The Ohio Daily Express

A Tableaux of The West Side

The hot, sultry summer evenings are much too uncomfortable for sleeping. The heat seems to seep into every pore of the body driving out the energy with the perspiration. Up and down Fifth street, and all the streets, front verandas are packed with people suffering from the heat, pleading in vain with nature to provide a refreshing, relieving breeze.

The young ladies traverse the streets in revealing shorts and off-the-shoulder dresses, much more fortunate than the men who dress a bit more uncomfortably. The males young and old find a measure of relief from the oppressive heat in just gazing at the demure young female creatures.

It is midnight, and a prematurely saturated set comes staggering up Fifth street past the Harris building. He ignores a fellow of the lodge who has long lost the power of self-locomotion and is ensconced in a simple trance beneath the flickering neon lamp.

On the corner of Fifth and Hawthorne in the brilliant lights stand the characters who eternally seem to have nothing to do, but just stand some place, any place, and make noise. Still no breeze just heat and heat and noise.

Further on down Fifth street, toward the hotel, a loud rat emphasizes the truth that we are in the ghetto. A woman and a man pass by with hands clutched, starry-eyed, but no one observes that, everyone seeks something exciting to take their mind off the heat.

An eruption finally occurs. A brave hero slaps a woman near Fifth and Horace, and all the others near the hotel are greatly amused. But this does not stop the heat. The star-flushed sky seems to quiver in it. And people still move endlessly up and down the street, still seeking surcease from the heat which descends on them in torrents, like a thunder shower of rain.

This, then, is a tableaux of the West Side on a sultry summer's evening.

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