THE OTHER MIAMI

Downtown Miami

When I make my trips to the US from Patagonia, I always stay a few days in Miami. I don’t really come to Miami for pleasure. It’s business that brings me here. But my Colombian friend Saúl has shown me the side of the city that he loves, and few know it like he does, since he makes his living here driving all day. He has introduced me to the port, to Brickell Avenue, to Downtown and to Bayside. He has taken me out to Florida City to see the Coral Castle, to Coral Gables, to South Beach and to Biscayne Bay. He has driven me to every mall and shopping center in the city, to the Freedom Tower Museum and to the Wynwood art neighborhood. We’ve climbed a lighthouse together, had powerful Cuban coffee at the famed Versailles coffee shop and restaurant, and have lunched together in more than a couple of good and truly authentic Colombian eateries. So although I would usually abhor a town where I feel like I’m melting most of the time—Saúl swears it sometimes gets chilly, but I’ll believe it when I see it—my friend has managed to endear it to me in ways I never thought possible.

That said, on this trip, I’m soloing. Saúl picked me up at the airport on my arrival in the US a month ago, but while I was up in Ohio promoting my two books—The Rock Garden, and Visions of What Used To Be—and visiting friends and family that the pandemic had prevented me from seeing for several years, Saúl had a knee operation. So now that I’m back in Miami, my friend is out of commission. He had a Cuban friend of his—Jorge, who is also a professional driver—pick me up at the airport, drive me to my hotel and take me to the business appointment I had on Friday morning. But the relationship has been strictly professional between Jorge and me. So I’ve been entertaining myself entirely on my own since I returned from Ohio on my way back to Argentina.

My friend and guide to Miami, Saúl 

Had Saúl been available, I wouldn’t have minded being stuck here for four days. But since I’m flying out Monday afternoon and Monday is a US holiday, Friday was the only day I could make my appointment for. So, I arrived Thursday evening, had my appointment Friday morning and was stuck for the rest of that day and the weekend in the city.

There was what I thought was a bad surprise waiting for me when I got to my hotel. It was my first time staying here—here being the Comfort Inn Downtown. My regular haunts were the Hotel Urbano at Brickell and I-95 and the Hampton Inn a couple of blocks off of Brickell on Twelfth, but the Urbano has become a Hilton Garden Suites and the other one has also been upgraded and both have become quite pricey. So I chose the Comfort Inn on the basis of price—which was slightly less jaw-dropping than the other two. Anyway, on arrival, I was advised that, due to some credit card snafu, the reservation I’d made two months earlier had been canceled. Basically, I had no room.

I’d been traveling since morning, from Cleveland to New York and from New York to Miami, and hadn’t eaten anything all day but a couple of English muffins early in the morning, and two Delta Airlines cookies in the afternoon, and it was now 8pm, so I was in no mood for getting jerked around and I immediately lost my temper and went ballistic on the poor desk clerk.

But dark clouds sometimes have a silver lining. He politely invited me to calm down and told me he was giving me a twelfth-floor suite for the same price as the room that they’d canceled. When I told him I was hungry and asked where I could get a bite to eat, he asked if I liked Peruvian food and sent me around the corner to a place called La Granja, with cold beer, good food and even better prices.

A room with a view

I had no real idea where I was. I mean, generally, yes: Downtown. But, as I say, I’d chosen this new venue on the basis of price rather than location. At night, it looked less than inviting—surrounded as the hotel was by highway bridge abutments and other towering buildings. But the room was comfortable and enormous. After supper at La Granja, all I wanted to do was shower and go to bed, which is what I did. It wasn’t until morning that I raised the shades and saw for the first time that my suite had a panoramic view of that other Miami: namely, the Miami River, and the whole downtown area surrounding it.

