Even more interesting is that Anniston was chosen by the U.S. government as the principal disposal [site for] chemical weapons that our country agreed to get rid of in a treaty (it is, after all, not just the Middle East that had such weapons). They're trucking down tons of warheads filled with gallons of lethal gases like Serin (the stuff a cult released in the Tokyo subway a few years back). The stuff will be burnt up in a big incinerator here. The process is supposed to be safe, but apparently a similar incinerator at a test facility in Utah leaked a substantial amount of toxins into the environment. That wasn't important in the middle of the desert, but it probably would be here in a major city.
TV and magazine reports make it sound as if all of Anniston might as well be called a toxic waste dump. Someone must have forgotten to tell that to the 100,000 or so people who live here, though. Anniston looks pretty much like any other city. Much of it is dumpy and decaying, but it's certainly not abandoned. Thousands of people seem to go about their daily business here in pretty much the same way that other people do elsewhere. ...
I stopped for breakfast in Anniston (yes I actually ate food in toxic waste central), at a place called Jack's. Whenever I travel I enjoy checking out local fast food places, and Jack's fit that bill here. Jack's looks like a lot of the newer Hardees restaurants, with scooped ice cream as well as sandwiches. I had a ham biscuit, which I was hoping would be a lot like Hardees also. It wasn't. What I got was a very dry biscuit (Southerners seem to like biscuits dry), with a bit of shaved ham in the middle. No egg, no cheese--just ham on a biscuit. I also ordered a large orange juice, and it took almost the whole drink to keep from choking on the biscuit. Believe me, I won't be returning to Jack's any time soon.
Just south of Anniston I turned east on Interstate 20, which is a lovely road through the Talladega National Forest. Before long I crossed the border into Georgia, and almost immediately I could tell I was getting to metropolitan Atlanta. I began seeing "Ride Share" signs at Exit 9, and by the time I got to Exit 24 the interstate expanded to six lanes. Not long after that it grew to eight lanes, which made traffic move steadily all the way through the suburbs.
My original plan was to drive to a park-and-ride lot just inside the Atlanta beltway, which is a good twenty miles in from the edge of the suburbs and only about six miles from downtown. From there I would catch MARTA (Atlanta's subway) to downtown and then transfer to a bus. Since traffic was flowing smoothly, though, I decided I might as well drive all the way to my destination. That was probably a wise decision. Traffic was even lighter in the city than out in the suburbs. I cruised down the Ralph Abernathy Expressway and before I knew it was downtown. I just kept going straight, and a few minutes later I exited onto Moreland Avenue. ... I made it up to Freedom Parkway, and before long I parked in the lot of my ultimate destination: the Carter Center.
Most people's heroes or role models are athletes or entertainers. For me, my biggest hero is probably President Carter. I first started being aware of government during Watergate, and Carter was a breath of fresh air after all of Nixon's shenanigans. To this day I'd say he is the only President I've been aware of who was truly honest and decent and who really cared about all the people. I've grown to respect Carter even more since he left office. Rather than retiring to the golf course, President and Mrs. Carter have been almost more active since they left the White House than they were while they lived there. Most of their work is based in the Carter Center, which is technically part of Emory University, but functions as an independent educational and charitable agency.
They definitely spared no expense in building the Carter Center. I don't know if the money that built it was public or private, but there was definitely a lot of it spent here. My first reaction was that the manicured grounds and fountains were excessive and unnecessary. When I thought about it, though, I realized that this place is used as a conference center by world leaders. There probably has to be some sense of luxury to attract those people here to begin with. It's not like someone who's used to living in a palace would exactly be in the mood to negotiate if you brought him to a big warehouse.
While there are many buildings at the Carter Center, the only one I visited was the Presidential Museum and Library. Most (possibly all) ex-presidents have a government-run museum. Carter's, though, is certainly the best I've seen. It begins with a display on the administrations of all the 20th Century Presidents, with fairly neutral descriptions of how society was in the era in which each one governed, the accomplishments of each man, and the problems each faced while in office. It was refreshingly free of any political slant--with good and bad things said about both the Democrats and Republicans throughout the century. I think the point was to establish the fact that there's good and bad in every Presidency; the good and bad of the Carter years were contrasted in the rest of the museum.
