(Editor's note: The New Balance 990 tennis shoes mentioned below aren't working out and I now, as in it's just popped up in the last two weeks, have plantar fasciitis in what was my "good foot" and have no idea what I will do--my foot doctor just had back surgery--but it doesn't look good for my job pounding a cement floor for 40 hours a week.)
Going home to Loudonville, OH recently on a day trip (October 17) after a 24-year lapse (when I helped clean out our family house after my dad's unexpected death in October, 2001) couldn't have come at a better time. I figure I might as well have driven through the Rockies.
In fact, I thought to myself as I drove the roads inside the Mohican Forest (the same ones I constantly bicycled as a teenager and college student), "My day-long odyssey drive inside the Grand Canyon, including a gorgeous sunset, wasn't as special as this!"
At long last, I was reunited with the super-hilly roads I knew by heart as a cyclist. Fortunately, everything came back to me in the most rewarding way, truly bringing back childhood and who I really am.
Now, I have to remind you from a previous post (October 19) that I had just read an article about near-death experiences and told myself, "I have to live like my life is really close to almost being over if I'm ever going to accomplish the things I want for myself before I die."
Anyone who counts me as a friend knows I've been FOREVER working on a book about teachings from the King James Bible. The reality is I was "writing" this book even before my dad died very suddenly one month after 9/11 in 2001.
In fact, my second to last phone conversation with him (one I actually borrowed a friend's landline to make as I attended a birthday party inside his SOHO loft in NYC) was the SAME Saturday night he later fell in his home and proceeded to treat his broken hip with injectable shots of the heavy-duty painkiller Talwin.
My dad, a medical doctor with his own private practice in Loudonville (1974-1994), kept all kinds of hard-core medicine on the lamp table and bookshelves nook next to his reclining chair. He wanted to be ready for anything I guess.
He asked me that night, "Are you working on that book?"
My last conversation with him was only a few hours before his death! It lasted for three minutes tops. It was just before he was being prepped for surgery and I said, "I'll be praying for you." He said, "Do that." That was our end!
*****
Okay, now I've got to break in with this detail from my visit to Loudonville. I turned left onto Loudon Avenue from the same stretch on Route 60 where we lived at 525 Union St. and could not believe that next-door to the spot where my dad's old office, since torn down, sat is now a cannabis dispensary!!!
In a way, and I'm in no way endorsing marijuana, etc., nothing could somehow be more ironic. In our time in Loudonville my dad gained a major reputation as a "diet doc" who would dispense medicine to help people curtail their hunger, reduce stress and anxiety, etc.
Patients would drive sometimes from 70-90 miles away just to see my dad and have him send them home with pills.
*****
I prayed that I would have my own near-death experience to make me realize in the most penetrating way that my life is close to being over and could even only be a few years away if I am fortunate enough.
When I neared the town limits of Loudonville, coming down that last big majestic, forested hill on Route 3 as you near Mohican State Forest, I knew I was truly, truly home, as in, if I can request one last road to drive on, this forest would be it. (If I had one last physical activity, it would be swimming in the Atlantic at South Beach, Miami, just at the same stretch I first swam in at the age of 5.)
Nobody but me and my Savior know exactly what it meant to me all the bazillion times I rode my bicycle through the forest. I remember times when I was so sad climbing those hills I didn't know how I would go on with life. I remember all the dreaming and imagining, too.
Making the turn onto Route 97 was one thing for my emotions, but then when I turned onto the forest road leading to the Clear Fork Gorge and the Fire Tower my soul was fully engaged. I might as well have been at the Grand Canyon, or inside Big Sur, or cycling the Blue Ridge Parkway--all things I've done by myself and found very memorable.
Seeing the heavy pine needles on the berm, just exactly like when I would climb that first initial hill in the thick heavily dark woods on my bicycle, I was transported back like a soothing balm from heaven to my high school years when I first discovered my addiction for riding all through this forest.
Of course, I could hardly contain my excitement to reach the gorge, recognized as a Natural National Landmark. As the historic site sign at the place where you first see the amazing landscape informs, the gorge, filled with white pines and towering hemlocks, is 1,000 ft. wide and 300 ft. deep.
"The seclusion has preserved a rare forest community," says the sign. "The gorge has changed little since pioneer legend Johnny Appleseed tended his apple orchards nearby."
