Author Archives: Denny

Clickable Collage of Done Deeds

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This week my world was once again too boring to provide a current event story. But it wasn’t too busy which is the other reason I sometimes use a canned post, as I most recently did on February 19 (Trip Peek # 122 Trip #84 Finding Holland), or recycle an older post, as I most recently did on January 29 (Happy Imbolc Again). So, instead of doing either of those things, I’m going to write about something on this website that I feel doesn’t get enough attention. That might really be saying something since I naturally feel that the entire website doesn’t get enough attention. I’m talking about the clickable collage of thumbnail images from completed trips.

I’ve had vague ideas about tooting this particular horn in the past but never pursued them very far. I thought of it again this week when I realized I had a little time to write a post but no real-time topic to write about. When that happened, I quickly realized that this was a pretty good time to write about the collage. You see the count of completed trips is currently a multiple of ten and the collage is ten images wide. That means I could produce the image above (which links to the real thing) without the uneven lower edge that it has 90% of the time.

For any that don’t know, this website came into being in 1999 to document a single road trip then hung around to document those that followed. Before long, a chronological list of completed trips appeared with highlights and such and links to the individual journals. This blog was added in 2011 to better support non-road trip postings and allow reader comments.

My 100th road trip occurred just a few months after the blog was started and there was a blog post noting it (The First One Hundred). I had already been selecting a single image from each trip to use in a now-retired feature on the home page and I included a collage of those images in that post. Just a couple of weeks later, the static collage was replaced with a clickable version that has grown as trips are completed and added. Hovering over an individual image will display the sequential number, year, and name of the trip. Clicking it leads to the associated journal.

I get great pleasure from just looking at the collage because each of those images has the potential for triggering tons of memories and together they remind me how much fun I’ve had over the last couple of decades. That will undoubtedly become even more valuable as more years go by. Of course, no one else has those memories to be triggered. I am very much aware of that but hope that others that look over the collage will see something they recognize or something they think interesting and worth a further look. There are 170 trips represented there now and it continues to grow slowly. I encourage you to take a look by clicking the opening image.

In addition to that 100th trip post where the collage first appeared, it was also mentioned a few years ago in a post on Some Subtle Stuff. A look at that might be worthwhile if that sort of thing interests you.

Short, Sweet, Wet, and Irish

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It took place on March 17 so obviously it’s Irish. It’s wet because of the heavy rain that fell before it started and the light rain that fell later. It’s sweet because that’s what most short things are said to be and it’s short because that’s what Hamiltonians wanted. The title quite accurately describes the first-ever Hamilton Ohio Saint Patrick’s Day Parade which those Hamiltonians labeled Ohio’s Shortest. I think the parade route was about 575 feet long but the margin of error isn’t much less than the distance separating the piper leading the parade and the fire engine at its tail. I’ve since learned that the piper is Thomas Eickelberger and that the fellows next in line are Jim Goodman, from Municipal Brew Works, and Michael Ryan, Hamilton’s Vice Mayor. Hamilton’s Mayor, Pat Moeller didn’t actually march in the parade but I did get a shot of him chatting with Eickelberger during the staging.

Municipal Brew Works was listed as the parade’s starting point with the route ending around the corner and up a block at Tano Bistro. I got a full frontal of that bicycle leaning against the brewery before the big kickoff.

Here is the parade after turning the corner. The official end point is behind me but not everyone made it that far. Many departed the route when they reached The Casual Pint or The Pour House. Tano and Chick’nCone got a few of the marchers and would get more later but most initially headed to the adult beverage dispensaries including MBW back at the start point.

The city of Hamilton is no stranger to celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day or to promoting shortness. The parade was followed by the second annual O’DORA Dash. DORA stands for Designated Outdoor Refreshment Area where adults can carry alcoholic beverages and, as everyone knows, adding an ‘O’ will make anything Irish. Despite the word “dash” in its name, speed in covering the 0.1K course doesn’t seem particularly important. In fact, I saw no evidence of any time or speed-measuring devices anywhere near the event.

Much of the chatter about the event concerns not spilling your beer and I saw several participants meet that requirement by chugging their beverage at the beginning. But the official goal was to get as much liquid (either green beer or local Pahhni Water) as possible to the other end. True competitors were not deterred in the least by winds taking down the finish line marker. The Hamilton Community Foundation will benefit from the fundraiser regardless of who won or how much rainwater was in their cup.