One large gallery was entitled "Road to the White House". It traced Carter's political history, starting with his election to the Sumter County School Board and ending with the Presidency. A sub-section of that was an exhaustive collection of memorabilia from the '76 campaign. I'd almost forgotten those green and white "Why Not the Best" posters, and it made me wonder why no one since Carter has campaigned with any color other than red, white, and blue. I'd also almost forgotten that huge campy smile that graced all of Carter's campaign materials. I'm not sure anyone before or since has had such a cheesy smile.
Another gallery deals with the issues of the Carter Presidency. I think that anyone (myself included) who complains about the issues of the modern era should just take a look back in history. It doesn't take too long to see that the "good old days" were anything but that. On the other hand, a lot of the problems we have today come from the fact that we never really fully solved our problems twenty-five years ago.
Case in point: the energy crisis. I'm appalled at how little progress we've made in that area. Energy was probably the number one problem of the Carter Presidency. I remember setting the thermostat to 68o, driving 55, and sitting through church services with the lights dimmed to save electricity. Everyone did their bit to save energy in the '70s, but after Carter left office we just went back to wasting it. Reagan, Bush, and Clinton all pretended didn't there was no energy crisis. The most dire predictions of the '70s may not have come true (I remember quoting some "expert" in a paper as saying we'd exhaust world oil supplies by 2000), but the fact is that we're using more energy than ever and we're more and more dependent on foreigners for that energy. In the '70s people were embarrassed to be driving gas-guzzling station wagons; today they don't think twice about driving pick-ups or minivans that get even worse mileage. Add to that all the new electronics our homes have--most of which suck power twenty-four hours a day--and the fact that far more places are air conditioned than were a quarter century ago. Is it any wonder prices are so chaotic and we seem to be forever at the mercy of the Middle East?
So what else was bad news in the '70s? The issues gallery also dealt with the decline of American industry (remember the Chrysler bailout?) and the related decline of American cities (remember when New York went bankrupt?), the Three Mile Island nuclear catastrophe, the Cold War and arms negotiations, and the issue that brought down Carter's Presidency--the hostage crisis in Iran that in many ways foreshadowed the problems we're dealing with in the Middle East today.
There are, of course, some areas where we have made some real progress since the '70s. One of those is the environment, and it's President Carter who really got things started. There's no question whatsoever that our air and water are cleaner today than they were a quarter century ago. I wrote about some smog in California in an earlier travelogue, but things are still way better than they were before-and that's true everywhere, not just in California. I remember seeing serious air pollution in Chicago when I was a child, while today there's pretty much never smog there. It was also in the Carter years that recycling (like the Iowa beverage deposit law) got started. It's grown from there to the point that recycling is required in most places today and pretty much everybody does it to varying extents. There are a lot of smaller signs of an improved environment, too. The number of endangered species is going down, and even changes like letting the highway ditches go back to natural prairie is a positive step. The challenge today is to keep going forward with the environment, rather than sinking back like we did with energy.
And that is a continuing challenge. Even as I write this, Hy-Vee and other grocers are trying yet again to get the deposit law repealed or weakened. If they really are losing money on processing cans and bottles, then they should raise their prices appropriately. I can't imagine, though, with the prices they charge, that Hy-Vee could possibly be losing money on anything. Nevertheless, though, every year they campaign for repealing the law.
A large part of the issues gallery deals with what is probably Carter's greatest accomplishment as President, the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. At the center of the display is the original treaty, typed in English, Hebrew, and Arabic on an old cloth-ribbon typewriter with white-out over mistakes and changes. It's a definite legacy to Carter, Sadat, and Begin that the peace has lasted well beyond the leadership of all three men. Relations are still far from friendly between Israel and Egypt, but it's still as close to true peace as anything seems to get in that troubled part of the world.
