Monthly Archives: September 2024

British Transportation Museum

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I am about to start a string of canned posts during some travel and wanted to put that off a little by making one more “current” post. Remnants of Hurricane Helene have caused many outdoor activities to be canceled or at least made them uninviting. Visiting a new-to-me museum in Dayton was just the sort of indoor activity I was looking for. The British Transportation Museum was founded in 1998 but I first learned of it less than a year ago. Apparently, it was an “appointment only” operation until fairly recently when regular hours, 10:00 to 4:00, were established for Saturdays and Mondays.

The museum is home to sixty-some British cars, a number of bicycles, and a couple of motorcycles and boats. It is an all-volunteer operation, and a round-table discussion was in progress among several of those volunteers when I entered. A fellow named Dave broke away from the group, gave me a brief overview of the museum, then provided a personal guided tour of the whole place.

We started with some small “family” cars that were the heart of the British car industry for many years. The yellow car is a 1961 Morris Minor Sedan. The red one is a 1964 Mini Cooper. About 1.6 million Minors were built between 1948 and 1970. Nearly 5.5 million Minis were built between 1959 and 2000.

I have included the red 1951 MG-TD out of sequence relative to the tour. It and its MG-TC predecessor introduced the sports car concept to the United States. The Lotus Elan was a major influence on the design of the Mazda Miata. A 1972 model is shown here. The Sunbeam Alpine has been repainted to match the one James Bond drove in Doctor No.

This 1979 Triumph Spitfire has just a few thousand miles on the odometer. It was won as a prize in Las Vegas and spent most of its life in a garage.

Following a visit to the museum, members of the British Embassy enquired about supplying cars for an event in Washington, DC. The museum was unable to meet the request but this beautiful 1959 MG-A did make an appearance. The photo propped against the windshield shows dignitaries admiring the car at the ambassador’s home.

Of course, not all British autos were two-seat sports cars or tiny sedans. Several Rolls Royce limousines and big Jaguar saloons are on display and not even all MGs were as small as we Americans tend to think. I believe Dave said the light-colored 1939 MG WA was the largest MG ever built. The darker-colored 1950 MG YA isn’t much smaller.

As mentioned, the museum’s collection includes bicycles, motorcycles, and boats. At present, there are no experts on any of these vehicles involved so no organized displays exist excepting this boat. Donald Healey was quite the collaborator in building cars. Think Austin-Healey, Nash-Healey, and Jensen-Healey. At one point he made boats and collaborated there as well. This time it was with Stirling Moss. That sign is readable here.

There are many more cars on display than I’ve shown here and Dave supplied much more information than I’ve relayed (or remembered). This place is definitely worth a visit.

SCA Conference 2024

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My on-again-off-again trip to the 2024 Society for Commercial Archeology conference in Nashville is definitely on and underway. Day one consisted mostly of getting there then ended in a reception at the Willie Nelson Museum near Opryland. A wonky internet connection and a full schedule delayed the posting of this and the first day’s journal and an itinerary fully packed with bus tours will undoubtedly delay the next couple of days but they will eventually get there.

This entry lets blog-only subscribers know about the trip and provides a place for comments. The journal is here.

Entertrainment Farewell?

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On Wednesday, I visited the “World’s Largest Indoor Train Display” for only the second time. My first visit to  Entertrainment Junction was in January 2009 when it was in the news for having recently opened. News articles about the attraction were also behind this week’s visit but this time the stories were about an impending closing rather than a recent opening. As a fan of old roads and the stuff beside them, I am somewhat accustomed to restaurants, motels, and the like facing survival issues when the owner retires. I can even see some similarities between this news and the news in 2020 that Roadside America in Pennsylvania was closing permanently. But Roadside America had operated for eighty-five years before closing. Current plans are for Entertrainment Junction to shut down in January after just sixteen years. 

The model train layout at the Junction was huge when it opened and I don’t know that it has grown much in size since then. It has grown in details such as buildings, people, and other “decorations”.

Familiar names and scenes stand beside tracks occupied by trains that match the represented period. Details, sometimes a little quirky, are everywhere. Examples are the fellow escaping from the jail with the Fox Theater in the background and the shake shop in the full frontal view of the Fox.

Model railroading occupies the bulk of the space but there are plenty of displays devoted to the full-size variety too. The “American Railroad Museum” contains lots of interactive and stationary displays and there is a small theater with railroad videos playing non-stop.

You can also catch some video entertainment at the drive-in where excerpts from Flash Gorden movies and others are playing. There is also a video of the entire model train layout taken by a camera riding one of the trains.

I think the biggest addition that I noticed compared to my 2009 visit was a set of balcony-like structures providing overhead views of some of the train layouts. One of the raised levels contained a model representing Cincinnati’s Coney Island. This was the amusement park on the banks of the Ohio River that was replaced by Kings Island north of the city.

The miniature Coney Island is nice but the main purpose of the upper levels is to provide views like this. From here I could see the kids swimming from the bridge at the left of the middle picture and the fenced-in area just out of frame. The overhead view of the roundhouse offers a great opportunity to show how things have been filled in since 2009 and here is a ground-level look at that turntable in action.

