Donna Harper's comment raised a few eyebrows.

It's part of her response to our request of former Clevelanders to give us their thoughts about their hometown as we approach the Nov. 29-30 "Homecoming Weekend" of this bicentennial year.

Another onetime resident now living in Virginia said he missed a lot of things about Cleveland, "but snow is not one of them!"

It is a beautiful time of the year, with the changing colors of the leaves. Communities with leaf-pickup services already are announcing collection schedules.

Autumn rains are chilly now.

The snows are coming.

David, in Virginia, won't miss them. Donna, in Arizona, will.

Donna won't be able to get back to Cleveland for homecoming.

"My husband is just starting a new job, and no vacation for awhile." But she and her husband have been talking about coming back. "He definitely wants to move there...and I really do want to come back to my roots."

The Harpers visited here during this bicentennial year. They were both impressed.

"There was one thing I was disappointed in, though," Donna writes. "When we visited, I took my husband down to the East 9th Street Pier to show him where I used to hang out. And the pier is a parking lot. Bummer."

She says the pier was being used for parking for the first anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (A note, Donna: the Rock Hall recorded visitor number one-million in time for that first anniversary. The honored visitor was given a car. She put it up for sale.)

David comes back "home" frequently. On his last visit, he went to the Rock Hall and Museum and was impressed. He took the RTA Waterfront Line from Terminal Tower to get to the Hall. He said an RTA employee had "a darn good idea" when he suggested, "It would be great if RTA put a shuttle down here (at the Waterfront Line station, which is a bit of a walk away from the Rock Hall and Great Lakes Science Center) to take folks over there during the winter."

The Ohio Department of Tranportation (those friendly folks who bring you all the welcoming orange barrels to Ohio roadways) already is checking out its snow-plowing and salt-dumping equipment. In last season's record snowfall winter, ODOT used 86-thousand tons of salt around here, about 20-thousand tons more than in a "normal" winter (whatever "normal" means).

The snows are coming.

Other things are coming, too:

Demolition of Cleveland Stadium. A New York company is going to tear it down for $2.9-million, and is going to use the debris to build a fishing reef in Lake Erie. The 3,500-foot reef is expected to start bringing in the fish in a year or two after its built. Demoliton is scheduled for mid-November.

There are arguments over land-use around the stadium area. There are some 11th hour calls for considering a domed stadium when the new one is built. A Maryland company has been chosen by the National Football League and the Cleveland Browns Trust to watchdog the development of a new stadium. The city has its own overseer for the project.

New downtown housing is planned. The Osborn Building on Huron Road near East 9th and two other buildings in the area may be turned into 165 apartments and retail space, and the Bardons and Oliver Building on West 9th could be used for more than 100 new apartments.

A new downtown hotel is in the works. The United Church of Christ plans a 93-room hotel near its 700 Prospect Ave. headquarters. That $6.5-million project could begin next March.

We add those new housing notes for those of you who have been gone from Cleveland for several years and who may have memories of complaints about not enough hotel space for conventions, and complaints about the streets being rolled up as soon as the offices emptied of workers.

The invitation is still there to former Clevelanders (and anyone else, for that matter) to come see for yourselves what's happening here. Homecoming Weekend is Nov. 29-30, with the Friday night holiday lighting on Public Square and what they're calling, "the parade of all parades" from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. the next day.

Oh, in case you happen to be in town over the next few days, you might go down to the East 9th Street area for a look at the Coast Guard's icebreakers and buoy tenders. The 9th Coast Guard District has brought the seven ships here for training and tours. They'll be here until Nov. 1, and then will head out into the Great Lakes to keep navigation channels open and to rescue ice-bound ships.

Yes, the snows are coming.

But, never mind; they always do, don't they?

OTHER BICENTENNIAL STORIES by John Herrington

RETURN TO Cleveland, The New American City

CLEVELAND BICENTENNIAL home page