GROWING UP IN CLIFTON: A PHOTO TOUR BY J.L.

Dear George, 

Our son J flew up from New Orleans for a long weekend last month, and we had a great time. One of the afternoons he and I walked around our Clifton neighborhood, and J recounted his memories into his cell phone. Here is what he had to say. 

Love, Dave 

J.L.:  My dad and I are doing a project where we talk about childhood experiences in Clifton.  So I am going to document all these spots.  

So here we are at Skyline Chili on Ludlow.  Skyline, for all people born in Cincinnati, is a very special place.  It’s the number one comfort food for Cincinnatians.  When I look at this Skyline, I’ve been here a million times.  I used to come here after tennis matches.  We’d sometimes come here for dinner.  It’s right across the street from Adrian the Florist where I always get flowers for Mom on Mother’s Day.  It’s right across from the little fountain at Burnet Woods which really wasn’t there when I was a kid. 

Burnet Woods has a small hill.  Walking down or sliding down in the winter and then walking through that path to the open area with the picnic tables, the natural history museum, and the lake.  

We’re approaching the house that has my first memories at on Clifton Avenue.  3507 Clifton Avenue.  And, my bedroom was in the back of the house and there was a door that went to the back yard at the driveway where I was always a little bit scared that someone could enter the house from the back right into my room.  So that was a little scary.  I also remember the house had a beautiful painting on the ceiling.  Like cherubs and little babies and angels on the ceiling.  And I also remember that Mom had a room that she wouldn’t let me in.  She had a special room, her office I guess.  And I remember my neighbor, Tom W.  He was my pal.  We would run around in the back yard.  I also remember having my bike stolen there once.  I think I left it in the front yard.  It was stolen very quickly.  Maybe like  the day I got my bike.  Soon after I got my bike.  I also remember learning how to skateboard.  This was at the beginning of the skateboard era.  Those little plastic narrow skateboards.  One time I skated down the driveway and I had to make an incredibly fast turn to escape getting into traffic.   At least it felt very dangerous and fast and unsafe.  And that was my first close call with death.  So lots of fond memories of being in the yard, riding my bicycle, being on the skateboard, getting a ride on the motorcycle with you.  I see now that there’s a big gate in the front.  There was no gate back in the day.  And hanging out with Tom in his yard.  He had a great yard too.  There’s a lot of space back there.  And I remember going to grade school, walking up Clifton Avenue, maybe a quarter of a mile.  A very nice place to grow up.  I was about seven when we left Clifton Avenue.    

So right next door to 3507 is the apartment building which didn’t really mean anything to me until later in life when my grandparents lived here from Philadelphia.  And they stayed there and we would have get-togethers.  Mom would be there all the time, visiting my grandparents.  They had a neighbor here at 310 Bryant who was a Holocaust survivor and who recounted his experience in the Holocaust and that was totally fascinating to me.  He was actually, I believe, at Auschwitz and had some very harrowing stories.  

Across the street from 310 Bryant is Emanuel Church.  This was the entrance to the preschool.  My main memories of Emmanuel were having my finger smashed.  I guess it was Jessica G.  She slammed the door on my finger, and I had to go to the hospital.  I also remember getting bullied by some kid and being traumatized by that.  And, um, that’s pretty much it.  I guess that was a pretty traumatic place, getting physically and emotionally traumatized at Emmanuel Preschool.  

And Annunciation I always felt was a weird place.  I just didn’t understand the origin or the idea of Catholic school.  I always thought growing up that private schools were for people who weren’t smart enough to be at regular public school.  I don’t know where I got that idea.  But I just looked down at kids who went to private school.  Like they were different kids in some way.  I guess I invented that idea.  

I do remember the Unitarian Church over there.  And I do remember going there different times for events or services.  Oh, you know what, there was a day care there during the summer that I went to.  Like a camp.  I feel that I spent some time there, some group activities.   

