Mistake By/On the Lake (1967) (LONG)

Frank Abate abatefr at EARTHLINK.NET
Mon Aug 26 19:39:58 UTC 2002


Following up on Barry's posting for Cleveland slogans, local officials
naturally promoted the "Best Location in the Nation" slogan, and ignored the
negative ones.  The explanation behind the positive slogan was that
Cleveland was on Lake Erie, on the major E-W rail line (from NYC to
Chicago), and just north of the Ohio Turnpike, which is I-80/90 as an
interstate highway.  The combination was such that the city, aside from
being within 500 miles of every major population center E of the Mississippi
and N of the "South", could ship or receive freight/goods easily, by any of
3 ways.

It seems like no big thing today, but when the St. Lawrence Seaway was
opened to oceangoing vessels in 1959 (or so; Eisenhower was prez when the
big celebration was held for the opening), that effectively made every deep
harbor on the entire Great Lakes an ocean port.  That changed the scene for
shipping goods to/from Europe, etc., to the Midwest in a big way.  After
that Cleveland regularly was visited by ships from all over the world, as
were other Great Lakes ports.

This from my recollection as a Clevelander in my youth.  Things have changed
much since, of course, and I cannot offer much recent info, as I've been
away from Cleveland since 1970.  I can say that Cleveland has long been the
butt of jokes and such, since the 60s at least.  The city is not deserving
of much of the bad publicity.  It is actually a thriving city with much
ethnic diversity, a great public library system, the Tribe and the Jake,
wonderful museums, theaters (for plays, that is), and, of course, the
Cleveland Symphony.  Under Szell, the symphony attained world acclaim, and
its rep has remained solid.

Back in the days when the Rust Belt was rusting out, Cleveland suffered
much, and it was a pretty grimy city (from the steel mills and coke plants),
with many of the typical urban problems of the time (declining population
and tax base, fleeing industry, slums, water and air pollution, etc.).
Notably, the Cuyahoga River (which flows N through the city, splitting it
into East Side and West Side) actually caught on fire from combustible
material floating on it (as sung about by Randy Newman).  The river (in a
valley called "the Flats") was used by many industries as a source of water
and a depository for industrial waste, and it was a mess.  So too was Lake
Erie, which received all the mess from the Cuyahoga, not to mention from
upstream places like Detroit and Toledo.

The city (and the lake and the river) has recovered quite a bit in recent
decades, in fact, but still suffers the bad rep.  In sum, it's a good place
to have grown up.  The big, unreversable downside, in my view, is the
weather -- it is cloudy for too many days in the year, thanks to "lake
effect" moisture, and in the winter it can get very cold and does get A LOT
of snow, esp. the eastern suburbs near the lake.  Not as much as the Buffalo
area, but still a lot.  I've never been a fan of winter, or perhaps better
put, growing up in Cleveland made me hate winter.

Frank Abate



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