“Like most small children, I learned my home address so that if I got lost, I could tell a grown-up where to take me.”
Those are the opening lines to “Hillbilly Elegy,” the memoir by Republican Vice Presidential nominee and Sen. JD Vance. It documents his rocky childhood growing up in Jackson, Kentucky, and Middletown, Ohio.
Like Vance, I, too, learned my address for the same reasons. In fact, the geography is pretty similar. I was born in Middletown, just like Vance. But I was raised just west of there. I can’t claim Middletown residency like Vance, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune, basketball Hall of Famer Jerry Lucas, football Hall of Famer Cris Carter or baseball All-Star Kyle Schwarber.
I didn’t graduate from Middletown High School like Vance. However, I spent a lot of time in Middletown growing up. I know Middletown about as well as any place on Earth.
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A welcome sign invites visitors to downtown Middletown, Ohio. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Both of my parents graduated from Middletown High School. My dad worked for four decades at ARMCO Steel, a major plant in Middletown. In “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance writes about how the fate of Middletown was linked to ARMCO, now known as Cleveland-Cliffs. I spent countless hours visiting my maternal grandmother who lived in Middletown. Like Vance’s family, grandparents on both sides of my family migrated from eastern Kentucky to Middletown to work at ARMCO.
Middletown was predominant in our lives.
We went to the doctor and dentist in Middletown. We shopped in Middletown. We attended church in Middletown. In 1976, I watched President Gerald Ford roll down Verity Parkway in an open-air convertible in Middletown.
As I grew older, I bought cassette tapes of Def Leppard and Iron Maiden in Middletown. We dined regularly at Frisch’s and a hamburger stand called The Jug in Middletown. I took a few classes at the Miami University (Ohio) branch in Middletown. I played basketball and soccer in Middletown. And I ran laps at the indoor track and swam at the YMCA there, too.
I still swing through Middletown to this day. I regularly buy a small cake or a box of smiley face cookies from the Central Pastry. I have never encountered another establishment which can rival the butter cream icing of the Central Pastry.
Vance worked as a cashier at Dillman’s, a local grocery store. Roger Dillman, who owned the store, sponsored me as a delegate to attend Buckeye Boys State. It’s a nationwide government politics program operated by the American Legion.
Starting in junior high, I studied vocal performance under the legendary Helen Ramsdell in Middletown. She taught music from her stately home on Central Avenue. In addition to yours truly, Ramsdell famously taught the McGuire Sisters back in the 1930s. Look ‘em up, kids.
Some of my most formative experiences unfolded in Middletown during my high school years.
The local arts organization ran a program called Summer Youth Theatre in Middletown. Students as young as 12 and as old as 18 could audition for a show, usually a musical. The performances often fell around the end of July or first of August at Middletown High School. In fact, if you examine some of the video from Vance’s rally last week at the school, you can spy the raised portion of the building which still serves as the auditorium.
At the time, Middletown High School had one of the best high school theater facilities in the state, a sprawling, wooden stage. It featured built-in footlights and an apron that jutted into a chasm that doubled as the orchestra pit. The backstage was spacious. It was deep enough to carry several layers of curtains, travelers and scrims. There was a set shop and a commodious makeup room, as well as two dressing rooms for the performers.
My high school to the southwest of Middletown had none of those things. We had a “raised garage” in the “cafetorium.” So, performing at Middletown each summer was a thrill. I acted in “Oklahoma!,” “South Pacific,” “Gypsy,” “Li’l Abner,” “Bye-Bye Birdie” and “George M!” It was great fun. Plus, you got to meet and hang out with kids from other schools.
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Buildings in downtown Middletown, Ohio (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
After rehearsal each night, many of us would drive down Briel Boulevard in Middletown to find something to eat. It’s doubtful that any thoroughfare in America could boast of such a dense concentration of fast-food joints and other eateries: Burger King, Long John Silvers, Friendly’s, Famous Recipe Fried Chicken, Rax Roast Beef, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, White Castle, Pizza Hut, Captain D’s. There was an Arby’s around the corner along with a local pizza place called Cassano’s. If we were out really late, a few of us might head to Milton’s Donuts. Milton’s stayed open all night.
As kids do, we’d talk about our aspirations, our hopes and our dreams. But for most of us, we were going to leave Middletown to make it big in theater, or music or movies. These dreams were all fueled by an ice cold Coca-Cola and a bacon double cheeseburger from Burger King.
Even though I spent a lot of time in Middletown, I always considered my visits as “going into town.” After all, we were from the country.
