By
Jim Bask
November 20, 2017
American flags flutter from every streetlight along Park Avenue in downtown Amherst, Ohio, despite the fact that it’s closer to Labor Day than the Fourth of July. At Ziggy’s Restaurant, the heady smell of Thursday’s perennial lunch special, the homemade meatloaf sandwich, begins to waft up into the foggy, early morning air. The Marion L. Steele Comets are just two days away from the high school football season opener, and every square foot of lawn in this town of 12,000, 35 miles west of Cleveland, is littered with signs extolling “Comet pride.” Welcome to small-town America, a snapshot of the past, frozen in time.