The picture of the step was taken on one of the upper levels but it is just an example of raised platforms that exist just about everywhere there is something to see to help younger and shorter visitors see it. The subway station is an example of something that younger and shorter people can actually see better than us oversized folks.

A “behind the scenes” tour was offered in 2009 and I was treated to a look under some of the tracks and behind some of the magic by owner Don Oeters. There doesn’t appear to be anything like that offered now but there is a big window that provides a view of the railroad’s control center. It is Don’s desire to retire and the lack of a ready buyer that has the Junction scheduled for closure early next year. It is hard for me to imagine this fantastic handbuilt world being abandoned but as things stand that may be what happens. $6.5 million could change that. 

Columbus Zoo Lantern Festival

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Although I had heard of lantern displays, I had never attended one so Thursday’s experience was a completely new one for me. Apparently, the event is also something new for the Columbus Zoo but they had more than a month’s experience with it before I got there. The Columbus Zoo Lantern Festival opened on August 1 and will run through September 29.

It opens at 7:00 while the sun is still shining and remains open until 10:00 long after the sun has set. I initially thought that was much more time than was reasonably required but realized that the lanterns essentially fill the entire zoo. And it’s a really big zoo.

I probably saw less than a third of the lanterns in full sunlight. 

Then I revisited some of those and took in the remainder as things got darker.

In between my light and dark walks, I took in one of the two shows that are offered. These photos are from the Martial Arts show. The other show, which I did not see, is Shadow Puppets.

Of course, darkness and lanterns really do go together.

Many lanterns represent living creatures and some are close enough to scale to be considered lifesize. That is decidedly not the case with this group.

When I searched for this event, I called it a Chinese Lantern Festival and many of the lanterns displayed in Columbus match some shown on a website with that name. The Columbus event, however, mostly, but not entirely, avoids the word Chinese. Perhaps that is because the zoo and the lanterns are organized to represent all the different areas of the globe. Of course, that means there is a section that does represent China.

Admission includes unlimited rides which was wasted on me although I did briefly consider taking a few laps on the historic carousel. And there are bunches of lanterns not pictured here. The Columbus Zoo Lantern Festival is open tonight and there are two more weeks of Thursday through Sunday operation.

Musical Review
Hot Damn! It’s the Loveland Frog!
Hugo West Theatricals
at Loveland Stage Company Theater

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I believe I first heard of Hot Damn! It’s the Loveland Frog! about a year and a half ago when I was making plans to attend the inaugural Frogman Festival. It premiered at the 2014 Cincinnati Fringe Festival and had not been performed since. Resigned to accepting that I had missed what was likely my only chance of seeing it, the disappointment I felt last year probably made hearing that it would be performed this year even sweeter. I immediately reserved a seat in the front row for opening night.

That was last Thursday, and it was a hoot. It’s pretty obvious that the play’s writers, Mike Hall and Joshua Steele, realized something a decade ago that many residents of the city of Loveland have picked up on only recently: It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, it’s fun.

Nor does it matter if the music might not actually be, as promotional materials proclaim, bluegrass. The songs are good with lyrics that always help tell the story and are often quite funny. Almost every cast member sings and sings well. The four-piece band does a great job on every tune and may even sound a little bluegrassy in spots although it is done without the benefit of either banjo or mandolin. There is a fiddle, though, played by Linsey Rogers. She also plays “The Old Woman” who is also blind and often uses her bow like a cane. Tom Steele, Steve Goers, and Bill Jackson fill out the quartet on guitar, keys, and bass respectively.

In addition to the scenic, and in this context unavoidable, Little Miami River, the script brings in other bits of Loveland such as the Loveland Castle, the Valentine Ladies, the popular bike trail, and the fact that Jerry Springer once called the city home. Just about every version of the Loveland Frog legend is referenced in one way or another and that includes a questionable Twightwee Indian tale presented with the aid of shadow puppets. There are characters in the play based loosely on individuals associated with the two most commonly mentioned “sightings” in 1955 and 1972. Maybe I did not need to include the word “loosely” there since every connection between something in the play and something in real life is a loose one.

Hall and Steele find lots of humor in those loose connections then thicken the laughter and the plot with some complete fiction. At the heart of the play are brother and sister moonshiners that take advantage of the frogman legend to scare folks away from an operation so successful that it has its own brand labeled Mason jars. A dishonest and disgraced cop and an ambitious college professor add to the confusion and laughter. The show’s sponsor, Schwartzman Taxidermy, benefits from surprise product placement and heartfelt endorsements. The whole show is funny but a canoe and bathtub chase on the river and a tandem bicycle trailed by a tiny scooter got me to laugh the hardest. Both of these scenes make good use of a moving projected background which plays a role in other scenes as well.

There have been a few attempts to make the Loveland Frog scarey but he is usually seen as rather harmless. That is how he appears here when he shows up near the play’s conclusion and, Wizard of Oz style, makes sure all ends well. Before leaving, he assures us that when a certain celestial alignment, which I did not have the wherewithal to record, occurs, he will be waiting at the bar in Paxton’s. I hope to be there and will happily spring for the first round of Ribbit River Moonshine.

