Your humble narrator, an Ohio boy, is the son of rubber workers. Akron, Ohio, formerly known as “The Rubber Capital of the World,” is now known to some as “The Armpit of America.” I was born in Akron and raised in the suburban town of “The Magic City,” beautiful Barberton, Ohio, in the wonderful suburbs of “The Rubber City.” My mother was born and raised in the “The Magic City” of beautiful Barberton, Ohio.
Can you imagine it? A rubber city? A magic city? Akron was dubbed “The Rubber City” because it was once home to the Goodyear World Headquarters and it was the world’s largest tire producer. Barberton was known as “The Magic City” because, much like Akron during the rubber boom, Barberton materialized and experienced rapid economic growth like magic, hence “The Magic City.” My mother and father earned their livelihoods for their entire careers in “The Magic City” of Barberton. They owned a rubber factory in “The Magic City” of Barberton, and that is something I took a great deal of pride in.
The founder of Barberton was O.C. Barber. The O.C. stood for Ohio Columbus. I kid you not.
If someone drove past where I lived and didn’t think to look for it, they might not even notice the driveway was there. It was marked by an old dead tree, still standing with three thick limbs branched off like a trident or a three-tined fork. The driveway rolled in gentle curves like smoke. To the side were little patches of grass, flower beds, a strip of woods buffering the lawn from a deep ravine. From the street, a couple dozen yards down the driveway was my place: a garage with an efficiency apartment above it, a mother-in-law suite, a studio, or a coach house That’s where I lived.
But if you kept following the driveway down a bit more, it finally ended at my parents’ house, a cedar-built home. Long, and cut into the hillside, its peaked roofs and sloping dormers over the cedar siding made it seem like a muddy jagged stone, or slants of shale rising out of the woods. Inside was open and airy. The dormers and ceilings met at peaks and sloped down high overhead. The living room and dining room and kitchen, all open and airy. The back wall: all windows that looked onto the woods and the grass and a small garden for the birdfeeders.
We also had a hot tub.
Sixteen acres of property in total, from the street straight on back to the Barberton reservoir. One parcel of six acres next door consisted of the house where my grandpa lived. The other larger parcel of ten acres was where my parents and I had our respective houses.
The hot tub was on the back patio, accessible through the sliding glass door to the downstairs rec room of my parents’ house. I stood on the patio with my dad.
“Now,” my dad said. “If the Ph level is too high, I like to put a capful of Spa Up in it.” He dumped the chemical powder from the plastic canister of Spa Up into its red cap.
My thumb and forefinger pinched a water testing strip. I reached over the side of the hot tub, then dipped and swirled the strip in the hot tub water. “Shouldn’t we check the water first?” I said to my dad. “Before we put the chemicals in?” I pulled out the testing strip, held it to the side and examined it.
“Yes,” he said.
A powdered sugar dusting of snow had fallen on the frozen ground and dead grass. Birds flitted around the birdfeeders, flapping in for seeds, pecking through the wire mesh and then flapping away to perch on the branches of the trees in the woods.
I held the testing strip up for his inspection.
“Okay,” he said. “It’s just as I thought. The Ph level is too low.”
“Okay,” I said. I watched the birds.
“Now, I’m serious,” he said. “Watch me.” Veils of steam rose from the hot tub water and dissipated into the pink winter dusk. “I need you to keep track of this. How often will you check this?”
“What?” I watched the birds: sparrows, finches, chickadees.
“Now pay attention. How often are you going to check it?”
I sighed and mumbled, “I don’t know, man. Like, everyday?”
“Nah,” my dad said. He raised his arm and flicked his wrist. The Spa Up chemical powder sprinkled into the hot tub water. “Maybe check it once a week. Hell, I’d even check it every couple days, but you don’t have to check it every day.”
“Yeah, okay,” I muttered, an irritated urgency in my voice. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it.”
“I’m not done yet. If the Ph level is too high?”
“If it’s too high, you like to put a capful of Spa Down in it.”
“Okay, and what about the Bromide?”
“What about the Bromide?”