Oh, yes, my old "secret friend" Johnny. Unlike during my youth, now many of the highways in and around Loudonville have official road signs that read "Johnny Appleseed Scenic Byway."
Absolutely nobody knew that I used to regularly think about Johnny as I rode my bike all through the territory. I knew it was THE territory he covered!!!
Definitely more to come on Appleseed and how he became a real disappointment.
*****
The biggest takeaway from my trip to my hometown of Loudonville, OH on October 17 is that I knew I was really going home--like no other place I've ever lived.
After all, having moved there from Akron at age 10 and not leaving until going away to college at 18, it’s where I really became me--my personality, my convictions, my affinities, my dreams, on and on.
Getting off at the Sunbury exit of I-71N is when the journey home, after a 24-year absence, really started to take hold of me.
Despite all the retail and housing development, I knew old Route 36 from the many, many times I’d traveled between Loudonville and Columbus over the years, most especially after I got my first car (a used Plymouth Horizon hatchback) my junior year at Ohio State and could drive home whenever I wanted.
The first town to grab me was Centerburg, which still has the sign at the village limits to tell you it’s the “Geographical Center of Ohio.” More than a few times I rode my bike all the way to Centerburg before heading back home on a real hilly Route 3. This was soon after I first got serious about cross-country cycling my senior year of high school.
Next up was Mt. Vernon (settled in 1805), “America’s Hometown,” as recognized on its town entry sign. I remember when there was an entry sign letting you know it was the “Home of Paul Lynde,” a comedian (Uncle Arthur from Bewitched and the “center square” on The Hollywood Squares game show) who always portrayed himself as being effeminate. Among many historical buildings in downtown Mt. Vernon is an opera house that is the oldest of its kind in America.
I was near-mesmerized the closer I got to Loudonville and the sentimental emotions washed over me when I saw the little old stone Zion Lutheran church that sits on a hilltop right next to the road near Jelloway, OH, which is 9 miles from Loudonville.
How many times I would ride my bike to this church as my intended destination before turning back home. I would often get off my bike there and sit on the front stoop, drinking water and resting.
*****
Here's post from October 19:
I was reading the results of a study on people who faced difficult aftermaths following an NDE (near-dear experience) and I thought, “But I would love to know what that’s like.”
(Note: The journalist in me can’t resist giving you at least a few findings. From Study Finds: “More than one in five participants said their relationships with family, friends, or people in general got worse after the experience. Another 22% reported a divorce or breakup . . . Researchers describe the period after a near-death experience as ‘reentry problems,’ a kind of culture shock. Imagine tasting perfect peace and love, then waking to traffic, bills, and petty arguments . . . Many wrestle with what one researcher called ‘the perceived triviality of their life or the problems they were facing before the NDE.’ The sense of unconditional love becomes a sharp contrast to ordinary life. Some feel anger or depression at having returned to what felt like ‘home’ only to find themselves back here. ‘I just feel awake to reality, but alone in that knowledge,’ one participant wrote.”)
With a couple of days off work last week, I knew I needed to get a pair of New Balance 990s that my foot doctor recommended. I had already gone to our neighborhood shoe store (an official dealer of New Balance) to learn they didn’t have my size (11 ½) and that it would be two weeks if they ordered them, so I looked online and saw there was a New Balance factory outlet store in Sunbury, OH.
This was the little town we always looked forward to getting to by car during my childhood growing up an hour north in the little resort/farming village of Loudonville, OH.
It’s where we finally could get on I-71 S and know we were almost to Columbus. We would sometimes stop at the giant McDonalds just below the interstate's entrance ramp and go to the bathroom and buy a sandwich and drink on Sunday afternoons following church (the old First Baptist in downtown Loudonville) and quickly going home to change out of our dress clothes before getting on the road. All there really was at the time besides the McDonald’s was a Wendy’s and a few gas stations. Now, as I was astonished to see, the town is a bustling bedroom community for Columbus commuters.
Just the week before, celebrating my brother’s birthday at a seafood restaurant, he and his wife told me and mom all about their trip to Loudonville for its annual free street fair (ongoing since 1876) and a high-school reunion by my brother's Class of 1979. My sister-in-law wanted to know when I ever planned to go back to Loudonville. The last time I was there was when my dad died in October, 2001 and I was charged with helping clean out our family home.
To be continued tomorrow. I am finding it hard to get back into writing about myself since I’ve pretty much let the “muscles” atrophy but, trust me, this is all leading somewhere . . .
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