And right near the nickel and dime store, there's a sign that says "Downtown Oberlin". After all, it's only a block or two, so if you don't pause at the stoplight, you might miss it. But there's pizza, a noisy place with alcohol, tater tots, and hummus, a few vintage clothing stores, and the chinese resturant ain't bad neither. Downtown even has a movie theatre (which plays moving pictures with sound and in color).
Across the street from downtown is the Square. If I remember right, that's where the college used to be, but now the campus is adjacent to it, and it's just a nice place with lots of grass and a few trees and that sort of thing. In the middle of the square there's a plaque telling you about the town's most famous scientific achiever, the guy who made aluminium cheap to make and whose name I no longer remember. There are a number of superstitions among the student body associated with stepping on the plaque, so mind where you put your feet.
The Square also has a rock or two. Just rocks, a little bigger than you are and a helluvalot heavier. What makes 'em interesting is that they tend to get redecorated in the night, by anyone with a bit of paint and a message to send, be they political statements or "Happy Birthday"s.
You mentioned this was in Ohio, right? Well, if you didn't know it, Ohio is damned flat. "Mount Oberlin" is a mound of earth grown over with grass, perhaps as much as twenty feet tall. It's the highest point in town. It's out by the sports field, created when they cleared the space off and bulldozed all the lumps into a pile.
Oh -- one more thing before you go. You've got to go to the college library. A few floors up, on the front side of the building (facing Wilder Bowl), there are the most wonderfully comfortable womb chairs. Some say people study there too.
a small college town
with lots of Steinway pianos
fourty five minutes west of Cleveland,
slippery when covered in ice.