I was already planning on attending the parade when I found out that someone I know would be playing at North Second Tap and Bottle Shop. When I got there, the new-to-me Bedel and Hibbard were on stage. Elijah Bedel and Sam Hibbard perform mostly American folk music on a variety of instruments. That’s a gourd banjo on the right side of the first picture and the banjo and fiddle on the picture’s left side are part of the mix too. Today’s song list was naturally slanted toward Ireland. Not only were they doing an afternoon set, but they would also be returning later to close out the night.

Although I’ve seen Rob McAllister do sets that would qualify as American folk music, that would not be happening today. Today it would be Dead Man String Band at full throttle. Usually checking out a guitarist’s pedal board will reveal an array of effects boxes with buttons. The Dead Man’s has real pedals and he uses them all. And somehow, replacing the tom rack on a bass drum with a microphone just seems to fit.

With the exception of the cold, I enjoyed everything about my day in Hamilton. I especially appreciated the sheer fun of the parade which kind of reminded me of the Cincinnati parade before all the sanctimonious family values posturing took over. The O’DORA Dash was fun to watch and I enjoyed a few malt beverages although none were green. And I appreciated hearing music in a place where others appreciated it too. Can there be any doubt that a place is cool when there is a wizard on the soundboard and a leprechaun on the bar?

Play Review
A Chorus Line
Playhouse in the Park

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This is no more about an actual play than was my most recent Play Review post. That post ostensibly concerned Company, a musical with six Tony Awards and a cast of fourteen. The musical in this post’s title won ten Tonys and has a cast of twenty-six. That previous post was really about the production company. Both posts involved theaters I was entering for the first time, and the theater is what this post is really about.

I’ve attended many performances at Playhouse in the Park but I entered The Rouse Theater for the first time Tuesday because it is brand new. As the heart of a $50 million project, it replaces the aging Marx Theater with a fully ADA-accessible facility. Many improvements, such as dressing and rehearsal rooms, do not involve the performance space. Others, including a fly gallery and an area below the stage, do but are still out of the audience’s view. A luxury lounge and upper-level restrooms are among the things yet to be completed.

The picture at right shows the view from my seat in the very last row of the balcony. Not too shabby in my opinion. A Chorus Line is the first production in the new theater. Apparently, the official opening night is Thursday with performances on Saturday, Tuesday, and Wednesday being called previews. The ribbon-cutting ceremony took place on Monday which makes the whole sequence kind of confusing to me. I guess that’s show business.

ADDENDUM 15-Mar-2023: It will not surprise anyone when I acknowledge that attending a play and posting even a slim and shallow review of it the next morning is something of a challenge. The photo at left is one that I simply forgot I had. It was taken as I approached the Playhouse on Art Museum Drive and shows how the new theater is now a real presence beyond its hilltop plateau. I fully intended to somehow include a reference to last year’s Getting Springy in Cincy post but it became just another thing I forgot. Scroll to the bottom for a couple of pictures of the under-construction theater taken nearly a year ago and one from my last time inside the Marx Theater taken on the same day.

Railroad Stations Stamps Dedication

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Thursday was a very special day for serious rail fans who live near Cincinnati and collect stamps. It was actually a pretty special day for casual rail fans who live near Cincinnati and don’t collect stamps. I know that because I’m in that second group. Thursday, March 9, was the first day of issue for a set of commemorative postage stamps featuring five historic train stations. Not only is Cincinnati’s Union Terminal one of those stations, but it was also the site of the dedication ceremony introducing the stamps.

Images of the stamps have been available for some time so the official unveiling would not be all that dramatic. Even so, I was surprised to see that the stamps and associated items were on sale ahead of the 11:00 AM dedication. That sign in front of the terminal can be read here.

I bought two sheets and a set of first day covers. I may save one sheet but one is definitely to use. I got the set of covers largely because I didn’t know what I was doing. I really just wanted a first day cover with the Cincinnati stamp but ended up with all five. The other stations are in Tamaqua, PA; Point of Rocks, MD; Richmond, VA; and San Bernardino, CA. Read about the stamps and the stations here. As it turned out, I would not have had to buy any as the program for the dedication was in a first day cover with the Cincinnati stamp. A cool pin was also included.

