Village by the Bay

The same fields, the flat, dandelion-specked fields along Cahoon Road have felt hundreds of thousands if not millions of soccer balls course across them--these are the fields that transform to carnival grounds every 4th of July. The same rides, tents, cotton candy every year. The same carnies, the same putt-putt game hosted by the Republican Club. It's a vestige of a Norman Rockwell America. The bandstand and the boosters and the veterans and the flags. Every heart in Bay Village breaks a little bit the day that the rides are disassembled. Bay Days is over, which means so much more than just Bay Days is over. Summer is somehow now on the wane. There will still be pool days and summer reading and running into your summer crush at someone's softball game. But you will never come back to Bay Days except as a year older, wiser, and maybe too cool for all this. Only when you are removed for so many years, the ghosts of Bay Days past revisit you. You are haunted by the feelings of what it is to be a teenager on these grounds, and how conflicted you were, being both independent enough to go without your parents and yet still so awkward running into your teacher next to the giant slide. You hear the echoes of your bestie screaming her guts out on the salt and pepper shaker, and the sense memory of the funnel cake cart comes rushing back to convince you that no time has passed at all. Come fall, these fields are trampled by the cleated feet of every kid who was ever raised in Bay Village, tracking soccer balls in one direction and then the other, stopping only for orange slice breaks.

These fields which bisect East Bay from West Bay, because there is such a thing--people will ask you, "East side of Bay?"--even though this little village that is practically slipping off the cliff into Lake Erie is so tiny, it still has subregions. Neighborhoods, real neighborhoods with real trees that tell stories of children who still ride bikes everywhere, that remember when a little girl was kidnapped from the Village Center. Bay Village is arguably the mini-van capital of the world. People not only make eye contact but they say Hi, and Good morning, while running along the lake, or taking a cut-through Huntington Park.

It is possible to stand on the fields at Cahoon and feel as though you've known everyone who has ever lived or will live in Bay Village, Ohio, to be stirred by the legacy of recreation, these fields that both unites neighbors and divides a small town.

This is the place where my father was raised, where my parents chose to return to raise their own children. This is the place that made me, and which I now bring my children to help them understand, maybe (?) a little part of this American dream.

***

A byproduct of Bay Village, my sister celebrating her entry into the twirties....

And my bro.

Childhood Fears

When I was 10, my family took an epic road trip. We drove from Cleveland, Ohio, to Dallas, Texas. My parent drove through a flood outside of Memphis, Tennessee with an alternating set of kids in the backseat which included my cousins and their own biological kids and possibly a Greyhound we rescued from a race track. I'm saying it's a possibility. I think the whole trip was a cruel experiment to see how many times you can listen to Billy Joel's Greatest Hits vols. I and II in the back of a minivan over the course of 22 hours. My parents are no longer married. Neither is Billy Joel. I don't think there is a correlation. Or is there?

Before we left for that trip, I cased my bedroom for places where my name and my face could be found. I flipped over all of my school certificates. I shoved all of my pictures into a drawer. Anything that had my name on it, I buried. I was trying to find traces of my identity that a burglar would be interested in stealing. I seriously was paranoid for weeks that someone was going to break into our house and be interested enough in my rising sixth grader life to warrant stealing it. Oooh, look at this interesting specimen of Catholic schoolgirl handwriting! And lo! What truths and wonders can be ascertained from her brace face with forest green gumbands around her brackets?

Still. It was 1990. How was I already freaked out about identity theft? Was that even a thing, pre-internets?

These days, I'm lucky if I remember to lock the door if I am leaving the house. For an hour, a day, a week. Bonus if I remember to unplug appliances.

So what about you? Any strange childhood phobias or abiding concerns, precocious or otherwise?

Above: Just months away from forest green gumbands--hip hip!

Great Gatsby

Dear High School Sophomores, The Great Gatsby dam is about to break and the waters of excess are going to flood every aspect of our culture. This means nothing to you now while you are Snapchatting away on the phone that you pulled out of your Coach wristlet. But a few drafts of that five paragraph essay later and you'll know what I mean.

Or will you?

Because, in addition to having the powers of the internet machine, you get to consult Leonardo di Caprio "for research purposes." Versus Kendra Stanton circa 1996 who had Mrs. L. Bluhm as a secondary source (a la MHS' English department) and some borrowed Cliff's Notes she read over someone's shoulder while riding home on the RTA.

It's funny that this book is taught to teenagers, as pointed out by R. Clifton Spargo in a recent HuffPost piece that I thought was very telling. Who can possibly comprehend, at the age when many are just grateful to drive around a pile of rust on wheels, the hazards of pretension and extravagance in society? Of seeking after the ever-elusive fortune?

But maybe you can better than any of us. The truth is that high school now is so radically different than it was even ten years ago. It is not some Dr. Seuss "Oh the Places You'll Go" cliche played out in four years. A 2011 survey by Schwab found that teens expected their starting salary in their first job would be $70,000. Reality check: this was three times my starting salary ten years ago. But the expectations of spending and earning potential are so tremendous for young people. Because God forbid girlfriend is wearing the ::GASPS:: same dress in the selfie she Instagrammed last week as this week. Teenagehood today is emotional battery that doesn't cease when the bell rings. It is media inundation, it is visual exhaustion, it is everything that F. Scott Fitzgerald decried about the Gatsby estate and the people who mingled therein.

I will return to this novel once more before Leo and Carey can teach me its merits again on the silver screen. I will be transported to a time of innocence when the green light and Gatsby's car were mere symbols in a five paragraph essay rather than real life.

Concurrent with my movie ticket, I look forward--and I mean this sincerely--to learning what our young people can teach us about the book that we pompous academics think we are teaching them.

Yours, A pompous academic