I retake the wheel somewhere not too far east of Toledo. I feel rested but wonder how long that will last. I order a cup of coffee at the roadside McDonald’s and have to wait a couple of minutes until I have it in hand. The male counter clerk appears to be the stereotypical brother from another planet. He must be on the third shift exclusively.
The Doors-Jefferson Airplane-Buffalo Springfield tape makes wonderful company, so good that I don’t even attempt to make conversation with Barb, who’s still in the passenger’s front seat. By the end of the second hour of my second shift at the wheel, I’m craving another cup of coffee as well as some hint of daylight. The latter’s arrival provides me with a barely noticeable second wind. When I exit off Interstate 80 at Barkleyville (State Route 8 in Pennsylvania) I’m desperate for sleep. JoAnna then takes the wheel at the approach to my favorite leg of this long trip: U.S. 62 from Franklin to Warren. I nod out momentarily but spend the last 30 miles of the drive with Eddie in my lap. We pull into Grandma and Grandpa’s driveway at 9 a.m. Great time. JoAnna had told them to expect us around noon.
After unpacking the van, I attempt to round up the necessary energy for a walk downtown. Postcards on which to write down observations of this trip are foremost on my mind. It quickly becomes obvious, though, that I’m not going to make it through the morning, let alone the day, without a nap. JoAnna’s already upstairs in the guest room with the boys by the time I sack out on the couch in the living room, the TV tuned to the Weather Channel. Before dozing off, I want to know how much longer this unwanted heat wave is going to be around.
When I wake up, someone has changed the channel to coverage of the U.S. Open tennis tournament in Forest Hills. Michael Stich and Malivai Washington are in the fifth set of their match. Stich has the perfect tennis frame, but Malivai looks as though he took a wrong turn on the way to Giants Stadium. He looks to have 200 pounds of body packed into a 150-pound frame.
After lunch I walk out onto the front porch and am greeted by a blast of hot air. In spite of the heat, I’m ready to walk downtown, as the mental notes I’ve made about the visit to Warren so far start to pile up inside my brain. While the boys nap, JoAnna and I walk together. I’m content to go at a leisurely pace, but JoAnna strides along as if she is in training for a walkathon fundraiser for our kids’ education. We walked across the Third Avenue bridge, then turn left onto Water Street as the shade is more plentiful in that direction. As usual, we admire the houses on Second Avenue, especially on the odd-numbered side of the street. The red brick house with the glassed-in front porch on the southwest corner of Second and East causes an indistinct memory bell to ring inside my head. What is it about this house, I can no longer recall, except for the fact that its architecture has always intrigued me. There’s also something about a phone number: 723-6262. And watching some older girl whom I had a crush on walk into this house. In 1962? My number does seem to be imprinted here.
Walking past Market Street School, I imagine how this corner site looked when the old high school was still standing. I recall the one time when I walked inside, when Mom was taking a driver’s ed course, and how entranced the interior of the building made me feel, the dark woodwork and the high ceilings, the frosted glass sections of some of the doors, the rows of gray lockers facing each other along the hallway. When the building was being razed – it must have been during the spring or fall of 1961 – I made regular trips on my bicycle to view the destruction. I felt the spirit of so many memories flow into me and experiencing feelings that an eleven year old could barely comprehend.
The rumors of Janick’s bankruptcy that Mom relayed to us in one of her chatty letters earlier this year have proven to be more than the latest news from the beauty parlor. Although the display windows are artfully plastered with large signs trumpeting “unbelievable” sale prices, other much smaller hand-written signs are found at the two entrances to the store. They say, very simply, “CLOSED”. Mom and Dad report their merchandise is too upscale for the majority of Warren consumers. Their prognosis would seem to point to a marketing blunder. Barb Lucia will tell me that the Bostjanicks, especially Linda, don’t know how to run a department store, a case of management ineptitude. Whatever the causes of Janick’s demise – and from an outsider’s viewpoint, I’d really be surprised to learn that the store reopened on a permanent basis – I think downtown Warren has seen the last of this type of retail establishment. A stagnant community like this can support two business districts. The Warren Mall, anchored by K-Mart, Penney’s, and the Bon Ton, is part of an irreversible trend in retailing. Downtown Warren, with its inconvenient parking, aging structures, and lack of a magnet seems to be headed for the precipitous decline that it luckily avoided when the Warren Mall first opened more than ten years ago.
Our prime reason for walking downtown is to buy disposable diapers, which is our reason for stopping at CVS. As I walk to the back of the store to a postcard display, I heard my wife call out my name. The cashier has run up and total and JoAnna has left her purse at the house. We also stop at the newsstand but there’s not even a Wall Street Journal to buy. In the mood for a cool drink, we stop at the Savoy and savor the air-conditioned air. We settle for milk shakes after being informed that the pop is flat due to some mechanical malfunction of a refrigeration unit. The shakes are delicious: cool, thick, and refreshing, although an ice-cold cake would have been a better match for an oppressively hot and humid day.
Back at the house, I sack out on one of Mom and Dad’s new recliners. I doze off for about an hour before supper. Mom prepares a light meal: cold cuts, potato salad, a plate of sliced vegetables. Afterwards, Andy and I walk to the “schoolyard”. That’s how we always referred to it. During those endless grade-school summer vacations, we played uncountable innings of waffle ball there. Except for the chain-link fence which prevented easy access, it was our back yard, especially since the house at 4 East Third Avenue has no back yard to speak of.
Andy amazes me with his strength on the monkey bars. Not even two months ago, the last time I walked him to Neshotah Park in Two Rivers, he wasn’t able to keep a tight grip as he moved from bar to bar. A couple of girls more than twice Andy’s age are barely able to maintain a 5-second hang time. Once I notice that Dale has returned home, I attempt to cut short our visit. Naturally, Andy isn’t immediately agreeable to my suggestion, but I remain persistent.
As we walk back to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, I give Jefferson School a thorough visual inspection. First of all, I neglected to mention earlier that the old schoolyard is almost completely covered with asphalt. Very little green remains. A chain-link fence now divides the play and parking areas. The building itself looks dirty; the red brick now showing nearly forty years of accumulated dirt and soot. At best, Jefferson has never been more than an example of utilitarian architecture, but now the school looks like it would be at home in a deteriorating inner-city neighborhood. The grounds are unkempt. Tall weeds have spiked through and now tower over evergreen hedges in need of a trim. One of the panes of rectangular glass in what was Miss Flowers’ fourth-grade classroom needs to be replaced. A rickety message board, nothing more than an eyesore, has been erected on the front lawn bout as far away from the main entrance as possible. It makes me wants to contact my sixth-grade class members to request donations for an improvement fund. Most would probably respond, if at all, to let the school board take care of it.
When Andy and I return to the house, we join the others on the front porch. Such a pleasant place to while away the time. Both JoAnna and I would like our next house to have this amenity, as well as a deck, at least two large full bathrooms, a two-car garage, four bedrooms, central air, separate dining room. I’m sure the list could fill up the rest of this postcard if I put my mind to it.
As 10 o’clock, my old bedroom is almost too hot for sleeping. The ceiling fan provides only minimal relief. Nevertheless, both Andy and Eddie are sleeping peacefully. JoAnna goes to bed first. I spend some quiet time in the upstairs TV room, where I nod out on the couch long before 11. I wake up at 11:30, initially unsure of where I am, then join the rest of my family in the guest bedroom.
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