The museum also includes an exact replica of the Oval Office, set as it was when Carter occupied the White House. A tape in the background explains the round-the-clock negotiations Carter made just before he left office to see that the hostages in Iran were released safely. There's another room with displays on what it's like to live in the White House. Yet another displays the countless official gifts that leaders of other nations presented to the Carters. Most of those gifts were pretentious and utterly impractical, and they made me wonder what our Presidents give to foreign leaders in return. Another large area is called the "Interactive Town Meeting". Visitors can select questions they'd like to ask President Carter at touch screens around the room. The President's rather long-winded answers (Carter obviously never mastered the media "sound bite") are shown on a big screen TV at the front.
One thing that disappointed me a bit was that there was almost nothing about Carter's work after leaving the White House. He's both a spokesman and an active participant in Habitat for Humanity, he's become a prolific author (largely on the topic of putting Christian faith into positive action), and he's served as a (usually unofficial) diplomat in countless trouble spots around the world. This is a Presidential museum, though, and the subject matter is pretty much limited to the Carter Presidency.
I left the museum, but there was still one more fascinating feature to see at the Carter center: the restroom. Signs in the restroom explain the many ways in which it is a model for environmentally friendly facilities. The place is unlit until the doors are open, when sensors turn on low-energy fluorescent bulbs. Like many modern restrooms, the sinks have no faucets. Instead sensors note when your hands are there, and water sprays on them automatically. The toilets are low-flow models, and they also flush automatically. Strangest, though, are the urinals. These use no water or chemicals whatsoever, yet somehow they manage not to smell at all. The sign attempted to explain how they work, but I really didn't understand it. I assume they must be extremely expensive, or we'd probably see them elsewhere.
I had visited Atlanta in 1990 and saw many of the "must see" sights, so today pretty much all I visited was the Carter Center. I headed back out I-20 and stopped for gas and lunch (Subway ham and cheese) at a Flying J truck stop on the outskirts of the area at Exit 19. Then I drove on through the woods to Pell City, Alabama, where I turned north on U.S. 231.
Something that amused me while driving today was the Alabama and Georgia state highway signs. Both states use signs in the shape of their state, and those shapes are close to being mirror images of each other-though Alabama has a tiny "tail" at the bottom, while Georgia doesn't. The signs are designed to hold a two-digit highway number comfortably. There's a lot of white space on single-digit numbers, and for triple-digit highways they expand the size of the sign, so it looks like the state is grossly overweight--probably from too much grits and fried chicken.
Alabama is one of those states where the interstates are fine, but the secondary roads are horrible. 231 is a perfect example of that. It's a long-distance road, running from central Indiana to the Florida panhandle, but Huntsville is the largest city on its path. It's the round-about way to everywhere it goes in Alabama, and no one who knew better would take it. I, of course, didn't know better. On the map it looked like a pretty straight shot from the interstate up to Huntsville. The map doesn't show that it curves around the contour of every hill in the state or that it literally goes around three sides of the town square in every town it passes through. For much of the way I was stuck behind a slow-moving smelly old car, which meant that even though the route was scenic, it was far from a pleasant drive. Scenic, though, it definitely was. The area around Oneota and Cleveland is truly mountainous, and while the road is not one to make time on, the scenery really is spectacular.
Eventually I made my way north to Arab (AY-rabb), where the highway becomes four-lane for the final half-hour into Huntsville. I relaxed in my room back at the Econolodge and watched Headline News on TV. Then around 5:00 I made my way back to Joe Davis Stadium.
Brad had ... my name on the pass list tonight, and I'm glad he did. It's not that I couldn't spare $8 for a "real" ticket, but having the freebie allowed me to sit in a section I'd otherwise have never known was there. Section F is located right behind home plate, and it is obviously reserved for complementary tickets. The bulk of the people here were the pitchers who were not playing tonight and the players' wives and girlfriends. There were also a few other friends and family members, but no "real" fans. You get a whole different perspective on the game sitting in a place like that.
* * * * *
Several of the other pitchers were [especially interesting to watch]. What amused me ... was that the game that was going on down on the field was just about the furthest thing from their minds. Three of them spent most of the night playing with a Gameboy. What game were they playing? ... Needless to say, it was video baseball.
* * * * *
This section was also where the grounds crew and stadium workers congregated when they weren't working. Mentioning them reminds me that the grounds crew had some real problems painting the base lines before this game. The first base line looked fine from the stands, but apparently something about it wasn't to the umpire's liking. They had to literally vacuum up the chalk and repaint the whole stripe.
