Fond memories of Cleveland

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But at that time, the inner city still held Cleveland's greatest treasure its ethnic neighborhoods. These were most easily explored through their numerous small, inexpensive restaurants.

For slightly more than the cost of a boring burger, we would sit in Keiffer's on Detroit just over the Superior Bridge, eat weiner schnitzel amid a babble of German and giggle behind our napkins at the lederhosened oom-pah band, until the plump, dirndled singer would embarrass us in front of our dates by urging us to dance or sing along to some song we'd never heard before.

We were sure it must be like going to Europe to enter Mama Santa's on Mayfield over on Murray Hill. The front room was only about 4 by 10 feet, with one table and a window for takeouts.

But through the door in the back wall, you stepped into a picture postcard of an Italian restaurant: checkered tablecloths, prints of the Colosseum and empty Chianti bottles doubling as candleholders. Music could never compete here against all the animated conversations.

We were introduced to this place by a Jesult we found out years later was homosexual. My cocktail partiers would no doubt rather hear about him, but I'll be darned if I'll give them the satisfaction. Besides, it's time to begin bragging about the Museum of Art.

But as I drone on about a Caravaggio exhibit, I think of my long fascination with the starker realism of the Flats. The best time to be there was at night. The bridges afforded two very different perspectives.

From above, we'd drop snowballs onto railroad cars that were so far below we could never see or hear whether we hit our target.

Underneath, the huge spans cast long, misty shadows on the warehouses, and we felt like hardys out of Dashiell Hammett, till a sudden blast sent us scurrying to the car, from where we'd watch some colossal cargo ship loom out of the eery darkness, majestically winding toward the lake and the sea.

The drive to the steel mills was over a labyrinth of intricate little drawbridges. From the last of these, the darkness was suddenly perforated by a row of monstrous buildings alive with a seering glow of freshly poured ingots as they inched their way down the line. A haunting image of America at work.

Equally enchanting at night was downtown. The only noise was the echo of our confident footsteps in the caverns of the Terminal Tower.

With what parents considered youthful derring-do, we'd sit on the benches in Public Square and talk with the denizens of the Sol-

diers and Sailors Monument. Their wine-induced

stories were meant to be funny but veiled only thinly the melancholy of impotent rage just

beneath.

We'd listen intently, and laugh, but then feel somewhat guilty when we realized listening wasn't enough they wanted something more.

It wasn't until my days as a truck driver that I got to know at all well the black sections of town. There was always the stifling summer heat in the alleys off Carnegie and Hough and the army of old men assembled each day at the corner of Euclid and 155th.

Though many of the neighborhoods seemed visually burnt out, in the workplaces, the streets and the playgrounds, there was the unmistakable sense of some special, restlessness that I could appreciate while knowing I could never myself draw from it.

"Are you from Shaker Heights?" asks someone else playing the odds.

No, I assure him, not all of Cleveland's expatriates are from the affluent East Side though, through friends, I did get to know it quite well.

It's hard not to be impressed with the stately, if showy, elegance of the homes on North and South Park, and the hospitality in them was, for me, always warm.

Suburbs can be beautiful, and I remember the summer evening ritual of going to a Rocky River beach to watch the colorful spectacle of the Lake Erie sunsets.

I avoid sharing these memories with casual acquaintances, for I know this makes for only more likely the question I most want to avoid: "Why, then, did you move away?"

Another pat answer about coming East to college and a string of jobs that lead one to the other is true enough, but not the whole reason.

Though obviously not the same as it was in the '60s, a city with so many enjoyable places and friends must still have a strong allure.

Part of me often thinks very wistfully of the parts of the city I knew so well, such as the pleasant drive back to the West Side first out Edgewater Dr., then Lake and then Clifton.

But another part of me rebels against the sense of security such familiarity breeds. This restlessness began back in Cleveland.I wanted to know the rest of the world in the same way I knew the city.

And the restlessness became further fired by what seemed like the provincialism of many of Cleveland's values. So many residents seemed to think here was best because they had never known anywhere else.

The best location in the nation. That's silly. It was rich and good, so why cheapen it by calling it best? Was it worth spending so much of our high-school years working toward winning the Charity Game our senior year?

We were told it was, but I came to doubt it and even resent not using the time more ambitiously.

Was it true, as our placement counselor seemed to imply, that all of the country's worthwhile colleges could be reached by the Rapid Transit? Unlikely.

If we enjoyed the city so much, how come everyone else seemed to spend their evenings at home?

Why wasn't there more world news on television? They didn't even give all the out-of-town baseball scores. Surely no one could think the Indians the only team worth following.

This chronic provincialism finally seemed to spring from the same safe, comfortable feeling I enjoyed on the streets of this simple, openfaced working city.

Cleveland is what eventually sent me packing. So, ironically, the kind of pleasure I took in I've spent most of my adult life and dollars pushing myself to explore other worlds.

As I suspected, Notre Dame is more beautiful than St. John's; Fifth Avenue more exciting than Euclid. And Fenway Park makes Municipal Stadium look like a dirigible hangar.

But none of these places is home, and I still instinctively compare all cities to the one I knew first and best. And part of me will prefer to pretend it's cruising down Edgewater, then Lake and then Clifton.

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I respond now to Cleveland as to a great magnet part of me feels tremendously drawn, but another part feels just as strongly repelled. And I'll live out my life balanced between these two poles.

But I could never explain this to a cocktail crowd, so I just sip my drink and hope the conversation soon changes. Alas, the jokes are unlikely to stop now.

Cleveland my no longer be easy to live in, but it's not so easy to live away from, either.