Three Hours Ahead and Decades Away

Grandma Hartzell’s Christmas gift from my Dad was flying Emma and me to Erie to visit for a few days. If you are thinking to yourself that this is a paramount example of “a gift and a curse” for my poor Grandma Lorraine, I couldn’t agree more; but like it or not, she is stuck with us!

Although half of my family originated in Erie and many are still living here, Emma and I seldom have the opportunity to visit because of the tremendous distance. It is always a strange experience to escape neon, 24-hour Nevada to fall into a slower, calmer existence back East, but once my anxious nerves adjust to a change that is much more dramatic than the three time zones we have to cross to get here, there is an indescribable calmness that consumes me.

Emma loves the houses in Erie, which she cheerily describes as “little Pi-Phis.” Brick-and-mortar houses are rare in Reno, and the few that do exist in our hometown seem somewhat out of place, as if someone dropped them into the unforgiving desert to fend for themselves. They cluster together near the university and tend not to stray out into the uniform suburbs that dominate more and more of the Truckee Meadows.
Among my many criticisms of Las Vegas, the most poignant is of the stucco wasteland that sprawls out in every direction from the notorious “Strip.” As my Dad put it, Las Vegas is the result of putting fortune first. I couldn’t agree more. At the risk of generalizing, the people that tend to inhabit and visit Las Vegas are often made of stucco as well. There are some people, like the Reno’s misplaced brick homes, that seem to have been dropped into Las Vegas by accident: people of character and strong moral fiber, people made of something other than a flaky paint that could never withstand a hard winter or genuine hardship. But these people are the anomalies, the outsiders.

At the risk of sounding self-righteous, I must make perfectly clear that I’m a stucco person too. I’m even perversely proud of it. Nevada does it differently, bottom line: just as the intense heat thins the blood of long term Las Vegans, so too does the environment become a part of its inhabitants, for better or worse.
Just as Emma appreciates the architecture, I have a certain indescribable fondness for Lake Erie. At least once a day I like to bundle up under what feels like eleven layers of coats, sweaters, and shirts to make my way down to the golf course originally created by General Electric for employees, no more than a mile from my Grandmother’s house. Barges float with painstaking patience across the icy waters, with bright running lights clashing against gloomy Erie’s perpetual dusk.

I didn’t know Grandpa Ed too well before he passed away. I only have one memory of being with him, a nighttime sledding adventure down the golf course hill. Even that memory is abstract and patchy. All of the information I have about him comes to me second hand, but I do know with relative certainty that he loved that golf course at least as much as I do.

He played golf nearly every day after retiring. He played through the winter, which is no small feat in these temperatures: I doubt that I could swing a club under my bundled clothing, which no doubt reminds passing cars of Ralphie in “A Christmas Story” as I waddle down the main road towards the course.

I know that course is man-made, but there is something savagely peaceful about it during these winter months when no golfers walk the course and the hills bend gently under a uniform blanket of snow. A man can really think out there, trudging down the fairways and surveying the lake that crests the horizon. The air is crisp and clean as it blows inland over the waves. I may not remember my young conversations with Grandpa Ed, but when I walk his course I feel like I understand what he was about as a man, and I understand what was important to him. I like to think that is more significant.

If anyone was a brick-and-mortar type of man, I think Ed was. Never have I heard an ill word spoken of him. He realized the few things that were important to him, and indeed the few things that are important in life, and lived by them. It was in large part in his memory that I joined the Knights of Columbus this past semester. I can’t help but think of him every time I see a Knight serving breakfast to the community, or ringing a bell in the frigid cold outside of a store at Christmas time to raise money for those less fortunate. My New Year’s Resolution, and indeed my life goal, is to be more like Grandpa Ed.