There was, of course, a game happening--two games actually. They made up for last night's rain-out with another doubleheader. Brad's played all of game 1 in left field. He did not start game 2, but he entered the game in the 7th as a pinch hitter and then played in left after that. Once again no balls came his way, so I can't really say how he's doing as an outfielder. Both games were basically pitching duals, with no one on either team doing particularly well at the plate. Brad managed one hit (in six at-bats, I think), but he actually did better at the plate than most of his teammates. He managed to make contact every time; unfortunately, the ball always seemed to go right to someone.
While there weren't really any big plays in either game, the games were not really dull either. The Stars ended up winning both, and the second game was the first win for David Nolasco, a pitcher from California who was promoted the same day as Brad.
Today was poster day at Joe Davis Stadium. The hospital I had driven past earlier had sponsored posters that were basically collections of the baseball cards of the players on the team. Since he had joined the team late, Brad's picture was not on the card. Nevertheless I had him sign my poster after the game. We talked briefly, but after another doubleheader we were once again both tired. So we said our goodbyes and I wished him well with the rest of the season. Then I went back to the Econolodge one last time.
I was up fairly early again this morning. I got things packed up, checked out of the motel, and was on my way by 6:45. I stopped briefly at a Krystal restaurant on Memorial Parkway for a bite of breakfast. I got a really tasty bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit, some hashbrowns, and a Krystal travel mug (99¢) filled with rather tasteless coffee. The Krystal mug has become my coffee mug at school this year. It certainly stands out, being probably the only mug from that southern chain in Iowa.
I headed west past the space center on I-565, thankful that this time my car was substantially quieter. I then turned north on I-65 and headed up to Tennessee. It was foggy this morning, and I was reminded of a program I'd seen on the Discovery Channel that described the worst auto accident in American history--a chain reaction where almost 100 cars crashed into each other on a foggy interstate in Tennessee. Fortunately it wasn't that bad here, but there were some places where visibility was a problem.
The worst part of the trip was following an extremely large mobile home that traveled just less than the posted speed limit (70mph). It was quite a bit wider than a single lane of traffic, and on the winding interstate in fog, neither I nor much of anybody else found many opportunities to pass. I was nearly to Nashville by the time I finally got around the rig.
About an hour and a half after leaving Huntsville I reached he start of suburban Nashville. There really wasn't much way to avoid hitting Nashville right at rush hour, and traffic was heavy for the next hour or so of my trip. The metropolitan area basically starts at Exit 50--"Saturn Parkway" (named after the cars they make here) in Spring Hill, and it continues through the rather compact downtown area and on to the northern suburbs. The six-lane finally gave out at Exit 108, less than half an hour from the Kentucky border.
I stopped at Exit 1 in Kentucky at another Flying J truck stop. I bought gas and got some better coffee there. It was interesting that while I was there they had some promotion trying to get people to buy motor scooters. A group of mostly middle-aged men were demonstrating the scooters by racing around in front of the convenience store. The salesmen didn't really seem the age group for whom the scooters were intended, and they looked strange indeed doing donuts in the parking lot on an overgrown kid's toy.
Kentucky has surprisingly good roads. I had thought that last year when we came through the state on our way back from national quiz bowl, and this humble mountain state surprised me again with its excellent highways. Large stretches of Kentucky's interstates are six lanes, instead of four-even in very rural areas. That makes traffic move efficiently, even with a large volume of trucks. Every year I-80 in Iowa gets more and more crammed, and we'd do well to consider six-laning it too.
Louisville is yet another of those run-on Southern cities. All of the sun belt cities seem to be dwarfed by their suburbs. The map shows two different beltways ringing Louisville, but the urban area stretches a good ten miles south of the outer belt. Before long I-65 was a massive ten-lane marvel of engineering that conveyed me far above the city. The highway really seemed unnecessarily large. I don't know for sure just how big Louisville is, but it didn't really seem all that important. It looks a lot like Cedar Rapids, though with probably three times as many suburbs. Even Omaha (three times C.R.'s size) doesn't have ten-lane highways, though. I wasn't complaining; really I was just pondering how Kentucky gets the money for these highway improvements while other states go without.
