CHAPTER 1
Warm Water
MY OLDER BROTHER pulled up to our mother's Cleveland Heights house in his late-model Chevy Impala, parked over the oil spot in the driveway and waited for me to come out. I had recently moved back from California in December 1971 after a ten-year absence, and I wanted to see the old housing project in Euclid, Ohio, where we used to live, maybe visit some old friends. We were both excited about our rendezvous with the past, but for different reasons. I was about to find out his.
"You're in for a surprise, Timmy," Barry said, on the drive over to Euclid.
"What do you mean?"
"You'll see. There are only a couple of houses left in the project."
"What?"
"That's right," he said. "The city is just waitin' to tear down the rest of 'em to finish the golf course. They've already got the back nine in."
"Huh? The back nine?
"Yeah."
"Where'd they put that?"
"On the other end, near east two-fifty."
I stared at Barry, stunned by what he said.
"Briardale dead-ends now," he said, "half way through the project at the community center. It's been converted into a club house."
"There were like ... eight-hundred houses there. You say the city tore 'em down?"
"That's right. All but six, and one of them is ours."
"You're kidding?" I said, in disbelief. "Does Mrs. Jamnick still live there?"
"Who's she?"
"She moved in when we moved out."
"I don't remember that," he said.
"You don't remember Mrs. Jamnick?"
Barry shook his head.
"Oh, yeah," I quickly recalled. "You were in the army then. That's right. You wouldn't remember. I used to pick up her monthly payment after we moved to Cleveland Heights. They bought our furnace, you know."
"How could they buy our furnace? We rented."
"Beats me. All I know is we were the first family in the project to convert our coal furnace to gas. I guess Dad was allowed to sell it, or somethin'. I really don't know, but they bought it, and I used to pick up their check. That's how I got to know Mrs. Jamnick. I wonder if she's still there."
Heading east out of Cleveland on the interstate shoreway, we got off onto the marginal road leading to Babbitt Road, which took us north under the overpass, passing Noble Elementary School at the corner of Lakeland Boulevard and Babbitt Road. The school was still standing, but vacant. The old ghost had seen a better day. I began my school days there in 1949 when I was six years old and stayed through Mrs. Donahue's fifth-grade class, until Mom sent me to St. Robert parochial school to "straighten" me out. She thought the nuns could do it. So did Sister Mary Leonard, who kept a wooden yardstick hidden in the folds of her pleated black dress.
We continued north towards Briardale Avenue, the only main street through the Lake Shore Village housing project, and passed the old familiar houses on Babbitt Road — the ones I used to know when I walked to school: the cube-looking two-story bricks and the frame bungalows that lined each side of the road. I recognized one of them as we drove by. It had been under construction when I was in Mrs. Sweitzer's third-grade class. I used to stop at that house on my way home from school to play inside. It was my private little playground. The dirt front yard was littered with construction scraps and piles of short-cut lumber. Although the bungalow was framed and the siding was up, there were no windows or doors installed yet. Inside were open stud walls and a lot of sawdust scattered on the plywood floor. I remembered the sweet scent of freshly cut lumber when I entered the house and the wet musty smell of newly poured cement rising out of the basement that had no stairway down.
A faint spike of guilt surfaced when I recalled peeing on the plywood floor. I remembered feeling sneaky when I did it, thinking I might get caught. I'd pinch my penis to hold back the pee and then release it, shooting a strong stream that arced over the plywood floor as I spelled out my name. I even dotted the i with a carefully placed spurt. In more ways than one, I was a pisser of a kid in those days. For years afterward, as I passed what was then an occupied home, I wondered if the new owner knew I had peed on his living room floor.
Several blocks farther, I knew what was coming: Howard's Gulf gas station, featuring Super No-nox leaded gasoline. The late thirties brick landmark had a gabled canopy that covered two filling pumps. I used to stop there to buy five-cent Cokes that stood upright in a cold-water bath contained in a red metal Coca-Cola cooler. Attached to its side was a vertical bottle opener/container that collected caps as they popped off and fell in. It was thick with sticky black gunk from the carbonized spray that often exploded out of the gassy bottles when opened.
About the only thing older than the building was its owner, Howard, a one-man business on the decline. He was still rocking in the same old rolling swivel chair when Barry and I pulled up onto the side apron and parked next to the building. I peered through a large, dirty paneled window at an old man in mechanic's work clothes, wearing a soiled-looking Greek fisherman's cap.
"There's Howard," I said, to Barry with astonishment. "The old geezer's still alive! Hell, he was old when I was eight."
Barry laughed. He knew who Howard was. Barry had gone to Noble School, too, as many of the kids in neighborhood had. "Yeah, I know what you mean," he said. "He's still here, but not for long, not the way he looks."
