Caption: The upgraded brick sidewalks, the unique planters, and nobody but a lone jogger to enjoy the streets of downtown Cleveland. This shot was taken an hour before the Cleveland Browns game at the stadium a few blocks from here. Not as many storefronts were empty in Cleveland as in Buffalo, where 90 percent were vacant. Many windows in Buffalo did not have so much as a "for rent" sign in them.
I had a breakfast sandwich at a Subway in downtown Cleveland. The person behind the counter was a black woman in her 50s, not the usual black teenager. I know she’s working for close to minimum wage (at least she has a job – that’s one way to look at it. I have to find one as soon as I get back).
All my corporate life I felt I was working in order to get a raise so I could build: build a family by providing for my two children; build a retirement fund so I could write full-time when I got to my early 60s, before my mind couldn’t remember the details of a novel any more.
This woman in Subway can probably barely pay the rent, much less build. How can she keep showing up every day for boring work that doesn’t pay enough to satisfy the human instinct to build?
We left Cleveland a few minutes ago. My bus is now headed west on U.S. 90, a great highway that turns a corner at Chicago and heads north and then west, joining 94 at times. I’m headed into the real west! I can’t wait to see what the Arch in St. Louis hinted at – the vast lands, the Rockies, the misty coast.
This bus is a stately ship of the highways.
Here's another view of the Arch in St. Louis, facing toward the vast West:
Here's another view of the Arch in St. Louis, facing toward the vast West:
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