I followed I-65 to the very last exit in downtown Louisville and drove through a maze of spaghetti onto a much worse urban freeway. Interstate 64 runs on an elevated structure right next to the Ohio River. There are three levels, one on top of the other. At the very bottom is a city street that I would eventually end up on lined by railroad tracks on both sides. Above that are two lanes of westbound interstate traffic, with the two eastbound lanes on the very top. The whole structure looks to date from the '50s, and I'd bet it hasn't had any serious maintenance since. They'd do well to just gut the whole thing and start over, but there's really nowhere to put a better freeway without leveling about half of a surprisingly vibrant downtown.
Fortunately I just went west about two exits and fairly quickly turned off the street at the bottom of the mess. My destination was yet another baseball-related one: the Louisville Slugger factory. While it's buried in a rather bleak industrial area, you really can't miss this place. Out in front of the old brick building stands the world's largest baseball bat, a six-story replica of their product. That alone probably accounts for why the factory tour is one of the top tourist attractions in Kentucky.
They really try to milk the tourists here. I passed on the $8 "official" tourist parking and easily found on-street parking where a quarter gave me two hours on the meter. I also passed on the opportunity to spend $75 have my name engraved on a baseball bat. I didn't have any choice, though, but to cough up $6 for the tour.
The tour starts with a really bad movie, a fluff piece on how baseball is the all-American game. While it was interesting to see a bunch of big league stars, it got dull seeing endless cherubic kids playing Little League ball while sappy patriotic music played in the background. Following the film we were herded through what could have been a very interesting museum. Unfortunately they didn't give us enough time to really see any of it. It would have made much more sense to end the tour at the museum, so we could have spent whatever time we wanted to, but here it was the beginning. The tour itself was interesting. We walked through the factory, pausing to see each step in the process of making baseball bats up close. Most of the machines were actually operating while we went past, so we did get a sense of seeing the real thing. It's a fairly complicated process, though today almost every step is entirely automated. The tour ended in a gift shop, where we were each presented with a complementary mini-bat.
I probably should mention that my friend Brad doesn't actually use Louisville sluggers. Like many younger players, the bats he uses are made in Canada out of maple wood. He feels these give better control and power than the more traditional ash bats they make in Kentucky. Here, of course, they say exactly the opposite--and I honestly have no clue who's right myself.
One interesting side note is the pronunciation of the city I was in. I'd always heard that Kentuckians said the name of their largest city as something close to LOO-vul. It was interesting that the visitor staff at the factory very carefully pronounced it LOO-ee-vill, exactly as we Northerners generally do. On the street and on the radio, though, I heard a slurred name that came closer to "larval"--definitely two syllables, and a definite "R" sound in the middle.
I left downtown Louisville on I-71, which heads northeast and very quickly leaves the city. This is a very scenic interstate, winding through the bluffs above the Ohio River. It's pretty, but a poor surface combined with all the hills made it kind of annoying to drive. Fortunately it's just 99 miles from Louisville to Cincinnati, so the trip went fairly quickly.
About 10 miles south of Cincinnati we joined I-75 on a ten-lane mass of concrete through the Kentucky suburbs. Traffic flowed smoothly until I came to the official Cincinnati beltway, where the road narrowed to six lanes and the interstate became a parking lot. It was stop and go, with a lot more stop than go for the last five miles across Kentucky. It took nearly forty-five minutes to go just five miles--close to the worst traffic jam I'd ever been in.
When I finally came in view of the downtown Cincinnati skyline, I finally saw the reason for the back-up. The interstate crosses the Ohio on a double-decker bridge. Northbound traffic takes the lower deck, and there had been an accident on that deck, with a truck crashing into the side of the bridge. Three other vehicles were also involved, and it looked as if there were probably multiple injuries. They had narrowed traffic to just the leftmost lane (for two major interstates running together) so the emergency crews would have space to work. I certainly hope everyone came out of the accident okay, and while I'm not normally one to gawk at such things, I must say it was at least good to have a reason for the back-up.
