ode to akron

akron, ohio is still a place associated with the decline of america. as sunrise industries found birth in warmer climes and the manufacturing base of industrial america shrank, places like akron became the proverbial post modern moonscape of downturn and despair. a far cry from the city once billed as the rubber capital of the world, fumes and all, where success and prosperity was tied to that great symbol of american freedom and mobility, the automobile.

for four years i lived within touching distance of akron and never mustered the courage to go there. i did go once though, for a bob dylan concert, during the appropriately apocalyptic times of his slow train coming album tour. it was night, and there wasn’t much to see. but the air didn’t seem right, and there was an imagined or real pungent whiff of decay.

this summer, 30 years later, i did visit akron. it is a transformed city; a model of re-invention, re-vibrancy, re-gentrification, and re-diversification into new-age industries. there are great places to eat where olive oil isn’t the lapel pin of a damn communist, and art is not a metaphor for people who inhale mind altering substances. i stayed in a delightful 1920s tudor style B&B joint that rivals anything i’ve seen in europe. still, i don’t think Akron is on anyone’s list of ‘must visit’ cities, let alone a destination for relocation. akron can’t be blamed for that, america is just too diverse and beautiful for it to legitimately compete. but it does have some pretty good claims to fame:

lebron james, he’s from there! that’s pretty damn good. the first car tires rolled out of there. it had the first automobile police patrol wagon. imagine if that hadn’t been invented: there’d be no high-speed car chases in the movies. bohh-ring! the first (not led) zeppelin in america was built in akron, as were space suits. and finally, for good measure, two brothers who lived and worked in akron invented the hamburger. whether you like it or not, akron really does touch our lives in more ways than we can imagine.

but of all the things that found root in akron, my favorite is the handmade glass marble. glass marbles have been around for yonks. but it was here that they were commercially produced on a mass scale. that’s the photo of the red house up top.

and over across the globe, millions of indian children amused and engaged themselves with glass marbles. you were, at least when i was young, an incomplete manboy without the clinking (if that’s the appropriate sound descriptor) of glass marbles in the trouser pockets of your school uniform.

akron, my white friends assure me, is gonna vote obama. following akron, it might just be that america gets it right. again.

next time i’m in akron, i’ll just have to visit the american toy marble museum.

photographs: akron, ohio, june 2008