The hotel breakfast room overlooks the river, and I watched while eating my initial breakfast there as the first tour boats and container barges of the day made their way along the river’s course to and from the Port of Miami. I would locate the port later, when, following my Friday morning appointment, I took a stroll along the boardwalk that runs behind the hotel as far as I could before running into a construction site that blocked my path. From there, I could see in the distance the towering cranes that marked the port.

Container barge passing by the breakfast room

Since then, I have whiled away more than a few hours walking back and forth past three major bridges from one end to the other of my promenade, observing the traffic on the Miami River. There are a couple of things that are extraordinary about it. First of all, except for the rail bridge, which is so very, very tall that any boat capable of fitting in the Miami can go under it, the others are draw bridges. I found the entire process of their opening and closing—as powerful tugs ushered through huge container barges, whose massive bulkheads nearly scraped the bridge abutments—utterly fascinating. One of them (the one I could see clearly from my twelfth-floor vantage point) is a four-lane structure and the operation of it is really impressive to see. The other thing that grabbed my attention was the incredible number of astronomically expensive yachts and cabin cruisers that one can see while standing on the quayside for a mere half hour.

As an aside, I should clarify that, for more than a decade, I was the chief (only) translator for a Panamanian publication entitled Luxury Road—now defunct, thanks to the 2008 worldwide economic crisis and its aftermath in the luxury industry. It was a lingering death, but fatal all the same.

While it lasted, the glossy magazine’s main function was to spotlight some of the most expensive and sumptuous items on the planet. Baume and Mercier, Vacheron, Longines, Tag Heuer, Rolex, Omega and Patek Philippe watches; McLaren, Ferrari, Aston Martin, Bentley, Lamborghini, Mercedes and Bugatti automobiles; Visconti, Caran D’Ache, Mont Blanc, Cartier and Aurora writing instruments; six-star hotels and Michelin-rated restaurants; private islands, private jets and private choppers; and, among many other things, yachts. So when I see a Ferretti, Riva, Heesen, Galati, Broward or other famous-name (often bespoke) vessel, I tend to recognize it. And the Miami River is loaded with them. Sleek, breathtaking, incredibly streamlined, they sail back and forth along the river’s course, their speakers bellowing salsa music and delighted guests gyrating to the Latin rhythm on their decks.

When you scratch the surface, Miami is a small town. In its downtown area—the older shops, city government buildings, etc.—are provincial, almost poky in nature. The original Miami, the “local” Miami, if you will, is nothing at all like the glittering Miami that one sees in the movies. It’s no secret that much of the extraordinarily stunning architecture of the more usually visible Miami that we see in TV series, films and magazines mushroomed out of the drug trade of the seventies, eighties and nineties.

Miami's glistening Brickell-Downtown

Even back then, cocaine was a twenty billion-dollar-a-year industry, and it’s a pretty fair guess that many of the sumptuous office buildings housing international financial institutions that line Brickell Avenue didn’t spring from the tourist trade, but drew their early sustenance from the soaring resources that the drug trade generated—an illicit activity often managed by the ever more savvy and sophisticated bosses of the Colombian drug cartel. The transformation from backwater to mafia-chic was not without hiccups, however. The city lived through a period of drug war violence that, back then, gave it a widespread reputation as a scary, dangerous place.

But Miami law enforcement and federal agents fought back and cracked down hard. Nowhere was that fight better documented than in the TV series Miami Vice in the mid-nineteen-eighties. The show was not only well-researched and wildly popular, but also introduced the salsa sound into mainstream music, and the “Miami look” into male fashion (a sort of Latino-cool, mafia-casual look) and into high-end interior décor.

That said, although Miami has become a much tamer version of the earlier warring cocaine capital that it had become, the wealth to which drug traffic first gave birth appears not to have waned in the least. In fact, Miami is now the second least affordable city (after New York) in the country. And it recently surpassed the Big Apple as the city with the nation’s least affordable housing.

