August 3, 2019

Breakfast at the hotel, at a window overlooking a thin margin of green ash and then a huge truck lot. Some festival at the Pro Football Hall of Fame packs the hotels and the roads with one-time football players. They are very big. Even the old ones have not forgotten they were big.

Lay down before 8 PM and did not rise until after 6 AM. Intense dreams.

Yesterday, Hiram, then trek down Tallmadge Avenue. For two summers I drove that way every day to man the summer playground program at King School. Drove on to Stan Hywet, stately home of the Seiberlings. The last time I’d been there was to the gardens to shoot photos for Mike and Diane’s wedding. Stan Hywet is Akron’s Biltmore House, much less grand and considerably more liveable. I remembered certain features from tours I had as a schoolboy, such as the cartoons of the Kaiser and of Hitler in the boys’ bedroom. I was able to brag that I knew Julie Seiberling Shaw, who was professor Shaw’s wife. Our guide says she is still alive, “though getting up there.”