So now we are approaching Clifton School.  Clifton Elementary School which is now known as the Fairview German Language School.  So it’s a new building, but I think the format is the same.  The parking lot is the same area, and I remember spending a lot of time.  There was a fence over there, and we would hang out by that fence by the parking lot.  And I remember Miss Williams, my teacher.  A very nice teacher, who was sort of firm but loving.  And I remember playing a lot of Four Square.  That was the main sport that we played.  And the main thing I remember about elementary school in this building was passing some test at the end of the year.  I felt some real pressure to do well on this test because if I didn’t score almost like a perfect score I wouldn’t get into the honors program at the next level when I went into seventh grade.  I’m pretty sure that’s the case.  I just remember high stakes.  High stakes as a third-grader.  

Then fourth, fifth, and sixth grade at the big school.  Again I mainly remember the playground, hanging out, a group of boys hanging out in the back.  We called ourselves the Wolves.  We thought we were a gang.  That was exciting.  We played a lot of dodge ball.  We played a lot of kick ball.  A lot of four square, a lot of tinder ball.  

I would do summer camp here at the Rec Center.  We would hang out in that playground area, playing sports.  And I don’t feel that I had any life-altering experiences here.  So looking at the parking lot at the Rec Center — oh, it’s filled.  We used to come and play basketball here, you and me.  That was a happy time.  I had lots of happy feelings here.  

When we moved to Ludlow, I would walk this way to get home, up Middleton.  So I guess around age 8 or 9 you started taking me to Crosley Tower to hit some tennis balls against the wall.  And we would go to Digby where you and Irv Greenberg would place tennis, and occasionally I would hit some balls.  I guess we would go to Crosley Tower to warm up there.  I guess I would come to the tennis court and watch you guys play tennis for one hour or two hours.  And you would take me out to Digby and we’d do drills.  I would sometimes get cranky.  What I really loved about Digby in my memory is that the balls would go out of the court and they would go down this big hill and you and I would go into the forest and scavenge for balls.  We would get tons and tons of balls.  And other things.  Sometimes we’d find interesting garbage or whatever.  That was a fond memory.  And I recall if you went all the way around to the bottom of the hill there was sort of a green space down there.

And I always liked this hill right here.  This hill seemed really steep.  Like climbing Mt. Everest every day.  And we’re coming up on the street where Irv Greenberg lived.  Wood Street.  And I have some nice memories of Wood Street.   There’s the Greenberg house.  It’s a small house.  This house seems too small in my memory.  And the only exciting thing that happened to me walking home to Ludlow on Middleton was during the winter once me and some friends were walking and a car drove by and my friends had this great idea of throwing snowballs.  And as the car passed we lobbed snowballs which would go onto the windshield.  So we would be behind the car and throwing as they were moving away from us.  And the idea was to get snowballs to land on their windshield and we succeeded perfectly.  And it must have stunned the driver because he stopped suddenly and backed up really fast to try to come after us.  They knew who did it.  And it scared the crap out of me at least.  The other kids were laughing but I ran away really fast.  So he didn’t or she didn’t pursue us.  But it was a little scary.  That was my brush with being a juvenile delinquent.  That’s about as bad as it got.  

Around that period we also spent a lot of time at the zoo.  I don’t have any particular stories about the zoo other than just being there.  And seeing the tigers, seeing the monkeys, seeing the lizards.  And we also spent a lot of time at the Natural History Museum.  It was in this great building, like a castle.  It was a pretty neat building, and I did like it.  Mainly I liked the building.  As I recall, there were skeletons of wooly mammoths and other ancient creatures that don’t exist any more.  

This was the house of my teacher from preschool.  It is a nice building.  I’m thankful they were my teachers because when I was being traumatized they would take me to the hospital.  When Jessica G. was smashing my finger.  I remember being pretty hysterical, and they had to hold me down and it was a large, well-cushioned woman who sort of buttressed herself against me to hold me down which felt kind of overwhelming. 

