Brook Park
We had a hectic schedule yesterday for the remote broadcast in Cleveland, but the folks at WCPN kindly provided a guide with a car to take me out to Brook Park, the suburb that's home to the Marine Reserve Battalion that was the centerpiece of our first hour show. I didn't realize it at the time, but I'd been through a bit of it the night before, in the cab from Hopkins Field. Well, I'd probably seen more of it illuminated by lightning as the plane circled the airport for forty-five minutes before we landed.
Just about everywhere we went, you could see the smokestacks of the Ford engine plant that's at the heart of the city's economy and identity -- there used to be a Chevy plant, too, and I mentioned a huge convention center that's been adapted from a factory that built B-29s during WWII and tanks in the fifties. A lot of the housing was originally built by the government for workers at the bomber plant ... neat bungalows and ramblers, many with American flags secured to the front porch. A noticeably high percentage of American cars ... the kind of largely white ethnic blue collar town that's been hit so hard by de-industrialization, and a rock solid republican part of Dennis Kucinich's congressional district.
The Marine headquarters is across the street from a Catholic school. There's a chain link fence outside that, in August 2005, was festooned with signs and prayers and flowers and teddy bears ... a 9/11 kind of memorial that happened spontaneously after 19 members of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines were killed in a week. All that stuff was collected and preserved inside ... there's a courtyard memorial outside now, with the names of the 48 men from the battalion killed so far in this war.
The visit helped me understand the area a little bit, and the grief and the loss, but I realize now I should have taken a camera to show you all some pictures. Sigh. I'll get this digital stuff someday.
3:23 PM ET | 03-16-2007 | permalink
