Niagara
Niagara, a film soaked with mist and rainbows, begins when Canadian border guards ask two newlyweds where they’re from and they chirp “Toledo!” Where ya born? “Toledo!” Uh-oh. These bumpkins are about to bump into Marilyn, in the only film where she played a villain, but much like the starlet, we’re not as naive as we look. When Journey sings about the south side of Detroit, that’s Toledo, a pastoral outgrowth, only there’s more to the story than suburban spread. Crime also crossed state lines. The phrase “Holy Toledo” sprouted from seedy history when Detroit mobsters struck a sacred agreement with Toledo cops who looked the other way in exchange for a boon.
Toledo is indeed the boonies. Even today there are apple orchards and cornfields in the middle of the city. You needn't go far before you hit silos and windmills. But there’s a surprising number of cosmopolitan amenities. Boon flooded the Swamp City via mobsters, automakers and industry, which flourished due to an abundance of natural resources. A legacy of old money and a number of New Deal endowments gussied us with parks and public spaces, an award-winning zoo and a world-class art museum.
The waterfront city is scenic and friendly, and yet we make a conspicuous appearance in the Joyce Carol Oates novel about a Dahmer-esque killer. At the end of Zombie, after 200 depraved pages, the character leaves his home in Ann Arbor and takes the I-20 to Toledo, a mere 40 minutes away, and yet “he’d never been there before.” We don’t know how that went because whatever happened in Toledo was too horrible, or too dull, to detail. We’re a lovely city really, filled with lovely people who have collectively agreed to carry the country’s shame. Yet, there’s room for pride. We gave you Gloria Steinem—which is maybe something only Toledo could do—and then there’s the badass who pulled a sneak attack on Tom Cruise and secured Katie Holmes full custody of Suri. A maniacal megastar was KO’d by Katie’s daddy, Martin Joseph Holmes SR, attorney at law. Don’t mess with Toledo.
I was raised in this land of heroes. A block from our riverside residence, my childhood BFF was ensconced in a haunted house. We experienced a number of unsettling encounters with the attic demon, the piano player and America’s 16th President. To be honest, it wasn’t Abe but a man who emulated the fashion of Lincoln, long suit, long beard and tall hat. He’d pace the hall and check his pocket watch. Wringing his pale hands, he watched the front porch from an upstairs window. We never understood until the day I absent-mindedly kicked a loose brick on the front steps. When it eventually fell in, through an open rectangle, we spied a hidden room. A bowl and pitcher on a small table. A chair. A narrow cot. Dad was eager to see it for himself. He knelt to peer in. Well, I’ll be damned. He explained that the house was sandwiched between the Maumee River and the Anthony Wayne Trail, which is a paved thoroughfare that was once a swampy waterway. Rafts travelled these twin rivers, and with our proximity to Canada, Toledo played a crucial role in the Underground Railroad. That room under the porch wasn’t a dungeon but a haven. The ghost at the window was a ferryman.
M.A.S.H.
Unlike those midwestern rubes, I wasn’t born in Toledo. I came from the New Mexico mountains where I played restaurant with imaginary friends and drove a tree, still living, but its trunk was run through with the steering wheel of a vintage automobile. This arboreal vehicle was devised by my father, in his woodsman phase. You can take the boy out of Motor City but you can’t take Motor City out of the boy. When Dad decided to return to Ohio, I imagined this Toolydoo/ Motor City place must be like a town from a Richard Scarry book where worms drove apple-cars. We arrived in a painted bus. I was enrolled in kindergarten, a difficult transition for a kid who was unaccustomed to shoes. I soon got patent leather mary janes and purple KangaROOS, along with corduroy peg-pants and a raincoat like a fruit roll-up. With these new accessories, I became a Toledo kid. Kinda. Once you’ve driven a tree through the mountains, it's hard to assimilate, but I did my best. I read my comics in the peach section of The Toledo Blade, rode roller coasters at Cedar Point and watched M.A.S.H.