I-71 joins and peels off of numerous other highways as it cuts through bleak industrial districts and run-down rowhouse neighborhoods in central Cincinnati. Downtown Cincinnati looks quite pleasant, but the surrounding city is far from attractive. The combination of the bad highways and the ugly city makes this a place I have little desire to return to for a longer visit.
Traffic hit the brakes again when I reached the northern side of the Cincinnati beltway. It seems as if in almost every city these days traffic is worse in the suburbs than it is in the city proper. The cities themselves have freeways that were built to handle big volumes of traffic, but the smaller suburban interstates are severely overloaded. I crawled on for about twenty miles through the northeast Cincinnati suburbs before things finally began to flow smoothly again.
Having spent the better part of the afternoon in Cincinnati, I was now on pace to hit Columbus right at rush hour. I had no desire whatsoever to get tied up in even more traffic, so I decided to stop for an early supper. I pulled off the interstate at Lebanon, Ohio, and had dinner at a Bob Evans restaurant. My entrée was a barbecued chicken salad, which had an unexpected flavor, but was really quite good. It also surprised me that the place was really quite crowded at 4:00 in the afternoon.
I stopped again at a rest area about halfway between Cincinnati and Columbus and then headed on north to Columbus. It surprised me after traveling through so many cities that seemed to sprawl on forever that metro Columbus actually did start at its beltway. I-71 kept joining and peeling off of other highways all through Columbus, but it was past rush hour and traffic moved fairly smoothly. It was interesting that while the southern end of the city was the beltway, the north end sprawled on better than 20 miles beyond the ring road.
I-71 is a very busy highway in Ohio. It runs diagonally up the state, connecting Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland and just barely bypassing Akron and Canton. Millions of people live in this corridor, and the factories and warehouses along here ship tons of goods. They're in the process of six-laning the highway, and they desperately need to finish it soon. In the sections that are six lanes, traffic moves fairly smoothly, but the four-lane sections--even through seemingly rural areas--are a real headache to drive. One of the biggest problems with the interstate is the stupid truck speed limit they have in Ohio--ten miles per hour slower than the speed limit for cars. While they don't exactly enforce either the car or truck limits, trucks do drive significantly slower than cars. That means cars are constantly having to pass trucks, which makes the whole crowded freeway one big mess. Fortunately Ohio really isn't that big of a state, even diagonally, so it didn't take all that long to make my way northeastward. It was around 7:30 when I finally exited to the town of Brunswick, in the extreme southern suburbs of Cleveland.
Brunswick comes across as a very pleasant town. ... Things are older than most places on the edge of suburbia. There are lots of apartments that appear to date to the mid '70s, plus some modest single family homes. It also had square streets, rather than the looping cul de sacs so many suburbs are plagued with. On the map in the hotel guide, it looked as if the Sleep Inn-Brunswick might be difficult to get to. I've been to lots of motels where the entrance was through the parking lot for a fast food place or an office park, so I was expecting the worst. In fact, this motel faced right on a side street, just one turn off the main drag.
Another definite plus to this town is that there are sidewalks everywhere--something I was grateful to see after a week in the South. I can't understand why towns don't require sidewalks everywhere. If they made it part of the initial cost of construction, they wouldn't have to worry about assessing owners after the fact. Too many places seem to think sidewalks are a luxury, though.
The Sleep Inn--Brunswick was quite pleasant. I've been to several Sleep Inns over the years, and I don't think I've ever had a bad experience at one. They're always either brand new or (like this one) immaculately cared for. The rooms are brightly lit, the beds are firm, the showers have good pressure, and the breakfast is good. In most places (including Cleveland), the price is also toward the low end of the motel market, which makes them a real bargain.
I'd already had dinner, but that was some time ago by the time I'd settled in at the Sleep Inn, so I decided to go out to explore the neighborhood and get just a small bite more to eat. I ended up at a Wendy's probably a mile or so down the strip from the motel (but not a bad walk, with sidewalks). I had some chili, made my way back to the Sleep Inn, and then relaxed and read the newspapers I'd accumulated during the day.
