Only In Cleveland (Heights)?

Just now I was taking the garbage out at dusk when lo and behold, across my sleepy suburban street, four big deer were lazily eating grass on my neighbor's back lawn. One of them looked at me, sussed I'm not an NRA guy with a taste for venison, and continued munching and slowly sauntering with his or her mates (I ain't no zoologist either). Now twenty or even ten years ago, such a sight would have been unheard of in this inner ring suburb. Now, unless you hit one, it's no big deal.

Yesterday afternoon I witnessed an even more incongruous, and certainly odder sight: I saw a young guy, maybe twenty-two, tops, who looked like he could have played linebacker on a mediocre high school football team, wearing sweats, a sweatshirt, and a yarmulke, walking a very well-coiffed rather tall poodle, who had one of those doggie jackets on (it was sunny and sixty, though breezy) and a large yellow spiky rubber ball, about the size of a volleyball, in its mouth. Man and dog walked across the mall parking lot, the dog never losing its grip on the ball, the breeze never stirring the guy's yarmulke, got into a late model navy blue Volkswagen (dog riding shotgun) and drove off. I watched the whole minute-long parade and nearly swallowed the cigarette I was smoking. I sat there hmmmphing for minutes after they had driven away.

Now separately, each of the elements in the tableau is not too unique, but together I'm telling you the picture just oozed "only in Cleveland Heights, Ohio." Of course, to explain what that means to outsiders would take a helluva lot more bandwidth than old blogspot could muster, I'm sure, and the parentheses keys on my keyboard would give out in no time. Deer are beautiful, that goes without saying, but these days you can see them just about anywhere. But if you really want to see some Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom mind-bending sights, park your car in Cleveland Heights (just don't forget to bring plenty of quarters for the parking meters).

In fact, the whole experience was so bizarre to me, that the natural way of things seems to have been reversed. The cliche is that music can bring you back to a particular time and place like nothing but smell. As I was musing on the poodle parade, though, the image brought me back to a song that I thought my memory had long ago, thankfully, buried deep in my subconscious. It's a snappy little ditty from the early 1980s by a Cleveland group who scored a regional hit with it (back when regional hits were still somewhat possible). Now I know some of you readers of a certain age and with Cleveland roots are now howling, saying, no, we know where you're headed, and we don't want to go there. Not that song, please, we'll Fed Ex you tons of Skittles, anything. Yes, yesterday's odd poodle parade managed, after twenty-four hours or so of hard labor, to excavate from the very depths of my being, memories of "Funky Poodle" by the erstwhile Northcoast bar band Wild Horses. I can't get the damned song out of my head, and if I could I'd rig this blog to blast it at you while reading this, but the best I can do is offer it, hoping the sharing will diminish its pull on me. I recommend, though, watching the following video after listening to the song: it's even crazier than all of this, and should act as a good palate cleanser for your brain.

Wild Horses-Funky Poodle

Rufus Thomas-Walking the Dog

The Kinks-This Is Where I Belong