Banquet

 

August 17, 2025

Drove to the Cleveland Museum of Art yesterday morning, Had to go clear to 532 to find an on-ramp to 76 that wasn’t closed. This was emblematic of the entire journey, through literally hundreds of miles of construction, much of it quite dangerous for that reason. When I finally got on to 77, the story was the same, almost all the way to Cleveland through a construction zone. It’s clear that our environmental problem stems at least partially from the orange and white construction barrels that exist in unknowable millions, wrought from hard, imperishable plastic, and which have to be stored somewhere in warehouses that must cover square miles. The sheer multitude of them is shocking. The museum was larger than I remembered, undoable (by me) in a single day, but studded with old favorites. You’re surprised when Cleveland has a Very Famous Painting.  

In the evening, off to the golf course banquet facility for the Ellet High class of 1968 75th Birthday celebration. It was maybe the best time I ever had at one of these. I felt free and comfortable. I was the answer to two of the trivia questions. Many old friends, many acquaintances who have become friends through the years. Without even a greeting, MH began his recitation of illness and procedures, whose severity and number, it must be said, are impressive, Frank reasserted his interest in my play. E, who was a beautiful youth (for whom I pined) is a fine looking old man. My classmates were interested in anecdotes from Helene and the flood.  The lake at the course was beautiful in the green-gray evening light. 

Breakfast with Mike and Jack and parishioners of the Visitation of Mary Parish at the Akron Family Restaurant on West Market. They’re so well known all I had to do was ask for their table. Much talk of current times, reminiscences of Boy Scouts, loud recriminations against Trump in a place that must have been at least a little Trumpish. Much, much talk of M & D’s many illnesses and procedures. They are lucky to have survived, a fact which they attribute to divine intervention. I do not doubt it. J and M possess memories of my father that I have lost, or never had. Dinner for me at the Lamp Post, open 24 hours. A guy who’d just gone on a 8 mile “walkabout” (because he has no car) recommended the triple-decker BLT at 3 AM as the food of the gods. I remember the Lamp Post from my time, for its disreputability, but that was left unsaid.  

Melancholy now, preparing for the journey home. Sadness over what? For all that was lost? All that was abandoned for something else? For what else?, the final question is. Peach ice cream from the store beneath my hotel window.