Taking a Minute to Pine about Some Good Old Days in Toledo, Ohio

My dad was a veterinarian who held three jobs. By day he worked rabies control for the City of Toledo. In the afternoon and on Saturdays he owned a small private practice. And by night, during the racing season, he was the State Vet at Toledo Raceway Park, a harness racing track. My sister and I sometimes had to go to work with him when my mom was busy, which meant we hung out in hot, dirty track barns, with itinerant horse groomers and trainers and drivers, until after midnight. There are probably people who would raise an eyebrow at that sort of environment for kids: late nights, gambling, drinking, swearing, loose women and randy men. But we were pretty well grounded. We just hung out, exploring the corners and shadows as kids are wont to do, and trying not to get into too much trouble.

Later, we each got jobs in the State Vet barn working for our dad. It was good pay back then--about $5 an hour when the minimum wage was under $2. We didn't have titles but my sister called herself a 'pissette.' Our task was simple: stand in a stall with a sterile jar on the end of a pole and wait for the winner to pee.  But horses wouldn't necessarily pee on command; there was art to it: Knowing how and where to stand, shaking fresh straw, whistling in low tones to distract them from other noises. Watching for the signs of imminent release. Hiding the pole until the last possible second. Making sure we were quick enough to not get shorted but not too quick to startle them into stopping. Knowing when to tie them up and when to let them free; when to use blinkers and when to not. And knowing when to hide in the secret room with the sliding panel. Even after all that, sometimes the horse would outlast us and my dad would have to draw blood from a neck vein.

I also worked a couple of summers in the horseman's cafeteria, where I washed dishes, mopped floors and developed a crush on the boss's daughter. Contrary to what you may expect, I never got a single betting tip worth a damn.

I bring all this up because today Raceway Park is no more. The current owners have decided to close down live racing and now you can only catch simulcasts from other tracks. But there is nothing like live racing, with the sound of the hooves on dirt and the smell of sweaty horses and used straw. Cameras cannot capture the violence of the jostling coming out of the gate, the angling for advantage going into the clubhouse turn, the grueling breadth of the back stretch, or the brewing storm as they explode out of the final turn and head for home. It all looks so flat and distant on TV, and if you've ever stood at the rail, if you've ever been close enough to feel the draft as they passed or see the nostrils flared as they reached for the wire, you will know that simulcasts can never replace live racing.

But this isn't about live racing at Raceway Park, which I really don't care about. They tore down my old high school and built a new one. They tore down my junior high and replaced it with riverside condos.  King's Taste is long gone. They moved the library, Canal Carry Out is now called Edgewater Bait and Tackle. I shouldn't complain, since I haven't been 'home' in a long, long time. It's just that as I'm getting older, it's hard to watch the pieces of my youth systematically disappear, is all I'm saying.

Sometimes a parade is not just a parade

One of the great things about living in a small town is that you get to know enough people that you are sure to see someone you know most of the time you go out.  It is for this reason that my wife insists on being fully presentable whenever she leaves the house, even just to get drive-through coffee. And I don't think I can go to the grocery store without seeing at least one person I know, not counting the cashiers or the nice lady in the bakery who has the border collie. We got to know many of them through our businesses, both of which are right in town, but there are many who we met via our kids: school parents, scout parents, orchestra parents, soccer, baseball and softball parents. How many hours did we stand together on the sidelines on a dreary October morning watching our pride-and-joys chase a soccer ball up and down a muddy field? 

High school created some separation as kids veered into diversified interests, and as the need for parental chaperoning and chauffeuring diminished. As a result, there are a lot of people I haven't seen in a long time. And the funny thing is I haven't noticed. Those relationships fall away so quietly that we never know they're gone. 

And so it was at the 4^th of July parade that my wife and I set up our chairs in the grass and engaged in our people watching for the year. Not only did we see the folks we see a lot, but also many whom we haven't seen in ages. And with that, years and years of scout meetings, play dates, rehearsals, spaghetti dinners, practices, popcorn sales, and ball games came flooding back, accompanied by the pang of having children who are all grown up and gone. But there was something else, something bigger, or maybe something smaller. 

It's easy to think of Aurora as a big town. We're so close to Cleveland and Akron. We're near major league sports. We have easy access to malls and big box stores, and most of us work someplace we have to drive twenty minutes to get to. It's easy to think that we're not connected to each other. But on Independence Day when we were all waiting for the parade on our flag-lined main street, it was like a town meeting without the agenda. I could walk up and down the street and see someone I knew every fifty feet. If I ever wanted to live in Mayberry this might be as close as I will ever come. Howard and Floyd were there. And Barney and Goober and Helen. Andy drove the lead car. Aunt Bee sat under a shady tree while a thousand Opies fidgeted, waiting to chase after bubble gum tossed from parade floats. My kids had played with their kids, studied with their kids, got in fights with their kids and made up with their kids. My kids had them for math and history, swam in their pools, and had teeth filled and eyes checked by them. For 364 days a year we are spread out over 24 square miles, going about our business, but today we are together, reminding each other that much of what we love about Aurora is right here in the sunshine, hanging out together on a summer day.