GALERIA
Eirik Johnson

Whatever else you can say about it, The American Dream has interesting edges, often more so than the middle. I had the good fortune of growing up near and in a wonderful edge in Akron Ohio—the Cuyahoga River Valley. My friends and I could be in what we considered very wild country a short walk from the back door. The river was famous for occasionally catching on fire from petroleum pollution, but between fires we learned to swim and build rafts in that river. We drew maps of the Indian mounds along the shore as we floated toward Cleveland. We met reclusive eccentrics living in tipping house trailers. We learned how to be in a very chaotic and sometimes dangerous environment. Above all of this adventure were housing developments, inhabited by parents, taxpayers, landowners, and lawn mowers-the superficially tidy dream.

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