A Tack on the North Coast (ca. 1985)

It was perhaps at the confluence of the Cuyahoga (Native American for crooked) and the now long dry Coggamaemi (Three Stooges for little wisdom) that Sam Domful (Spoonerist for unspecified, accursed dimwit), having wandered the Lake Erie shore in the Flats searching for place to relieve his beer-tormented bladder, cast a bleary-eyed glance at the watery horizon and first declared so many years ago: "As eyes can plainly see, this here's the North Coast."

Nearly 150 yellow pages listings later, new companies and other would be trendy-settlers continue scrambling to the banner birthed so discomfortably that fateful day. That a comparably inebriated and only slightly more myopic denizen of Newport, Kentucky, could have stared at the Queen City on a foggy day from the south bank of the Ohio River, and come to the same inaccurate conclusion with as much justification mattered not a whit. Uppermost was claiming the honor first.

For just as Mayor Johnson's sole surviving city daily had declared the town a plum while its critics catcalled it a prune or the pits, the street polloi hungered for final, unequivocal first class recognition and demanded for their city metropolitan parity with the great urban centers of the nation. If New York ruled the East coast and Los Angeles dominated the West coast, well by golly gee, Cleveland, they ventured, would be founding king of the North coast.

Sadly that pathetic scurry into bombast only trucked their delusions into full public scrutiny. Their only hope was to retrench even more quickly lest some national comic, perhaps their own Jimmy Brogan for instance, slip the North Coast albatross into a burning river/boy mayor burlesque.

What brought all this silliness so painfully into positive clarity for me at least was our family's trek a year ago camping at various locations around Lake Erie. One afternoon I found myself leisurely awash in the gentle waves on the leeward side of Canada's Point Pelee when the bubble of my unconsidered acceptance of the NC terminology finally burst.

As I floated amiably in the sun-warmed water a picture gradually took shape in the isolation chamber behind my closed eyelids of the Park Guide's description of the Point as Canada's Florida, the southernmost tip of the continental expanse. I rejected the notion outright. First the place was not overrun with retirees from the Garment District. Second everyone knew that Canada had no South. While tobacco grew the length of the Ontario shore, neither a belle, nor a mammy, nor a porticoed plantation mansion had we spied. 

Canada was all North, some parts Norther, and the extreme parts Northmost. With the growing weight of the realization that this side must be the North Coast, chagrined and drowning, I concluded our side must be the South coast. 

I called on all my thrashing skills to survive the eureka experience and hustled home for some elementary cartography. True enough the US had an east coast which ran with jagged but satisfactory continuity from Maine's northern shore to Florida's sputtering Keys.  The Pacific similarly baptized the western states. While Mexico implacably blocked a clear shot at full oceanside, we wisely sidestepped the issue and settled for a Gulf, not a South, coast.

As my eyes rose to the top of the maps my worst suspicions were quickly confirmed. One either conceded that the North coast belonged jointly to Alaskans and Canadians or one pulled a bag over his head. Even according the Great Lakes shoreline coastal status failed as its shores refused to consistently face any one compass point  E, W, N, or S.

But I'm not here just to poke holes in a lot of catchy titles or to deflate vaunting civic aspirations--norsireebob! I know how difficult traipsing aimlessly through trademark jungles for marketable grabbers can be. Since that day at Pelee I've devoted every spare minute to doing just that and I now find myself atop a stash of smasher subs for all those N-Coast misnomers.

For as little as $1K per rechristening plus the 5% kickback from my printer, who's got this terrific package for new business cards and office stationery, I expect to put each of my four munchkins through at least one year of the local poly-dollar tech. You can reach me at New Monnikers, Inc.,
216-555-3072. But if you'll excuse me, the prexy of North Coast Aardvarks is on the line right now.

c. 1985

[The author, eventually to be recognized as a brilliant sonneteer, takes a stab at the forgiveable foibles of his forever inferior native area. Why does he bite the hand he hopes will feed him? "Dostoyevsky wrote Crime and Punishment to pay off his gambling debts. I'd just like to make a dent in my Mastercharge."]