Jamie Farr was famously eager to return to Toledo. As Klinger, the Toledo native waxed rhapsodic on hotdogs from Tony Packos while wearing marabou slippers and a satin nightgown. M.A.S.H was set in South Korea, during the Korean War, at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, and Klinger was desperate to be discharged from the military. Mental health, depraved mind, sexual deviant, whatever it took. Glamour was a sacrifice he was willing to make. In contrast, Lucille’s looking for the exit. The antiheroine in the Kenny Rogers song taught me that a woman must break free or else she’d find herself at a bar in Toledo, down by the depot. I resolved to leave before I had four hungry children and a crop in the field. I followed in the footsteps of a famous feminist—Gloria Steinem’s escape from Toledo’s East Side is a key detail in her mythology, as if she'd fled a war-torn province or overcome an unimaginable obstacle.
The Edge of Seventeen
I made a parade of my own escape—top down on the convertible and leading a caravan of cars which we’d outfitted with magnetic funereal magnets and tiny Lonestar Flags. We decorated our cars with bumper stickers: Texas or Bust, On Earth As It Is In Austin. Wasn’t born in TX, but got here as fast as I could. After a show in Austin, I ribbed The Soledad Brothers who’d announced themselves as Detroit boys, though they were like me, a South Toledo kid. It’s a regional compulsion, ever since Toledo grew like a tumour from Detroit’s ass, blossoming into a quasi-cosmopolitan population of 270,000 give or take, though it’s not a city that attracts new citizens. Rather, it haemorrhages young people. According to a former mayor, Toledo suffers from an affliction called Brain Drain. In the film The Edge of Seventeen, Eric is one of the drained brains. Disaffected, queer, and too cool for Ohio, Eric’s off to college but first, a transformative summer.
He gets a job at Cedar Point, and an equally life-changing rim job. The directorial debut for Kelly Fremon Craig is the best depiction of what it is to be a Toledo teenager, though it’s not technically set in Toledo, and the amusement park is unnamed. Still, any Toledo kid will recognise Nirvana. Cedar Point is a popular attraction on the shores of Lake Erie. In operation since 1870, the park is often featured in documentaries about record-setting roller coasters and I squeal with delight every time I catch a glimpse.
On my parade out of town, I waved like a beauty queen, with my middle finger. I made sure to swing past the old high school. Later losers! See ya! Wouldn’t wanna be ya! Now I’m friends with my old classmates on Facebook. I know when Becky has a baby or Susan has a bad day. We’re closer now than we ever were in that building. I was certain the show A.P. Bio had to be filmed on the old Bowsher campus, but I was wrong. The series, which was mostly filmed in LA, features Glenn Howerton as a disgraced Harvard prof who is forced to crawl back to Toledo where he teaches A.P. Bio to kids who are smarter than him. He remembers that Toledo is actually kinda great.
I’ve come to the same conclusion. Two decades ago, I flipped the double bird and now, my middle fingers are homesick. The Detroit Metro Area is the setting for my Pink Zombie Rose series so I essentially unleashed revolutionary zombies on the city, but now I spend all day, every day in this mental homeland, built from memory and altered by imagination. Between the artist and myself, we erect spooky architecture and colour the high-level bridge yellow when it’s actually blue. Nostalgia is deceptive and Tom Wolfe was right when he said that you can never go home again, but fiction breathes the truth. I have written Toledo as a magical place because it is. I took that magic for granted. I thought every museum had Van Gogh and Art Deco and eccentrics of the highest order.
Friends insist that my Toledo no longer exists, yet I’ve changed more than she has. My young self and her bangin’ bod are long gone, but Lake Erie is the same as ever. Vincent’s Wheatfields With a Reaper hangs in the museum. Mustardy chilli dogs are still a thing. Ohio was paved for shopping malls, The Pretenders weren’t wrong, but there’s still Amish country on the winding back roads to Cedar Point.
