James McConkey
I am fond (“fond” being a synonym for foolish) of saying that I was
born on Brockley and raised on Mars-- though it would make more
sense if I lied, and said I was born on Mars and raised on
Brockley. Both of them are streets in Lakewood. Actually , during
my years of growing up, I lived on another Lakewood street as well.
My father changed jobs at least once a year, moving his family
around much of the country, but always returning to Lakewood, as if
it was his (and our) home base: the other streets on which I lived
were McKinley, Fries Ave. , Hilliard Rd. and Clifton Blvd. During
the last two of my high school years, I wanted more permanence than
my father could give me, for he had changed wives as well as jobs;
and so I asked my uncle and aunt, whom I had briefly lived with
when they were in Lakewood and who were now living in Olmsted
Falls, to take me in; and they did.
What I remember most vividly from my early years in Lakewood is the
sound of the foghorn-- the mournful Ah-woo-wah on misty and foggy
mornings in the spring and fall, as I still lay in bed.
That
mysterious sound is intimately connected with the spiritual impulse
which underlies nearly everything I’ve written.
It still has
connotations for me of loneliness and connection, and of vast
expanses of sea and sky. It speaks of the littleness and lostness
of each of us in a terrifyingly immense universe, and of the degree
of assistance we can give each other; it also speaks of a freedom
as impossible as it is frightening, but which the soul desires.
Without that foghorn, I doubt if I could have understood the story
that has become so important to my own self-understanding,
Chekhov’s “Gusev,” whose conclusion is also the conclusion of a
book I wrote in 1984, To A Distant Island.
For many years, I thought it necessary to live near a large body of
water to avoid entrapment. Sea and sky--and that warning foghorn-underlie whatever creative impulses I have.
In Olmsted Falls, I
was given much love by my uncle and aunt, and made some long and
lasting friendships with other high school students. Olmsted Falls
then was a village, surrounded by farmland, and Rocky River an
unpolluted stream for midnight skinny-dipping with friends. My two
years there were happy ones, crucial to my psychic health.
For
years, my uncle and aunt spent most of June on North Bass Island,
off the Catawba peninsula; my mother and brother and I had gone
with them to North Bass previous to my stay in Olmsted Falls, and
my mother and I went there twice more during my stay with my uncle
and aunt.
I used the peninsula and the island as the major
environment for a novel published in 1979, The Tree House Confessions.
WRITING ABOUT A CLEVELAND NEIGHBORHOOD
The South Side
Raymond DeCapite
The South Side, the Tremont Area, is a hillcrest neighborhood five
minutes south of downtown Cleveland. North, south and east of it
is The Flats, the industrial valley of the city.
The South Side was home. It was immediate family. It was aunts,
uncles and cousins. It was schoolmates whose parents were Polish,
It
Ukrainian, Russian, Slovak, German~ Irish~ Greek and SYXian.
proved to be a stage deep and wide enough for any dream.
The South Side was St. Augustine’s Catholic Church, St. Theodosius
Church--and
Congregational
Church,
Pilgrim
Russian Orthodox
fourteen others. It was Tremont Elementary and Lincoln High. IT
was the Merrick House, one of the oldest settlement houses in the
city. It was the Dinky, a yellow trolley pretty in memory as a
toy.
It was Lincoln Park, a square block of grass, trees,
A man named Dominic used to sit on a
playgrounds and benches.
bench, smoke his pipe and talk about the old country, dream about
It was
it, as he must have talked and dreamed about the new.
Fairfield Hill with three and sometimes four layers of children on
It was the Jennings
a sled whistling down the January dark.
Theatre with nickel movie matinees every Saturday and Sunday
afternoon; with love and innocence conquering all in double
features every night; with dishes on Wednesday; with Bank and cash
prizes on Saturday.
The South Side was the men who worked in The Flats. It was the men
who worked on the railroads, the men who worked in the forges,
foundries and mills.
It was the women who worked to make ends
It was Miss Bloommeet. It was Father Walsh at St. Augustine.
It was Miss Glick, Miss
field and Miss Alexander at Tremont.
Palmer and Miss Dickerson at Lincoln. It was the grocer, John, who
It was
extended credit like a hand all through the Depression.
Angelo the Jeep, who used to say, even at weddings and funerals,
“Where is everybody?” It was TT, who had traveled with the circus,
who had survived two wars and two marriages, a solid keg of a man
who delighted friends by turning sudden backflips and saying, ‘Ye! ‘
‘One of these days you might land on your head,’ a woman said.
‘That’s the least of my worries,’ he said. It was Alex, the owner
of a small confectionery, a man who took on all comers at two-hand
‘Alexander the Greatest, ‘ he was called. It was Pete,
pinochle.
who now and then during the week before the Fourth of July tossed
a cherry bomb in the stovepipe opening of the confectionery, a bomb
that exploded with such force in that store it seemed to blow
‘Ain’t you
everyone out the door. ‘What happened?’ he would say.
It was Romeo, an
going to grow up, ever?’
Alex would say.
aspiring actor who tried his luck in Hollywood. He tested for the
lead in Golden Boy but lost the role, he said, because he was two
inches shorter than William Holden. Long afterward he was hearing,
or overhearing, remarks like, An inch taller and I’d be dancing
with Ginger Rogers. ‘
Or, ‘Two more inches and I’d have been
It was Danny, who for two years enjoyed one of the
mayor. ‘
sweetest of political plums, a job emptying the wastepaper basket
and dusting the desk, chairs and sofa in the City Hall office of
Commissioner Paul, a shipmate for two summers on an ore carrier.
Danny would catch the trolley on the South Side at four in the
afternoon, hop off in front of City Hall, dashing while the trolley
continued its downtown round, do what he was supposed to do, and be
out in time to catch the trolley on its way back to the South Side.
Sometimes he took his wife,
He would be home by five-thirty.
Vicki, to keep him company and do the dusting. Vicki used to say
things like, ‘Haste makes hurry.’ Or, ‘A bird in the bush.’ Or,
“Mary was in Rome: she had an audition with Pope! ‘
The South Side was a midsummer night a long time ago with plumes
and pillars of smoke in the sky; with flags of blue fire; with a
throbbing red glow from the mills that could be seen thirty miles
away. It was people sitting on porches, porches generous enough
for friends as well as family. The women were saying:
‘She outgrew all her clothes.’
‘I can’t do anything with him. He’s like a wild animal. I
can’t wait till school starts. ‘
The men were saying:
‘Things are picking up at the mill. I put in three days this
week. ‘
‘There’s going to be a war in Europe. ‘
‘We’ll get in it. Mark my words now. ‘
Mike started playing his harmonica. It was forlorn, at first,
a threadbare weave. Pretty soon it was different. Pretty soon it
was If You Knew Susie.
People did, of course, and so for a while
some were able to relax a little in the heartbeat glow, a glow
insistent, profound, like the hope that brought them to this
country.