“Watch me. Look at this,” my dad said. He got serious and maybe a little scornful. “Because, I’m not going to be here to keep an eye on this. It’s up to you to keep the levels right.”
I looked back again to the testing strip. Next to the hot tub was a patio table and, on top of the table, was an ashtray. The ashtray was filled with testing strips. “Bromide level looks good,” I said.
My dad grabbed the testing strip from me and threw it in the ashtray. “The Bromide level is a little low for what I’d like. So, what do you do if the Bromide’s too low?”
I watched the birds again. The feeders would need filled. Truthfully, I’d been through the whole hot tub chemicals lesson a few times already. My dad was going over it with me because he was going out of town. I would be the man of the house. The man, actually, of two houses, well, really three.
My grandpa was already long gone from the Northeast Ohio winters down to the sunny beaches of Fort Meyers, Florida. He’d be there until April.
My dad was going over the whole hot tub chemicals lesson because he and my mother were soon to depart. They too were leaving the Northeast Ohio winters to head down to the sunny beaches of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. My aunt and uncle lived down there. My parents had gotten a long-term rental property.
“Are you listening?” my dad asked. By this point, he had hauled out a cardboard box from who knows where and was loading it with the canisters of spa chemicals.
I wasn’t listening. I was watching the birds.
“I’m putting all the chemicals in here and you can keep it in the house,” he said. “I’ve got them lined up in rows, and I’ll leave handwritten instructions.” Holding the box, he nudged open the sliding glass door with his elbow.
I’d have to feed the birds too while my parents were gone.
“What are you doing with those?” my mom called from inside the downstairs rec room.
“I’m leaving them in the house, so he’ll know how to keep track of the hot tub chemicals,” my dad answered.
“The boy’s not an idiot,” she quipped back.
Three houses. Sixteen acres. My parents were going down to Florida. My grandpa was already down there. Their houses all sitting empty, surrounded by woods. I would stay at my place during the week. Weekday afternoons, after work, I’d get the mail and take it down to my parents’ house and hang out there a little bit to keep an eye on things, feed the birds, check the hot tub chemical levels. Then, on the weekends, I’d go next door to my grandpa’s house. I was the housesitting grounds keeper. I was in charge of the estate. It was my job to feed the birds, check the chemical levels in the hot tub and shovel the walks.
To get from my house to my job at The Comfort Hotel, first I take a left out of my driveway onto Simpson Road, and then follow that all the way down until it deadends into Medina Line Road. I take a left on Medina Line Road and follow that all the way to Reimer. Once I get to the four way stop at Reimer, I take a right. I follow Reimer all the way to Smokerise Drive, the side street behind Walmart. I take a left, follow it all the way to the intersection at 94. I take another left on 94 and go through all the traffic lights until I get to Park Center Drive, just before the freeway onramp. I take a left at that light, and then I’m there.
The Brookermans were a prosperous family. They owned the Comfort Hotel I worked at. They also owned the Holiday Inn, the other hotel at the other side of the parking lot from the hotel I worked at. Since we’re on the subject, there was a restaurant, The Galaxy Restaurant, in between the two hotels. The Brookermans owned The Galaxy Restaurant too. That’s how prosperous of a family the Brookermans were.
Both father and son Brookerman had strange haircuts. The thing so strange about their haircuts was it didn’t mark the two men as eccentric, exactly. Their haircuts were strange in an old-fashioned way. Haircuts that marked the Patriarch and the Heir Apparent as out of touch, and perhaps flouting how out of touch they were with haircuts that deliberately looked antiquated.
Both the Patriarch and the Heir Apparent drove big black Sport Utility Vehicles. The cars were both General Motors Company Denalis. High off the ground with massive wet tires, shiny flickering rims and the bold red GMC proudly emblazoned onto the broad front grill. The cars looked like funereal monster trucks.
Sometimes, when both the Patriarch and the Heir Apparent wanted to go for a sportier, less gloomy car, they drove a GMC Yukon. Similar to the Denali, but a little shorter, nubby in the body, snout rounded off tighter around the hood. They could afford to drive such hulking, gas-guzzling vehicles because both the Patriarch and the Heir Apparent Brookerman had majority holdings in a General Motors car dealership.
