Fully loaded for Cleveland

A crust of snow on my car welcomed me to my home state. After the most uneventful drive from Nashville to Columbus of my life, Ohio graced me with a little winter flourish. The temperatures had not dropped low enough to snarl the roads with slush and ice, but there would be traces of winter to pelt me as I headed northeast to Cleveland.

Powdery snow coated the rolling farms and hills, growing season a distant echo. People hate the Columbus-Cleveland drive, but that road never bothered me, especially not with this dusting. The closer I drew to Cleveland, the more I feared the snow might have some weight. At Lodi, winter gusted hard, swirling around the gas pumps. The city had to wait; I had family to visit into the east, in Lake County. I took the highway spur toward Erie, Pa., knowing my 12-year absence from my college town wasn’t ending anytime soon.

Rather than rush into the swirling Lake Erie winds, I decided on a look at Cuyahoga Valley National Park and its namesake river. A few dozen miles from its mouth, the Cuyahoga flowed broad and wild, waters gray and choppy. The flurries fed the river and coated the grass near the Boston Store visitor center and the cluster of buildings where I had eaten lunch on Independence Day a few years earlier. Today a handful of well-bundled walked took to the Towpath Trail. I stuck to pictures of snow falling hard and vanishing on the asphalt.

By the time I reached Lost Nation Road in Willoughby, the flakes had abated, even if the cold held firm. My aunt, my father’s sister, lived a mile or less from the lake and Willoughy’s series of streets and pocket parks that ended at Lake Erie. I visited with my aunt for a few hours then we ventured to downtown Willoughby for a late lunch. We caught up, talked about what we had been reading lately.

Downtown Willoughby was quiet on a Tuesday afternoon. The corner coffeehouse, Arabica for several decades, had just closed for good. Bars and restaurants filled out the 100-year-old buildings.

Willoughby was always cooler than Mentor. I would wager that still holds true. This was the first place my crowd at Mentor High School frequented when we got our licenses. My first legal drink came at the 1899 Tavern, many more followed at Mullarkey’s, the strip’s Irish pub. Tucked behind Main Street was the Willoughby Brewing Company, housed in the former trolley repair shop when a streetcar line crossed Lake County. The lunch crowd had died down, but the trains still ran - the brewery has a model train track that runs through the dining room.

Melvilles at Yellowstone

After lunch, my aunt showed me some more old photos I had never seen. My grandfather in a baseball uniform with his relatives, my great-grandfather and grandfather standing at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park, posing in front of a football-shaped rock I photographed on my last visit to the park.

Before long time to migrate west arrived, and I said good-bye to my aunt. I jumped on the East Shoreway and headed toward downtown – Willoughby, Eastlake, Wickliffe, Euclid, then just Cleveland and the Lake Erie horizon. For the first time all day, the sun punched through the clouds, at the golden hour no less. I decided to stop at Edgewater Park to see where the patch of light fell.

No sooner did I pull into the lot than I scrambled for my camera. The angle of the light couldn’t have been better, a direct hit on the skyline. From Edgewater, Cleveland glowed, a city of gold with the sunlight striking a century of stone and steel, illuminating everything from the football stadium to the Key Tower and the skyline’s signature spire, the Terminal Tower. The downtown skyline never seemed so close and beautiful. The lake water chopped and the clouds waited to cover the city once again.

Shadows overtook Edgewater. A solitary statue of Richard Wagner stands in a grassy patch. Edgewater’s stylish Cleveland sign has become a must-stop spot for the selfie crowd. I was too enamored with the skyline. Within a few minutes the sun’s angle no longer caught the skyline, and the golden city would have to wait for another day.

Wagner in the park

I skipped to Lakewood and an even more blustery spot in Lakewood Park. From the park’s high cliffs, the wind was even less forgiving although twilight painted the lake and its curving shore in flattering shades of crimson, violet and blue. Smokestacks from of a distant power plant stuck out against the bands of reddish clouds.

Several miles into the lake, the light caught the orange paint on the Cleveland Water Intake Crib, where the city’s water supply is pumped in. The crib caught the last of the light. The lakefront winds grew too strong, and the light too dim for further delights along the shallowest of the Great Lakes. Not that depth would make its muddy waters feel less like home. Being Lakewood Park, people still milled around, but I knew the wind would ease a few blocks further south.

