Ode to Cleveland, Part II

Despite the scare of Covid that kept many classmates from attending, vaccinated, I decided early on that I would go to my 50^th Shaker Heights High School reunion. Though many of my closest friends opted out, I had a strong feeling that seeing people now was important. I needed to experience this: It may be the last time some of us have a chance. At our age, who knows. The venues had lovely outdoor spaces. I felt safe.

Indeed, the memories that my week in-and-around Cleveland evoked were beyond special, even though the melancholy that tinges Cleveland for me rides on my shoulder like a daemon. 

Oakwood Club is gone but the University Heights library where I first read a chapter book is still there. 

I needed my perfume so I stopped at May Company, now Dillard’s, at the corner of Cedar & Warrensville, where, as a little girl, I spilled a chocolate shake all over myself in the basement cafeteria, and it baked to a fine crust all the way home. 

The Fairmont Circle theatre is a bank now and the drugstore gone. Aunt Berte and I went there for lime sodas. She told me fairies did the renovation and I believed her.

Bubbe’s apartment at Fairmont Circle is still there though. I would bicycle over and spend Friday night Sabbaths with her. She would light the candles and recite the prayers in Hebrew heavily accented with Russian, then put the candles in the sink, because she was nervous about a fire. I do it to this day, in her honor.

Ahhh, Fernway Elementary School. Reopened this year after a tragic 2018 fire.

Because of Covid, I couldn’t wander the halls where I taught my first 5 years after undergrad . . .

. . . but here is where I froze my ass at recess. It was a kickball field then. I would be jonesing for a cigarette. 

Good old Chagrin Falls was the meeting point for lunch with two former Fernway teachers! We talked for hours. 

Surprisingly, I felt the most nostalgic walking through the still-rickety parking lot at Russo’s, now Dave’s Market, where I grocery shopped when I lived in Cleveland Heights, on Overlook:

Leaving Pinstripes, night two of our reunion, I drove past the bar where I stuporously drove home after many a Friday night’s last call. How did we get away with that back then!

And the reunion itself? Magical. 

The 10-year reunion was a drag: Classmates bragging on their accomplishments. During the 30^th, I spent most of my time with my old friends, I think. But 50? I spent time talking to so many people. We would scramble to see the name tag, but without anxiety. It had been fifty years for crying out loud. Others looked just the same. Thanks to Covid, many of us reconnected on Facebook and we experienced a year of communication through quarantine. This reunion, I think most of us “branched out,” talking to as many as we could. Worthwhile conversations, not just cocktail party talk. Remembrances mingled with the present.

(I must acknowledge, though, that the high school that had professed integration in the 60’s and 70’s remained segregated in terms of who gravitated to who, with exceptions of course. Just like the Shaker cafeteria at lunch time.)

L and I, never close in high school, spent time in long conversation. J was a delight to hang with. We’d known each other more from Sunday school. What humor and kindness. I hugged B as hard as I could when it was time to leave. I worry about W. 

I was so busy having fun that I never once thought to take a photo with anyone. This is the only one I have. Flo and I were in the same section in 8^th grade! She looks just the same.

In May of 1970, the flagpole was here where the tree stands.

We congregated here the day after the Kent State massacre.
Holding hands. Listening to a former Shakerite describe the horror. 

I topped off my week with an Indians game, of course. I took the train down, just like the old days. I had a blast. I talked to Andre Knott, got waves from Austin Hedges and Tristan Mackenzie, and was thrown a mid-inning t-shirt after I yelled,”C’mon, throw it to the old lady!”

Un-friggin-believably, a young man I had talked to earlier in the summer in Chicago at the game in White-Sox stadium saw me and we reconnected! It was wild. So was saying goodbye to the tribe. We’ll never see this sign again. It was hard to leave.

I will be back in Cleveland next summer: My sister Kathy and I have already postponed twice our trip to spread our folks’ ashes, tentatively set now for the end of next June. We will begin in Cleveland and end on Mackinac Island. A different kind of reunion. I will invite my Cleveland friends to join us.
I have more now than before. #thankful.