Day of the Dead, Cleveland-Style

I thought it appropriate, what with today being Dia de los Muertos, to honor a few of my favorite defunct Cleveland landmarks. RIP, you guys.

Clay Oven
I know I've eulogized the Clay Oven before, but the ultimate demise of this Indian restaurant is, in my opinion, a Cleveland tragedy worthy of They Died Crawling. The Clay Oven was originally located on Lorain and 205th in Fairview Park, but closed because the city decided an office park was a better use of the space. The Clay Oven did a fantastic business at their original location - it was always full, and with a very cosmopolitan mix of people. It didn't do so well at its next location, next the DMV in a Parma strip mall, and even worse at the Budget Inn on Brookpark Road. The Clay Oven was way better than Cafe Tandoor, which for some reason unknown to me always wins "Best Indian Restaurant" in the Free Times even though it's not that remarkable. If anyone hears anything about the Clay Oven re-emerging, please let me know. It may be the catalyst which ensures that my next leap will be the leap home.

Danny Boy's Farm Market
I'm actually still in mourning over this one, which came as a total shock. Danny Boy's had been on that same corner in North Olmsted for 50+ years. It was the only place to shop, as far as I'm concerned, for locally-produced foods. They had all manners of heirloom and hard-to-find vegetables, Amish baked goods, Lake Erie wines...there was just nothing else like it. It closed in 2004 because, as I recall, the owner professed an interest in doing something different with his life. Which is fine, although in a puzzling and somewhat maddening twist, it appears he's now a produce buyer for Heinen's.

Fenn Tower Deli
Well, it's doubtful that the Fenn Tower Deli could really be called a landmark, but this tribute is for that one person who at some point in the future will google "Fenn Tower Deli." I'm not exactly positive that it's gone, but I'm assuming it is given that Fenn Tower has apparently been turned into housing for students who are no doubt indifferent toward the building's recent past, even if its recent past was somewhat of a decline from its "original 1929 grandeur." The FTD was the only eatery I could stomach on the campus of Cleveland State, and to that end I only found it upon the recommendation of a professor whose uncharacteristically elaborate office (it was an old dorm room, and featured not only a bathroom but a bathroom with a shower) was located in FT. (In the classroom where he taught, there was a raised set of steps that led to nowhere, which allegedly once led to a swimming pool, although I'm not sure about the veracity of that claim.)

The FTD was located in a large atrium, (I want to say) on the sixth floor (googler of the future, please correct me if I'm in error). You ordered from a hole in the wall that resembled a Punch and Judy stage, from people who resembled Punch and Judy. The food was passable and cheap, and the coffee was, er, useful for those of use who did their student internships in 18th floor windowless offices.

Miller's
Miller's had sticky buns. It had a tree growing inside the lobby. I got to drink Shirley Temples. Miller's burned down. These are my memories of Miller's.

Cleveland Aquarium
I only have dim memories of the Aquarium, which closed in 1985, and most of them involve my sister and I fighting over a wax koala (?) from the gift shop, but one of the things that makes me pause when I consider moving back is the lack of a good place to view large fishies. (Although there seems to be an effort to resurrect it.)

Franklin's
I have a feeling this is one of those places nobody remembers but me. Franklin's was an ice cream shop at Lorain around W. 212th. They sold what eventually became UDF ice cream (ahh, those nondescript pink-and-orange packages of yore). I'm not sure when it closed, but I think it might be a plastic surgery or a day spa now.

The Fairview Cinema
It seems strange that I might be nostalgic for a second-run theatre in a strip mall, but I am. First of all, the strip mall in question was an early, pedestrian-friendly model, with the bulk of the parking located behind the shopping center, instead of in front of it. I remember the area as somewhat of a gathering place, the nearest little Fairview Park could come to a "downtown." I liked it because your basic needs could be met there: there was the movie theatre for entertainment, a Revco, Conway's grocery store, Santo's pizza. The whole shebang was torn out in the mid-90s and a new-style strip mall, with a Tops grocery store and ample parking in the front, of course, was put in, making that part of Lorain Road a pedestrian nightmare. Brilliant!