Even in Lakewood, I was peppered with memories. I stopped at Rozi’s Wine House, the esteemed liquor store on Detroit, for a six-pack and bottle of Gruner Veltliner I would forget in my friend’s fridge. Driving around with nowhere in mind, I passed the high school then the nice first-floor rental where we spent a few days back in July 2016. For the shortest of moments, it had been our neighborhood – the porch where we read, the bar where we drank, the Hungarian bakery where we bought delicious breakfast pastries.

Other Cleveland activities beckoned. I stopped at Giant Eagle for the mustards Clevelanders crave when away from Progressive Field for too many summers. Mostly I observed. It’s free and most people pay too little attention. I watched people flocking into Malley’s Chocolate on Madison for local sweets and ice cream. I had no fear when traipsing around Lakewood. I passed little restaurants and bars filled with seemingly content crowds. I never lived here, but this dense city was as comfortable a town as I could claim in this world. Here I belonged, if just for a night.

Time came for my meetup with Marjie and Dru. Two years passed since our last visit, although this was the third attempt to connect in 2018. Life will prout obstacles, but this time I was determined to see my old friends. Over a few beers at the Winking Lizard, we were successful. I had a Christmas Ale over a light dinner, and soon enough we walked back to their apartment and caught up over a nightcap.

The evening dashed by. It should have lasted ages, but the good ones never do. These are the friends we all long for. High school was long gone and it couldn’t matter less. You go years between visits, and every time to pick up where you left off. Not a awkward moment clung to the air in that apartment. I slept soundly on an air mattress I the living room, a slight chill in the air and cars cruising Detroit Avenue filtered into my dreams.

Marjie had to work Wednesday morning. After we said goodbye, Dru and I headed out for breakfast on the West Side. Joe’s Deli and Restaurant, a big spot near the interstate, served breakfast staples and boasted an intimidating case of pastries and sweets. I nabbed a few cookies for the ride back to Columbus.

One newer Cleveland attraction had been on my list for a while. I did not get to tour the Christmas Story House, but finally saw the restoration work done to the house where much of the cult Christmas classic was filmed. The people who preserved the house have transformed the entire block into a museum. A carriage house protects the Parker family car and the fire engine used in the movie. A newer addition is the Bumpas’ house next to the Parker house. Behind the house lies not more neighborhood but a vast industrial plain of factories and steel plants.

A vocal cat greeted the throngs of visitors funneling into the gift shop. The gift shop and visitor center fill the rest of the carriage house. I did what people are supposed to do there, putting a few dollars into the Cleveland economy. On the day before Thanksgiving, business was brisk. Museum owners wisely keep the admission well-priced, but an inordinate amount of people posed in front of the house and took off again. I was guilty too – in fairness, time didn’t allow for the tour this trip.

We were a few blocks from another unexpected Cleveland tradition, this one in nearby Ohio City. The day before Thanksgiving marks Great Lakes Brewing’s annual release of its bourbon barrel -aged Christmas Ale. GLBC Christmas Ale is an Ohio beer tradition, but the barrel-aged version is sold only at the brewery. A line stretched along the building. The clock tower of the Cleveland’s Westside Market soared above the brewery.

To get bottles for friends, especially Marje and Dru for letting me stay, I gladly joined the inching parade. Folks behind me had driven from Kalamazoo the night before and wanted bottles for the holiday. In the cold, the line moved slowly. Only when close to the door to the gift shop did the wind kick up and chap the faces of the beer diehards. I overspent on Christmas ale and for good measure grabbed a bourbon barrel porter (GLBC Albert Clipper). I don’t drink Christmas Ale regularly, and the barrel-aged version was a bold new experience.

After the beer line, I said goodbye to Dru, the threat of bad weather and pre-Thanksgiving traffic volumes ushering me down to Columbus again. Say what you will, but the short visits to Cleveland preserve the dirty old town as a special place, as a spot where the welcome never wears out for me, even in a year when I reached Lake Erie twice.

Cleveland slips away too quickly. That’s my criticism of the maze of interstates. In scarcely 25 minutes I’ve covered two counties and the last of the suburbs. But if I close my eyes long enough, the hard wind of Lake Erie is ready to whip my face anew. As long as the clouds part enough for a band of gold to strike the city, I won’t flinch.