My good friend, Judge Bill Klatt, began twowheeling to his job as a Court of Appeals judge at the Franklin County Courthouse last year. When asked my a reporter what he likes best about biking to work, he replied, "It makes me feel like a kid again."
Like me, many of my twowheeling friends, hadn't been on a bike in decades........since they were kids. Once they reached "driving" age, they parked their bikes in a remote corner of the garage and eagerly embraced the rite of passage to adulthood.....getting a car. Everything in our culture, and on TV, conditioned us to believe we needed a car to be "cool."
On Monday I biked out Morse Road to Limited Brands to attend a meeting of the Council on World Affairs Sustainability Advisory Committee. I used to bike out Morse Road as a kid in the 1960's, before they built Northland Shopping Mall.......kinda ironic that when I biked out there on Monday there was no Northland Mall (they tore it down a few years ago). But boy, did this ride bring back memories.
In 1962, we moved from a 2 bedroom house in the heart of Clintonville to a rambling 1910 farmhouse on 5 acres at 366 Morse Road. (I was 6 at the time and had 3 younger siblings and one on the way.........I guess my parents thought we needed a bit more room, which was a good decision since they went on to have a 6th child a year later.) We loved this old farmhouse on the edge of town. Our 1/4 mile gravel drive was lined with 60 year-old peonies and when you drove down the lane in May when the peonies were in bloom it smelled like you were driving through perfume.
My parents bought our new/old home from a 50-something, never-been-married-or-had-kids bachelor named Morris Zuckerman. Part of the deal was that Mr. Zuckerman was permitted to live in the house for 6-12 months after closing WITH US! (In more than 25 years practicing law I've never seen any real estate transaction with this feature and would never recommend it to a friend or client.) I guess Mr. Zuckerman could drive a hard bargain. Of course, my parents loved this house so much they probably would have agreed to almost anything to get it.
So there we were.......my late 20-somethings dad and 8-months pregnant mom, us 4 1/2 kids under the age of 6, and a 50-something confirmed Jewish bachelor......just one big happy family. Mom instructed us to call him "Mr. Zuckerman" and to try not to disturb him. Mr. Zuckerman moved all his furniture and possessions into one downstairs room at the base of the stairs and he stayed in there most of the time with his door shut. I think he tried to be nice to us at first, but we asked him lots of questions, "Mr. Zuckerman, what's this?" and "Mr. Zuckerman, why are you doing that?" We were curious and he was a curiosity, so of course we pestered the daylights out of him. And we had the run of the rest of the house, and I mean RUN. We constantly ran through the house, up and down the stairs, yelling and screaming and fighting like brothers and sisters do. It must have been loud as hell because we had wood floors and no carpeting. We only had 1 full bathroom and a very small 1/2 bath downstairs (but the toilet didn't work).
Mr. Zuckerman was a serious amateur photographer. We soon discovered where he kept all his equipment and negatives. He even had movie film stored in those cool metal containers. The basement was really dark, so we had to take the movies out of the cannisters and unroll them a bit to get them over to the window where we could hold them up to the light. We tried, but couldn't, get them back in the cannisters.
Mr. Zuckerman moved out in less than a month. He left so fast, he forgot to take most of his photo equipment and film.
I hadn't thought of Mr. Zuckerman in decades........it's funny, sometime, the things you think about when you're on your bike.
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