Personal Narrative: Shaker Heights

I am very pleased to say that I am living the good life. I live in a fairly wealthy suburban neighborhood located near Cleveland Ohio. It is a wonderful place called Shaker Heights that was founded by “two entrepreneurial brothers, O. P. and M. J. Van Sweringen” (Sax 2). I enjoy living here much more than when I lived in the city. The overcrowding of people and expansion of industry made me feel like I was being squeezed into a box. I was surrounded by people and I could hear factories operating as I tried to sleep at night. In Shaker Heights, I feel like I have breathing room and that allows me to create meaningful relationships in my community. One of these relationships includes a girl I met while commuting to work. She is wonderful and

I was a bit surprised that this place hasn’t shut down yet because of how much attention it gets. The Stork Club made so much money that “they were able to withstand repeated closures by federal agents” (Hicks 1). People just really want to drink alcohol and it’s really hard to stop them. The speakeasy resembles a club where people are looking for a good time. There is gossip everywhere as a line of people are hunched over at the bar indulging in alcohol. I took a seat next to my friend and requested for some liquor. As I was waiting I overheard a man next to me say, “seven gangsters were gunned down in Chicago as they waited for a shipment of hijacked whiskey” (Hicks 2). There has been a lot of violence recently around speakeasies as gangs fight over them. I just wonder how long this prohibition thing can keep going before someone says enough with the violence and cancels

He was a legendary magician capable of stunning the whole crowd with his tricks. He became so well known for his performances that “the name Houdini became interchangeable with death-defying stunts” (Dorfeld 1). Houdini made his tricks so realistic that there was no way it was fake. He even asked volunteers in the audience to test out his props and make sure that they were real and that they weren’t rigged. His best tricks and performances were “the handcuff challenge, milk can escape, Chinese water torture cell, suspended straitjacket escape, and buried-alive escape” (Dorfeld 1). I made every effort to attend all of his stunts and was blown away every time. Just when I thought he couldn’t do it, Houdini defied all odds and miraculously