The Move From Boston to Lorain

At the tender age of 6 weeks, I was bundled up and packed into Dad’s flashy, vintage 1917 rag-top Buick Roadster; and we set out across the mountains of Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania, on what was called, the Old Mohawk Trail, and finally into Ohio several days later, as this was before the time of modern freeways.

With everything we owned packed all over the car and a bucket of ice riding out the window to keep my formula chilled, we must have looked more like the Beverly Hillbillies than immigrants from Boston when we finally arrived.

Lorain was a small industrial town on Lake Erie’s southern shore, where the Black River emptied its industrial wastes into the lake. Dad had grown up in the area, had gone to Lorain High School, and had contacts and family close by.

On the day we arrived, seeing the age of our car and its road-weary, gypsy appearance, a reporter from the local newspaper (The Lorain Journal — I think) came out and interviewed Mom and Dad. It had been a tough trip, but we had made it, and the car still in one piece, more or less.

–LE