It's always perfect there at Ohio State University--ahem, THE Ohio State University--and today is no exception. My friend, Mike, and I trek to campus via I-70 to help our mutual niece move out of her dorm for the summer. It seems as if every time I visit my alma mater, a gentle rain falls before giving way to dog-day heat and humidity.

We decide to get off on the High Street exit and drive through downtown Columbus and its busy work-a-day world of pedestrians and compact cars and an occasional bicyclist. The city blocks of the business district fade in our side-view mirrors as we make our way down High Street toward the poverty that is sandwiched between downtown and OSU. Boarded up buildings, tall grass and litter appear in stark contrast to the tidy downtown historic buildings that complement shiny newer office towers behind us.

We roll down our windows, and I soak in the scent of car exhaust fumes flirting with the early-June heat. Third Street. Fourth Street. Fresh tar covering pot-holes here and there melts under the mid-day sun, and I wallow in the smell of it, and the gas fumes, and I'm flashing back to my last trip to the local mechanic $380 ago.

We grab our niece and load her belongings into the car. We soon find ourselves on South campus, the Gateway to THE Ohio State University. Traffic is slow so we have time to sight-see and reminisce. We decide to park the car and walk.

When you're a student at Ohio State, you learn to maneuver through alleys past dumpsters and old, dirty mattresses. It is sometimes the quickest way to get from your off-campus apartment to your classes. We walk down Pearl Alley past broken bottles and garbage bins ripe with the putrid smell of trash, stale beer and an old man's piss. It rises, stinky vapors, from the crumbling concrete until you feel like you're covered with it.

"It still smells the same," I say to my niece. "Some things will never change."

We walk along Frat Row past the D-Zs and the Tri-Delts, trying to remember where Mike and I lived a few apartments away from each other (though we did not know each other then) more than twenty years ago. His former apartment building is worn but recognizable; mine has been torched with its innards gutted.

"If Claude's still the landlord," I say, "he'll renovate it into a three-bedroom apartment, you watch."

In five minutes, we're on High Street, walking past bars old and new, and book stores and a tattoo parlor and McDonald's. The unmistakable stench of humanity greets us from sidewalks and sewer grates, and it presents itself with a familiar smell that blends together to tell the weekend-tales of many in this Go Bucks! city: we drink, we puke, we eat, we puke again, we stumble home.

It's good to be back.

We decide to grab a gyro-lunch, and the hot, stagnant dining area is a perfect place for small talk over slices of lamb, sour cream and onions wrapped in warm shells. Our bellies full, we head back out onto High Street and down the stairwell to Bernie's.

I haven't been to Bernie's since 1985, when I treated myself to a toasted bagel and an imported beer after graduation rehearsal. Like everything else in Buckeye Nation, nothing really changes, it just gets older, like me and Mike and the bartender, too, who brings us a beer and a shot, no charge.

The smell of this musty, damp basement, with its tapped kegs and nicotine-stained walls, cannot deny our history here where we used to watch bands play while drinking our beer and smoking our clove cigarettes. We were young then, wondering where our futures would take us. Little did we imagine the coming home would be so memorable more than twenty years later.

Mike finds his name on the Beer Wall of Champions, circa 1987. "Take a picture of me," he says to our niece, pointing to his name on the plaque. "Man, I sure worked hard for this."

We finish our drinks and decide to head back to my sister's house. I light up a cigarette in this no-smoking city and extinguish it before I get in the car. After all, we can't take our niece back home smelling like she's just spent the afternoon in a bar with Uncle Mike and Aunt Jane.

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