What made the Heir Apparent’s haircut seem so antiquated and strange was how much hair he displayed and was able to grow on his head despite the fact he had fallen victim to male pattern baldness. The hair that did grow on his head was springy and curly, a chestnut sandy blonde color, sprigs grew in curled brambles that piled up above his forehead and down the sides over his ears. There were no signs of gray, though, at least not yet, not in the Heir Apparent’s hair, which was odd. He was so prosperous that he had many wheelings and dealings to worry about. Heavy is the head, as some might say, that wears the crown.
Even though the Heir Apparent was going bald, the u-shape of hair that he did have grew toward the front of his head, just like a crown, in fact. From the front, it looked like a small wall of hair accumulated atop his head. From the back, the bald spot, over the greater scalp area, was almost embarrassingly obvious. As I watched him pass from the restaurant to his GMC Yukon or Denali parked behind the Comfort Hotel where I worked, I asked myself, “Why’s he growing all that hair in the front of his head? Doesn’t he know he’s still bald in the back?”
The Patriarch was perhaps just as bald. The worries of his prosperous life had gotten to him, and his hair had gone gray, a salt and pepper mass that spilled down to the more salt than pepper of his close-cropped beard. His haircut looked so strange because it always looked like he had just gotten out of the shower, with the curls and locks plastered in loops and curves down the side of his head. He liked to wear New Balance Shoes. I’d see the colorful flash of the suede and polyester footwear when I stood outside the back of the hotel smoking a cigarette. Across the grass median, he walked his itty bitty wife – Esther’s her name and I know her name because she signs my checks – from the GMC Denali into the restaurant.
Yes, the Brookermans, the Patriarch and his son, the Heir Apparent, were indeed prosperous. They were so prosperous they could afford to eat in the restaurant behind the Comfort Hotel. They took long leisurely meals in the Galaxy Restaurant’s wine room on weekday afternoons. The Matriarch Esther signed my checks because I worked in the hotel by the restaurant. The Holiday Inn, The Comfort Hotel, wedged between it, Galaxy Restaurant. All three buildings lined up in a row right off the exit, along the side of Interstate 76 in Wadsworth, Ohio. Just a 15-minute drive from downtown Akron.
Supposedly, the Brookerman forefathers started out as famers. Or some dumb, hardworking, all-American bullshit like that.
I drove an orange 2009 Dodge Nitro. The Sport Utility Vehicle model has since been discontinued, but it’d been a sturdy car for me. It was a bulky car, boxy, but with a sharp compacted body. It served as my own private breakroom. When I pulled in for work, I parked it behind the grass median that ran along the side of the hotel.
I only worked six-hour shifts and I was given a lot of leeway. My title as an employee of the Brookerman’s Comfort Hotel was House Person. I still currently hold this job. It’s my day job. You know, how like when people say, “Don’t quit your day job?” Well, I still have my day job just in case, as inconceivable as it might seem the Lost Project doesn’t take off and land me a million-dollar book deal and movie rights for an original motion picture adaptation starring Shia Lebeouf or Lucas Haas as your humble narrator. The housekeepers for the hotel, and by association, me, were given two 15-minute breaks. One at 10:00 a.m. and one at 2:00 p.m. Collectively, we also took an unofficially designated, but regularly-taken break at noon. Sometimes I took an 11:00 a.m. break when I took out the trash from the breakfast bar to the dumpster out back.
I’m an Aquarius. My Integrative Essay for Marlowe was due on January 29. A birthday gift from my sister was tickets for the both of us to see a play at The Magical Theatre. The Magical Theatre, in “The Magic City” of Barberton, Ohio, produces community-oriented live productions for the young and the young at heart. The birthday gift was tickets to see Magical Theatre’s limited engagement production of Quoth the Raven, a greatest hits medley of Edgar Allen Poe’s work adapted for the stage. My birthday is January 29. In Quoth the Raven was a reenactment of Poe’s short story, “The Masque of the Red Death.”