Seeing that John Lomax was the emcee was a wonderful surprise. John recently retired from WKRC-TV where he was one of my favorite news anchors. After the ceremony concluded, most of the participants stayed for autographs. I initially headed elsewhere but when the line got quite short decided to get that envelope in the previous panel signed. When I reached John, I told him that we had spent a few Reds opening days and a couple of car shows together — even though he didn’t know it.

A color guard from the Loveland American Legion and VFW posts presented the colors and DeMarco Reed from the School for Creative and Performing Arts did an impressive job singing the national anthem. We were all welcomed by Cincinnati Museum Center CEO Elizabeth Pierce and Hamilton County Commission President Alicia Reece. Pierce remarked on what a nice coincidence it was to have a commemorative stamp issued during the terminal’s 90th year. The Cincinnati Museum Center is housed in the terminal.

Daniel Tangherlini from the USPS Board of Governors presided over the actual “unveiling”. Tangherlini deviated from his prepared speech to note that this train-related event was taking place in a state where two significant train incidents (derailments near East Palestine and Springfield) had recently occurred. He called these reminders of the need to keep safety front and center in USPS operations.

Following the dedication, Janice Forte and Nicholas Cates shared personal memories of Union Terminal. Forte is a historian and docent at the building. Some of her memories involved interactions with visitors who had their own memories. Cates grew up in the area and told of his inspiring first visit while in high school and the incredible good fortune that brought him back to the city and the role of lead architect on the terminal’s recent restoration.

When all the formalities were over, I made a visit to the Amtrak passenger area next to the auditorium then joined the autograph line as I mentioned before. Back in the rotunda, the previously covered image of the Cincinnati stamp had been revealed and sales had slowed a bit but were still going strong.

Before leaving, I grabbed pictures of some of the murals in the rotunda, that iconic domed ceiling, and the model of the terminal that is part of the “Cincinnati in Motion” exhibit in the history museum.

When passenger service moved from Union Terminal in 1972, my sister-in-law and I headed there to take some pictures. We were turned away but as we walked back toward our car we saw a man with a box of toy trains being admitted. We then learned that a hobby shop temporarily remained in business inside the building and customers were permitted access. We declared ourselves customers and were allowed through the door to walk directly to and from the shop. Once there, we realized that the shop dealt in expensive (to our budgets) model train gear. Being more or less obligated to buy something, we did find one thing we could afford and each bought an envelope that had been carried and canceled on the last train to leave the terminal. That “last day” envelope, for which I paid $2 plus 9¢ tax, is pictured with the “first day” envelope, for which I paid $1.18 (set of 5 for $5.90) and no tax. A clear example of the advantage of going straight to the source and buying in bulk.

Our walk from the store was not quite as direct as our walk to it had been as we feverishly snapped pictures of anything that looked interesting. Neither was it as direct as at least one observer would have liked. We had stopped shooting and were probably halfway across the big open space when a man emerged from somewhere and shouted something with the word “pictures” in it. We mumbled something back and kept walking. He was in pursuit as we reached the door and exited but apparently decided that we weren’t worth going outside for. It is the only time I’ve ever thought it quite possible that someone might grab my camera and pull the film from it.

I know not where those pictures are. My photography was a very low-budget affair in those days. It’s likely that they were shot on black & white film that I bought in bulk and spooled and developed myself. It is also likely that few if any were ever printed. Those negatives may eventually turn up somewhere or they may be truly lost to the world. Thankfully that wonderful building has not been even though it came very close.

Play Review
Company
Loveland Stage Company

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Loveland’s got Talent! Rest assured that I’m not going to review the actual play. Company has been around since 1970 and won six Tony Awards after being nominated for fourteen. It is a collaboration between George Furth and Stephen Sondheim. Sondheim did the words and music and he’s won eight Tonys himself. Nope. I’ll not be reviewing that. In fact, I’m not even reviewing this particular production nearly as much as I am praising the company behind it and severely chastising myself for missing out on something this cool for so long.

Loveland Stage Company is community theater. The community it belongs to is centered on a town of 13,000 or so. That’s not the entirety of their talent pool, of course. The area is well populated. Downtown Cincinnati is less than twenty miles from the theater. That 13,000 is clearly not an absolute limit but it does indicate that a limit does exist. Had I been the least bit familiar with Company before Sunday afternoon, I would probably have predicted a straining of the pool. There are fourteen parts. Fourteen speaking, singing, and dancing parts. In my mind, that seems like an awful lot of amateur talent to pull together from my neighborhood. It was — an awful lot of talent. It didn’t — strain the pool. All fourteen roles were filled with extremely capable actors plus extremely capable musicians filled the hidden nine-piece orchestra.

