WAY TO GO OHIO, part 6

after the disappointment of sunday morning's breakfast burlesque (which was more a failure on the part of the venue in getting our breakfast orders right than anything else, but nonetheless also a failure of the show), we were excited for that night's drag pageant, and especially so after we'd found out (that evening) that we'd been identified in a photograph as the perfectly disinterested party to another (better) party and chosen as guest judges. unfortunately, although we showed up almost too promptly at five until eight to judge them, the contestants had apparently decided that this wasn't their sunday to be judged, and we heard from a man in the parking lot that the disco would be shut until it opened for church at eleven-thirty. way to go. at least the restaurant out the covered driveway and down the street had all day sunday happy hour that included a guided tour of all of its twenty-first amendment cans.

and fortunately, that gave us time to review our schedules, set a date for the company holiday party, and then to remember that this week was the week we had slated for our overnight in youngstown, which we'd identified as one of the places where motel 6 had brought together its special combination of "modern style, functionality and value" in the rust belt. finally. from the ashes: "phoenix" by priestmangoode, and only a few years behind the times at the date of our reservations. so out of the frying pan and into the fire, with the hope was that there would be a decent hamburger grilling somewhere nearby. and, fortunately, the new suit arrived from the ladies at duchess via priority mail on monday afternoon, so we packed three changes of our almost best clothes into the volvo bat pod and headed into the tepid december downpour toward steeltown, u.s.a. the next day.

unfortunately, as a result of the downpour we weren't able to enjoy the more normal, (sometimes) less inclement late fall bleakness of the buckeye state as we drove. even the relative splendor of the goodyear campus was obscured by the sheets of rain coming up from the wheels of the semis doing eighty in the left lane as we passed through the curves out of akron. fortunately, we had the remnants of the style and opinion sections left over from sunday's breakfast; and, maybe unfortunately, we had the leftover torment and comfort of two relationships that we had left behind us in columbus. i read, and we jawed. i stumbled over an articulation of my confusion, and she drove through the rain with the surety of her understanding. and there we were when it got too dark to read.

darkness fell fully about ten minutes after we'd finished our thirty seconds on kent state when we passed that exit. then the lake, and then the reservoir, and then we noticed that we were hungry but fortunately we were almost to the motel. i'd called from those curves in akron to cancel one of the two king rooms that she'd reserved, and when we arrived she left me in the car to go get the key for the room that we'd be sharing from the jennifer that i'd talked to on the phone. she had just known it was her as soon as she'd walked into the lobby, jennifer had said. jennifer had also given her a guide to every motel 6 in north america which specifically designated those which had undergone a redesign.

room 115 wasn't, as they say, at all bad. with adjustments made for relative cost, the motel 6 in youngstown -- if not arguably comparable -- at least elicited a comparison with the general ambience of the thompson chain. no? perhaps, i'll admit, not the views. our room was on the first floor, and although the rain had abated the dark still kept us from gauging the appearance of our surroundings.  for the time being, however, that was for the better, because it meant that we needn't rally to try to find something closer to the center of town. they weren't at the denny's that jennifer had recommended, but we'd gotten wind of some good burgers through the rain, and they were there to be had at a place just down the road. so we dolled up -- better than sufficient for dinner out in any of the places where that other chain had a hotel (although i had regrettably forgotten to pack cufflinks) -- and put ourselves back in the bat pod. his and hers grasping, imperative misadventure. jennifer was right to have suspected.

the internet had advised us that shaker's bar & grill was dimly lit, and that, in fact, had been an encouraging factor in our making our decision (since drawing too much attention to our likely celebrity would be just gauche ostentation). and to be sure, the entryway off the nearly empty parking lot on belmont avenue near the cluster of budget motels was dim. we might have figured it was closed if a man hadn't come out of the door as we were walking over from the nearly empty lot of the vacant whatever next door where we had mistakenly parked. inside, however, shaker's -- if nearly uninhabited -- wasn't all that dark. but that might have been the holiday lighting, which included white lighted miniature christmas trees between the triangular booths across from the bar. as we were finishing our burgers, which we agreed must be the best in town (and were definitely the best of what we'd sampled), we joined the only other conversation in the restaurant, which was taking place between the booth behind us and the two stools closest to us at the bar. there was supposed to be a gaudy display of lights at a house at the end of kingwood lane. the neighbors invited us to have a look. and our waitress, who we suspected at that point might also be the mayor, told us that we should probably take the treasurer's wife up on her offer. so we finished and left, smiling and eager, having also given our compliments to the cook, who it turned out might have also been the steel town's barber/dentist. the one night carnival that might have been the surreptitiously fabled best of youngstown, ohio met us that night at shaker's by tacit appointment and, for better or worse, we got its best.

