Trip to heave and ho

25 April 2004, 10:52

The main difference between the architecture in Northeast Ohio and Bolton, Lancashire is that Bolton has architecture.

Caroline’s friend Tony asked me if I could taste any difference in the air—and I could, it was crisp and clean and invigorating. Everything was cleaner there, and they had weather.

I wanted to take pictures inside shops, which, thankfully, Caroline advised me out of, but the record stores were nirvana. The local Asda, which is roughly equivalent to Meijer/Super Target, had a better music section than most actual record stores I’ve been to in the Midwest United States. They also had biscuits and proper chocolate as far as they eye could see, alcoholic beverages in liter plastic bottles, and apples the size of coconuts. Even the signature American dessert, the apple pie, was better there (Florence, my mother-in-law, baked one for me!).

They also had hills. Northeast Ohio is very flat (in almost every conceivable sense of the word).

During our visit to Manchester for CDs and curry, Caroline spoke with someone she knew at Vinyl Exchange. When she told him she had moved to Cleveland, Ohio, he became very animated about Cleveland’s 1970s punk scene. I could see Michael Stanley’s heart exploding from a hemisphere away, and smiled. (Michael Stanley being the local stadium “rock” hack who everyone in Cleveland kowtowed to in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but couldn’t get arrested outside of Ohio.)

Rodney Eric Griffith

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