As I write this, I regret that I left my program behind. I often, but not always, do that at other theaters and I thought that was even more appropriate here than at those pro and semi-pro operations. The program contained interesting biographies of all the cast and orchestra members. I assumed that that information would be available online but it is not. An online “Prompter” does identify all cast members but there are no biographies. Orchestra members are not identified.

Maybe that’s just as well. With those biographies at hand, I would be tempted to focus on individuals and this was about as much of an ensemble performance as I’ve seen. Everyone on that stage held the spotlight at multiple points throughout the play and everyone delivered. This was probably a pretty good vehicle for a first look at LSC. It let me appreciate the entire operation and made it apparent that there is considerable talent in every piece of it. That impression started with the friendly and helpful ladies at the ticket counter and continued as I listened to the folks managing the lighting and the sound from a stage full of individually miced actors and all those musicians behind the screen. The set itself did a nice job of keeping focus in the right place while often having more than a dozen potential speakers in view.

My appreciation certainly extends to the two ladies at stage right who signed the entire performance. My impression is that every play mounted by LSC offers American Sign Language for at least one performance although I’m not entirely sure of that.

Loveland Stage Company was founded in 1979. I lived inside Loveland city limits from about 1981 to 1997. I visited the town frequently before I physically moved there and visit even more frequently now that I’ve moved a few miles away. I have driven by the LSC theater perhaps hundreds of times. I have seen many interesting titles displayed on that marquee. That I’d not previously been inside is both inexplicable and inexcusable. The performance I saw Sunday compares favorably with some I’ve seen in downtown Cincinnati. Walkable restaurants around LSC also compare favorably with those around the downtown theaters and the parking is cheaper. There’s some Shakespeare (Twelfth Night) coming up at LSC in a couple of months which I hope to catch. I’m also quite curious about what next season will bring.

Company continues through Match 19.

Support Your Local Cryptid

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I can’t really claim to be a big supporter of cryptids of any sort but I can claim to support my local cryptids more than any of the others. I have taken a few pictures of Bigfoot signs and statues but I’ve never gone out of my way to do it, and I’ve never for a moment thought of going to Scotland solely to look for that critter reported to live in Loch Ness. I have, however, visited Point Pleasant, West Virginia, a couple of times primarily to admire the Mothman statue, and when I heard about the first-ever Frogman Festival, I figured attending it would just be proper. You can’t get much more local than a cryptid sighting a mile and a half from where I once lived and less than three miles from where I live now.

Some background, I suspect, might be in order. I’ll start with a definition. I now know what a cryptid is but I didn’t a few years ago and the word is not one I use daily. From Wikipedia: “Cryptids are animals that cryptozoologists believe may exist somewhere in the wild, but are not recognized by science. Cryptozoology is a pseudoscience, which primarily looks at anecdotal stories, and other claims rejected by the scientific community.” Mothman, which has been sighted about 120 miles from my home, is a cryptid and I believe the pictured inflatable is a representation. Here is a picture of a more solid, but not necessarily more accurate, rendition that’s in his hometown.

The Loveland Frog or Frogman is a cryptid that some cryptozoologists believe lives, or at least lived, in or near the Little Miami River around Loveland, Ohio. There are numerous descriptions floating around and even some reports of more recent sightings but essentially all descriptions mention sightings in 1955 and 1972. The creature is sometimes described as having webbed hands and sometimes as having human-like hands. Sometimes it’s very frog-like and sometimes it is basically a human with the face of a frog. Sometimes it’s about three feet tall but sometimes it’s closer to six feet. There are many other variations too. Legends and cryptids are often like that.

Vendors were a major part of the festival. It was announced at the start of the presentations that there were fifty-two vendors present representing twelve states. They filled the majority of the space offering clothing, books, games, a variety of craft items, and some really serious masks. Some very impressive works of art could also be found.