Before the play, my sister and I had dinner at Angie’s Restaurant. I’d put in a shift at work earlier in the day and, prior to that, I’d pulled an all-nighter trying to make my Integrative Essay tight and coherent and accurately sourced and provocative and, above all, worthy of the residency experience. I had difficulty staying awake over my plate of food as I sat in the booth in Angie’s Restaurant. My eyelids were heavy as lead curtains. I’d always associated Poe’s work with Halloween. I didn’t know why the show was scheduled at the end of January. It turns out my birthday is the day Poe died. My tiredness in Angie’s was so noticeable, my sister suggested I order a Mountain Dew to compliment the coffee in a ceramic mug I tried to muster the strength to bring to my lips. Causes of Poe’s death are mysterious to this day.
“The Masque of the Red Death,” opens with a description of a pestilence that ran wild through the countryside. “The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his follow-men.”
Amongst this plague devouring the common folk lived a “happy and dauntless and sagacious” Prince Prospero. He summoned all his prosperous and lighthearted and plague-free buddies to his castle. He had all kinds of walls and deterrents and guards set up to make sure nobody but his friends got in.
This Prince Prospero had an eye for design and a taste for the finer things. Several chambers in his castle were decked out, each with a different color scheme. All the revelers came and drank and danced and ate and overall just partied, just hung out and had a good time. Only it was kind of decadent. With the whole pestilence and what have you going on. There was one downside, though. There was one bummer. There was a ghastly and opaque room with leaden glass windows and a clock. Every hour, when the clock struck a hideous and bone-chilling chord, the partiers stopped their partying and shuddered.
Then a figure emerged from the ghastly room. He wore a mask that made him look like a cadaver, and clothes that made him look like he had crawled out of a grave. Poe writes, “There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.”
What happens next? I don’t know. Well, I do. While working on the Lost Project, I knew I wanted to incorporate “The Masque of the Red Death” as part of the composites surrounding my psychosis. On my bookshelf, I had a collection of Poe short stories, edited by Vincent Price and Chandler Brossard. So, I took a break from writing to read the story. I kind of read in a hurry, so I could get back to my writing. I think Prospero dies and all the partygoers die too. I can’t remember.
I do remember that, as I sat in the audience and dozed in The Magical Theatre, I snapped awake just in time to look on in helpless horror at the theatrical enactment of “The Masque of the Red Death.” Anyway, here’s my point: The party’s over.
Ohio was slate gray for the fresh winter of 2016. A lot seemed to be at stake with the presidential election and all that jazz. Donald Trump, the loud mouth running under the Republican banner, who oddly didn’t seem to be a conservative in any real sense, had taken the United States Republican voters by storm, but had yet to be taken seriously by the Democrats who believed Hilary Clinton, even with her misplaced e-mails and that sloppy little spat in Benghazi, was bulletproof. Election coverage seemed to start earlier and earlier and, by February, with nine months to go until the presidential election, I was already bored by all the noise.
I went to my own private breakroom in the driver’s seat of my Dodge Nitro parked behind the grass median that ran along the side of the hotel. I rolled the window down and lit a cigarette. My hands quaked as I checked my e-mail on my cell phone. Over the radio, I listened to the “Diane Rheem Show” on 90.3, WCPN, Ideastream. She had commentators on her show talking about, sure enough, the unorthodoxy of the Donald Trump campaign for Presidency. There was a new message in my inbox. I read it and was elated. It was from The Director to tell me that I had passed the Integrative Essay. I could now continue with the semester which would focus solely on my writing and chosen reading material. I finished smoking my cigarette and stepped out of my Dodge Nitro.
I took slow purposeful steps down the side hall in the hotel. Tina was working at the front desk. Tina was toothpick thin and had long blonde hair. I walked into the lobby. Tina had just hung up the phone and began typing into the computer. I raised my hands high in the air, arms held in a V.
“I win,” I said. “I just got an e-mail from the director of my school program. I have passed my Integrative Essay and can continue on with my writing during the semester.”