Chagrin Falls is Chagrin Falls Again

      I drove into Chagrin Falls the other day without once hitting a man made chuck hole in the road, clanking over a metal plate, dodging an orange barrel, or evading a front-end loader. It struck me that Chagrin Falls’ downtown renovation is complete.   No more jumping over moats or sloshing in the mud to get into shops. Now there are real sidewalks and curbs, new old-fashioned streetlights, and the rest. It was all pristine and like its old self, but a bit upgraded. Chagrin Falls is Chagrin Falls again.

    That  Western Reserve town is the genuine article, enduring in the midst of instant outdoor chain store malls, designed to look old fashioned and cute. Although I grew up in the Heights, “The Falls”, as we called it, was the place to go on a hot night, to buy popcorn balls or ice cream, stand on the bridge at look at the falls, or just hang out.

When friends came in from out of town we invariably took them down took them there to show it off.  When I was courting my wife Grace, who lived in Manhattan, the Falls was one of our first stops when she came to Cleveland to check out the area. Can’t swear that‘s why she agreed to leave NYC and marry me, but who knows.

   I remember in 1956 when I got promoted at The Press to assistant city editor and got a $10 a week raise, I celebrated by trading in my aqua and white 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air, for a brand new 1956 white Ford convertible with red and white seats and a black top. Bought right it off the floor at a dealer in East Cleveland with reckless abandon.

    On the first evening I picked up a female friend, and headed for the Falls, with the top down, of course.  We got into town and I parked in the most conspicuous place I could find.  And we just sat there waiting to be noticed by the lovers of the finer things in life.  It was a kind of paradise type experience one remembers for a lifetime.

    Years earlier, when I was still at Heights High, tooling down the treacherous Grove Hill with my friends in my mother’s tan 1938 Plymouth was a real hoot. This was long before anti-lock brakes, air bags and sanity. Just took it out of gear and let go. It’s a wonder we and the rest of downtown Chagrin Falls survived our Kamikaze-like attacks.  The exhilaration put the Thriller at Euclid Beach to shame. And it was cheaper.

    In those days we liked Havre’s Department Store because it was owned by the same people who owned our apartment building on Euclid Heights Blvd.  I worry about the fate of places like the Falls, and downtown Hudson and Medina or any other downtown that happens to be authentic. Authentic isn’t “in” with the current generation.  

    Can these lovely towns make it amidst the glitz of fake?  Will my grandkids and their friends head down to the Falls in their convertibles and just sit? Will they patronize the independent stores, buy popcorn, and watch the falls? Or will they head for the mall like they have done most of their lives and talk to each other ceaselessly on their cell phones, and buy alleged high-end stuff made in Sri Lanka?

  Your guess, my friends, is as good as mine.