Here is an aspect of the festival that was a complete surprise to me. A company named MetaZoo was identified as the festival’s official sponsor. The name meant nothing to me but I soon learned that it is a gaming company and that a big tournament was part of the festival. I said that vendors had the majority of space but that’s because vendors were set up in the hallways. Space inside the main room was about evenly split between vendors and gamers. I don’t know much about the game itself but it looks like wizard hats, swimming goggles, and other paraphernalia could be important. I did learn from one of the people supervising the tournament that the play was one-on-one with winners advancing. The final rounds will be held at the tables with overhead cameras sending the action to the large screens. At the moment, all tables were being used so that random preliminary games were taking place at those tables.

I took in some but not all of the festival’s eight hours of presentations. The first picture is of one of the event’s organizers, Jeff Craig, introducing the first speaker. Dee Elliott talked about the effect of “hauntings” on three small West Virginia towns. Ashley Hilt’s presentation was entitled “Mothman” but it ended up touching on other sightings as well. I realize it looks like Mickey Mouse ears on the pair of audience members but they are actually frog eyes. Quite a few attendees were wearing frog eyes or something similar.

James Willis’ “Frogman of Loveland, Ohio” presentation was the main thing I wanted to see and I was certainly not alone. This was a standing-room-only presentation that was worth the price of addition. Willis dug into original police and newspaper reports to construct a rather thorough history of the legend. It’s the first time I’ve heard a version of this saga that makes sense.

The City of Loveland seems to have embraced its local cryptid. The picture at left was taken during the recent Hearts Afire weekend which I reported on here. That’s the city mascot greeting a young visitor on the bike trail.

I suppose it’s too early to know if this will become an annual event or was a one-time thing. It was clearly well-attended which I assume means it was a success. I had fun and learned more than I expected and will be on the lookout for a big festival or a big frog.

 

Book Review
Lost Treasures of Cincinnati
Amy E. Brownlee

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Amy E. Brownlee is a lifelong Cincinnatian. She naturally learned a lot about the city growing up here then used that knowledge and added much more during her ten years at Cincinnati Magazine. An awful lot of the treasures she writes about in Lost Treasures of Cincinnati were lost before she arrived but a rather frightening number have disappeared during her lifetime. Of course, an even larger number have disappeared during mine. Neither of us is responsible for that. I swear it’s coincidence pure and simple.

Lost Treasures of Cincinnati contains five major sections with several sub-sections in each. Most pages are split between two different lost treasures although more than a few treasures get a page all to themselves. Most descriptions are accompanied by images and these are usually of the actual treasure but there are exceptions to both. I believe that each treasure is described in a single paragraph although it is possible that an exception or two escaped me.

The book opens with “Food and Drink” in Section 1 then covers “Entertainment” and “Retail” in the next two sections. The smallest section, “Media”, is followed by the largest, “Community”. Definitions for those section titles are not particularly rigid and the size of the “Community” section probably indicates that it is the least rigid of all. It is where things like churches and breweries, of which Cincinnati had more than a few, appear.

Most, but not quite all, of the breweries mentioned in the book were gone before I got here. Likewise with restaurants and attractions which together comprise the biggest part of things that have disappeared during my lifetime. I caught one show, Hair, at the Shubert (“Entertainment”) before it was torn down. I also saw one movie at the Albee (“Entertainment”) but I don’t remember what it was. I had one meal each at The Gourmet Room and the Maisonette (“Food and Drink”) before they closed. There are quite a few places in this book where I ate one or more meals or watched one or more movies, plays, games, or concerts. Encountering each of them on these pages prompted memories that went way beyond the single paragraph of text. Reading about places that were already gone when I came to Cincinnati didn’t prompt any memories, of course, but it did make me appreciate just how many treasures have been lost.

I really enjoyed reading Lost Treasures of Cincinnati cover-to-cover front-to-back but as I did, two other ways of reading the book came to mind. With its fairly short standalone essays, it seems like a natural fit for that popular personal reading room with the porcelain furniture. Its use as a reference book also seems rather natural. I don’t mean an every-last-detail reference book to use in conducting deep-dive research but a great place to answer questions like “What was the name of that boat-shaped restaurant?” or “What happened to our NBA team?”. The full index will help the book play that role.

Lost Treasures of Cincinnati, Any E. Brownlee, Reedy Press (October 1, 2022), 6 x 9 inches, 192 pages, ISBN 978-1681063263
Available through Amazon.