In fact, Middletown was a place I looked up to at the time. It wasn’t Cincinnati or Dayton or New York or Chicago. But it seemed more sophisticated than the country landscape where I lived. Middletown had a vibrant arts scene. There was an art gallery and regular classical music performances. There was a “grown-up” theater troupe and several movie theaters.
The houses seemed nicer in Middletown. Many of the students seemed a little better off. Their parents might have worked at ARMCO. But maybe they were employed on the corporate side of things. They weren’t blue-collar workers like my dad.
It always seemed like there was more to do in Middletown than out where we lived.
But something was afoot in Middletown that I didn’t realize at the time.
Middletown was a “company town” because of ARMCO, but ARMCO began bleeding cash in the 1980s. The recession of the time hurt American steel manufacturers. The influx of foreign cars into the U.S. market exacerbated things, just like the “dumping” of cheaper steel into the American market from abroad.
ARMCO slashed jobs. Kawasaki purchased ARMCO, forming a new firm named AK Steel. It temporarily shifted the headquarters from the vaunted “Central Offices” in Middletown to Pennsylvania. There was a brief lockout at ARMCO in 1987. There was nearly a strike in 1990.
I always parachuted into Middletown when I would come home from Washington. Sometimes, just to catch up with friends or go grab a meal. But things were evolving.
Eventually, people moved out of Middletown. They may not have moved to Washington, D.C., like me, but they left for bigger cities like Cincinnati or Columbus. AK Steel remained in business. Middletown didn’t become Youngstown or East Chicago. But the place wasn’t quite what it was decades ago. The global economy evolved, thanks to outsourcing and congressional adoption of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
This is what makes Middletown an American story.
I really noticed changes in Middletown after the financial crisis of 2008. The streets were ruddy and worn. A mall on the eastern side of the city near I-75 struggled. Shops were boarded up. The population dipped slightly. There were always pockets of poverty in Middletown. But – like much of the U.S. – the hardship was now more pronounced. The city looked destitute. Meth use skyrocketed. Homelessness, which one rarely saw before, was now obvious in downtown Middletown. There was even prostitution.
In the late summer of 2008, the presidential campaign of the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., flew former Republican Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin into Middletown’s Hook Field under cover of darkness. Palin was a surprise pick to be McCain’s running mate. McCain planned to roll out Palin at a rally in nearby Dayton the next day. Bringing Palin into unsuspecting Middletown helped the campaign keep its pick under wraps.
The campaign put up Palin and her family at what had been the posh Manchester Motor Inn in downtown Middletown. JFK even stayed at the Manchester when he campaigned in Ohio for President in 1960. But the Manchester was a shadow of itself. It had threadbare carpet and ancient fixtures in the bathrooms. Palin’s daughter, Bristol, ripped the Manchester’s ramshackle state in her 2011 book.
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Houses on McKinley Street in Middletown, Ohio. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
“The raggedy old hotel had dated furniture, small rooms, ugly pink walls, and an abundant supply of cockroaches,” wrote the younger Palin. “I’d never even seen a cockroach before. Reporters might not think Wasilla is the prettiest town in the world, but at least we don’t have roaches.”
And Bristol Palin didn’t even get the name of the town right. She dished about “Middleton,” not Middletown.
But like many places in America, Middletown rallied from the 2008 economic calamity. While major banks that occupied three of four corners in downtown Middletown closed, Cincinnati State opened a branch campus in the old Cincinnati, Gas & Electric building. That fueled a mini-wave of a few coffee shops and restaurants downtown. There’s even an Italian steakhouse now. They paved the streets.
“Middletown Dreams” is a mid-80s track by the Canadian rock band Rush. Late Rush drummer and lyricist Neil Peart said he chose that title “because there is a Middletown in almost every state in the U.S. It comes from people identifying with a strong sense of neighborhood.”
One lyric goes like this:
“Dreams transport the ones / Who need to get out of town…”
One can certainly appreciate that sentiment considering the portrait of Middletown painted by Vance in “Hillbilly Elegy.”
But Rush’s song ends with this:
“And life’s not unpleasant / In their little neighborhood / They dream in Middletown.”
Middletown may be a place of nightmares to some, but it’s also a place of dreams. Think of all the people from eastern Kentucky who migrated to Middletown to work at ARMCO.
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They had dreams — dreams of a better life and better wages. Middletown certainly fueled my dreams. I suspect they did the same for JD Vance, too.
And dreaming in Middletown — all of the Middletowns — is a very American story.
