On an average Sunday, we get 100, sometimes 200 cars. This is our third year. It starts in June, and it ends at Halloween.
We had a bunch come from Arizona. They were on a cruise trip: four of them, all classic cars. They said, “We heard about the 500 flags.”
It’s not a straight line of 500 flags. It’s several rows, three or four deep. It follows the whole rim of the parking lot. Five hundred American flags. Especially when the wind’s blowing and they’re all fluttering in the breeze, it puts a lump in your throat — I’m a veteran. When you see 500 of them, and they all have names on them of guys who have served, it gives you a nice feeling.
Because our streets don’t all have curbs and sidewalks, they think it’s ... I don’t want to say, hillbilly. Eastlake, originally, was all cottages. People would come from Pittsburgh to the lakes here.
[Mayor] Dan DiLiberto got the stadium going. Of course, we had a $52 million debt! I’m not too happy about that! But he did a lot for the city: improved the streets, set up a lot of code rules. A lot of roads that were asphalt, he made ’em concrete.
We went into receivership— the state took over because we were having trouble with our finances. But we’re on our own now. We’re straightened out.
We went twice last year.Very nice stadium. We try to sit on the shady side. Sometimes we take the grandkids.
We’ve got the Chagrin River. There are restaurants down there. You can sit by the dock. It’s a slow-moving river. You can just sit there and watch other boats go by. I think people sit on their boats more than actually take them out on the lake.
