2 Quotes by Mark Winegardner

It's the Cuyahoga River that puts the cleave in Cleveland, separating East from Midwest, integration from segregation, a place that sees itself as America's westernmost Eastern city from a place that sees itself as the easternmost midwestern city. The rest of the country sees it as neither, though it must be said that the rest of the country is perversely wont to misunderstand Cleveland.

Early one seasonably cold morning, the first day of November, in the year of our lord 1952...the Cuyahoga River caught fire.The river burned.It wasn't so much the river, but a huge oil slick *on* the river, though distinguishing one from the other was more a job for a chemist than a lay observer.