Sometimes You're Pleasantly Surprised

Let me get the Big News out of the way in case you haven't heard:  my apartment troubles have been favorably resolved.  I will be living in a high rise near Rogers Park just off the north end of Lake Shore Drive.  It is a wonderful apartment and I am looking forward to May 1, when I get to move in.  Here's what it looks like:

Please excuse the white line running down the left side of the picture - this is actually a photograph of the picture in their brochure, but it's what my unit looks like, although anyone who knows me knows that I will not have a plant.  At least, not one that is green for long.

I learned this great news on my way from Fort Wayne to Pittsburgh, and it caused me so much excitement that I missed the turn at Toledo.  There was a time not too long ago that Highway 24 from Fort Wayne to Toledo was the kind of road that any person who A) was sane and B) had an alternative - including staying home - would avoid like the plague.  A former State Senator (who was also a former Allen County Sheriff) publicly and routinely referred to it as the Highway of Death.  He was right.  It was a two-lane road that hugged the Maumee River and was therefore curvy and prone to heavy fog.  Although in some places that would be a good thing, when you layer that with the semis that come from the highway being the primary connector of a number of manufacturing towns, you end up with a bad situation.  Fortunately, it only took fifty years for the States of Ohio and Indiana to correct this problem in a project known as Fort to Port (cute, huh?)  But now it's corrected, and it is a joy to behold.  Seriously.  But there's a little trick at the end to get onto the Ohio Toll Road which mostly requires that you read signs.  Anyway, I missed that part, so I ended up taking Highway 6 for a while until it connected back to the Toll Road.  This saved me about $4 in tolls and provided a more scenic route.

Highway 6 takes you through Fremont, Ohio, for instance.  This is the home of the Rutherford Hayes Presidential Center.  I didn't know a lot about President Hayes - he was one of those Minor Presidents that you sort of zip over in U.S. History - and because I drove through Fremont on a Monday, the day his Presidential Center is closed, I still don't know much.  But he had a lovely home.

Interestingly, I got lost in Fremont, but I eventually found my way to Interstate 80/90.  Apparently Monday was not one of my better days, direction-wise.

Somewhere southeast of Cleveland you realize that the landscape, which had been pancake flat forever, was starting to have some hills and valleys.  It's sort of a thrill, which gives you an idea how boring a drive the Ohio Toll Road can be.

I had decided to take a slight detour and check out Youngstown, which meant I drove by Niles, Ohio, home of the William McKinley National Memorial.  Ohio is certainly chock full of those Minor Presidents.  But at that point in the afternoon I was more interested in making it to my cousin's in time for dinner than I was in more history, so I will have to take a raincheck on President McKinley.

And so, onward to Youngstown.

When I was in college in the early 1980's I met Matt, a grad student from Youngstown, and that was the first time I'd ever heard of the place.  I cannot explain why I found it oddly fascinating, and the stories I've heard about it from other people who have lived and worked there only added to my interest.  Certainly the history of Youngstown includes a lot of the bad parts of American history (industrial unrest, use of ethnic and racial divisions as a method of controlling labor costs, sharp decline in manufacturing, local government and business corruption) with fewer, from what I can tell, of the good parts.

The Little Steel Strike of 1937 occurred in Youngstown.  (The companies that were struck were the smaller steel companies, hence "Little Steel.")  There's a monument to it on the campus of Youngstown State University, my friend Matt's alma mater.  Phar-Mor, the discount drugstore that went bankrupt in the early 1990's amidst claims of fraud and jury-tampering, was based in Youngstown.  The city's population has dropped nearly in half in thirty years, which results in all of the problems that you'd assume such a drop would result in.  Their Congressman was indicted for a variety of, um, financial indiscretions, although he continued to be re-elected for nearly twenty years after the initial charges.  The list goes on and on.

So I was surprised to see Youngstown, looking kind of nice, actually.  Yes, it was a sunny day and that helps a lot.  But the city looked a lot better than I thought it would.  So good job, Youngstown.  Keep your chin up.

By the time I arrived in Pittsburgh in the late afternoon, the temperature was in the mid-70's.  It was crazy and made my visit with my cousins even more pleasant than it would have been otherwise, as we were able to enjoy an after dinner stroll through Squirrel Hill, where they live.

Pittsburgh is a really beautiful city.  Set near the Alleghenies, it is hilly and has three rivers with growing riverfront development.  Pittsburgh has turned its economy around over the past forty years and is something of a poster child for industrial city reinvention.

Squirrel Hill is an older neighborhood, full of beautiful homes and with a very busy commercial district that has a Main Street feel.  About 40% of the residents are Jewish - my cousin said that her neighborhood is the largest urban concentration of Jews outside of New York City - which is definitely a source of community pride.  They've got a great Jewish Community Center there (for my Gentile friends, that's more or less like a YMCA.)  And there's a famous shoe store there called Little's Shoes, although I don't know what religion the Littles are.  Plus there's a beautiful old Presbyterian Church, if you are so inclined.  And an elementary school where the neighbors have worked with school leadership to make it a reason why families would want to move into the area.  Altogether, a really great neighborhood.

Anyway, it was great to catch up with my cousin, her husband, and their three adorable daughters (who are 7, 10 and nearly 13 - there's a Bat Mitzvah coming up next month!)  Probably I should have stayed longer to see more of Pittsburgh, but after I helped drop the kids off at school, I was off to points south.  Guess I'll just have to come back for another visit.