Off the Rails by Beppe Severgnini

Author:Beppe Severgnini
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-02-12T05:00:00+00:00

Cleveland Rocks!

Cleveland is an interesting city. It doesn’t enjoy the best reputation in the rest of the United States. One nickname that’s stuck is “the Mistake on the Lake,” a moniker that opens itself up to various interpretations: it’s either a reference to the city’s Municipal Stadium—well-known for being chilly, dreary, and uninviting—or else a sarcastic holdover from the time that the Cuyahoga River actually caught fire, back in 1969, because of the elevated pollution levels at the river’s mouth, where it flowed into Lake Erie. It could allude to the city’s default on its federal loans in 1978, or be a grim tip of the hat to the spikes in unemployment that plagued Cleveland in the 1980s, when manufacturing in the Midwest, which had long lured immigrants from around the world, first began to collapse.

In any case, things have changed. Cleveland made no further mistakes, and recovery finally came to the city. Heavy manufacturing was replaced by health care, now the city’s biggest industry, and to a certain extent that anesthetized the pain, as has been the case elsewhere (in Houston, for instance). Cleveland has been spruced up and now looks clean, full of parks, green spaces, bike paths, and pedestrian malls; in 2005 The Economist named Cleveland “one of the most livable cities in America.” I have to agree: it’s a sort of miniature Chicago, just a little more modest and working-class. “I think I could live here,” I tell my traveling companions, who all look at me as if I’ve lost my mind.

In the warmth of a bright, almost summery sun, we get busy trying to deepen our understanding of the local culture. We discuss politics with those willing to listen (not many), especially in the Tremont neighborhood, full of bright, cheery murals and young people of all colors, long since abandoned by its original immigrants—the Ukrainians, Poles, Hungarians, and Slovaks who came here a century ago to work in the steel mills—now replaced by restaurateurs, baristas, and artists. They seem to be convinced that the Democrats will succeed in taking Ohio, a fundamental electoral prize: whoever wins Ohio usually wins the election. This is America, I philosophize: always changing, none of that European romanticism about places. They’re no better or worse than us, only different.

It’s a long day as we wait for the train to Illinois. We search for relics of LeBron James, the basketball champion, born not far away, in Akron, in 1984. We explore the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, along with crowds of schoolkids on field trips to the museum of America’s own classical music: Elvis, Springsteen, Nirvana (in fact, the term “rock ’n’ roll” was used here for the very first time, back in 1951, by the DJ Alan Freed). We have lunch with the Donauschwaben, the Danube Swabians, Germans who were expelled from Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia in the aftermath of the Second World War. They seem to have popped out of a time warp: sandals with socks, vegetables eaten almost raw, stern matrons with sculptural permanents.

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