Puritas Springs Park
OK, I don't remember Puritas Springs Park at all, but I'm intrigued by it. I grew up within spitting distance of Puritas Hill, which I didn't know was there until they opened it back up for traffic sometime in the 90s. What? There's a mysterious unused road somewhere nearby? Fascinating. In light of my recent experience living due south of creepy, crumbling Asbury Park, I'm also pretty piqued by the idea that you can still go rooting around in the thick underbrush of the Metroparks and find bits and pieces of a roller coaster that they just let drop off into the valley.

Memphis Drive-Out

Inspired by this BFD discussion, I decided to compile my own list of "Real Cleveland" landmarks - those places you aren't likely to take your chic out-of-town guests (if you want to impress them).

And thus I found that yet another icon of my childhood has dissolved into history. I'm sure that I would have known about this sooner, had my parents not been in England lo these last few weeks. Cleveland loses an historic drive-in theatre, but it gains a larger corporate park complete with a Starbucks. Yahoo!

I can't say I'm too surprised - who cares about drive-in theatres anymore, after all. But that was precisely what I loved about it. There you are, driving around in a clearly urban environment, and poof, how weird, a drive-in. Très bizarre!

Well, at least I'll have my memories of being curled up in my Miss Piggy sleeping bag in the back seat of our Ford Fairmont, while my sister threw popcorn in my hair until I shrieked for mercy, watching Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, or maybe Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Like Orange Juice and Milk....

...wisdom and teeth do not go well together. After seven years of willing them into submission, I've lost the battle. I've realized that the last few weeks have been spent seeking out meals like split pea soup and wonderbread and avoiding things that take even the most minimal amount of work, like pizza. I'm even past the stage where it's still mostly all in my head, the stage where you wake up and there's that blissful moment where you can't remember what you're supposed to be worrying about. When I wake up, and several times a night at that, it's immediately obvious -- so much so, that I've learned not to sleep on my right (the offending) side.

Beyond my semi-hysterical fear of general anesthesia, which in my personal history has been paralleled only by my childhood fear of volcanic eruptions (in Ohio!), the thing that's been toughest to overcome in this crowded-jaw odyssey is the fact that I regard my life in New York not as real life, but a sort of vacation life. In other words, if I was still in Cleveland, I probably would have had the cutting and ripping and cracking and yanking done years ago. But nobody wants to have surgery while they're on vacation, do they? What a bother.

30

Not yet.

But I'm on the slow march, at the point where I can no longer say I'm in my mid-twenties. I don't mind. I've been yanking out grey hairs for about a month now -- the bona fide, thick, wiry kind. I'm not being dramatic. My mom went grey early. Probably I've been grey for a while, but I've been coloring my hair for so long I haven't noticed.

I've long accepted the fact that I'm now an older, fatter version of my younger, thinner self. I watch younger people chow multiple cupcakes and remember that I used to be able to do that, until one day, I just couldn't anymore, without gaining weight. I don't mind the extra poundage, though. I was always a bit scrawny, anyway.

I'm looking forward to 30. I think much of my twenties was spent feeling sorry for myself, and just lately I've realized what folly and nonsense all of that is. I'm in the early stages of planning a big trip to celebrate -- by big trip, I mean several months. I'm not sure where I'm going to go. I'd like to go to Iran, but I don't think that's going to happen right now. I'd like to go to Malta, Turkey, Greece. I'd like to go to Kyrgyzstan. I'd like to go visit my new nephew in England. I'd like to spend a month in Nova Scotia, just looking out at the sea.

We'll see.

What?!

Mammoth Cave attendance is dropping! How can this be? Seriously, all you people of Ohio, this has got to be one of the best possible roadtrips. Tell your friends! Take the Wild Cave Tour! (But not if any part of your body measures more than 42 inches around....) If you don't, they'll fill it with concrete and turn it into the only Wal-Mart that was formerly a cave!!