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He said, there will be girls without bras on. Well, we were both 12, what do you want from me...
Anyway, we had lived through the assassinations in '68. Cleveland had elected a black mayor, Carl Stokes two years before. This was right after we got out of school for the summer, right after the Cuyahoga caught fire and someone noticed.
Now I remember that we couldn't swim in Lake Erie, even at the beaches in the far flung suburbs, the signs were up about bacterial levels and we had just learned about how bad bacteria could really be. Mr. Lazors science class, sixth grade.
Anyway, my mom was preoccupied with getting her Masters from Kent State and planning her marriage to the man I would hate till his dying day. Hate really wasn't a strong enough word to describe the animosity between us. I think he actually loathed me.
So I was all set to see the Hippie girls. Well, we took the bus out to the suburbs, Fairview Park where West Gate was the first almost Mall in the area. They had stores centered around a courtyard covered by that corrugated plastic shit that people had for cover over their patios. The Hippies were meeting there. It was the first time I heard the word Ironic.
Well, the Hippie girls loved us and we loved the Hippie girls. They thought it was cute that Ritchie and I were interested in saving the environment because that was what the march was all about. They actually called us little dudes.
The march was set, they gave us signs to hold and so we marched back through the same neighborhoods we had taken the bus through. It was about five miles. We walked from West Gate all the way to Edgewater Park, this great beach about two miles from downtown Cleveland that hadn't been safe to swim in since they started to take measurement of the bacterial levels.
Side note. I had always been frightened about the pollution. I remember driving to the east side to see relatives and I would try to hold my breath as we went down the Clark Ave. bridge, right through the industrial flats. I made my parents roll up the windows even though there was really no air conditioning in any car we could afford. The bridge isn't there anymore, it was taken by the highway ten years later. Well, for that matter, hardly any of those plants and foundries are up and running. Come to think of it, probably none.
So Ritchie and I were in pre-pubescent heaven. Yes, none of the girls wore bras but by the time the march began and we were put up right in the front because we were, after all, little dudes, all we were thinking about was saving the world. Well, I still snuck a look. I ain't gonna lie about such things. We marched that whole time, I think we even chanted. Some photographers were at the event and Ritchie and I made the front page of the local paper.
It all started because of the Burning river.
And, it rekindled my nascent activism that started when I shook hands with then candidate Carl Stokes at the Italian Festival at St. Rocco festival two years before.
Another side note. Years later, one of my political friends asked me what was St. Rocco was the patron saint of. He answered his own question which was Broken Thumbs which caused a spit take on my part.
So my activism was nurtured by an event some forty years ago this week. The time that the Cuyahoga River caught fire and someone finally noticed.
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