Ashes, Sweetness and Light  − 1 June, 1982

When I was a kid growing up in Cleveland, my dad had the coolest job. I suppose I had a vague enough notion of what other kids' dads did for a living, but it didn't matter. Other kids didn't get to see their dad teach, write, think, talk and go to college every day of the week. My dad was a professor of Creative Writing at Case Western Reserve University. His colleagues were cool. His environment had little indy cafes and pubs in constant rotation. The University had old buildings, hot co-eds and museums. Could the kids at school say their dads worked walking distance from Warhols, Wittgensteins and Wurlitzers?

The landscape of my childhood was peppered with three-day old, sediment-laden coffee-cups, overflowing ash trays, the dusty smell of old manuscripts, and the heavy pitter-patter and ping of my dad's typewriter clanging away in the next room. On weekends, being the son of a poor writer, we found entertainment at the college film society, and the Strosacher auditorium.

Strosacher was a proper student movie theatre replete with a balcony, swing away fold-up desktops, wood-paneling, and smoke. Strosacher was a college theatre. It's the place in Cleveland you were most likely to see Last Tango in Paris, Pink Floyd the Wall and Apocalypse Now. It was also the place I saw Robocop as a pre-theater release. Cinderella had a screening there. Over the loud speakers the student organizers dedicated the showing to me by name. Something my dad had put them up to, no doubt. Strosacher was home.

Sometimes when the movies were not up to capturing the attention of an 8-year-old, I would go out to the lobby and mooch popcorn from the girls working the counter. Even at that age I was a huge flirt. Cokes, Twizzlers, milk duds were rare, but not out of the realm of possibility. The two-story interior had a couple of stairwells on either side of the auditorium and opened up to the campus so if I had two hours to kill then my imagination could roam wild as it often would.

When my dad took me to see Blade Runner, I was in one of those moods. The film was not compelling enough for me, even though I was intrigued, I wasn't captivated. I can remember the darkness of the opening scene and the eeriness of the soundtrack. I can remember the interrogation scene where Leon kills the interrogator. After that, not much else. I went out to play, flirt, and mooch and horse around. When I came back my dad was smoking, alone in the balcony, with a Dr. Pepper. I sat next to him and grabbed the drink and before he could warn me took a deep gulp of ashes. I choked as I realized that my dad had been using the can as his ashtray.

Growing up in Cleveland, when I thought about what I wanted to do when I grew up, it was that. Create movies. Re-create experiences that were filled with ashes, sweetness and light.

Comments:

Previous story  |  Next story