To The Person Who Wrote “Hello World” on a Dead End Street

On a dead end street. 

In Akron, Ohio.

Perhaps you thought no one would ever see it.

Akron.

Before we moved here, I had never heard of this town. Cleveland, sure. Cincinnati from the 1970’s TV show. Columbus when I learned the capitols. But Ohio, even as a whole state, was just a place filler on a map puzzle.

Ohio doesn’t have the romance of the West. Think about the deserts of Utah, the Rocky Mountains. It doesn’t have the glamour of Nevada. Ohio doesn’t have the south’s taste in food or the politics of New England. It is the everystate, with the most generic accent and the worst weather.

We are not a destination state.

And this little love letter isn’t going to save us and I’m not going to attempt it. We know, living here, the hand we have been dealt. We get courted heavily during election season, but other than that, we go silently about our business. We make the news the way every state does: a crime here, a storm there. We are not the most fit but we are not the most fat. We’re affordable. Chevys are affordable. Honda Civics. Fords. We are the Ford Escorts of states.

But someone, at the end of this tiny block, was feeling optimistic one day, happy enough to write it in big block letters and address it to the whole entire world. It’s been there for years. My son delivered papers on that street and he walked over those letters for years. They never fade. He passed the paper route on to another kid the way it passed on to him. Every week they get their papers, snowstorms and heat waves.

HELLO WORLD.

It’s amateur irony, and I love it.