Thanks for your reply Carole!

Here's what my friend Carole wrote: Just finished reading your current blogs. I love your writing! I was taken with the fact that you grew up in the Cleveland area - what part? We were just to a family wedding this past weekend in Cleveland. We were in the downtown area near 4th St. and the Rock -n- Roll Hall of Fame. What a hot weekend but, the wedding was awesome (reception at the Wyndham which was magnificent!) and it was good to see family members again.

My Dad grew up in the Bay Village area (site of the infamous Sam Sheppard case), our relatives live in Valley City.

RZ begins: First of all, Dear Reader, I should tell you that when I read the name Carole with an E on the end I pronounce it, just for fun, Ca-ROLE-ee. Who knows? Maybe Carole's husband Randy does that! (I like to show off the fact that I remember people's names. When you get Alzie's, that's the first thing to go.....names).

Carole is certainly right about Bay Village, Ohio. The osteopathic physician Sam Sheppard was found guilty of murdering his wife Marilyn who actually went to Cleveland Heights High School in the same class as my mother. In recent years, for some reason, the case was written about yet again, and I read all about it on this website. Look for other great murders here too.

Now, back to Cleveland. Our family lived there until about 1970 when my dad got transferred to the garment district in The Big Apple. The city had not yet begun its terrible decline that faces just about all inner cities today. Sounds like you and your family did what 'the new Cleveland' wants you to do - frequent the tourist attractions put there to revive the city.

Let's do it!

I can sit here, close my eyes and remember the exciting hustle-bustle of downtown Cleveland teeming with people and pigeons and beggars selling pencils. What a feeling of freedom I had stepping off the 'rapid transit' and going it alone to the Cleveland Public Library instead of our small quiet air-conditioned branch.

One time I sat in the downtown Reading Room an entire afternoon and read A Night in the Luxembourg, an arcane book I longed to read but was not allowed to check out b/c it was one of a kind. One of the page corners snapped off when I read it since someone had used it as a bookmark. I was appalled.