As I say, two of the places where this glitzy high lifestyle is high-profile is on the river and on the downtown streets. On the weekend the river is jammed with super-sleek speedboats and luxury yachts. The outer decks of the sedately engineered millionaire-class small craft come, it almost seems, inevitably equipped, with voluptuous, string-bikini-clad, young women, whose purpose, judging from their extroverted performances, would appear to be to remind the boatless clowns on the quayside that money really can

buy anything. Penurious macho guy-guys, who hang out on the quayside path with apparently nothing better to do, express their envy for the revelers with wolf-whistles, catcalls and shouted compliments. Often they are rewarded with a wave, a smile and a few bumps and grinds from the scantily-clad yacht-ladies to the infectious rhythm of the blaring tropical music that travels the river with them. The impromptu go-go dancers seem only too happy to express their joy at being chosen as part of the Miami River in-crowd. Without a doubt, some of the same owners of these lavish vessels are among the drivers of the incredible array of luxury-elite automobiles that cruise Brickell Avenue and the streets of the Downtown area, especially on the weekend. Although, just about any day of the week, you need only stand on one of the central downtown street corners of Miami to collect enough images to create a veritable catalog of the highest-end automobiles on the planet.

One of the places they can go—apart from the city’s many bars, restaurants and nightclubs—is the new downtown mall known as Brickell City Centre. No, it’s not naïve of me to think that people who own those cars and those boats might entertain themselves in a shopping mall. Because this is no ordinary mall. It has got to be one of the highest-end shopping centers in the country.

You won’t find a Macy’s, Penney’s, Sears or Footlocker here. No Auntie Anne’s Pretzels or Sbarro or Cinnabon. Indeed, nearly every store represents at least one of the elite brands that I translated articles about in Luxury Road. And there are others that are even too exclusive for me to have heard about before. For instance, only in Miami could you have not one but two

Brickell City Centre

enormous stores devoted entirely to ultra-high-priced sunglasses—one selling exclusively Italian designer shades and the other, the world’s priciest brands in sunglasses (Fendi, Cartier, Prada, Dior, Ray-Ban, Saint Laurent, etc). Allsaints sells exclusive biker leathers, Acqua di Parma craft fragrances, and the alphabetical roster of high fashion luxury brands continues with Bally, Boss Menswear, Chanel, Coach Leather, Diptyque Candels and Fragrances, Edite Mode, Eternity Gallery, Intimissima Italian lingerie, Kiton tailored suits, Lafayette 148 New York women’s fashions, Michele Lopriore tailored womenswear, Orlebar beachwear, Porsche Design and Richard Mille timepieces, Swarovski crystal, Trousseau luxury bed and bath items, Violet’s Bacarrat Crystal and, among others, the Wolf Boutique that sells some of the world’s most renowned high-style brands.

The purse - "a steal" at $2.700!

Fittingly, the anchor store for this exclusive mall is Saks of Fifth Avenue, which occupies all three floors of one end of the building. There was a thirty-percent-off sale the day I was there. Innocently, I thought I might pick up something nice for my wife. But a quick look around immediately dissuaded me of the idea. Prices weren’t expressed in tens or even hundreds, but almost exclusively in thousands. Out of curiosity, I picked up a sale item, a horrid little sixties-style black and white purse. At thirty percent off, it was a bargain at “only” two thousand seven hundred dollars.   

For me, the whole scene has a carnivalesque quality to it. No part of this world is a corner where I wouldn’t stand out as a total alien. It’s a place for easy money, not for money earned in a job where you get paid by the word. But there’s a sideshow quality to being able to wander for a while along the midway, observing the attractions to either side with no real thought of participating in what seems, essentially, to be a freak show—a place where the unusual and, indeed, the outrageous are on full display.  

Back to reality...

Clearly, it wouldn’t be hard at all, if I were so inclined, to blow my life savings in a day—or in an hour—in this place where I have no business being. But for me it’s been fun to venture for a spell into an environment that is completely beyond my means or comprehension, and to observe how the other two percent lives in that “other Miami”.

And now…back to reality.  