unfortunately, the display on kingwood was hardly gaudy enough to warrant a photo. the treasurer's wife had probably just exaggerated as the result of too much holiday cheer. it probably wasn't every day that she and the other regulars had a chance to sing the praises of their city to anyone from -- "where were you from?" -- and there didn't seem to be much else shaking outside of shaker's. and regardless, we'd only been hoping for good burgers, which we got. and we also got a warm (almost feverish) welcome at the giant eagle where we went to buy drinks and scratch offs for our television party back at the motel. like jennifer, the adorably excited checkout clerk had recognized us as someones from somewhere else. the luck he wished us went with us, and we netted eight dollars on our lottery tickets before stripping off the finery and planting ourselves on the bed: three bottles of water, a glass of emergen-c and all of the takeout to make sure that the party didn't carry over into the morning.

awake, fortunately unearly. unfortunately, the cufflinks weren't the only things we'd forgotten, and the motel 6 redesign didn't include toothbrushes or hairdryers (the latter of which seemed to be an unfortunately glaring oversight). the man at the front desk who wasn't jennifer offered me toothpaste, but i had that. then he obliged with directions to the dollar general. then quickly into outfits number three and out the door. it was colder than it had been on tuesday, but the skies were clear. the certified escort vehicle that had been in the parking lot when we got back from the carnival the night before was gone, so after checking out with the man who wasn't jennifer, we got back in the volvo and headed downtown.

fortunately, we hadn't missed anything for the rain and the darkness the night before. there's hardly anything downtown. the coffee was good at the independent cafe that seemed to have replaced a seattle's best across the street from a vacant middle-rise that stood at the northwest corner of the main square. and the management was happy to give us easy directions to the oak hill cemetery. otherwise, there was nothing to indicate that youngstown was one of the ten best places to start a new business, as a banner on the side of one downtown building (likely vacant) proclaimed had been decreed by entrepreneur magazine. (who knew what was on display at the museum of labor and industry advertised by a highway sign near the motel.)

the factory by the river was still spewing smoke from some of its smokestacks, but it was hard to say what workers might have been making in the half of the factory buildings that still seemed to be operational. to the northeast, the onion domes of the holy trinity ukrainian catholic church and its adjacent stone cross (not unreminiscent of the cross at the valley of the fallen) commanded the skyline. there is a higher percentage of ukrainians in youngstown than there are in the world, so we'll say they have a presence. that presence must, however, be recent, because the headstones at oak hill don't show any earlier signs. whether or not the ukrainians were involved in the boom times of steeltown might be adressed at the labor and industry museum, but we'll just have to speculate because we didn't go. we spent all of our time trying to find breakfast on market, which, although it was obviously the main commercial drag of the area (and was advertising big dicks), didn't seem to host a single diner. the motel 6 redesign might have made its way to youngstown -- however late -- but the brunch trend never did. (way to go?)

in the end, after making our way through the modern love and draft columns of the opinion section, we found ourselves back past akron in seville. (we hadn't, however, made it so far south on market that we ended up in lisbon.) there was a mexican restaurant and there were churches. so we kept moving. and not that we needed anything exactly, but we'd already saved the sunk cost so we took the outlet mall exit, threw our beautifully tailored sleeves in the air and sat down to breakfast at two-thirty at the bob evans in lodi. not that we needed anything exactly, but we couldn't leave the pendleton outlet without a purchase. (way to go portland.)

when we exited 71 at the 97 exit, it might have been getting dark. we got gas and cashed in our scratch offs, and the cash we got we used to buy two more. and then it was certainly dark. and then home. no luck. we'd made it to that motel 6 on the night of the carnival, but somehow, with all the non-activity, we never managed to finish with the leftovers of that comfort and torment.