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August 13, 2006

My Hometown Slogan Should Be: Visit Lorain - It's Like Driving on the Moon!

By: The Dude on the Right
So here it is, Sunday morning in beautiful Lorain, OH, and sure, I should probably be at church or something like that, but “Cocoon” is on the basic cable that my parents subscribe to and I just can’t seem to break away.  Here on an extended weekend to visit the parents, I have found out a few things about my hometown.  First, it seems to have corruption just like Chicago, yet nowhere near the same scale.  I have also found that there seem to be many folks who really don't respect people in wheelchairs, let alone elderly people in wheelchairs.  I know this isn't indicative of all people in the Lorain area, at least I hope not, but I did find it a tad shocking.  I suppose I'll explain more either when I talk to Stu during our weekend wrap-up podcast, or save the specifics for a later blog. 

Lorain also seemed to always have a thing for building their streets out of concrete, instead of concrete with an asphalt surface, and that concrete road is great when the roads are first put in, but not so great 10 to 30 years later when the City doesn't have the money to rebuild the roads, the concrete crumbles, and the patchwork fixes makes it seem like you are driving on the moon.  Mom tells me that a few years ago there were plans to try to set up a roadway fund by making owners of registered vehicles pay for a "City Sticker," much like Chicago and tons of other cities do, but one of the ex-mayors, an older dude, rallied many of the other older folks to defeat the measure (the sticker was supposed to cost like a whole 5 to 10 bucks).  I hope those older folks are happy as they bounce around in their Buick's with suspensions that need a hell of a lot more work than the original 5 or 10 bucks it would have cost them for the sticker.

But enough complaining about Lorain.  It's a great city, really, and would have had the potential to be even greater if the damn horse track and religious nuts long ago hadn't rallied to defeat a measure to put a casino in downtown Lorain.  I would have gladly gone there this weekend and lost a few bucks which might have helped pay for the repair of a sewer catch basin collapse in front of my parent's house that hasn't been fixed in years.

Anyway, although I haven't been able to catch a new movie this weekend (and there weren't many I was excited about anyway), I have been able to catch up on writing all of my movie previews, so those should be posted shortly, and watch a lot of baseball, golf, "Jeopardy," and "Wheel of Fortune."  As much as Mom always says, when I'm sitting our living room, to watch what I want I want, I know she doesn't really mean it.  She really means "Watch something that I'll also want to watch."  Since mom likes baseball, golf, "Jeopardy," and "Wheel of Fortune," that's what I want to watch.

In any case, as much as it is nice to be home, it is always a little weird, and sometimes makes me sad, because Lorain has such potential to be a great town, with its river and lakefront location, but sadly they seem to keep shooting themselves in the foot when it seems they have a chance to take a step forward, and can't even seem to get the corruption to turn the city around, either.

That's it for this one!  I'm The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

Posted by Rightdude at 10:01 AM | Comments (0)