don't know what you've got 'til it's gone

I never think of myself as a child who grew up along a river, but, you know, I did.  Its proper name was "the Black River", but it was just "the river" to us.  My parents told me that when we moved into the big, old house on West Sixth Street, the riverbank cut right behind our garage. But I don't remember that, and the earliest memories I have are of a steep, green bank some distance beyond the garage and the huge old oak tree that grew next to it.  The river curved around and cut off the end of our street, as well, and was narrower and deeper there. 

We were strictly forbidden to go "down to the river", of course, but every summer when the water was low, my dad would take me down the bank and we would step across the exposed stones in the riverbed to the island in the middle of the river.  I remember the island mainly as overgrown and buggy, but exciting simply because it was off-limits to us for most of the year.  Over the years, dump truck after dump truck left their loads behind our house, altering the course of the river, and gradually creating a parking lot for the high school across the street.  The island became a peninsula, jutting out into the widest part of the river.  Easier to get to, but not as appealing.

Our neighborhood was defined by the river.  Because the bank cut in sharply behind our house, there was not room for a West Fifth Street or a West Fourth Street. Third Street and Second Street had bridges.  Heading away from town, the river curved away, and Riverside Drive ran alongside the river for many blocks.  Sometimes my dad took us for hikes along the river, and we were amazed to learn that we could walk all the way to Eleventh Street, where our elementary school was, and beyond, along its narrow banks. 

I was thinking about the river today because I learned that the derecho that knocked out our power for five days this week was actually the second one I have experienced.   Don't know what a derecho is?  Neither did I, of course.  Wikipedia defines it as "a widespread, long-lived, straight-line windstorm that is associated with a fast-moving band of severe thunderstorms". Got that?  A really big storm that comes really far, really fast and is really windy. 

So, the first time I experienced one, as it turns out, was the famous 4th of July storm on July 4th, 1969, a storm that I remember more for its aftermath than for the storm itself.  It was a summer storm.  A bad storm.  One where all the windows had to be closed, and we sweltered in our hot, airless house.  The usual, really.  But the next morning when we woke up, we heard a sound we had never heard before.  The river.  We heard the river.  Although we lived quite close to the river, the banks were tall, and we had never heard it from our house until that day.  The river was rushing and swirling.  It was higher than I had ever seen it, and it was opaque and brown and very, very deep.  It was fascinating and frightening and I couldn't look away from it.  The distant, friendly river that my dad and I threw stones in from the tall bank was gone, and in its place, this new river raged.  The toddler I was babysitting that summer had developed a fascination with water, and I was warned to watch him closely, as he had already jumped into the Vermilion River earlier that summer.  His mother jumped right in after him, but I wasn't going to do that.

So, yeah, I grew up by a river, and I have always lived by rivers, until now, and, boy, do I miss that.  You just never know the things that truly matter to you until you don't have them anymore - you know, just like the song says.

the next best thing

Well, we didn't win the lottery, of course, but we got something almost as good in the mail last week - our royalty checks. Amazingly, Ben and I still get checks periodically for the book we wrote back in 2004. We get separate checks in separate envelopes for separate amounts. My check is always bigger - this time I got six cents more than Ben did (!) I love that.

We used to get checks every six months, then our publisher started asking us to allow the money to be direct deposited. We didn't want to do that, however, as I like getting checks in the mail. Ben agreed with me. The next thing they told us was that they wouldn't issue a check for less than a certain amount so they would hold the money for us until enough accrued. So, as I say, periodically we get checks in the mail, and last week was one of those days. It's always a nice surprise.

Coincidentally, Ben scanned our last few postcard purchases the other day, then I put them into the leather albums with our other cards. Of course I paged through the albums as I did this, and I don't want to get started (molars and bicuspids, you've no idea!) but we have such an amazing collection! I think Elyria today is a sad, little, run-down town, but our postcards made me yearn for the Elyria of yesteryear. Not the Elyria of a hundred years ago that our oldest cards portray, but the Elyria of fifty years ago when I was a child there. I guess one of the symptoms of getting older is longing for the days of one's youth, and my longing for the Elyria of my childhood grows stronger with each passing year. What a bustling little city it was!

After I slipped each card into its proper place in the album, I asked Ben how many Elyria postcards we have at this point. You may be staggered to know that we have 680 unique postcards of the little town of Elyria, Ohio. I know I was. And what I started thinking was that is more than enough for another book. We could do a whole chapter about the Elyria Block fire in 1909 or when the Washington Avenue bridge was washed away in the spring floods of 1913. Doesn't that sound fascinating?

I know you must be curious as to the size of our checks, and I must be honest and say that it was forty-three dollars and some change for each of us. What did I spend it on? I bought some yarn, of course.

something about walking down the same street on the very same day...

President Obama and I were both in Elyria yesterday. That is what I am told, anyway. I didn't see him and he didn't see me, and I'm fine with that.

As I crossed the bypass, I noticed police cars parked at either side of the intersection. I assume they were there to stop traffic on all the side streets so that the presidential motorcade could speed along the highway. When I went to the post office to drop off Dad's change of address form, I could see further down the street that Cleveland Street was totally blocked off, with traffic being re-routed to Gulf Road. The president had lunch at Smitty's, apparently; a working-class greasy spoon where I never ate in all the years I lived in Elyria.

I think it's fine that the president visited Elyria, and I think it's even better that we didn't impact each other's time there in any way.