How I Spent My Summer (2017)

Raising Cairn
Celeste Roberge, 2000
Portland Museum of Art

As summers go, this past was not as historic, nor as creatively productive. We won no basketball championships, directed no productions of Shakespeare, attended no theater festivals, nor were we present for the nomination of a tyrant.

I wrote no new plays.

But summers are important, they always have been and for different reasons. I still work, to be sure, but this is when vacations are had, and my wife and I do strive to make the most of those brief moments as we can. Once it was because our children needed attention and occupation, and now it is becoming increasingly apparent our summers with them as children are running out.

And she wonders why I am depressed this week.

Humming
Jaume Plensa, 2011
deCordova Scultpure Garden

The first major journey was to attend, and in my case, to officiate, a wedding for my wife’s cousin and his beautiful bride. Perhaps you didn’t know I am an ordained minister, but seriously, who isn’t these days? I needed to register with the state to conduct ceremonies in Ohio, in Illinois they don’t ask. Are you in good standing with your church? Well, you better be, that’s the only thing they have to say about it.

We turned this delightful event, held in Aurora, into an extended stay in the Chicagoland. Funny, I set one of my recent works in suburban Chicago, though I’d never really spent any time there. Just research. Passing through and investigating those sites I thought appropriate, I was not disappointed. I tried to imagine my characters there. They must have been happy once.

The weather in Chicago was perfect, we did the architecture tour, saw the Neo-Futurists, spent a whole day at the Museum of Science and Industry. I had my own memories of that place from when I was a kid, I was probably there more for myself them for them.

A Sunday Afternoon On
the Island of La Grande Jette
Georges Seurat, 1886
Chicago Institute of Art

In July, I bought a new car.

Our schedule fell out so that we needed to be in town by August 1 for my daughter to begin soccer practice, so we barely got Boy Camp in before it was time to leave for the east coast, this year spending several days in Salem, MA before continuing on to Friendship.

Between the Art Institute back in Chicago and the deCordova and Peabody Essex in Massachusetts, we spent much leisurely time at art museums, both indoor and out. Our time in Maine, however, was brief. Before long we were heading back, a stop in Concord to meet friends and check out the grave sites of famous authors before making our way back home.

Throughout the summer there were macaroni and cheese topped burgers at the Speedtrap Diner, deep dish at Navy Pier, drop-dead ramen at Kokeshi, and our favorite waiter at Congress Bar & Grill. Also, I developed a strange obsession with Oh Hello, On Broadway on Netflix, which I watched at least three times.

Real Estate Goldmine
Joshua Starcher, 2017
Rooms To Let

After Maine, we still had all of August, which ended up being something of a blur, driving back and forth across the state. The truth is, a cloud has been hanging over us since the very beginning of the season, on what may have been the first unofficial day of this summer. It was a Saturday in late May, the kids were on a year-end, school-related Cedar Point trip, the wife and I had the day to ourselves and witnessed Rooms to Let in Slavic Village, the first of our many art-related summer explorations. It was while waiting for the kids to return on the bus that we received the call.

It’s personal. It’s family-related. I don’t want to go into it right now. It is enough for now to say I have been looking at things more closely at things this summer, and finding them horribly beautiful.

Miller's Dining Room

The Miller family was on old Cleveland food family. The had a butter and egg stand at Central Market. Doris Miller had a degree in home economics from Mather College and had trained as a dietician at Stouffer's. After Central Market caught fire and burned down, she talked her parents into joining her in taking over the former "Kaase's" restaurant in Lakewood at 16707 Detroit Ave.

Miller's Dining Room opened in 1950. My memories are faint, and because we always went after church I think of it as some fancy place, but it was a family-style restaurant where the emphasis was home-cooked meals at a decent price. The table cloths were crisp and white, and they even had finger bowls!

Ask anyone about Miller's and they will tell you about the sticky buns. Servers circulated throughout the meal offering a selection of piping hot rolls to whoever wanted one. It was like dim sum for crackers. The sweet and chewy, caramel-swirled sticky buns were the most popular selection.

The "average costumer ate two." The child must have had three or four, or until someone told him to stop. This was important, because I also usually ordered the chicken a la king, chicken in gravy served in a crispy shredded potato basket.

After 40 years of business, Doris Miller Urbansky and her husband Tom sold the venture to the Thomas family, who kept the Miller name and style. Five years later, in 1995, Miller's Dining Room caught fire and burned down.

Doris Urbansky died in 2010.

Sticky Buns
originally served in Miller’s Dining Room
[makes approximately 30]

For the Sticky Buns:
4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (regular white enriched flour; not bread flour)
2 packages active dry yeast
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
1/2 cup cold water
1 1/3 cups butter
1 egg

For the Topping :
(to be put in each muffin cup)
1 to 2 teaspoons melted butter
1 tablespoon light brown sugar
1 dash cinnamon
For the Filling:
1/4 cup butter, melted
2 to 3 cups light brown sugar

In large mixing bowl, combine 2 cups flour, yeast, sugar and salt. Mix well.