We got out of the car and walked beneath the canopy that sheltered Howard from the weather when motorists pulled up for gas. The smell of grime and grease permeated the air as we approached the front door. A week's worth of washing would not have dissolved away the smell. The rickety old door had a metal kick plate at its base. It was scuffed and scarred by decades of use. The doorway's wooden threshold was worn shiny and smooth by foot traffic and was heavily blackened with the stain of engine oil. The place had not changed; neither had its owner.
"Howard, how the heck are you?" I greeted, coming through the door, half expecting him to recognize me, but he just kept rocking in his wooden swivel chair, nodding hello to me. "Tim Richards," I said, extending my hand. "I used to buy candy here on my way to school."
Howard nonchalantly extended his leathered old hand, and in a flash, I wondered how many other guys like me had come through his front door and got that same reception. I felt a little awkward standing in front of him, expecting some sort of recognition, but nothing happened. He just kept quiet.
Slouched in his spring-loaded swivel chair on casters, Howard tucked in a foot beneath him and then propped it up onto one of the chair legs below. When he settled into position, his posture slouched even more, causing him to slide forward on the smooth wooden seat. So he readjusted his position and then leaned back as far as the chair would tilt, and when it did, the old worn-out spring beneath the seat groaned for oil.
I looked around the gas station office. The rotary telephone with a grimy-looking hand receiver was cradled in its base on the desk. It sat next to a two-tiered metal tray piled high with smudged business receipts. The edges of the grease-stained wooden desk were scored with burn marks — deep black channels — the result of burning cigarettes left unattended. The channels reminded me of the same kind of burns on my parents' furniture at home. Mom and Dad were both smokers in the old days and had the bad habit of sometimes not using an ashtray. Rather, they'd set their lit cigarettes on the edge of the kitchen table or living room furniture when they needed to free up a hand, and then walked away forgetting, leaving their cigarettes burning in place. The black channels were quite apparent and especially numerous on their bedroom furniture, where eight or nine lengthy burn marks had ruined the surface of their mahogany dresser and chest of drawers. Howard's desk looked no different.
Barry chatted with Howard while I poked my nose into the grungy work bay. It was empty of cars. A stack of unbalanced used tires leaned precariously towards the dirty paneled window that overlooked the parking space where Barry had parked his car. Nearby, a cast iron tire mount was bolted to the floor, its grimy changing tools scattered at its base. A used transmission case sat alongside a grubby workbench piled with hand tools and used car parts. Dusty fan belts and odd-shaped machine tools hung on a pegboard blackened with use. I wondered how long Howard would stay in business.
When I glanced back at him leaning comfortably in his swivel chair, I noticed scratches on the old glass display cases across from him. The cases were now filled with FRAM oil filters and quart cans of engine oil. The glass shelves were covered with grit. There were no more one-and two-penny candies lined up behind the glass in open boxes. There were no more neatly stacked packs of Lucky Strike and Philip Morris cigarettes. There was only the memory of passing Howard's gas station countless times with no money to spend on candy.
The rattling glass in the wooden front door echoed, as I pulled the door closed behind me when we left.
WHAT REMAINED of the Briardale housing project — what we called the "Patch" — came into view when we passed the Y.M.C.A. building on Babbitt Road across from Euclid Memorial Park. I stared at what were now vacant lots where houses once stood. The former 127 acres of low-rent government housing were gone, now overgrown with tall grass and weeds, except for six random houses standing in the distance. I was suddenly saddened — feeling like I felt after an old girlfriend had brushed me off, knowing I'd never see her again. The old stomping ground had vanished. The baseball backstop was gone and so was the sliding board and Jungle Jim monkey bar set on the asphalt playground. The winding dirt pathway that cut through the wide-open grassy field — the one we took when we walked to Noble School — had long disappeared under the overgrown grass.
"I can't believe it, Barry. Look at this place," I said, with astonishment as we approached the corner traffic signal at Briardale Avenue and Babbitt Road. "There's nothing left. You say our house is still standing?"
"Yeah, it's still there."
"How come?"
"I don't know."
"Where is it?" I asked, as I searched the open landscape trying to distinguish which of the six remaining houses used to be ours.
"I'll show you in a minute."
Barry turned east onto Briardale, nearly slowing to a stop as he did, providing time for us to absorb what was no longer there. There was no traffic on what was now a dead-end road. It was strange to see nothing but the side streets and sidewalks still in place, their cement edges heavily overgrown with creeping crabgrass. Some of the original trees, I thought, were still standing, but no houses other than the six — no side-by-sides, no four-family up-and-downs, just cracked, black asphalt side streets that looped around, connecting to one another, all of them leading back to the only route through the project — Briardale Avenue.
"That's the field where we used to hit golf balls," I said, pointing in the direction of a tree I thought we used as the target. "Do you remember that tree, Barry?"
"Which one," he asked.
I pointed as best I could. "The one over there," I said. "We used to use it as the first hole. Remember that? We used to chip up to it, and if we hit the trunk, we made the hole."
"Oh yeah," Barry chuckled. "I remember that."
"And all we had was an eight iron," I said. "Remember that? I got pretty good with it."