Niagara
Niagara, a film soaked with mist and rainbows, begins when Canadian border guards ask two newlyweds where they’re from and they chirp “Toledo!” Where ya born? “Toledo!” Uh-oh. These bumpkins are about to bump into Marilyn, in the only film where she played a villain, but much like the starlet, we’re not as naive as we look. When Journey sings about the south side of Detroit, that’s Toledo, a pastoral outgrowth, only there’s more to the story than suburban spread. Crime also crossed state lines. The phrase “Holy Toledo” sprouted from seedy history when Detroit mobsters struck a sacred agreement with Toledo cops who looked the other way in exchange for a boon.
Toledo is indeed the boonies. Even today there are apple orchards and cornfields in the middle of the city. You needn't go far before you hit silos and windmills. But there’s a surprising number of cosmopolitan amenities. Boon flooded the Swamp City via mobsters, automakers and industry, which flourished due to an abundance of natural resources. A legacy of old money and a number of New Deal endowments gussied us with parks and public spaces, an award-winning zoo and a world-class art museum.
The waterfront city is scenic and friendly, and yet we make a conspicuous appearance in the Joyce Carol Oates novel about a Dahmer-esque killer. At the end of Zombie, after 200 depraved pages, the character leaves his home in Ann Arbor and takes the I-20 to Toledo, a mere 40 minutes away, and yet “he’d never been there before.” We don’t know how that went because whatever happened in Toledo was too horrible, or too dull, to detail. We’re a lovely city really, filled with lovely people who have collectively agreed to carry the country’s shame. Yet, there’s room for pride. We gave you Gloria Steinem—which is maybe something only Toledo could do—and then there’s the badass who pulled a sneak attack on Tom Cruise and secured Katie Holmes full custody of Suri. A maniacal megastar was KO’d by Katie’s daddy, Martin Joseph Holmes SR, attorney at law. Don’t mess with Toledo.
I was raised in this land of heroes. A block from our riverside residence, my childhood BFF was ensconced in a haunted house. We experienced a number of unsettling encounters with the attic demon, the piano player and America’s 16th President. To be honest, it wasn’t Abe but a man who emulated the fashion of Lincoln, long suit, long beard and tall hat. He’d pace the hall and check his pocket watch. Wringing his pale hands, he watched the front porch from an upstairs window. We never understood until the day I absent-mindedly kicked a loose brick on the front steps. When it eventually fell in, through an open rectangle, we spied a hidden room. A bowl and pitcher on a small table. A chair. A narrow cot. Dad was eager to see it for himself. He knelt to peer in. Well, I’ll be damned. He explained that the house was sandwiched between the Maumee River and the Anthony Wayne Trail, which is a paved thoroughfare that was once a swampy waterway. Rafts travelled these twin rivers, and with our proximity to Canada, Toledo played a crucial role in the Underground Railroad. That room under the porch wasn’t a dungeon but a haven. The ghost at the window was a ferryman.
M.A.S.H.
Unlike those midwestern rubes, I wasn’t born in Toledo. I came from the New Mexico mountains where I played restaurant with imaginary friends and drove a tree, still living, but its trunk was run through with the steering wheel of a vintage automobile. This arboreal vehicle was devised by my father, in his woodsman phase. You can take the boy out of Motor City but you can’t take Motor City out of the boy. When Dad decided to return to Ohio, I imagined this Toolydoo/ Motor City place must be like a town from a Richard Scarry book where worms drove apple-cars. We arrived in a painted bus. I was enrolled in kindergarten, a difficult transition for a kid who was unaccustomed to shoes. I soon got patent leather mary janes and purple KangaROOS, along with corduroy peg-pants and a raincoat like a fruit roll-up. With these new accessories, I became a Toledo kid. Kinda. Once you’ve driven a tree through the mountains, it's hard to assimilate, but I did my best. I read my comics in the peach section of The Toledo Blade, rode roller coasters at Cedar Point and watched M.A.S.H.