In saucepan, heat milk, water and butter just until warm (between 120 and 130 degrees F). Add milk mixture to flour mixture. Add egg. Blend at low speed until moistened. Beat 3 minutes at medium speed. By hand, gradually stir in enough remaining flour to make soft dough.

Turn out onto well-floured board or pastry cloth and knead until smooth and elastic, about 3-5 minutes.

Place in well-greased bowl, turning to grease top. Cover with clean cloth toweling or waxed paper. Let rise in warm oven (turn oven to lowest setting for one minute, then turn off) for 15-20 minutes, or place in warm area of kitchen and let rise until doubled in size.

Prepare muffin tins by generously greasing each cup with butter, adding about 1 tablespoon of brown sugar to each cup. Set aside.

Amply flour clean toweling or pastry cloth. Roll dough out into rectangular shape no more than 12 inches wide and about 1-inch thick. Generously brush dough with melted butter. Sprinkle up to 1/2-inch brown sugar over top of butter.

Roll dough loosely as for jellyroll, pinching along the seam to secure filling. Cut into 1-inch slices and place in prepared cups.

Bake rolls in oven preheated to 400 degrees for about 10-15 minutes, or until golden brown. Let cool a minute, then remove rolls with fork. Spoon any remaining topping over the rolls.

*Recipe note: Miller’s secret was the type of brown sugar the restaurant used — C&H Pure Cane Golden Brown. You can buy it in bulk ($22 for 24, 1-pound boxes) by calling the company directly at 1-800-234-5708, but Domino brand is a good substitute.

Source:
Lakewood Sun Post
Cleveland Magazine
Cleveland Memory Project

Stouffer's

Stouffer's Shaker Square
Abraham and Lena Stouffer had a farm in Richfield, 28 miles from downtown Cleveland. They started a coffee shop in the Arcade in 1922. Lena's apple pie is credited with giving the family name its great reputation.

The first Stouffer's restaurant opened in the Schofield Bldg. on the south-west corner of East 9th & Euclid. Sons Vernon and Gordon expanded the business into a flourishing chain of restaurants in Cleveland, New York, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Philadelphia -- every important city in America.

The first "suburban" Stouffer's restaurant opened at Shaker Square in 1946.

Their nation reputation was based on the distribution of "partially cooked" meals which could be prepared at home in limited time. In 1953 they opened a plant on Woodland Avenue to develop these "frozen foods." This brand of their business was a separate corporate entity, in 1954 named the Stouffer Foods Corporation.

The "TV Dinner" was originally a brand name, which later became a genericized trademark, created by C.A. Swanson & Sons in 1953. You know what that is, a pre-packaged meal, complete with meat dish and sides in an aluminum tray that you can heat up quickly in the oven. Stouffer's, however, tried to set itself apart from Swansons by touting the "high-end" quality of its frozen food products.

For those of you unaware because you haven't read Fast Food Nation or because you simply haven't been paying attention, "flash-freezing" food products (chicken, potatoes, what have you) virtually erases all discernible flavor, and so most pre-packaged meals are jacked up with salt, fats and artificial flavoring.

FYI - The Stouffer's name would not be added to the hotel on Public Square until 1978.

Sources:
Wikipedia
Encyclopedia of Cleveland History
Ohio History central
Stouffers.com

Bearden's (1954)

One of the iconic images of 1950s Americana is the drive-in burger joint. When we have visited car shows I have pointed out to my children the trays that some of the cars feature, often original "Big Boys" trays, with a clip to secure it to the window, with the tray facing either into or out of the window. I help them imagine what it might be like to drive up to a restaurant, park, and not have to get out of the car, to have it brought to you.

Never having sat in a car with seats a comfortable nor as large and unrestrictive as a living room couch, I do not believe they actually think this would be an enjoyable experience. And the truth is, I am too young to have actually experienced this phenomenon myself. A drive-in move is as close as I get,

My parents would have visited the original Bearden's in Rocky River, 19985 Lake Road. Anyone who has been there knows about the model train, set up high on a ledge running around the entire dining room, which was a feature left over from its original owner, Charlie Jackson. Then the place was known when it first opened in 1934 as Jackson Limited because of that train (and Jackson.)

When Ross Bearden operated the place in 1948, and changed the name, he kept the train. It's a great gimmick, as a kid I always thrilled to visit the place with the train. You will notice the restaurant was not renamed in honor of Gene Bearden's performance as pitcher in the 1948 World Series anymore than the team was named after an actual Indian.

From the website:

The 1950s were the heyday of the drive-in restaurant theme and Bearden's was no exception. Staying open until 2 or 3 in the morning on Friday and Saturday nights and having police direct traffic and provide parking lot security was the norm. To this day, we still hear stories of high school romances, first dates and hot cars. The popularity of the drive-in theme waned in the early 1960s and soon "Curb Service" was a thing of the past.

The food itself wasn't legendary, a greasy burger wrapped in paper, a milkshake and a basket of onion rings, but aren't those things everybody wants, after all?

Three years of extensive construction on Lake Road combined with a flagging economy forced the present owner to close Bearden's doors in December 2010.

UPDATE: Following a brief closure, Bearden's reopened in Fall 2011 !!!

Sources:
Bearden's Homepage
cleveland.com