There’s a small city lot on E. 53rd street in Cleveland, I’ve visited many times over the years. When I was a little guy, it was known as “Trampe’s grandma’s house” because it was how I differentiated my paternal and maternal sets of grandparents, by their dogs. I’m still in the habit of remembering some dogs better than people.
I retain some vivid memories of this place. I helped my dad paint the house when I was about 9. I’m being very generous with the word “helped” here. I remember my early Thanksgivings with peas & carrots over mashed potatoes and Easters with “blessed food”. I remember another dog, named Bronson, licking my feet when I spent the night there. And my grandfather feeding me saltine crackers with butter on them.
I also remember walking up the driveway with my father who always tapped on the windows along the driveway to announce his impending arrival at the back door of his childhood home. I didn’t learn until recently that since he married a (gasp) Lutheran, none of his Catholic family would attend his wedding. So on the morning of his wedding, he got dressed himself, and walked out of that very house alone, down the streets a couple blocks, to the church where he began his new life with mom.
Those strange family stories. We’ve all got them.
That set of grandparents died in my elementary years before the 80s, but I still visited the house intermittently for the next couple decades because I had a great aunt who lived there. She was a well-known fixture in the neighborhood and when she passed during a winter of 2000, I carried her ridiculously heavy coffin up a slick, muddy snow-covered slope to her family grave with a Cleveland City councilman by my side.
I’ve been a pallbearer a number of times in my life, but that one was the most memorable.
After she had passed, we cleaned out the house the best we could, and the estate was sold “as is” to an investor.
I have enough reason to be nearby from time to time, so I’d drive by and take a look. Sometimes it was inhabited, other times for rent, and for the past ten it was vacant, with windows and doors missing in action. In recent years a condemned sign began to stand vigil. With the advent of smart phones, I’d take a picture each time for my dad to show the state of his childhood home, always trying to capture the moment.
A week or so back, I drove up the street. And for a moment, I couldn’t believe my eyes because I saw new porch-posts and fresh paint! For a second or two I was amazed that someone had invested any money into the shell of a home which I had watched decay for decades. Then I noticed new grass on a new vacant lot.
It wasn’t being fixed; it had been razed.
I must have been kind of stunned, because I forgot to take a picture of the emptiness. I called dad to tell him the house that contained the memories of his youth, was now just a memory itself.
So, this weekend, while traversing between incredibly tasty vittles in Little Italy and going to an afternoon Indians Guardians game, I thought I’d swing by once again, with the wife in tow, and have her take a picture, of me, on the vacant land that was my ancestral homestead to share with dad.
As we drove down the street the I saw a boy of about ten playing basketball on one of those portable hoops set up in the street. I slowed down and moved to the other side, and while I’m not sure who missed the rebound, I suddenly heard and felt a jarring pop.
I’m not certain that running over a fully inflated basketball with a Jeep feels and sounds like a gunshot, but it did cross my mind.
I panicked for a quick second as I continued down the street and thought “Getting that picture is going to suck now”. As I turned around pulled up to the curb, a couple of gents that were hanging out in the park next door, yelled over at me, “you busted that boy’s basketball and he’s all sad.” I didn’t know quite what to do so I walked over and told him I was sorry I ran over his ball, and handed him a ten, because first world problem, I only had a ten and a fifty. The locals seemed okay with my overture, so we took the picture and skedaddled to the Guardians game outfitted in my finest thirty-year-old Chief Wahoo threads.
Although it was a great day filled with food, friends, and entertainment, but today I thought most about that house, that neighborhood, that park, that kid with that basketball. Ten didn’t seem like enough at the time, and not now either, so I popped, like a run over basketball, onto Amazon and ordered a new ball along with a pump and sent it to “The kid whose ball I ran over” at the address of the house containing the memories of his youth.