Electric Boulevard by Robert Miltner

Ethel Crowe loves the sound of the calliope.  On this July night in 1912, the twenty-two year old rides the electric trolley from Cleveland's West Side out to Avon Point Park in Lorain County with James Egan, her beau who is sweet on her, so that she can ride the merry-go-round.  Her favorite carved horse, the dappled gray with the black mane and the raised right hoof, prances on the outside position of the four carved wooden horses, far enough away from the calliope for her to hear the sounds of people laughing in the night throughout the rest of the park.  She loves this ride even more than the candied apples James Egan will buy her to eat while they listen to the brass band play waltzes in the gazebo.

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My friends and I wade around the fences, our rods and tackle boxes above our heads, by the intake pumps to fish off the piers back behind the coal-burning electric power plant that replaced the old Avon Point park in the nineteen thirties or forties. Fishing is good here because the water is always warmer and the catch is always better: white bass, carp, crappie, yellow perch, and the best prize, walleye, though I've seen salmon and even northern pike on occasion taken here.  Pfluger sinkers are twenty-nine cents for an eight ounce box and wooden bobbers are eleven cents apiece at the Western Auto store that's two stores past the turn-in side road that leads to "The Cut," the place we like to fish.

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Ethel laughs, whirling in slow circles, catching glimpses of the sun setting through the magic lantern made by the horses spinning past the light.  Carried on the Northwest breezes are the scents of popcorn, pipe tobacco, funnel cakes, perspiration, her own makeup, fried fish, the fresh moist scent of night air.  Ignoring the barkers' calls, she hums along with the music box tune of the calliope, looks over at James Egan whose face she has seen many times walking through the green door of the West Side Hibernian Club where her father drinks beer with the other men from the fire station after his shift is up.

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Night fishing: the Coleman lantern's mesh wick is on low, the cigarette's tips burning as we inhale, and the stars above Lake Erie: these points of lightfire make me feel as though earth and space are all one.  I learn to be a philosopher while I fish, that doing-nothing that fishing is, and learn to smoke, to blow smoke rings, and to "French inhale" through my nose.  Done fishing, I carry my rod lightly in my right hand and my tackle box in my left hand, walking along the edge of Electric Boulevard, a tar and cinder street built in layers upon the track bed of the old trolley line that used to come all the way out from Cleveland and turn around at the Saddle Inn, the only restaurant and motel at Avon Point. And return back again. At night the power plant's tall smokestacks cough out sparks that sift down to settle like deserting armies of fireflies, or the sparkling confetti that is left over after fireworks have exploded.  If the wind off the lake is right, they swirl as if dancing to some unheard music: a brass band, a calliope, or a merry-go-round.

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Ethel walks with James Egan who holds her hand as lightly as if it is a live minnow he cups in his palm, and they catch the last trolley back to Cleveland's West Side before she breaks the curfew her father has set for her.  Her head resting lightly upon James Egan's left shoulder, she looks out of the trolley window and she sees, set against the rows of grapevines in the vineyard, a boy walking with a fishing rod and a tackle box.

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