Going Back to Ohio
Mention the
state Ohio and today one might be greeted by several responses. Rust-belt. Went
for Trump big time. Ground zero for pill mills. Overdose country. Craigslist
serial killers. (That last one is not made up.)
It has become a
place of desperation, where residents felt left behind, misunderstood. Also the
pill mills. They were rip[e and ready to be taken advantage of by shyster
doctors and lawyers, using them for SSI money. Many have been left behind by an
economy not built on manufacturing or mining. The population of the small towns
has been decimated—the overdoeses don’t help.
But that isn’t
the Ohio I remember.
Because many of
my memories are colored by bike riding (see
even back then I rode way too many miles. Often too far to get home. More than
once I had to call my dad from a pay phone to come get me because I was too
tired or it was too dark for me to get home.) I remember riding through small
towns where there was a liberal arts college. In the autumn trees burst into
reds, yellow/orange, a bruised purple, drifting to the pavement, clogging the
curbs. Home-town parades with baby carriages adorned with crepe paper and silly
hats on dogs. Slow, meandering creeks that glistened in the sun. The occasional
Friday night wreck where high school kids were injured/killed/crippled. Rumors:
girls pregnant, a gay athlete, couples coming together or breaking up. This was
my world.
Nothing like
the dire descriptions now filling newspaper headlines. It was frankly conservative,
Republican in a Nixonian kind of way. Not Trump. Forty years ago they would not
have been taken in by a huckster. By a New York City slicker with a bad comb
over and a fake tan. But back then folks had jobs. They farmed, taught school,
worked the mines, worked at Mead Paper Company, or any number of appliance
manufacturers or parts maker for the car industry.
I don’t
recognize the Ohio I hear about today. When I last visited Athens a young
teacher who taught in the county told me when she left for work on the a.m. the
roads were empty. Almost all of her neighbors were on disability and didn’t
work. They all had HUD housing. She had to have extra security for the house
she rents because people break in all the time. It sounded dystopian, walking
dead-ish.
Ohio, home of
aviation. Birth place of astronauts Neil Armstrong and John Glenn. Where have
you gone? I have flown far from the state I once knew.
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