Ghosts of the East Side

Cleveland skyline, Terminal Tower in the middle

The East Side Tour Winter still clung to Cleveland when late April brought us back. Tom Mac, husband of my Dad’s late cousin, had passed on, and we had to show our respects. He was my godfather and the first adult to treat me like an adult, an uncommon respect I never forgot. No kid can discard an adult who treats them on the level. While I had not seen Tom in a decade, I could hear his voice and would not miss his memorial.

I couldn’t remember the cold lasting this late. We stayed for two nights and most of two sunny days. Yet any time the wind struck up, any pretense of spring vanished. Along with the sadness of the funeral and the chance to reconnect with a branch of the family we had not seen in years, we retraced many steps, all within view of Lake Erie.

We had a free morning to wander a city my parents and I knew well. Cleveland’s skyline pales in comparison to other Midwest cities. It lacks the volume of skyscrapers rising in Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis and Louisville. Yet few towns can claim a spire as elegant as the Terminal Tower. Okay, maybe they can, and I’m still partial to Cleveland’s signature building. They just resumed limited trips to the observation deck, a trip we took more than 30 years ago to look out into the clouds.

We rounded Dead Man’s Curve behind a truck at a slow speed. Even though the city had softened the curve’s harshest points, the element of danger never faded completely. The East Side landmarks had not changed – Burke Lakefront Airport, Cleveland Municipal Power, the ethnic gardens off MLK. My mom noted the old aquarium, its brick building mostly rubble after it shut down in the 1980s. It was an inexpensive way to entertain young kids and probably the first place I ever saw a shark or an alligator.


Dad knew the tour he wanted to lead. We exited Lakeshore Boulevard near the mansions Bratenahl before crossing into Cleveland then Euclid. The blocks looked dilapidated. Scores of empty storefronts line Lakeshore. The stony architecture of the early and mid-20th century saved this stretch of the East Side from looking too worn out.

Before Euclid city limits, I recognized the hospital where we took Joe when a chunk of apple lodged in his throat. We waited and just before he prepared him for surgery, he coughed it out. The street seemed dead compared to my early memories. The lack of foot traffic made sense – temperatures hovered in the low 40s, and necessity powered any pedestrians. Even car traffic was muted.

My first home

We idled next to a familiar house on Lakeshore among series of duplexes. We lived on the second floor, the first house for all three Melville children. I remember the two-bedroom unit vividly – after my sister was born, we moved further east into Lake County, two bedrooms not nearly enough room. We had bunk beds and a crib in one room. The driveway of the old homestead had almost crumbled into gravel.

A window A/C unit follow the living room window. We went without air conditioning in our days on the second floor; don’t ask me how. On many summer evenings, we sat on the spacious back porch. As he drove, my dad pointed to landmarks of his youth, my mom noting restaurants long gone, the resilient ice cream parlor that would reopen Memorial Day and the bakery we used to visit. Dad’s high school, once all-boys St. Joseph, had consolidated with all-girls Villa Angela under one roof many decades ago.

As we reached East 260th, it was time to turn. Dad knew these streets intimately. His family had no car, so he traveled by foot, bike or bus, with family and friends sometimes offering rides. Dad never attended Upson School, but he played pickup games on the basketball courts and baseball diamond down the street from his childhood house. Upson had been replaced by a modern school that absorbed the athletic facilities. Dad mourned those fields where he spent so many hours. All evidence of Upson had not been scoured away. At the front of the new school, the arch of Upson School’s original front door stood as a monument to the old building.

Soon came the small homes of Zeman Avenue, where my grandparents lived, where Dad lived until marriage and Aunt Ann lived after my grandfather died. My aunt sold the house a year ago, finally leaving the old neighborhood. The houses were small but comfortable. They were built with milk slots and mailboxes attached to the front doors. Even on this cold morning, mail carriers walked their routes.

Dad rattled off names of families all along Zeman and adjacent streets too fast for me to record. He wound through the streets, the architecture moving from the 40s through the 60s. He could point to a corner house where Mr. Fowler’s giant garden filled the backyard. He narrated decades of happenings. He recalled the janitor from Upson School returning baseballs accidentally thrown onto the roof when simulating fly balls. He brought us with him as he talked about traveling through a giant sewer pipe to a retention pond where he and his friends rolled a giant boulder into the water. He told us about a kid on the street lost his mean streak after Lake Erie currents drowned his friend and would have killed him too if he had not been saved.

Along Lakeshore, there was some new development. A new space for multi-use development showed promise for Euclid. New houses sprouted near Willowick’s Shoregate shopping center (Willoughby, Willowick, Wickliffe – I could never keep them straight). We slipped through Timberlake and into Eastlake, passing Classic Park, home of the Indians’ A-ball affiliate, the Lake County Captains.

After catching up with my aunt over lunch, we had one more stop - Chillicothe Road in Mentor. Our second home in Mentor had not fared well in the 19 years since my parents moved. I saw it less than two years ago, when the overgrown trees made the house rundown and uninviting. This time it looked more like it had been condemned. With the trees not budding, the houses looked storm-damaged, with dead or dormant foliage strewn across the lawn.

Our old neighbor’s house looked similar – in fact, no two houses on Chillicothe Road looked worse. A wire dangled too low for a car to enter the drive. A city garbage bin stood in the brick courtyard where purple finches once nested in the spring. Had the house been abandoned? We couldn’t tell, and memories of the house's glory days stopped us from lingering.

Changes around Mentor seemed mild. Bike lanes lined major streets, inconceivable in my years of cycling on the narrow lip of those country roads. One of the horse farms across Johnnycake Ridge Road in Kirtland Hills had been sold for residential development, its mirror across the street still pasture.

We rolled back to the West Side, having checked all our old haunts and found the ghosts intact.