 

OHIO COUNTRY

 I’ve been back in my native Ohio since April 30^th. I’ll be flying back to Miami tomorrow and back home to Patagonia a few days later. It has been great being back in my home town and my home state over the course of the past month. It has been the first trip “back home” I’ve made since the pandemic broke out. The first, in fact, since November of 2018.

Wapakoneta, Ohio, my home town

I could have done worse than to have returned with two new books under my arm—one published toward the end of last year and the other newly out last March. Clearly, I took advantage of the pandemic isolation to get some work done.

I discovered on arrival in Ohio that, in my absence, I have become a bestseller… A bestseller, that is, in Wapakoneta, my home town in west-central Ohio. That may not mean much to highly successful writers, but the truth is, Stephen King couldn’t have gotten a warmer welcome.

My friend and local agent Mary Jo Knoch had set up a couple of events for me at the local library. The ladies at the Auglaize County Library were gracious and generous with their space and time. Two nights in a row, I invaded their basement event room—once with the flamboyant Jim Bowsher, the protagonist of my first published book, The Rock Garden and Other Stories. The second time they had to put up with just me, since I used that occasion to discuss my latest book, Visions Of What Used To Be, and my life as a musician, journalist, writer and traveler.

With Jim Bowsher during a joint talk

Photo by Mary Jo Knoch

Jim does a lot of public speaking: Writer, historian, ancient artifact-hunter, ad hoc anthropologist, expert on Wapakoneta personalities and indeed on Ohio (among other things), collector (of stories and of the myriad conversation pieces that represent them), renowned local figure, folkloric hoarder and resident eccentric, Jim has no problem holding forth for hours on end. I, on the other hand, have spent most of my adult life in quiet, lonesome spaces, researching, writing, opining on paper and pondering in isolation, with only very occasional company. Which means that when I am coaxed out of my lair and placed before the public, the first reaction is a deer-in-headlights moment. Mine, I mean, although the public sometimes follows suit.

Jim, on the other hand, fills a room with his exuberance and personality. He couldn’t care less if there’s anyone else there to “take up the slack”. With Jim, in fact, there just is no slack. He’s never at a loss for words. He’s the perfect conference partner for an inveterate wallflower (i.e., me), since, if I felt like it, I could just sit there all evening and say nothing, and let Jim talk.

Actually, a couple of weeks before I arrived, he even signed a score or so copies of The Rock Garden, the book I wrote about him and the extraordinary mental and physical world he lives in. He was giving a talk, and, in the absence of the author, for many, getting an autograph from the protagonist was just as good…maybe better. Even now, at one of our joint conferences—I, talking about my books and he, about the subject of the first one (namely, him)—we’re sitting side by side, busily co-signing copies of The Rock Garden, when somebody asks for us both to also sign Visions.

Jim says, “Hey, whoa, wait, should I be signing copies of the other book. I’m not even in it!”

Above and below, with friends from Casa Chic,
State and Local, and the Riverside Art Center

“Knock yourself out, man,” I say, “no problem,” so Jim ends up signing a few copies of Visions as well. It’s an autograph free-for-all!

There are two joint talks. One at the library and another, fittingly, at the Rock Garden. It turns out to be wonderful weather and a lot of people come to see and hear us there, as well as to bring their books, or to buy them in situ, to be signed.

This is all new to me. And for a while, I get this little voice in back of my head asking me who the hell I think I am, acting like a bigshot and signing books. But then I suddenly realize that, hey, these are my books, and as their author, I have not only a right but also an obligation to sign them if people ask.

I’m on Jim’s turf. He’s Home, I’m Visitor. He talks about the Garden, talks about our relationship, talks about the myriad miracles that have taken place in his own backyard. Now and then he says, “Sorry Dan, go ahead,” and I’d love to, but am damned if I can remember what I wanted to say.