I slept fairly late this morning. While they had a nice fruit and bagel bar at the motel, I passed on that and figured I'd eat in the city instead. So I got in my car and headed north on I-71. Before long I reached I-80, the Ohio Turnpike--which here serves as a beltway for greater Cleveland. Things are solidly developed from the turnpike north to downtown, but on Saturday morning traffic flowed well. I exited at 150th Street, just inside the Cleveland city limits, did a U-turn around some construction, and parked in a park-and-ride for the Cleveland rapid.
I'd been to this very same park-and-ride about five years ago when I came out to Cleveland at Easter. On that trip I had stayed at what was then a Budgetel (now a Baymont Inn) that literally shares its parking lot with the subway. Having changed management the Baymont had also priced itself out of my budget, which is why I chose to stay about ten miles further out and commute to the park-and-ride.
The Cleveland rapid is weird. Those who regularly read my travelogues will know I've spoken highly of public transit systems in many cities. Cleveland, though, I'll barely damn with faint praise. There are really three parts to the rapid. The station at 150th and Puritas is on the red line, an extremely utilitarian subway that runs mostly in an open trench through a string of grimy neighborhoods that few tourists would want to visit. Downtown the red line connects with the blue and green lines. Those lines run through more open trenches past more grimy neighborhoods on the east side of Cleveland and then rise to street level to run as streetcars through the leafy, old money suburb of Shaker Heights. In downtown itself the blue and green lines join to form a new "light rail" line that serves the renovated lakefront area, with stops for the new football stadium, a host of overpriced seedy bars, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Not many people ride the rapid. Even with long intervals between trains, there's hardly ever a crowd on the platforms. That struck me when I was here before, when even on a weekday at rush hour they ran just single-car trains at fifteen-minute intervals on the red line. I also remember on that trip when on Easter Sunday morning I was the only passenger on the blue line for more than half an hour as I rode from Shaker Heights to the waterfront. The red line stations were built with booths to accommodate ticket agents, but most of these were long ago sealed up. Now they don't have agents or even vending machines; you just walk down long spooky hallways past signs advising you to pay on the train.
I made my way through the bowels of Puritas station and up to the platform. Surprisingly, a train arrived just as I reached the platform. They have a bus farebox just inside the doors of the train, and I inserted four dollars in exchange for a daily pass. I joined about half a dozen other passengers who had boarded further south. The train soon whisked me along through the graffiti-filled jungle that is Cleveland's west side.
The only significant transfer point for the rapid is Tower City, beneath a historic downtown building that has been renovated into a snooty mall. I got off and waited on the platform as the red line car headed off eastward. ... And I waited ... and I waited ... and I waited ... and I waited. Either green or blue line trains are supposed to stop here every fifteen minutes, and either of those heads to Shaker Heights. I waited for nearly a half hour before a green line train finally stopped, though.
Most of the passengers on the green line got on for just a couple of stops and then left. They appeared to be heading from residential areas to commercial areas to do things like the weekend grocery shopping. There were never more than about eight people in a double-length train car that could easily accommodate 70. I was the only person who went all the way from downtown to Shaker Square at the east end of the city, the place where the blue and green lines split.
My destination this morning was a place I'd been before, Michael's Diner. Michael's essentially is the Shaker Square rapid stop. While it's built on a foundation, it has the style of an old-fashioned rail car diner--long and narrow, with every table having a window view. I had stopped at Michaels on my Easter trip a few years ago, and I enjoyed it immensely. I made a point of returning to Michael's on this trip, and I'm glad I did. The food was excellent. I had a perfectly cooked ham and cheese omelette with dark rye toast, home fries, and hearty coffee.
The skies were dark when I left the Sleep Inn in Brunswick, and the weather looked somewhat threatening. I brought a folding umbrella with me, in the hopes that if I brought it, it would be unnecessary. It utterly poured as I ate my omelette, which made me hold out little hope for the ballgame I had a ticket to see this afternoon. As I sipped my coffee, though, the rain let up. It never really became sunny, but at least it was no longer raining when I left.
The problem with the improving weather was that it made me forget my umbrella. I had walked around the Shaker Square area, which was home to a weekend farmers market, for about twenty minutes before I realized I had left the umbrella at the diner. When I went back, they hadn't even cleaned up the table, yet. The umbrella was still sitting there, and I quickly grabbed it and was on my way.
(CONTINUED)
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