Maybe it's all these hilarious jokes about Sarah Palin, being a cheerleader and clueless, and also that I was thinking the other day about a job I once had back in Hudson at a place called Flilckinger's, but I've had this urge to talk a little bit about Hudson Ohio, which is a town up in northeastern Ohio, between Cleveland and Akron.

I moved from Missouri to Hudson in the summer before my junior year in High School. It was after the Kent State shootings and that was a big topic of conversation that summer. The first week I moved there, I went downtown to a drugstore called Saywell's that still had an old-fashioned soda fountain and wooden phone booths inside. (No idea if any of these places, incidentally, still exist). One of the features of Hudson is that it is based on a New England design, with a town green and a clocktower, AND strict zoning laws. At the time, there wasn't a McDonalds because the building design wouldn't have fit with the stiff-upper-lip pinkies-up look Hudson wanted to keep. I was amused when I went back for a reunion to see that there was a McDonalds built but it was not your typical building; in fact, a low-key New England looking place where you might miss finding it if you didn't look for the classy little sign. There was a family that built a japanese-style house near downtown-quite a beautiful home, I had a friend who lived there- they were made to build a fence around it because it wasn't a colonial building.

The high school was up the street from downtown. Now I think it's an elementary school or something and the high school is out of town on some acreage that used to be fields. Near one of the other schools was some woodded land with a dirt road running through it-we called it Cruise Alley because it was a favorite spot for people who wanted to drink or hang out to go.

I see on a map that the park I used to go is now called Cuyahoga Valley National Park, but at the time it was called Virginia Kendall. Used to go out there and hike around and the Ledges were a favorite spot. That whole area was beautiful to drive through.

More on this when the mood strikes.