It’s not uncommon for inhabitants of a city or town to have little more than a dim awareness of various cultural and historical resources in their midst, even as they pass them by on a daily basis. The blasé attitude is sometimes brought home when a visitor’s enthusiasm about the attraction that drew them to a particular place receives blank stares from the locals.
Similarly, most visitors to Second Sole Rocky River probably give the poem on the wall by the back entrance nothing but an occasional, fleeting glance. Perhaps not wanting to interfere with the traffic pattern of customers entering the store, that’s about all I did until preparing this entry; the main thing that impressed me was the painstaking care that someone had devoted to applying each and every one of its 1,621 characters. Besides, if a poem should “begin with delight, and end in wisdom,” as Robert Frost believed, then it’s best to sit down and take some time to give the work some deeper contemplation.So the depths of winter’s discontent seem like a good time to present it here, with formatting and spacing carefully preserved.
The “someone” behind those lines of verse, by the way, is third-generation Berean and children’s authoress Hannah Purdy Budic. Oh, yes, she’s something of a runner as well, with a win (and course record) to her credit in the 2005 Cleveland Half-Marathon, among other accomplishments.Budic recalls: “I was thrilled that Bill wanted it in the store. Permanently! I think I wrote it in 1999, but I can’t actually remember. It took me two trips and several hours of tedious letter painting to get the job done. I used an old overhead projector and a ladder.”
“I wrote it about my husband Tim, as a nameless/faceless everyday runner, but we are all part of a larger pack, so I hope people can relate!”
…and enjoy.
