The House on the Corner

 

August 28, 2013 was an eighty four degree, ninety five percent humidity mid-Ohio day.  What started out as showers in the morning had ended up as a sticky, airless afternoon.

If it seems to you I’m always dragging my poor husband out to do unpredictable things with me, you would be right.  On this particular day we headed to the house at the corner of Fifth and Walnut Streets in downtown Mansfield to flesh out a story I’d been working on.  The article, a review of the book The Corner of Fifth and Walnut, is in the November/December issue of Heart of Ohio Magazine.  I have to admit I set out to do this story to answer my own curiosity.  If, in the effort,  a lot of other people get the same result, then it’s worth doing…don’t you think?

The house, long boarded up for security reasons, is currently owned by Grant Milliron, also the owner of Milliron Industries.  When I spoke to him about the house, I asked if a ‘tour’ would be possible.  Grant said he had a bag with 500 keys in it; he would see what he could come up with…and sure enough I ended up with a key to the house!

So it was that we found ourselves parked on Walnut Street, directly in front of the red brick house on the corner.  We struggled up the small incline; stone steps visible but un-usable in the corner of the yard.  The snaggle-toothed front porch greeted us; I hoisted myself up on it at the risk of ruining a good pair of slacks.  Why don’t I think of these things before hand? 

Larry stood checking out the hinged cover on the front door.  We carefully made certain not to stand too close together as we crossed the spongy wooden deck.   After determinedly working the padlock, the door cover swung open, and the actual door to the house stared out at us.  I could read the obscenities spray painted on the inside of the glass as I peered into the darkness.

I carried one of two huge flashlights we had brought along; it’s bright beam sliced into the darkness of the small room to the left of us.   Directly in front of the entrance door a staircase wound its way up into the second floor.   Although the peeling paint spoke of the years that have passed, I could imagine a little girl in dark stockings wriggling up that staircase, chased by a little boy in suspenders and knickers.   Eileen Levison’s comment* about this being a great house for children with creative minds came back to me; the nooks and crannies they enjoyed while they were at play stood out to me as we carefully explored.

The plywood covered windows did their job, keeping even the smallest glimmer of light at bay.  Inching around the first floor we found small rooms partitioned off to make even smaller spaces.  Many doors covered with ceiling tile; soundproofing for what purpose in this eerily quiet house?  The thick, red brick walls kept the sounds of traffic and life in general at a dreamy distance.

Larry climbed to the top of the staircase and, peering around,  announced it might not be prudent to go up there with so little light.   He also pointed out that the 150 year old wooden floors might take offense at our added weight; I did not disagree with him.

The years, the vandals and the elements have left their mark on the house at the corner of Fifth and Walnut Streets.  My fondest hope is that someone comes up with an idea to restore it, there is so much left to work with!  How I would love to be involved in that project. 

My husband says I see things the way they could be, while he is bound fast to reality.   Still, I can’t help wonder…is there someone out there who can hear the children scampering up the steps, and perhaps see the circus marching down Fifth Street?  If that person comes along, Mary Eileen Schuler Levison’s former home will be around for a long, long time.
 

*The Corner of Fifth and Walnut, written by Mary Eileen Schuler Levison

Book Review:  The Corner of Fifth and Walnutr, November/December Heart of Ohio Magazine

 

 

I Know You're Out There.....

It’s really hard for me to imagine but I just passed my second anniversary writing this blog.  I had no idea when I started if I’d be able to keep it up, but I just passed 139 posts.  I’ve also just passed the 10,500 visitors mark.  That means over ten thousand people have visited my blog, or one person ten thousand times…etc., etc.  

Which brings me to an obvious question: 

Who are all of you??  I don’t know ten thousand people (or 50 dedicated people, etc., etc.)!!!

Although it may exist, there is no software program that I know about, or that I could very likely operate, that would tell me the names and locations of everyone who stops by my blog.  There are some general things I can tell from the diagnostics that I have available.  I have a reader in the Ukraine, three in China, one in Jamaica and one in England (Thank you, Phillip).   74% of my readers use windows, and 45% visit me via Firefox.  I can usually tell when I have a new reader because I see the older posts being perused.  Right now I think someone in Germany is reading the novella, Stalk, that I wrote last year.  Thank you for visiting!

