, the now-gentrified neighborhood near the area where my Dad grew up. The murals in this upscale gallery- and boutique-laden strip between downtown Columbus and the Ohio State University campus quickly clue you into the fact that this is a place trying to recreate itself. Downtown’s Union Station is long gone, only a single archway having been preserved…but the grandeur of the grand building’s facade is replicated on one side of a High Street parking lot while the trains that would have thundered in and out of the station are depicted on a nearby wall (click on the image below for a larger version):

My Dad’s name is Joe…but this posh Short North coffee-shop isn’t named for him. When I last lived in Columbus in 1980s, the Short North was not a neighborhood where you wanted to stop for coffee…unless, of course, you were a cop stopping for caffeine after another night of busting teenage prostitutes and the shady businessness who patronized or pimped them.

In the ’80s, “Short North” was the Columbus police department’s shorthand term for an urban strip of High Street where not much good was going on. Still, when developers came in and began gentrifying the working class neighborhoods along High Street, a lot of average working folks found themselves priced out of their homes. Although my Dad’s mother, sister, and brothers had long since left Flytown for nicer neighborhoods, when gentrification in the area soon-to-be-renamed the Italian Village began, my Dad astutely noted that had they kept the old house they’d been so quick to move out of, they would have ultimately been sitting on a goldmine: prime real estate in a neighborhood destined to be Yuppified.

When Gary and I mentioned to my folks that we planned to spend part of our day in Columbus strolling the Short North, my Dad didn’t regale us with stories of his old ‘hood…but he did make a point of mentioning that the lightbulbs in the area’s signature arches, designed to create a historic ambience by replicating the gas street-lamps from the good old days, aren’t and never really have been functional. You can renovate a neighborhood out of a ghetto, but you apparently can’t repair the ghetto out of that neighborhood. The Short North and Italian Village are now among the priciest places to live in Columbus…but the area is still somewhat funky, with undeniable aspects of urban squalor that some would call “charm” and others would consider “overpriced hype.”

Whether or not living in the Short North is worth its fashionable price-tag, the fact remains that this once-shady district is now a premier place to hang out. As Gary and I window-shopped High Street’s various upscale boutiques, I kept marvelling that this was Columbus we were browsing; when I was a teenager in Columbus, there was virtually nothing to do downtown other than maybe roll tumbleweeds down the all-but-abandoned streets. These days, you can go Gallery Hopping the first Saturday of every month, or simply sightsee (and be seen) every other fabulously fashionable day.

Believe me, when I lived in Columbus–and when my Dad grew up in Flytown, long before the Short North was cool and “Italian Village” even existed–they did not have arty murals on the brick walls along High Street:

If you want to live in one of the Mona Lisa condos, you’d better act soon…and be prepared to pay a pretty penny for the privilege of tossing your trash next to La Gioconda’s enigmatic smile. The Short North and Italian Village have gone from being a slum called Flytown to being the hippest place to live and play. One of the truest signs of changing times I saw during last weekend’s stroll was this banner for a yet-to-be-completed condo renovation:

In case you can’t read that condo-banner, here’s an enlargement. As if having a Short North address isn’t fashionable enough, the Yukon Studio Loft condos boast Ikea kitchens, something my Dad definitely never had in the Flytown home of his childhood. If it seems odd to sell real estate on the basis of its kitchen appliances and furniture, keep in mind that there are no Ikea stores in Ohio, but there are Ikea fanatics there. Apparently the best way to furnish a tony Short North condo is with funkily fashionable Swedish furniture…and I’d be willing to bet that Swedish-made lamps work better than the Short North’s stylish but non-functional street arches.

So if you’re looking for the “urban lifestyle” of one-bedroom lofts, non-functional street lamps, and arty murals, the Short North district of downtown Columbus, OH might be just what you’re looking for. The art scene is hot and the hangouts are cool…just don’t offer an over-priced cup o’ Joe to an old Italian Daddy named Joe, or he might regale you with stories of the old days when this was a ghetto called Flytown.

 

Smooth

Today’s Photo Friday theme is Smooth, which gives me a perfect excuse to prove to Tom Montag that on a recent trip to Columbus, OH to see my parents, Gary and I stopped to experience the smooth, creamy delight that is Graeter’s Ice Cream. (That’s Gary’s scoop of Peanut Butter Chip on the left and my scoop of Buckeye Blitz on the right. As you can see, the stuff is so irresistible, I had to stop Gary from eating his to get a photo. And for those of you not from Ohio, the buckeyes in “Buckeye Blitz” aren’t the nut, which is toxic, but the candy, which is tasty.)

Graeter’s has been a cultural and culinary icon in central Ohio since 1870…and I’d never been there. When Tom learned I was born and raised in Columbus, OH–when Tom learned my parents still live on the east side of Columbus, not far from Graeter’s Bexley store–he was amazed that I’d never tasted his favorite ice cream. When I go home to see my parents, I typically don’t have much opportunity to check out the various things to do in Columbus: typically, I spend time at home with my family. But just as having someone visit from out-of-town gives you an excuse to see the tourist attractions in your own backyard, going to Columbus with Gary gave me an excuse to visit my parents only briefly before heading to Bexley for ice cream, to German Village to go book-browsing, and to the Short North for a daytime gallery-hop.

Tom was right about Graeter’s Ice Cream: it’s incredible. (If you want mouth-watering visual proof of how ice cream should be made in tasty two-gallon batches, check out the delectable images of how Graeter’s ice cream is made, clicking the “Next” link at the bottom of each page.) Between you and me, I thought Tom was exaggerating a bit when he said his family buys gallons of the stuff to take back to Wisconsin whenever they visit Ohio…but you can see for yourself from the window sign in the above photo that Graeter’s offers dry-ice travel packs (as well as an online ice cream store) so out-of-towners can indulge in their favorite tasty treat. Isn’t it funny to think that folks from all around scream for Graeter’s ice cream, and I was born and raised just down the street and never tasted it?

It just goes to show that it’s never too late to try something smooth.

 

Off the wall

In the past, I’ve blogged pictures of the two Coke murals here in Keene, as well as a picture of the Parrish Shoes mural left over from filming of the movie Jumanji. Of the various sights I notice and collect, old advertising murals are among my favorites, so I was amused last week to see more than a few faded glories in both Findlay and Toledo.

When I posted that first picture of one of Keene’s two Coke murals, I mentioned that such painted signs remind of the old Mail Pouch tobacco murals you used to see on the sides of rural barns. So I had to laugh when one of the first things I saw in downtown Findlay, OH was a brick wall sporting ads for both products: tobacco and soda.

Judging from the abundance of old soda murals, Ohio must be a particularly thirsty state…either that, or Midwestern folks are so hard-working, they need lots of reminders to stop and pour a pop. (And yes, Ohio is the heart of pop country, “soda” being a word I taught myself to use only after moving to New England.)

It seems that in the olden days, if you were thirsty in northwest Ohio, you had a wide choice of soft drink options. You could have enjoyed a Pepsi at Johnny Tobak’s Nite Club…

smiled with a Coke by the pawn shop…

or sipped a 7-Up at the Paradise Grill & Bar.

After you were sufficiently hydrated and ready to get back to work, you could take a cue from this faded sign by going shopping for “Everything for the home, farm, garage, or factory.”

Some old murals are so faded, they are no longer legible. This wall used to advertise something, but now it’s difficult to determine what.

Whatever products they sold, faded brick murals continue to fascinate me, standing as they do like isolated islands from a nearly forgotten past.