Toledo holds great sadness

A tanker goes through the Cherry street bridge here in Toledo yesterday.

12/4/09 Friday
In Toledo there is great sadness. It affects me to see how people I know and love are impacted by so many of the forces that operate here. There are things I won’t write here out of respect. I called one friend several times but he was too messed up to talk coherently. Hopefully he will lay off the pills long enough for us to visit and my prayers are I can convince him to get it under control. If I still lived here I could, perhaps, make a difference. But I’ve seen this type of problem and experienced it so that reduces my hope. Suzie and family are in the same daily struggle to survive they’ve always been in. The girls have brought their grades up to A’s and are doing much better. Suzie got the youngest into a catholic school so that got her out of the gang banging fighting hatefulness of the public school. So these are two big bright spots for me.


I drove around a little and took pictures. One is the back of my old warehouse. You can only imagine the feelings connected with that, no probably you can’t. There are so many lives and stories connected to this. Hundreds of people worked for me so hundreds of people were under my care at one point of another in the two companies I built, lost, and built again. Now the building stands empty and all the businesses that once were housed there forced to move out. I’m sure that there are still truckloads of my stuff in there but I’ll never be able to recover it. What’s left is the trash that others didn’t want to steal. But some of it is good trash, things like bowling alley floors that I could make workbenches out of.

Today I hope to ride with Nate to the Charlotte auction site and examine the trucks and stuff for sale. I looked at craigslist online to get an ideal of what trucks sell for.

Called Cherie this morning and it’s always good to hear her voice. It’s cold there and they have snow on the ground. It’s only an inch but the whole area has shut down and schools along with multiple businesses are closed. It’s real cold, about twenty degrees. Cherie may get the electric blanket I have set up for my seed starting operation out and on the couch outside that Ben and Gretchen sleep on. I wanted to do that before I left but it’s one of the many things I forgot despite trying so hard not to.

I’m waiting for a call from Nate about heading north. Put two pair of socks on because we’ll be out in it for a while. Guess I’ll run out and grab breakfast while I wait. This hotel room has a kitchenette and fridge in it so I plan on buying eggs and a few other things I can cook.