Finally, I say, “I’m going to do a brief reading now from The Rock Garden,” and then, as an aside to Jim that a few people close by hear and snicker about, I say, “and you are gonna shut the hell up.” Not everybody could get away with saying that to Jim Bowsher in his own backyard, but when I say it, he laughs out loud. He knows I’m being facetious, and adds, “Well, I may have to interrupt you.” To which I respond, “Oh no you won’t.”

There’s another event, two days after the one at the Rock Garden. It takes place at the Riverside Art Center, right downtown in Wapakoneta. The RAC is a great event space, full of works by local artists and artisans. This event is organized by Wapakoneta Daily News publisher Deb Zwez, the folks at Casa Chic—one of three stores in town that are graciously selling my books (Image Masters and State and Local are the other two)—and by the RAC.

Joint talk at the Rock Garden

They’ve gone all out to provide me with a purely meet-and-greet event and have even provided soft drinks and iced sugar cookies made to look like the keys of a computer keyboard. Three of them spell out DAN at the top of the cookie tray (have to confess I ended up eating some of those, since iced sugar cookies are my favorite cookies in the world).

All four of the events—the two with Jim and the two I do alone—are flattering. I’m touched by the number of readers who turn out to meet me. Some are people I’ve known on Facebook for years but am meeting for the first time. Others are just now meeting me after reading one or both of my books. Still others go back with me a very long way. Like the mother of a former classmate, whose younger son I taught percussion to when he was, maybe, ten or eleven and I was nineteen. She is ninety-four now and shows up dressed to the nines and wearing a lovely spring hat. She’s with her husband, who was my family’s mailman from the time I was in grade school and we moved onto his route.

Several of my former classmates are there as well, including my old friend Tom Shaw, who has flown in for the occasion from Charleston, South Carolina. I’m very grateful for their presence. There are others as well, classmates of my sister, Darla, who is also there, ever supportive of my writing efforts. One of my nephews, Andrew, has also driven down from Cleveland, and I have the pleasure of spending an afternoon giving him a tour of the town as I remember it, even showing him the now much remodeled house where his great-great grandparents once lived. I also take him to the Rock Garden, where Jim Bowsher gives him a personalized tour of his opus magnus, the Temple of Tolerance.

With Miss Jean

At one of the presentations, a spry-looking lady who doesn’t look much older than I am, comes up and says hello, handing me a book to be signed.

I say, “Pleased to meet you.”

“We met a very long time ago, Dan,” she says.

With that, she takes a little cardboard folder out of her purse, opens it and lays it on the table in front of me. Inside, there is a black and white picture. At the bottom there’s a legend that reads: Centennial School, Kindergarten, 1955.

Pointing with her index finger, she says, “That’s your cousin Greg, and there you are.”

“Wow!” is all I can say. And then, “So which one are you?”

“I’m this one,” she says with a smile, and points to the teacher at the top of the picture.

“Oh my god!” I say, “You’re Miss Jean!” I am truly moved that she has taken the trouble to come to my event. And so glad to find her steady on her feet and as lucid as the first day I knew her.

Going solo at the library

This all happens at the RAC. Miss Jean also attends one of my two events at the library. When she does, we take advantage of a photo opportunity by having Mary Jo, an excellent professional photographer, take our picture in the children’s reading area, which is decorated with kindergarten-like images. As we’re sitting there, Miss Jean turns to me and says, “You know, something I’m very proud of is that none of my kids—I call them my kids—was ever in prison.” I reflect that it’s a real sign of the times that this, above all other achievements, has done her proud.

The last event—it’s at the Auglaize County Library—is a test of my meager ability to hold an audience’s attention. As I face my audience—lots of familiar faces from a half-century ago—there’s a second when I’m sorry I didn’t invite Jim to join me here too, even though the subject of this talk is Vision Of What Used To Be and my life and times. At least if Jim were here, I fret, people wouldn’t be bored.

But it doesn’t take long for me to find the “improv” performer in me, and to my delight, I hear the audience laugh and see their hands go up to ask questions, and surprise myself by knowing the answers and enjoying providing them. All in all, it turns out to be a truly gratifying experience.