I do remember feeling like there were cool kids in the neighborhood that kind of scared me.  There was a kid named C*** H***  He was a bad kid, he was a little rough.  He never singled me out for bullying, but he seemed like kind of an 80s movie of cool kids that bully other kids.  And he used to spend a lot of time at the arcade in Corryville, and I was always too scared.  I maybe went there one or two times, but it was pretty overwhelming.  

I do remember going to Northside and going thrifting and going to other thrift stores around town.  I guess we’ve been doing that my whole life.  Whenever we went to Menominee you would do research and we’d have an outing and go to yard sales.  I don’t remember that as much in Cincinnati.  

Now we’re standing on Ludlow opposite the Esquire Theater,  right next to the grocery store.  Kitty corner to Graeters.  These are all some of my favorite places.  I don’t have particular stories to tell but these are the places I wanted to go to when I first came home to Cincinnati.  I do remember that the Esquire was a porn theater where they used to have big posters in front that were provocative and titles that were really inappropriate.  Was Ludlow like Times Square back then?  It’s kind of crazy.  I don’t think that that would fly today.  And I remember that Stier’s Pharmacy was right over there.  Mom would go there all the time, or we’d have stuff delivered from there.  And I remember Keller’s IGA.  I remember going there and shopping all the time.   And then there was the Golden Lion.  And that was a gay bar when I was growing up.  And there was a lot of mystery around that place.  The kids in elementary school were pretty titillated by the concept of a gay bar.  Back then there weren’t that many gay bars, I guess.  And now there’s gay bars everywhere, but back then it was a really strange idea.  It seemed that way to a fifteen-year-old.  

Now we’re standing in front of the old library.  It’s no longer a library.  It’s an open concept wine cafe.  We spent a lot of time.  We would go to the library all the time, I guess.  Super-easy to get to.  We would get DVD’s and VHS movies.  When I was really small I would get childrens’ books there.  I went to story-time there.  There was one particular story-teller who I saw numerous times.  I think you would make an effort to get me to go there.  

I remember there was a place called Acropolis where the Tap Room is now.  It was a Greek restaurant, I would have Hero sandwiches there in high school almost every day.  Especially in the summer time.  I’d take my money and go got a Hero sandwich because I loved that so much.  

Here we are, approaching our house.  It’s funny how you only remember the kind of dramatic or traumatic things.  When we first moved here I was throwing snowballs at the stop sign, and a man stopped and flashed me.  We called the cops.  That’s one early memory I have of this house.  And then I remember playing with matches and sticking it in a hole in the floor, and my parents smelled smoke and they asked me if I’d been playing with matches and I said, “No, no, absolutely not.”  And they called the fire department, and three large fire trucks came to our house and an ambulance and a cop or two, and I was interviewed by the fire department.  And I remember spending a lot of the early years hanging out in the neighbor’s yard, going on the top of the garage, and jumping off the top of the garage into the yard.  And I remember when I started playing tennis I would hit tennis balls agains the wall.  I don’t recall getting any complaints about it.  Maybe I timed it so I was doing it when people weren’t home.  And I remember our rabbit coop in the back.  And I remember a dog got loose and scared one of our rabbits so badly that he had a heart attack and died.  I remember you building a snow bunny in the front yard every year.  A really big snow bunny in the front yard.  That was kind of neat.  And I also remember you had a circular fence, and we’d have the bunny in the front yard, in the front yard, and we’d hang out in front.  And the bunny, Thumper,  would hang out there.  Yeah, I love this house.  

And that’s my experience in Clifton.  My wrap-up statement is that Clifton was a really great place to grow up.  I didn’t know what it was like until I was past my childhood, but when I look back I have a lot of fond feelings.  There was a real neighborhood with a lot of businesses and a lot of fun things to do.  I don’t think I had much of a sense of architecture or an aesthetic sense, but it’s such a pretty area.  So green and the architecture’s so neat.  Just as an adult I appreciate that.  (THE END OF THE TOUR)