Writer's Block

(This photo is of "The Thinker" which stands in front of the Cleveland Art Museum. I have always liked the statue. I feel like I understand it.)

For some mysterious reason, I’ve found it hard to write this past week. I could attribute it to being closer to home and the pull that I feel on each arm in opposing directions, one toward home, and one in the opposite direction. I haven’t been able to bring my hands down to where the computer keys are.

Yeah, that must be it, ‘cause even thinking about the end of this road trip, sends a chill up my spine and not in a good way. I’m not ready to get back to the conventional life, the real world, regular everyday stuff. I want to keep going, be irresponsible, and continue my wandering ways, talk to wise old streams and eat peanut butter by a campfire. But………heck…….I think I will be coasting down the Smokey Mountains next week, slowly, toward Florida, toward my island. (Although, I really do think that if I have to live in one place, IRB is one of the best places to do it.)

For the time being, though, I’m spending a few days in Alexandria, Virginia, just outside of Washington, DC. I’m staying at my daughter’s town home. Yesterday, while Erin and Jerry were at work, I took the opportunity to organize (again), wash clothes, check emails, and generally try to clean up the mess in my car. It took all day and I still didn’t get done. And I worked hard at it, too. And I tried to blog, but the words wouldn’t come. It has been almost a week since my last post and I feel negligent!

However, I wasn’t able to blog at my last stop, anyway. Cousin Stan in Chesterland, Ohio doesn’t have a computer and thus no internet access. A rare bird in this age of electronic communication. I can’t even imagine living without a computer anymore! But he and Pat manage just fine. They like it that way, and I am thinking they may be onto something. Sometimes less information is good. Sometimes not being so readily available is less stressful. Being a little less connected can be peaceful, even more so if you live on a gravel road surrounded by trees.

Ohio was a familiar place for me and I visited my old haunts. I stopped to walk down the sidewalk I’d walked every school day from the start of kindergarten up to fourth grade. We lived in an apartment house owned by my grandmother and grandfather (Mommer and Popper). It was one block from the elementary School. Things haven't changed much from what I remember, although when I lived there the area was almost totally white Anglo types and now it is mostly an African American community. There were very few other changes, except for little stuff like my doctor’s office now being a pizza shop and the old movie house gone altogether. I used to be able to buy candy in the Big Little Store for a penny, candy bars for a nickel and ice cream cones for a dime. At today’s prices, I can’t afford them.

The apartment house looked much the same although in need of sprucing up. I tried to remember my younger self, catching fireflies, riding my big three wheeler around the parking lot, playing with Karen who lived next door, coming home for lunch and racing back to school when the first bell rang. T’was all a really long time ago, another lifetime so it seems. Our old apartment had a for rent sign in the window!

My Ohio childhood is a life far removed from my Florida life. I left Ohio a married woman at the age of twenty-two, a graduate of Kent State University, and settled in a warmer climate for the rest of my life.

Following is what I did while in Chesterland, Ohio. On a day threatening rain I went to a flea market in a park where I bought nothing, sat with Stan and Pat sharing a bottle of wine and a cheese plate in a local winery, toured the wonderful Cleveland Museum of Art, and watched Mamma Mia on the TV. Also, I enjoyed the company of their son and his family, ate terrific homemade dinners, went to a backyard birthday party for a one year old, and enthusiastically discussed politics with my cousins as the television news commentators brought up one disturbing issue after another. And I think our distinctly different views were disturbing, too! Well….maybe stimulating is a better word.

I stayed overnight just outside of Uniontown, PA in the Historic Summit Inn, once considered a grand porch hotel on the top of the world. I crossed paths with Thomas Edison and Henry Ford again. (Toured their ground in Ohio, too) Others who have come before me include Warren Harding, Harvey Firestone and Jonny Weissmuller!

It has been cool for July and I am having a hard time comtemplating August heat in Florida. The weather report for 33785 says it has been raining and in the eighties. I guess my grass won’t die nor the candles melt while I have been gone. Hope not, anyway.

Before heading home though, I will be heading to Confluence, Pennslyvania for the weekend where I and Erin and Jerry will be meeting up with friends and hopefully doing a little kayaking and camping.

So, in case you were wondering if I had been captured by pirates or swept off my feet by a poor but shockingly handsome and charming gigolo, or simply got lost on the back roads of the Appalachian Mountains, I thought I would let you know, all is as it ought to be, I am well.