I had the pleasure of being in Wapakoneta two Thursdays. Whenever the weather is good, Jim Bowsher’s Rock Garden hosts a group of “pickin’ people” in the evening. They come straggling into the yard one at a time along toward sunset. Mostly they carry guitars, both acoustic and electric. Most are store-bought, but at least one of the regulars makes his own instruments and they’re pretty amazing. Another performer arrives carrying a five-string banjo.

Mark at the Rock Garden

My childhood and life-long friend Mark Gallimore is one of the regulars. Mark was always a talent. An outstanding artist, a musician and songsmith, an accomplished writer
who majored in English at Miami University in southern Ohio many years ago, he has chosen a quiet life here in our old stomping grounds. He has that in common with Jim Bowsher. Guys with amazing talents who have kept to themselves and kept to their home turf.

It’s always a celebration when Mark and I meet, as it is with Jim and me, and with our mutual friend Mary Jo, an artist and photographer whose haunting images of our neck of the woods should long ago have found their way to a much broader public. Incredible people who have stayed in the places they love and documented them in their art.

"Y'know Bill? He knows three thousand songs."

It's a jam session in the Thursday Rock Garden twilight. Musicians and public alike carry their own refreshments in various and sundry coolers—beer, wine, soft drinks. They relax in lawn chairs that they carry into the yard, or they scatter among the myriad stones piled everywhere, choosing the best vantage points from which to enjoy the impromptu recital.

Another of the regulars, besides my friend Mark, is Bill. Bill is a force. A big guy with a big voice and an easy guitar style.

Walt's "washtub bass"

Mark says, “Y’know Bill? He claims to know—and I believe him—three thousand songs by heart. He’s got a fake-book about the size of the one I have the songs I know in. Those are just the ones he doesn’t know by heart.”

Often, it’s Bill who leads. He’ll start a tune—maybe pop, maybe blues, maybe a nice country song—and the others will strum around until they find the key and then join in, taking turns soloing and singing lead or harmony. They improvise and enjoy the musical dialogue. They are clearly in touch with one another. Very little talk. Just lots of mutual playing and singing.

Another regular at these sessions is Walt, Jim’s brother. His instrument of choice is a variation on the washtub bass that he has rendered all in wood. He adds rhythm to the tunes and sings harmony. And when it’s cool out, he also builds a fire in the fire ring that is at the center of the musicians’ gathering place.

On the last Thursday that I’m around, Jim comes out of the house and brings an extra chair for me. I pop across the street to the Beer and Wine Depot and buy a six-pack of Miller Highlife—"the Champagne of bottled beer”—and, back at the Rock Garden, take the seat that Jim has provided me with. Sitting on the other side of him is Larry Street, a close friend of his who is a major local figure in the exploration of Native American digs. He is the discoverer of no few of them, whole former villages he has found, places buried by time until a local farmer's plow turns parts of them over. Or until rivers and streams wash away the dusts of time and reveal the treasures beneath. I share my beers with them, and we sit there enjoying the music at the end of a perfect week—back in Ohio Country, back in my childhood home.

BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN—A COVID CHRONICLE

 It had been, literally, years since I’d traveled. Last time I was in the States was November of 2018. In 2019, my wife’s older sister was mortally ill, and Virginia was traveling a lot back and forth the thousand-plus miles from our home in Patagonia to Buenos Aires, so I decided to postpone my annual visit to my homeland until early 2020.

I finally made reservations for March 25^th, 2020. Had my tickets, hotel reservations, rental car reservation, the whole works. Got my pre-trip haircut on March 10. Little did I know it would be the last one with my barber of twenty years, who would die a month or so later of COVID. The pandemic wasn’t yet a thing then. Or rather, it was. We just didn’t know it. It was like, ho-hum, another “Asian flu” epidemic.

