johnbyronkuhner.com

Romulus Just down the road.

http://dnasab.net/x.php We’ve returned to rural Ohio, to Scio, for a brief period. The twins were born here, and it’s been pleasant for me to revisit those days. I feel a pang at the instability of our lives – that the memories of awaiting the birth of my first child(ren) do not adhere to the place where we live, but are far away, cut off from my daily experience. For that reason though, they are all the crisper; returning here means returning to that time of expectation, birth, and first parenthood, with none of the intervening stages obscuring the impression.

We have as it were gone back in time in another way too. In the Catskills autumn was at its peak: evenings were cold, foliage was peaking, and on rainy days one felt the chill in one’s fingers and toes. Here summer has lingered into October, with temperatures in the 80s, and only the first blushes of color on the trees. It is as if we have gone back to get a re-do of early fall.

And returning after four years, the place seems happier, more prosperous, busier – I am almost inclined to think it is due to the good weather, but Catherine thinks we are seeing a real change. One of the distinctive things about entering interior Ohio along US-22 used to be the sheer number of abandoned cars by the side of the highway: they would get cleared off eventually, but their number made it clear just how often people’s old cars were breaking down and stranding them. Now the roadsides are (almost) clear, and we’re seeing new cars in the streets.

Four years ago I found a restaurant I liked here in Cadiz, the county seat – a decent lunch place with good ambiance, old pictures of Cadiz up on the walls, and locally sourced foods on the menu – and I hoped it would do well. Well, it’s even better now, and when we returned recently with our little family, it was packed. The clientele was mixed: mostly greasy-handed engineers from the local fracking platforms – the main source of the recent prosperity – but also bureaucrats in casual office garb working for the county government, some officers from the courthouse, retirees, and such. They looked a bit more rough around the edges than the patrons might be at a similar restaurant in New York. We looked a bit rough around the edges too: the twins are now three, and Eva is two: two “threenagers” and one in the “terrible twos.” We both look as tired as we are. Eating in a restaurant is always difficult, but eating in a busy restaurant is a particular trial. I had already taken the kids out into the street for a walk, where I taught them about the edibility of Callery pears, which they triumphantly brought back into the restaurant. Now I was trying to corral the kids as we were waiting for our food – they were crawling under the table trying to get to the salt and pepper shakers I had put on a nearby windowsill out of their reach – when I looked up to see Catherine crying.

“What’s wrong?!!” I asked, somewhat incredulous that she had just burst into tears seemingly without any warning at all.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I just feel that these people have been beaten down for so long, and I’m so happy to see them enjoying something nice…” she said, before trailing off. Later she explained that it was more complex than just that: she knew that fracking was the source of much of the bounty and happiness we were seeing, but fracking was probably long-term rather a mixed blessing. But it is always these rather questionable things that seem to reliably produce our prosperity.

After the food had arrived, the waitress came up and told us that we would not have to pay for our meal: someone in the restaurant had already paid for us. We were dumbstruck. It had been a long time since a stranger in America had done anything quite so nice for us. And it felt like a real welcome back to Ohio. I know Catherine has always felt an especial love for this place, and I see why.

Later I speculated on why the person had paid for us, and I thought that maybe Catherine’s tears had played a role. Someone saw us struggling to get through a meal with three toddlers, struggling so much in fact that the children’s mother had burst into tears. But that’s just conjecture. I don’t know the why of it; all I know is that it felt very nice to be back in Ohio.