Blogging is a very personal thing, and because of that it’s been rather difficult for me.  It’s one thing to write advertising copy or stories about other people; quite another to put my own thoughts and experiences down for others to read.  I’m an introverted extrovert…if there is such a thing.  My work life has always forced me to be ‘out there’…but people who really know me understand that I’m rather introverted when I don’t have a microphone or podium in front of me.  Writing about other people is a privilege…writing about me, not so much.

Another thing I wonder about is the lack of comments. I know it was technically difficult at first to leave comments on the blog…I heard over and over that is didn’t work.  I think I have that fixed now, but people still don’t often leave comments.  Is that good?  Is that bad?  Are readers speechless because the post is so good?....because the post is so bad?   How can there be 10,500 visits and only a dozen comments?  The other thing in “blog-speak” that has me mystified is “followers”.   I have 14….that’s curious with so many visitors, isn’t it?

It’s not possible to determine how many ‘unique’ visits are in that number or, as I said earlier, if one person has visited Unremarkable Woman ten thousand times.  I can’t believe that all the bloggers haven’t banded together to demand a system that registers who and how many times someone reads the blog.  Maybe I’m the only person who’s actually curious about that……could be.

Everyone says we are communicating less in this day and age, but in truth I think we are all trying harder to communicate, with more people, than we ever have.   I have a zillion Facebook friends.  They’re people I’d never had contacted any other way, some I’d lost touch with over the years, and recent acquaintances, too.  I love being able to keep up with so many people, their families and their lives.  I talk to several people by text every day; being a person who loathes the telephone this is a wonderful way for me to touch base with them.  I actually feel more connected because of the electronic media, not less!

I will continue my blog as long as there is anything in me that I believe is remotely worth pouring out.  I will never know who all of you are, but somehow it still makes me happy to know that I have ever-so-slightly touched your lives.  

     Thank you for visiting and please feel free to share The Life and Times of an Unremarkable Woman…..whoever you are.

                                                                        Life is Good  

Things that go Bump in the Night

 

 

October has always been my favorite month of the year.  As a child the city always had a parade on my birthday (Oct. 30^th), which I thought was darned nice of them.  I remember going to the Halloween parade, my dad hoisting me up on his shoulders so I could see everything.  In those days they threw lots of candy and the long line of revelers seemed to snake through town forever!  Years later my Mom and Dad enjoyed taking their grandchildren to see the parade.  It was still a special event for me because while they took the three little ones to enjoy the spectacle, I could catch my breath and relax.   I still remember how much I appreciated having that two hour span of time to myself.

I grew up in a time before we had the world at our electronic finger tips.  With only three TV channels from which to choose the selection was small, but so were our expectations.  During the month of October you could always count on one of the stations to show scary movies!  In this day and age our kids expect gore and special effects and 3-D and surround sound to heighten their enjoyment.  I can’t imagine anything better than being stretched out on the floor in front of our old black and white TV, a bag of Jones Potato Chips, a tub of Lawson’s French Onion Dip and my BFF beside me.  We would giggle and gasp and watch Frankenstein or the Werewolf or Dracula far into the night.  If we were lucky the movie was hosted by Goulardi, or Big Chuck and Hoolihan; Cleveland TV and Mansfield potato chips were the highlights of my October.

Makeup techniques, innovative masks and special effects have developed to the point of delivering nauseating realism.  I can’t remember the last horror movie I saw, but I’m sure I sat with my face in my hands through most of the thing no matter what it was.   It’s funny, but I love to read ‘stab and slasher’ novels, but I simply don’t want to watch it on the big screen.  Sensory overload I suppose.

I know there is a new genre of television that has become very popular; vampires and zombies are now a year round occurrence.  I’ve never seen The Walking Dead, but I’m sure the special effects are amazing.  You can keep all that.   For me evil is best displayed in the scenes in the old black and white films where Dracula (Bella Lugosi) is advancing on the sleeping man/woman/child. (I vant to drink your blood….blaaaa!)  A light shines on the eyes of the walking dead man, giving him the most eerie and terrifying look imaginable.  That’s the point in the movie where I’d start looking around me to make sure the drapes were completely drawn and there was no strange mist seeping under the front door!  No remake has ever come close as far as I’m concerned.  Watching Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt mince their way through a later edition really didn’t do much for me.

