“How do you stake a claim—the chips from my front teeth on Daisy Avenue, the shoes I almost lost in new I-90 mud. My dead planted like stone flowers in Riverside and Holy Cross. I have always lived in Cleveland, and Cleveland has always been mine, even when I wanted to move away. Lilacs, hydrangeas, bridal veil…

After World War II, when my mother and father married, they were supported by steel in their two-family house on Mapledale Avenue, the upstairs always rented to a family member (my mother having given up whichever job—printer’s assistant, Ohio Bell operator, lunch counter girl—to stay home). Front porches, tree lawns, roller skating on sidewalks made of slate.

I can remember my grandmother and her daughters talking in Slovak. Halupki palacinki. I can remember weddings at church auditoriums and VFW halls where everyone under 12 slid assiduously on the wood floors…”

–an excerpt from Susan Grimm‘s essay, “Not Bullet Points, or I Remember Cleveland,” included in Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology (expanded electronic version).