This is another of those reviews published too late to be useful. When I left home for Thursday’s show, several tickets remained for both the Friday and Saturday performances. I made plans to hurry home and ready the review for a Friday morning post to provide a little help in filling them. However, by the time I got home, Saturday was sold out and a single seat remained open for Friday. I could see that my help was not needed and aimed for the normal review publication day of Wednesday. That lone ticket was gone when I woke up Friday morning.

At the end of my post on that first Frogman Festival, I noted that I thought it looked successful, and wondered if there would be another. Despite a venue change and the main sponsor going out of business, there was, and dates for a 2025 event have already been set. I did not make this year’s event but Jacob the Carpetbagger did, and reported on it here.

That 2023 Frogman Festival post also included a picture of Loveland’s rather new mascot taken earlier in the year at the city’s Hearts Afire event. At the time it seems not to have registered with me that part of the mascot’s job was to promote a new festival debuting in October of this year. It’s pretty obvious, however, in this picture taken during Loveland’s 2024 Independence Day Parade. The first Return of the Frogman festival will take place on October 12, 2024, with plans to have another “Leap into the Legend” every leap year going forward. The Loveland Stage Company will also be involved with a showing of Frogman, the movie, which was just released in March. Sadly, at the moment it looks like I won’t be here to attend the festival but I sure hope it’s a success. I guess if I can wait ten years to see the musical, I can wait four years for the festival and — maybe — the movie.

Cars Galore

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I attended the Pap’s Rod Shop Labor Day Bash on Monday but I still don’t know much about it. At least not much about its organizers or venue although both are obviously quite interesting. The venue was the Evans Family Ranch which appears to be a thriving operation offering a variety of products and services. The results of a search for Paps Rod Shop are not so clear cut. Most hits point to a Facebook group or to announcements of or reports on the bash. One of the administrators of the 6K+ member Paps Rods n Kustoms Facebook group claims Pap’s Rod Shop as a workplace. Following that clue led to this video report about that administrator and a not quite public shop near Springfield, Ohio. Good stuff, for sure.

The word “rod” in the title, made me think of cars like these, and pre-1940s coupes and roadsters stuffed with modern V8s were certainly well-represented at the bash.

Of course, there are also some later-model vehicles with upgraded (to say the least) power plants on display. 

There was a time when engine upgrades were not required to make a car a hotrod. In those days, Mopars with toilet-bowl-sized carburetors and supercharged Studebakers came straight from the factory.

Posters for the bash spoke of more than 600 cars on display and I’m guessing that could be right. Among them were some decidedly non-rod and non-hot vehicles. That group is represented here by this personal memory jogger. My very first car was a 4-door 2-tone 1953 Chevy. Mine was a top-of-the-line Bel Air and green instead of blue and it had a 3-speed stick rather than a 2-speed Powerglide. I also believe mine had more rust but other aspects of this example, such as the engine compartment you could pretty much climb into, look very familiar.

Dulcimers Galore

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A couple of weeks ago, I didn’t even know that a dulcimer museum existed let alone that it was within a dozen miles of my home. On the last Sunday of August, I visited the American Folk Music School/The National Dulcimer Museum and learned that the museum has been in operation for about two years and that the school it shares space with has been there for about five years.

US-42 (a.k.a., Reading Road) splits into separate north and southbound sections in Sharonville, OH, where the museum is located. The windows in the opening photo face the northbound lanes. The entrance and a parking lot are at the rear of the building. When I entered, Vickey Sasser, the knowledgeable and energetic lady behind the operation, had just started a museum tour with a group of people who knew much more about dulcimers than I did. Some were wearing shirts with the logos of assorted area dulcimer clubs and Vickie knew several by name.

There are, of course, factory-made dulcimers but most of the more interesting ones, which means most of those in the museum, are made by individuals. The wide variations in design, materials, and craftsmanship are part of what makes them interesting.

Some well-known builders or performers have multiple instruments in the museum. By far the largest collection of this sort is associated with performer Kevin Roth. That’s Vickey Sasser in the third picture holding a dulcimer that, if I understood her correctly, Kevin had made specifically for a single performance of the national anthem at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

The museum is preparing a space for a collection of instruments from performer Bing Futch. Bing has performed and conducted workshops at the museum in the past and will be doing both again next June. Available right now is his video of a recent visit to the museum in which he and Vickie provide a much better overview than my few photos and uninformed commentary.

Although the bulk of the instruments displayed at the museum are mountain dulcimers, there are others including hammer dulcimers, autoharps, and flutes. Here Vickey is holding a hurdy-gurdy that I believe was made specifically for the museum. I have seen a few hurdy-gurdys in the past so already had some of my early misconceptions corrected but this one is small and simple and even opens for an up-close view of the internal workings. I think I finally understand how these things work.

Being open just two hours a month is clearly not a lot. Plus, due to another commitment, Vickey will not be opening the museum for its “last Sunday” showing in September. On the other hand, she is often on-site giving lessons and such so, if the scheduled monthly window can’t be made to work for you, there’s a pretty good chance it could be arranged for her to let you in that back door at some other time.