Frankenstein’s Monster was another favorite.  Boris Karloff was the best, and the scene where he’s throwing flowers into the water with the little girl breaks my heart every single time I watch it.  Yes, Frankie speaks for the misunderstood monster in us all.

Werewolves were another thing to worry about in October.  Lon Chaney was just a big, unattractive man with stringy hair sporting an ill-fitting suit…but he was an amazing werewolf!    Of course we all knew it was just a movie…but even at this age I think a wolf call would send me scurrying back into the house if there was a full moon. 

 For a child of the fifties and sixties those old movies were deliciously frightening cinema.  Even though they were made in the 30’s, I still watch them today when I run across one as I’m flicking through the zillions of stations we now have available.

Maybe I enjoy those old flicks because I wish the bad guys were as easy to identify today as they were way back then.   We all knew not to trust the guy in the long black cape.   Today evil takes many forms…but none of them is as easy to spot as Frankenstein or as predictable as a full moon.  Dealing with today’s bad guys isn’t as easy as arming yourself with a wooden stake, a garlic necklace or a silver bullet.  When I was young we knew evil couldn’t triumph over a crucifix, couldn’t withstand the pain of being doused with holy water, and could not cross the threshold of a church.   We believed evil could be contained, it had boundaries.  As it turns out, that’s not really true.  More’s the pity.

 

                                                                            

Life is Good

Preaching to the Electronic Choir

 

The alarm on my iPad went off at six a.m. sharp, just as Siri had promised.  Before I rolled out of bed she informed me I could expect a sunny, 70 degree fall day.   I love it when she has good news for me.

Driving into work I was entranced by the changing colors of the leaves until my car chimed to get my attention.  It nicely pointed out that my trunk was open, a fact underscored every time I hit a bump by the gentle bobbing of the trunk lid in my rearview mirror.  Last week the car informed me I had a tire with low air pressure, something I never would have noticed until I needed road-side service.  My devoted Chevrolet always nags me till I fasten my seat belt and warns me that I’m low on fuel with a ‘get gas dummy’ light.  I know I take it for granted, but this car is so thoughtful in so many ways.  My husband’s van is even more sophisticated, with a hands-free, voice recognition phone system, satellite radio, CD/DVD players and sliding doors that open and close with the touch of a key fob button.  Get carried away with the remote and the automatic doors and tailgate give it the appearance of one of the shape-changing Transformers. 

Settling in at my desk I check my iPhone and discover two voicemails.  As I touch the screen the phone effortlessly redials the callers.   Next, as I return emails and prepare for a morning meeting, my printer warns that I will soon be out of ink.  Oh, bother.   The ‘15 minutes till the meeting starts’ reminder on my computer screen makes me realize I have just enough time left to check the tracking report for a package I’m expecting to arrive at my home later today; the workday is officially underway.

I recently spent the evening with two of my (seven) wonderful grandchildren.  I scooped up the girls from two separate locations; we had dinner, and then headed back to their house for the evening.  When an impromptu concert broke out I snapped photos of the viola playing duo with my iPad.  A bit later we downloaded an app to learn French and spent the rest of the time laughing as we learned new words.  Thirteen year old Sam served as instructor, nine year old Meg and I were the struggling students.  Siri (the voice of iPad) must have had a good time as well because when Meg prompted her, she told us a joke!  Out of town on a business trip, their Dad kept texted me on his progress as he headed home along the route that On Star had downloaded to his car.  

When I call my bank, my doctor, my pharmacy, the chamber of commerce or any other number of places I get a recorded voice with instructions on how best to work my way through their automated maze.   I come in contact with a real person only as a last resort; that doesn’t happen if I do what the electronic voices tell me to do. 

Automated systems give and take my money; I’m almost on a first name basis with my ATM. My favorite grocery offers me a self-scan option that I use frequently, and I religiously take my symptoms to the internet before I take them to my doctor.   At some point I bet that grocery store scanner technology will evolve and make my doctor obsolete, too.  No appointment necessary, just point the scanner gun at your aching knee and the problem and solution will pop up on the screen!

We seem to be on the road to making people obsolete… I actually think we’ve already blazed the trail and we’re just waiting for the paving to be completed!   Don’t get me wrong…..these technological perks are often great stuff.  Some of them save time, some seem to actually take more time, and some have just been created to waste my time.  It’s the ones that keep my learning curve straight up that sometimes just drive me nuts. 

