Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Cleveland has always had a reputation for being a dirty, ugly, boring city, though now they
say it is much better. By
“they” I mean reporters from serious publications like the Wall Street Journal, Fortune and
theNewYorkTimesSundaymagazine,whovisitthecityatfive-yearintervalsandproduce
longstorieswithtitleslike“ClevelandBouncesBack”and“RenaissanceinCleveland.”No
one ever reads these articles, least of all me, so I couldn't say whether the improbable and
highly relative assertion that Cleveland is better now than it used to be is wrong or right
What I can say is that the view up the Cuyahoga as I crossed it on the freeway was of a
stew of smoking factories that didn't look any too clean or handsome. And I cant say that
therestofthetownlookedsuchaknockouteither.Itmaybeimproved,butallthistalkofa
renaissanceisclearlyexaggerated.IsomehowdoubtthatiftheDucd'Urbinowerebrought
back to life and deposited in downtown Cleveland he would say, “Goodness, I am put in
mind of fifteenth-century Florence and the many treasures therein.”
And then, quite suddenly, I was out of Cleveland and on the James W. Shocknessy Ohio
Turnpike in the rolling rural emptiness between Cleveland and Toledo, and highway mind-
lessness once more seeped in. To relieve the tedium I switched on the radio. In fact, I had
been switching it on and off all day, listening for a while but then giving up in despair. Un-
lessyouhavelivedthroughit,youcannotconceiveofthesenseofhopelessnessthatcomes
with hearing “Hotel California” by the Eagles for the fourteenth time in three hours. You
can feel your brain cells disappearing with little popping sounds. But it's the disc jockeys
that make itintolerable. Canthere anywhere beabreedofpeople moreirritating andimbe-
cilic than disc jockeys? In South America there is a tribe of Indians called the Janamanos,
who are so backward they cannot even count to three. Their counting system goes, “One,
two … oh, gosh, a whole bunch.” Obviously disc jockeys have a better dress sense and
possess a little more in the way of social skills, but I think we are looking at a similar level
of mental acuity.
Over and over I searched the airwaves for something to listen to, but I could find nothing.
It wasn't as if I was asking for all that much. All I wanted was a station that didn't play
endless songs by bouncy prepubescent girls, didn't employ disc jockeys Who said “H-e-y-
y-y-y” more than once every six seconds and didn't keep telling me how much Jesus loved
me.Butnosuchstationexisted.EvenwhenIdidfindsomethinghalfwaydecent,thesound
would begin to fade after ten or twelve miles, and the old Beatles song that I was listening
to with quiet pleasure would gradually be replaced by a semidemented man talking about
the word of God and telling me that I had a friend in the Lord.