I looked at Barry. His vision had locked in a deadpan stare through the windshield. I could tell by his pleasing expression that he was enjoying every minute of our ride down memory lane.
As the car crept along, we kept scanning the landscape.
"And there's that big willow tree, the one Reggie and I used to climb when we played behind his house." A vivid memory formed when I recalled the hopscotch game we played on the cement walkway beneath the tree. "We used to wet, balled-up toilet paper into blobs that stuck fast to the cement when we tossed them into the numbered squares."
"I remember Reggie Meyers," Barry said. "Wasn't he younger than you were?"
"Yeah, by a couple of years. He was my little buddy."
Barry wondered out loud. "There was, ahhh ... who? Launce and then ...?"
"There was Launce, Chucky, then Carol. Reggie was the youngest. Chucky was David's friend. I remember you used to hang out with Launce — ol' Stumble Bum. That's what you called him. You remember him, right?" I knew I'd get a rise out of Barry with that name. His expression brightened to a wide smile. "Why did you guys call him 'Stumble Bum?'"
"I don't know what was wrong with him," Barry replied, "but he always used to trip over his own feet. There could be nothin' is his way, but when he stumbled, he'd look back, wondering what it was in his way that caused him to trip."
Barry and I shared an old moment in time, laughing spontaneously as we reminisced about the Meyers family who lived catty-cornered to us.
In the distance, beyond the open field near the edge of the woods where the Big Creek gully flowed when it rained, was the place where kids flew model airplanes. It was the same grassy area where Barry's buddy, Teddy Browner, winged me in the leg with his Daisy Red Ryder BB Gun. The bastard made me run for it, just for the fun of it. I had zigzagged across the open field, trying to dodge the shot, but it got me anyway on the back of the thigh, sending me withering to the ground, screaming with pain. "Oh, you're all right," Teddy yelled, from a distance, dismissing my pain as I squirmed like a wounded snake in the grass. I ran home several blocks away, crying to my mother, but nothing became of it. It was just another day in the Patch.
"We must be coming up on two-thirty-five," I said, trying to accurately count the unmarked side streets as we passed them. There were no more numbered street signs or corner mailboxes to guide me, no more bus stop benches to sit on. There was nothing but deteriorated asphalt, the grassy open field and lonesome utility pole wires running to the few remaining houses on the side streets
"Can you see our house now?" Barry asked, extending his arm in front of me, pointing to our house nearby. "It's that one right over there."
I couldn't believe it. It was still standing: the old 563 East 235th Street side-by-side duplex. It was the only house in a three-block area, and there was no rubble anywhere; no piles of dirt or other evidence of demolished houses, just sprawling flat ground and six lonely sentries standing duty in the wide-open empty field.
"Here's two-thirty-five," Barry said, as he made a right turn onto the street where our old house still stood.
"This is the narrowest street I've ever seen," I said. "How could that be? It was sooo wide when I was a kid."
Barry nodded in agreement. There was barely enough room for two cars to pass. There were low curbs, rising up to doublewide, gravel parking spaces shared by each duplex. Old neighborhood family names suddenly flashed back: Miller, Malehot, Pinchot and Podwell.
"Maureen Suskin used to live there," I said, pointing to the empty lot where her up-and-down fourplex had once stood. "She was a redhead and lived in the third unit. Do you remember her?"
Barry glanced at me and then stopped the car in front of the first empty lot on the corner of east two-thirty-five where Maureen had once lived.
"No, I didn't know her."
"You remember Gary Beltzer, don't ya? He lived over there on the other side of Briardale on the corner of two-thirty-four next to Orlo Wertenberger."
"Oh yeah ... Orlo," Barry sighed. His expression changed. I knew he remembered him; they were buddies. "Yeah, I remember Gary. Wasn't he the one with greasy black hair? A duck tail, right?"
"Yeah ... that's right. He and I went over to Maureen's one time and ate her mother's Matzo crackers." I began to reminisce about Maureen. "Huh," I softly mumbled, "Isn't it funny that I remember Matzo crackers?"
We passed another empty lot before Barry stopped just before our duplex. One side of the two-family unit was vacant. It looked odd, standing there alone. The bicycle shed built by a carpenter our father had hired was still attached to the house. It covered the coal shoot delivery door we no longer needed after our gas furnace was installed.
"Barry!" I exclaimed. "Look how small that bike shed is. I used to have to duck my head to get into it when I was a kid. I couldn't get in there now. It's too small."
But for the sound of the idling Chevy engine, we stared in silence at the house we used to call home. It wasn't much to look at anymore. It was run down, but still there, still home, the place where we were raised — the little one-story, three-bedroom side-by-side duplex on a slab. When Barry took his foot off the brake, the car began to idle by the house.
"Have you been back here before?" I asked, while glancing around at the surrounding properties where houses once stood.
"About a year ago when I was over here on business," he said.
"Let's stop, Barry. Let's go up and knock."