My prediction is that humans will continue to communicate less and less.   I can see the enthusiasm for talking to one another falling to the level of the appreciation a wife experiences when trying to talk to her husband during an OSU bowl game.  I’m not saying it’s a good thing, and I’m not prepared to say it’s a bad thing.   Speaking as a soon-to-be-completely-unnecessary human being….It is what it is. 

I don’t know how long it will be before the machines completely take over the world, but I will have made my point when Siri calls my Garmin to direct me the restaurant where an anniversary party has been planned for my burglar alarm and his main squeeze, our answering machine.

                                                                       Life is Good  

 

 

To be...or not to be grey

It was just about this time last year I came to the decision that I was no longer going to color my hair….I wanted to see the ‘authentic’ me.  (Blog: ‘Authentic’, August 2012)    I had discussed it with my hairdresser at my last coloring session in July; in August I set off to claim my natural hair color, whatever that might be.  In truth I hadn't seen my natural hair color in so many years I was hard pressed to remember.

If you are male and reading this you may be thinking, “What’s the big deal?”   If, however, you are a balding man reading this you know just how important hair can be.  (You don't know what you've got till it's gone)   The beauty industry rakes in billions of dollars each year that everyday people like us spend trying to look better.    But don't get all judgemental, because that's not money spent by strictly women. Hair Club for Men and other companies give men a second chance to have a full head of hair.  There are special hair color systems for men, spray-on hair to cover bald spots, Rogaine to stimulate hair re-growth, and toupees if that should fail.  Both sexes are imminently susceptible to the siren song of youth-promising products.  Coloring your hair is just the tip of the rejuveniation ice berg.

For those of you who are considering this ‘let’s get back to basics’ move let me give you a few tips I’ve learned to get through it: 

My hair was decidedly blonde for a long.  (I decided I wanted to be blonde, so I was)  When I made the choice to let it all grow out I got the advice of my terrific hair dresser.  Kasey suggested we put some very light streaks throughout, anticipating a lot of gray/white to come!  She was right.  Doing this very light colored frosting helped make the process go much easier.

Knowing how I had always used special shampoos to keep the color in, I did the reverse and used harsher shampoos in an effort to let the color drab out a bit.  That also seemed to help! 

I washed my hair daily because the colors seemed to blend better when my hair was squeaky clean.

I went to the internet to look for pictures of women with gray hair.  There was no shortage of energetic, happy and vibrant women who had embraced their natural color.  I decided then that, for me, gray was the new blonde!

Most of all, I was determined to have a sense of humor about it; I knew if I didn’t make a big deal out of it wouldn’t be a big deal.  Wear a hat…wear a babushka….it will grow!!

One year later I’ve arrived at the point where my hair is all grown out…and the funniest thing has happened!  During the many years I colored my hair I’d sometimes have a stranger tell me she loved my haircut, but I never had anyone ask me what color my hair was.   Now, perhaps just because it's different,  I have women ask what color I’m doing my hair these days, “Is that ash blonde or what?”     I’ve decided to dub this color ‘Late in Life Diana’….because that’s honestly what it is.

I was at lunch the other day with a friend, chuckling about how people ask about my hair color, when a woman I’d never seen before stopped at our table and said she loved my hair color!  We both burst into laughter; maybe getting older won’t be as bad as I thought.

It’s such a little thing, but I love the freedom of not having to worry about coloring my ‘roots’.   Talking to women about hair coloring the comments ranged from “You’re so brave…wish I wasn’t so hung up on my hair!” to “What’s the big deal?  My hair started turning gray in my thirties!”.

Although the change is less than I expected, it is really a whole new ball game dealing with my "natural hair".  It's baby fine, with very little body.  For the first time I'm having to learn about hair products; for the first time I own hair spray.  I also find I'm spending more time on my hair than I ever have...with not very satisfying results.  I suppose there's a learning curve, but I'll get the hang of it.

And so it is that I have reached ‘authentic’ status in just one short year.  Like everything else this experience, as frivolous as it is, has taught me a lesson I needed to learn: 

                          Be who you are….whatever age you are….and you will be authentic.

                                                                            Life is Good