But the same day I got that haircut, I also went to my cardiologist and family doctor for a routine checkup. I told him I was glad I’d gotten in to see him before I left.

“Left? You going someplace.”

“Yes, my belated annual trip to the States.”

“You’re going now?”

“Yes, in two weeks.”

“Do you have to?”

“Uh, well, no, I don’t have to. But I want to. I didn’t make it back last year because of my wife’s sister’s illness, and in case you hadn’t noticed, Doc, I’m not getting any younger, and neither are my family and friends back home.”

“I understand,” he said, shrugging slightly and looking worried.

“What is it?”

“Well, this whole COVID thing.”

“Is it that serious.”

“Yes, it is. Especially since you have high blood pressure, arrhythmia and you suffered a life-threatening lung injury…when was it? A year ago?”

“Year and a half.”

“Still…”

“So what you’re saying is, I shouldn’t go.”

“Well, no, if you have to go, go. But I can’t say I recommend it.”

“Well, I don’t have to. And if you really think it’s that serious, I’ll postpone it."

"It'd be a good idea. If there were a vaccine, it'd be different, but there isn’t one yet. And the government here is going to impose a quarantine, so if you go, when you come back you’ll have to be in quarantine for a couple of weeks.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

So I postponed. I figured in six months or so everything would be back to normal, and I could reactivate my reservations. Fat chance. Over the next two years I watched in horror as a million of my fellow Americans died in one of the most advanced countries on earth, where, incredibly, the ultra-advanced medical system was overwhelmed—and while tens of thousands died in my adopted country. In the pre-vaccine days of the pandemic, I lost several friends and acquaintances to the ravages of the plague.

My wife and I isolated. In Patagonia, especially where and how we live, it's easy to isolate. It’s also easy to become alienated and out of touch, to slip into an almost anti-social, hermit-like existence. And that’s what we did. Out of an abundance of caution, my wife wasn’t even letting me go to the grocery store with her, since she was concerned about my pre-existing conditions like the lung injury, high blood pressure and drug-controlled arrhythmia.

I became a creature of the forest. Getting out into nature, into the mountain woodlands. But as far from people as I could keep. Social media kept me from getting any squirrelier that I became from being my own best (and worst) company. But still, I could feel something akin to agoraphobia setting in. Just that it wasn’t limited to my house, but to the house and the seventy acres of forest surrounding it, where I was unlikely to meet up with any other human being.

We got the vaccines. A mixed bag if there ever was one—Russia’s Sputnik the first time, America’s Moderna the second and England’s AstraZeneca the third time.

Still, it didn’t feel safe out. I wore a mask everywhere, and “everywhere” was the gas station, the bank, doctors and dentist, the essentials. I was supposed to have eye surgery for a failing retina. That had to be postponed too and my left eye drew dangerously close to blindness waiting.

But then one day, it was as if a long night was ending, and I could begin to see the dawning of life sort of as I recalled it. Not carefree like before, admittedly, but no longer scared to death that I’d catch the plague and die gasping for breath like a hooked fish on a dock. I saw my doctor to adjust the dosage of my blood pressure medicine. I told him we were getting so tired of the pandemic, especially of its stealing life, or rather, living, from us at this time in our lives when we shouldn’t have a care in the world and should be living the freest ever.

He said, “But you’ve had your vaccines and you’re boosted, right?”

“Yes, but…”

“What is it you want to do?”

“Get my eye surgery so I can see again…”

“You can do that. You can do it tomorrow, if you want.”

“Really?”

“Really. You’re chances of getting seriously ill even if you do get breakthrough COVID, which you very likely won’t, are practically nil.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Great news, but I have to travel to General Roca for the surgery. That’s two hundred fifty miles on a bus.”

