six feet deep and forty-nine years ago

funny how things work
forty-nine years ago
at the time i wrote my first poems
if i came to this spot
where this stage is now
in the amphitheater
i'd have been six feet deep
right under Main Street

back then i wrote
a booklet, thirty-three poems in three days
a rush job, i was a kid
beat poetry

words with rhyme
that go
sometime
or not
which is to be
of course
the other way

forty-nine years ago in the first freshman class
at the new high school
we were looking for the future
this was before the Beatles and the Rolling Stones

our house was over there next to the funeral home
and from standing in the middle of the street
i could see straight down to the light house

down by the track
that lone railroad building still standing
is where the telegrapher
Hiney Kensel worked
he always rode a bicycle

across from my house was the old town hall
with a small theater
opera stars and vaudeville teams performed there
1876, i saw that in stone every day

across the street was the post office, then the movie theater, The Ritz, McCormick's Insurance, Enderle's Foodliner
the bank where it is

the Eagles, the Reporter, the Edmar restaurant,
a used car lot, Dirk's Jewelers
Guenzenhauser's Department Store
old Anne Guenzenhauser drove that '35 model A coupe to work everyday

at 217 Main was the dairy
on special occasions i remember Carl Wechter
delivering milk with his old horse and wagon
right down Main Street

Duck Eggs, Hoppy, a lot of the locals with nick names
and Millicent Leib who led the cry
"Please don't tear down our town"

there was a poolhall across the street from Yaylie Lavoe's News Stand
an old timer told me
John Dillinger was in there playing pool
a few weeks before he was shot in Chicago

before the bypass and the turnpike
when vaudeville players like Jack Benny, George and Gracie and W.C. Fields
and baseball teams like the Red Sox with Ted Williams
and the Yankees with Mickey Mantle
drove from Detroit to Cleveland and beyond
they took this street right above us

the Knotty Pine Bar and the Three H Bar
there and there
and there, my dad's bar a block up from the church
they used to say we had more bars than churches

that same year - 1959
our town had it's sesquicentennial, that's a word we all learned
the 150th birthday of our town

Carl Kramp, the Chief of Police told Bill Swoppe
a happy-go-lucky fellow
that they kidded a lot
and who owned the bar next door to my dad's

"There is no place to keep the parading elephants,
so would you keep two small ones?"
they told him my dad would keep two of the larger ones
in his bar
so Swoppe said okay

they played it out a few days

then the Chief of Police was measuring Swoppe's door
and said they would have to cut part of the front wall
so the elephants would fit
Swoppe said, "no way"

the next day the Chief of Police
was measuring the doors of my dad's bar
and they said they'd have to cut the opening
for two large elephants to enter

Swoppe said, "Okay. If Chet is going to have elephants
you can cut my doors too. I'll keep elephants if he will."

in the end no doors were cut for elephants

we had our sesquicentennial parade
on a beautiful clear day

the big parade took three hours and fifteen minutes
with vintage vehicles, horses, wagons, fire trucks from all over
both our police cars, and both fire trucks- big red
and the old blue one
banners, marching bands, drill teams
and gaily costumed tap dancing
cadets, baton spinners
more fire trucks and police cars
plus honoraries, mayors and dignitaries from every village
and farm and orchard in Northern Ohio turning out,
several of the bands played John Philip Souza marches
and oh, how they marched
on and on they paraded,
yes, paraded, not rode,
but walking proudly
right down this street
into history

now from the start of my poetry
it's forty-nine years later
and six feet under
and here we all are
for better or worse
what's done is done
now let's move on to the future

so tell me
do times change
or don't they?