Maybe it was Reds games and museums, watching my kids thrive in a safe, exciting city, afternoons reading on the deck, listening to children playing in leafy backyards so green they make a desert dweller's eyes water. The Midwest is the glue that holds our country together, as different from the drifting West as tumbleweeds and oaks. Maybe it was the thrill of coming into downtown each morning, descending from the suburban hills with the skyline rising out of the Ohio River valley like the city of Oz without the flying monkeys. I have found mysteries and histories in those downtown streets. And on the sidewalks, the people smile.
Some cities are bitter and cold.
Some carry a grudge with both hands, or just don't care anymore. Some can't wait to bury their dead past. This town is laughing in the streets this summer at an elaborate practical joke on itself, mocking its own sober image with a tipsy litter of plastic pigs dressed like ballerinas, superheros, cartoons and porky swells in tuxedos. The other day, Mrs. Helen Gripkey sent me a copy of an Enquirer section published on Cincinnati's sequicentennial, Oct. 12, 1938. The pages were sepia-brown, the color of memories, decomposed to a state somewhere between confetti and mulch, with a faint perfume of musty libraries and dusty antiques.