“You’ll be fine. Just wear your mask.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“So when do you think I’ll be able to travel back to the States.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Suddenly, it was as if a heavy weight had been lifted off of me. As if the darkness had lifted and the sun was shining. It was suddenly a beautiful day. I was free again. It was a more dangerous world than I’d known pre-pandemic, but it was doable. You just had to arm yourself with mask and hand-sanitizer, and social distancing, but hey, it was no longer the life of a mushroom, of fungus sitting alone in the dark, waiting for manure to be spread on it. It was no longer a life restricted to an island of COVID isolation.

Cleveland skyline

I got my eye surgery and, while recovering, made my travel reservations. And here I am, in Greater Cleveland. This is my Stateside residence, Rocky River, a Cleveland suburb. And in the decade and a half that I've been living here whenever I’m back, Cleveland has become my home city. I recognize the skyline and imagine the places I’ve known, the bars and restaurants, the museums and bookstores, the coffee place around the corner where I have breakfast and write for a while each day. Ever since my parents and brother died and my hometown became more memory than tangible home, Cleveland has become the closest thing to home that I have here now. My Stateside address, my sister’s place, the hometown of my two nephews, the city I identify with whenever I’m “back home”.

I’ve celebrated in a variety of Cleveland’s excellent micro-breweries with family and friends since I got here at the end of last month. I also celebrated by getting a good haircut from Jason at Irish barber Sean Gormley’s place in Rocky River. Sean also owns the pub on the corner of Center Ridge and Wooster, next door to the barbershop. Not surprisingly, it’s called Gormley’s Irish Pub and there’s a Guinness sign in the window.

This week, it’s on to my home town of Wapakoneta, two and a half hours or so southwest of here. I’ve accidentally rented a hot car—it was a promotion for cars rented for more than a week. It’s a black, metal-fleck, fully-loaded Toyota Corolla. It’s a far cry from the ’95 Toyota four-by-four truck that I drive at home and is a barrel of fun to drive, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss my truck. I’d love for my truck to know these streets.

I’m getting a warm welcome. I’ve written a couple of books about my town—The Rock Garden and Other Stories, and Visions of What Used to Be. I’ve been invited to give a series of talks and to sign books starting on Thursday. I’ll be doing a few of them jointly with my friend and fellow writer Jim Bowsher, about whom I wrote The Rock Garden. Jim is, without a doubt, a Wapakoneta icon, so this is a very big deal.

It’s odd for me to feel like a big deal. Unlike Jim, who has made an art of public speaking and oral storytelling, I’m one of those nerdy research-writers who has spent most of a half-century writing career in the shadows. Oh, there have been moments when, because of my positions as a newspaper and magazine editor, or because of a particular story I’ve written, I’ve had my quarter of an hour on radio or TV. But not often enough for anyone to put my by-line with a face. In fact, I’ve spent the last fifteen years or so as a ghostwriter, a career in which, as the name suggests, the writer disappears from view—nearly ceases to exist. (I’ve actually had people say “I thought you were dead” when I’ve shown up somewhere after having left the newspaper and magazine trade more than twenty years ago).

Indeed, once a job is done, ghostwriting is the kind of work where the client almost wishes you really would cease to exist. In this trade, you research and write like a spy, behind the scenes, out of sight, nameless, and “the author” will very likely disavow any knowledge of your existence if you should accidentally come to light.

So, it feels odd to be the center of attention. Good, it feels though, if a little scary. Best of all is how I feel about finally bringing out two books under my own name and both about one of my very favorite topics—growing up in the fifties and sixties in smalltown, Midwestern America, as only an expat can remember it.

I’m really grateful to the people who are making this a special homecoming for me—my friend and local agent Mary Jo Knoch, the Auglaize County Public Library, the folks at Casa Chic, State & Local, Image Masters, the Riverside Art Center, local newspaper publisher Deb Zwez, Rachel Barber at the Auglaize County Historical Society, and my friend and colleague Jim Bowsher. I’m hoping to return their kindness and confidence in me by providing participants in this week and next week’s events with something at least thought-provoking for them to take away with them.

Looking forward to seeing old friends and new. Thanks!