Jamie Farr was famously eager to return to Toledo. As Klinger, the Toledo native waxed rhapsodic on hotdogs from Tony Packos while wearing marabou slippers and a satin nightgown. M.A.S.H was set in South Korea, during the Korean War, at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, and Klinger was desperate to be discharged from the military. Mental health, depraved mind, sexual deviant, whatever it took. Glamour was a sacrifice he was willing to make. In contrast, Lucille’s looking for the exit. The antiheroine in the Kenny Rogers song taught me that a woman must break free or else she’d find herself at a bar in Toledo, down by the depot. I resolved to leave before I had four hungry children and a crop in the field. I followed in the footsteps of a famous feminist—Gloria Steinem’s escape from Toledo’s East Side is a key detail in her mythology, as if she'd fled a war-torn province or overcome an unimaginable obstacle.
The Edge of Seventeen
I made a parade of my own escape—top down on the convertible and leading a caravan of cars which we’d outfitted with magnetic funereal magnets and tiny Lonestar Flags. We decorated our cars with bumper stickers: Texas or Bust, On Earth As It Is In Austin. Wasn’t born in TX, but got here as fast as I could. After a show in Austin, I ribbed The Soledad Brothers who’d announced themselves as Detroit boys, though they were like me, a South Toledo kid. It’s a regional compulsion, ever since Toledo grew like a tumour from Detroit’s ass, blossoming into a quasi-cosmopolitan population of 270,000 give or take, though it’s not a city that attracts new citizens. Rather, it haemorrhages young people. According to a former mayor, Toledo suffers from an affliction called Brain Drain. In the film The Edge of Seventeen, Eric is one of the drained brains. Disaffected, queer, and too cool for Ohio, Eric’s off to college but first, a transformative summer.
He gets a job at Cedar Point, and an equally life-changing rim job. The directorial debut for Kelly Fremon Craig is the best depiction of what it is to be a Toledo teenager, though it’s not technically set in Toledo, and the amusement park is unnamed. Still, any Toledo kid will recognise Nirvana. Cedar Point is a popular attraction on the shores of Lake Erie. In operation since 1870, the park is often featured in documentaries about record-setting roller coasters and I squeal with delight every time I catch a glimpse.
On my parade out of town, I waved like a beauty queen, with my middle finger. I made sure to swing past the old high school. Later losers! See ya! Wouldn’t wanna be ya! Now I’m friends with my old classmates on Facebook. I know when Becky has a baby or Susan has a bad day. We’re closer now than we ever were in that building. I was certain the show A.P. Bio had to be filmed on the old Bowsher campus, but I was wrong. The series, which was mostly filmed in LA, features Glenn Howerton as a disgraced Harvard prof who is forced to crawl back to Toledo where he teaches A.P. Bio to kids who are smarter than him. He remembers that Toledo is actually kinda great.
I’ve come to the same conclusion. Two decades ago, I flipped the double bird and now, my middle fingers are homesick. The Detroit Metro Area is the setting for my Pink Zombie Rose series so I essentially unleashed revolutionary zombies on the city, but now I spend all day, every day in this mental homeland, built from memory and altered by imagination. Between the artist and myself, we erect spooky architecture and colour the high-level bridge yellow when it’s actually blue. Nostalgia is deceptive and Tom Wolfe was right when he said that you can never go home again, but fiction breathes the truth. I have written Toledo as a magical place because it is. I took that magic for granted. I thought every museum had Van Gogh and Art Deco and eccentrics of the highest order.
Friends insist that my Toledo no longer exists, yet I’ve changed more than she has. My young self and her bangin’ bod are long gone, but Lake Erie is the same as ever. Vincent’s Wheatfields With a Reaper hangs in the museum. Mustardy chilli dogs are still a thing. Ohio was paved for shopping malls, The Pretenders weren’t wrong, but there’s still Amish country on the winding back roads to Cedar Point.