Friday, January 21, 2000

East side, west side: Couple copes with culture clash

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BY JOHN JOHNSTON
The Cincinnati Enquirer

        Jim Borgman's “East/West” poster hangs in Greg and Viki Dittrich's bathroom. Greg's mother presented it to the couple after they were married. It seemed so, so ... appropriate.

Everyone has a story worth telling. At least, that's the theory. To test it, Tempo is throwing darts at the phone book. When a dart hits a name, a reporter dials the phone number and asks if someone in the home will be interviewed. Stories appear on Fridays.

        The poster by the Enquirer's editorial cartoonist pokes fun at the imaginary “wall” that divides Cincinnati's east and west sides. Mr. Borgman plays the east/west stereotypes for laughs — west siders with bowling balls, east siders on polo ponies and so on. And yet, the Dittriches will tell you there is more than one grain of truth in those panels.

        Check out Borgman's East side-West side cartoon series

        Greg, 36, sells industrial adhesives.

        He says: “I'm from Mack, Our Lady of Visitation.” (True west-siders often introduce themselves by noting their Roman Catholic parish.)

        Viki, 40, was clinical nurse specialist in the liver transplant department at Children's Hospital Medical Center until she left to have her third child, Peter, now 2, and raise her other children, Laura, 9, and Hannah, 6. She nows sells Mary Kay Cosmetics part time.

        She says: “I grew up in Terrace Park, and went to Mariemont High School.”

        They met at a party in Mount Adams.

        Greg is asked if, while growing up, he had any preconceived notions of what east-siders were like.

        He says, chuckling: “I didn't really know the east side existed.”

        Viki is asked about her contact with west-siders while growing up.

        She says: “Never met one.”

        He says: “I went to St. Xavier High School. People there come from all over the city. The east-siders made fun of the west-siders, and the west-siders made fun of the east-siders. The east-siders wore button-down collars and Topsiders. The west siders wore flannel shirts and gym shoes.”

        So, he wore flannel?

        He says: “Oh, yeah, a different flannel for each day.”

        She says the best thing about living in Terrace Park was its almost utopian feel. “I couldn't see it then, because I was living it. But looking back, it was a very safe area. My girlfriends and I would pick each other up by bicycle, and make our way to school. You just don't see that anymore.”

        He says the best thing about growing up on the west side was “Pete Rose!” Also: “We had great creeks and woods. We would go out, make campsites, be gone all day. There was a lot of open space for us to play.”

        She says: “I really didn't learn about (Cincinnati's) German heritage until I met Greg.” Then she learned about it first-hand, from Germans.

        He says: “My family were German immigrants and real conservative. The family had a pony keg on the west side.” It was called Karl's and was in Westwood. His maternal grandfather and then his father ran it, until it was sold.

        He also says: “My grandmother was written up in the Post one time as cook-of-the-month for her sauerbraten.” He also says she did not throw away holey socks, but darned them instead. Thrifty, those west-side German-Americans.

        Not that some good old-fashioned common sense didn't prevail on the east side, too.

        She said: “My dad raised us right and he really raised us to be independent. He taught us that before we learned to drive we had to learn to change a tire. And all of us got jobs before we married.”

        Both of them were products of their upbringing. But when east met west — when Viki Smith met Greg Dittrich — they found that their differences didn't matter all that much. They married in 1990.

        A few years ago, they were deciding where to live. East side? West side?

        He says: “A lot of people that we've known from the east or west sides have moved up here.”

        Up her is north. To West Chester.

        She says: “My dad says, "It's still West Chester.' ”

        East. West. Does it really matter?

        He says: “Even though there's the stereotypical east side and west side, when you get down to the core family values, they're very similar.”

        And she agreed.

       

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