Cincinnati’s got me down.

“I’ll be in Nashville by the morning, cause Cincinnati’s got me down.”

I drive to Kroger right across the street. This is not a drive. I start to think to myself how much better this place looked last year. It’s not disappointing, it just is. This is the full extent of Highland Heights. Every now and then while I’m riding the TANK that I look over at the houses surrounding campus. They have old brick and are littered by trees and this is almost an old college town.
Louisville is the same way, at least what I’ve seen. Any street along Bardstown in fall, now that will convince you, but you keep driving and you’ll wind up near 75 in no time. I don’t relish the place I grew up, but I’ve grown out. That’s hard when you have no money, nor any credit with anything to your name.

I ride a riverboat everyday. We can be packed or completely empty at any given time. Yesterday it was eight. I took a picture of two and they weren’t interested. The captain forgot he had to work and we left fifteen minutes late. And as we pulled out of the dock he scrambled to button his shirt, he drank from a plastic cup and cleared his throat.
Out it comes.
“Well folks, let me first welcome you to Cincinnati.”
He speaks of how the river was once a fourth this size, how pioneers rode flatbeds down, but weren’t able to go back up, and how in the summer you could cross between Newport and Cincinnati.
I picture Ford’s “How The West Was Won” but these me were real, and how did they feel about the city.
And I worry that these are side thoughts, that this is the echo of every dream within me as they dwindle down into an abyss.
Are these cities living a lie? Are the Carolinas everything I dreamed they are.
Utah, Maine, or wherever the travels take me, life moves farther with a girl and a car.