I went to middle school about a mile away from a Wendy’s on Wyoming and Wayne Streets in Dayton, and I had gone to elementary less than a half mile down the road. One day out of each week I got picked up from school to go to a ‘cello lesson in a southern suburb. The after-school snack was invariably a small fry and small Frosty. Every once in a while, local celebrities would come in with their children and eat the same thing.  Back when this guy was mayor of Dayton, he used to take his kids to that same Wendy’s. 

One day, the mayor and his two children happened to be there, sitting rather fitfully in one of the tables at exactly the same time I was. I don’t know what the problem was, but Mike (he was called Mike then, before he moved to Washington and somehow became respectable) must have been having a bad day. His kids, who didn’t seem to be doing anything out of the ordinary as far as I saw, were irritating him. As a result, anyone who happened to say hello to him were greeted curtly. I watched amusedly, slurping my Frosty and chomping down my fries, as this man told his kids to sit up, to not open their mouths when they ate, to be quiet. I didn’t think at the time that there was anything particularly remarkable about him, nor did I particularly care when he was elected out of office several years later (’02, to Rhine McLin, who’s more embattled now as Mayor than he ever was, it seems), or that he’d be part of the Congress that allowed for us to get into the nasty mess that we’re now in. It’s not that I blame him, mind you. It’s that in the eight years that he was mayor of that place–of the place that housed this Wendy’s where he constantly told his kids to sit up straight, to keep their elbows off the table, to not talk so loud when in public, to behave because, you know, he’s the mayor and his kids just can’t behave that way–his legacy was marked primarily by a monument in the middle of the city.

This had to have been ’95, because he hadn’t been in office long enough to get a street named after him, but had been able to push through his first project:  a broken rail-road track on Main Street, it’s a silly-looking pseudo-sculpture marking the exact length that the Wright Brothers took on their Kitty Hawk flight. It’s bendy, not straight; short, warped, and metallic. It really makes no sense where it is, except that the then-mayor–the one who wanted his kids to sit up straight, to act as if they were in a formal restaurant while really eating at a fast-food place right outside of one of the most run-down neighborhoods in the city–built a legacy based on a silly monument.

And now, of course, he’s that district’s congressman. The Wendy’s, at least, is still there.

It’s spring, 1997. The bell tower at the Carrillon is always nicest this time of year; not only are the hills surrounding this 150-foot tall, 57-belled tower on the southern edge of the city particularly flowing and green and the breeze off of the river particularly sweet (when not after a rain, of course), it’s also among the most beautiful views in town. The museum itself has the air of a place trying to be stuck in time, the last bastion of a city whose memories of Wright Brothers and Dunbars and NCRs are still very fresh and very dear. But the hill itself, with that tower hovering above in the closest thing we have to a Washingtonian monument, is the place where the youngest of lovers go.  At the foot of this hill where the bell-tower rings out for life and love and lust every hour on the hour, this place really belongs to us, the brashest, the exhibitionists trying to shake up the calm of this town full of cars and wide-open roads and rolling hills.

It’s spring, 1997. I’ve been dating this girl now for about three weeks, so we’re still in the mode of finding as many different places to hook up as possible. It’s mid-afternoon, and the bells have just rung a Bach tune. The wind blows. We kiss. An older couple–he’s about thirty, she’s about twenty-two, so old for us– walks by. He grins at me, rasises his fist in the air.

“Yeah, man! Do it! I remember that spot. Good spot, good spot. Get it done!”

It’s spring, 1997. The bells ring a Bach tune, and I’m too young to know that just where I am, right now, so many others–the exhibitionists, the lovers, the Dautonians still home and not sure where they want to go–will do just what I am doing now for years to come. The bells ring on.

The mark of the best bars has very little to do with the sort of alcohol you can get, what beers are on tap, or whether the person behind the bar knows what really goes into a Mojito, especially in Dayton. I mean, I know what goes into a Mojito (this isn’t a bad recipe, actually), but it’s immaterial when considering the best places in this town. Of those, I’d have to say that the friendliest spot downtown has to be the Trolley Stop, on the corner of Fifth St. and Wayne Avenue on the main drag of the city’s Oregon District. This is a quintessential neighborhood bar, with a level pool table upstairs, live music three nights a week, and a crew of regulars more colorful and friendly than any other on that strip. On those nights, ladies, make sure to have a dance with the the bearded blond hippie in the open Hawaii shirt. He’s sure to give you a twirl and a smile, and you just might be able to get his name and send it back to me. I’ve met the guy at least twenty times, and I have forgotten to ask every time. Of course, he never asked me to dance with him.