The Bridge to Nowhere

I read in The Plain Dealer that the City of Cleveland will waste $5 million to build a pedestrian bridge at the opening of North Coast Harbor and I ask, why a bridge hardly anyone will use?
This is to span a little bit of water behind the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, from the tip of a pier on the west to Voinovich Park on the east. Not many people go back there, a few in the summer, none in the fall, winter and spring.

There are a few concerns about the height of the bridge because it will open in the middle and rise 135 feet high to allow boats to pass through. Among the concerns is that it will reach into the glide path of Burke Lakefront Airport.

I'm guessing that it also will be a gathering spot for gulls, whether the bridge is open or closed. Be careful walking across that bridge. You might slip and fall off due to the gull droppings.

In my day, there was one reason to go there -- Captain Frank's restaurant on the Ninth Street Pier. It was open all day and half the night, serving food until 4 a.m. The food was good, especially the seafood. They didn't call it walleye, You could park anywhere on the pier, right up next to the restaurant or at the far end. Parking was free. As I recall, parking meters were installed at some point, but there wasn't such an obsession to turn parking tickets into the City's primary source of income. Even then, parking was free for the occasional boat that tied up for lunch at Captain Frank's.

Oh, well. It will create seasonal jobs. Somebody will have to open and close the bridge, just like a drawbridge over the Cuyahoga in the Flats.

In othr matters, my neighbor Mark Saksa started putting up his Christmas lights today, Tuesday, Nov. 10. He had his lights stretched out on his front lawn. Most worked. A few didn't. What happens to Christmas lights from one year to the next? They work when you take them down. They don't when you put them back up.
Anyway, it was a beautiful day for November -- calm, warm, dry. But not a good day for putting up Christmas lights. When the kids were small I waited for a day with 30-mile an hour winds and driving sleet. We'd lay out the strings of lights on the front lawn. The kids would step on the bulbs and break them. That was a good old-fashioned Christmas.

Of course, that was nothing compared to the chaos later when the Christmas tree fell over.

Excuse me for jumping the season, but blame Mark Saksa. He started this.

I see that cancer took an old friend , Jack Mulhall, who saved hundreds of Irish drunks over his 86 years. Jack founded the Ed Keating center to rehabilitate alcoholics, named after the late sports agent who conquered demon rum late in life. Actually, what he conquered was Tanqueray gin.

Ed told me that he conducted so much business in the Theatrical Restaurant downtown that his monthly bar bill reached $5,000. When he quit drinking, the Theatrical closed. Among his clients were Larry Csonka, Jim Kiick, Frank Robinson, Buddy Bell, Duane Kuiper, Rick Manning and Dennis Eckersley, to name just a few.

Eckersley also stopped drinking, which he says is the reason he's in the Hall of Fame today. In gratitude for what guys like Mulhall did for guys like him, Eckersley hosts a golf tournament fundraiser each August in Parma for the Ed Keating Center.
Eckersley actually comes in from his Boston home and works the tournament. He greets everybody, plays a few holes, and says a few words. Best of all, he matches what the tournament raises. He usually sends a check for over $20,000 each year. That's been going on for over ten years.

Funeral mass for Mulhall is Saturday, 10 a.m., St. Ignatius of Antioch, West Boulevard and Lorain. I hope the church is big enough. This could be the biggest AA meeting in history.
Visitation Donlon Funeral Home, Triskett and Lorain, 2-4 and 6-8 both Thursday and Friday. Definitely not big enough.

Another old friend to be remembered. A memorial Mass for Herb Score, Wednesday, 11 a.m., St. Christopher Church in Rocky River. Herb died a year ago.

That's all for now. I'll post the official lines for high school playoff games Thursday morning.