A little this and that from around the Heights

Some thoughts about recent goings on around town:

Improved parking

Cumberland’s improved parking lot has been completed in time for the summer swim season. The $200,000+ project was funded from an Ohio EPA grant to improve quality of rainwater runoff into adjacent Dugway Brook.

The project included greenspace medians in the lot, to filter dirt and chemicals that run off of cars. It also included a minor redirection of traffic entering the lot – to make it safer for people entering and leaving the pool. The improvements actually increased the lot’s capacity to 105 cars.

Senior Prom

Cleveland Heights High’s senior prom was Friday, June 3 at Landerhaven. As is tradition, the students organized bus rentals to the prom from the Wade Park Lagoon, where they gathered beforehand to take pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s an event for parents, too – who gathered beforehand to take pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

The pre-event lasted about an hour – which seemed to be about 10 minutes longer than many of the girls were  able to tolerate their high-heel shoes. One girl briefly fainted during the photo op, and claimed it had to be the pain of the shoes because she had been well fed and hydrated on arrival. When it was time to depart for the dance, many girls took the short walk to the buses with corsages on their wrists, dates on their arms and shoes in their hands.

Parents’ Prom

That evening, I was part of a group of 16-or-so parents who held their own “Mom Prom.” After sending our kids off for an evening and unsupervised weekend at Punderson State Park, we dressed up, toasted our own mixed feelings in the Corydon Road backyard of one parent; walked en masse to  Jimmy O’Neill’s Tavern on Lee Road for dinner; and walked to another parent’s East Overlook home to dance (mainly the wives) and enjoy the  summer-like weather from the front porch (mainly the husbands). I’d share a photo but they were all too dark.

Seitz-Agin Farewell Party

On Saturday, June 4, a pile of Heights residents showed up at Seitz-Agin Hardware to help send off the 66-year-old store in a flourish of goodwill and neighborliness.

Spearheaded by Heights Arts Director Peggy Spaeth, the throng brought food to eat, music to play and money to spend on merchandise they didn’t necessarily need and inventory they couldn’t always identify – some of it having sat in the basement for 30 years or more.

Goods for sale included storage bins, office supplies and all manner of mystery hardware –  providing a touching and warm moment on what was to be the store’s third-last Saturday. It was, employees, said, the best Saturday they’ve had in years – an irony lost of nobody.

I snuck down to the basement – where many of the screens in my home have spent some repair time, and where countless window panes have been cut to measure before I put them into place using glazing points and putty purchased at the store.

In more than 40 years as a Seitz-Agin customer, I’d never seen the basement – an endless warren of shelves, still stocked with doodads and whatsits  from companies that may have long ago gone out of business themselves. I told owner Joel Borwick that I’d been down below; I even found an  artifact to purchase – though I have no plans to ever find a use for it.

To call a trip into the basement anything more than a trip into the basement is silly. Joel rolled his eyes and asked me if it was amazing.

Kind of, yeah.

A stereo for a pencil stub

To an audiophile this stereo may not look like anything special. But to a 13-year-old who likes music that his parents would prefer not to hear, well, this is a gateway to all sorts of entertainment. Especially considering how he got it.

My son was invited to a farewell party for a friend whose family is moving back to Thailand after spending three years here. As one of the activities, the kids were given some junk and an hour to turn it into something better than junk. Do they do this stuff in Hudson?

They set off around the neighborhood, explaining the game to the amusement of people who answered their doors. Others came back with videos, a snowglobe and even a small, old-tech TV (from my parents’ house). My son converted his pencil stub into a string of beads, a rubber ball, a box of Ritz crackers, a broken iPod and, finally this stereo – which now proudly plays at full volume in his room. Even when he isn’t in it.

Now that he’s got sales firmly in hand, we’re going to work on sustainability and noise pollution.