Cars for a Cause

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The Butlers made a little money selling bathtubs on the internet. Actually, bathtubs aren’t the only things Matt Butler and his dad Mike sell at Signature Hardware, and saying they made a little money might not be telling the whole truth either. In Mike’s case, he made enough to buy a couple of hundred used cars. All were built in America between 1903 and around 1980. Apparently, Mike has occasionally let groups see his collection of cars and recently started letting the public at large in to see them — for a cause.

I first learned of Collection 21 last month when I saw this Citybeat article. The collection is available for viewing on Fridays and Saturdays from 10 AM to 4 PM. 100% of the requested $15 donation goes to Housing Opportunities of Northern Kentucky. I visited last Friday and the trio at left more or less greeted me when I entered. The red car is a replica of a 1936 Auburn Boattail Speedster built on a modern GM chassis. It was the only replica I noticed in the collection. The pair of 1937 Cord 812s that bracket it are very real as was every other car I took note of.

I had barely moved beyond those Cords when these Lincolns caught my eye. The 4-door is a 1967. I remember seeing a slightly older model in high school and thinking it was one of the coolest cars ever. Lincoln 4-door convertibles still fascinate me. The 2-door should fascinate everybody. The Derham Body Company made two of these 2-seaters in 1962 by drastically shortening full-size Lincoln Contentials. The resulting car is actually four inches shorter than a same-year Corvette. The idea never went beyond the prototype stage and one of the cars was totaled making this the only one of its kind.

This car was factory built and it’s not one of a kind but it sure is strange. It is a 1929 Chevrolet AC International Landau Convertible and there were supposedly about 300 of them made. I guess it’s for people who enjoy open-air motoring just a wee tiny bit.

The cars are not formally arranged although there are clusters of similar vehicles. I’ve clustered three cars with distinctive front ends together in this panel. The 1959 “slant-eyed” Lincoln and 1950 “bullet-nosed” Studebaker were physically side-by-side’ although I can’t say why. The 1940 “sharknose” Graham was several cars away.

The first Ford Ranchero car/truck was a 1957 model. The Chevrolet El Camino would not appear until 1959. Maybe the carlike fiberglass trim on the 1958 Apache Cameo Carrier was intended to fill the gap. Dodge put station wagon fins on their Sweptside pickups in 1957 and ’58 but they never did make a full-size Ranchero/El Camino equivalent.

The 1946 Lincoln Continental and 1939 Packard 1703 were parked next to each other. If there is a need to impress the neighbors, I’m pretty sure that either of these would do the job. That’s a 1931 Ford Model A in the foreground of that third picture but the thing that caught my eye was the shiny temperature gauge on the 1928 Dodge Brothers Victory Six beside it. The next car in line is a 1912 Maxwell Messenger.

When I eventually exited the building, two other fellows were beside me. We all made comments about how impressive the collection was. I mentioned that I had never seen so many split-window Corvettes in one place. They both agreed but when I said I thought there were seven of them, I was corrected. I had forgotten one near the front which made eight. I’d never had to count them before and just didn’t do well. There are five in this picture. The others are scattered here and there.

Among the brass-era cars in the collection is this 1911 Model 30 Cadillac. The Model 30 was manufactured from 1908 through 1914 with the price growing from $1400 to nearly $2000. When this particular car was built, the base price was about $1700. In 1912, the Model 30 became the first production car with an electric starter.

I could have included this 1903 Curved Dash Oldsmobile in the earlier panel of distinctive front ends. No electric starter for this guy. With production starting in 1901, this is generally considered the first mass-produced automobile. By the time production ended in 1907, roughly 19.000 of these one-cylinder wonders had been built.

If I had turned left instead of right when I came in, this 1954 Kaiser Darrin, with its own distinctive front end — and doors — would have been one of the first cars I saw rather than nearly the last. They say there are between 220 and 230 cars here at any time and that all can be started and driven. I have obviously shown just a tiny fraction in this post. Seeing cars as rare as many of those here at way under a dime a piece is a great deal and knowing you’re helping a charity makes it even better.

Product Review
Route 66 Navigation
by Touch Media

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Those who have read some of my writings on various routing devices are probably aware of my frustration at almost all of these devices being concerned with reaching a point with absolutely no consideration for following a specific path to get there. It’s a sad situation that has only gotten worse. Garmin continues to make models that support this to some degree but they are pricy and, in my opinion, not exactly ideal. A company named River Pilot Tours once offered a turn-by-turn guide to Route 66 (reviewed here) that worked with certain Garmin models but gave it up when compatibility issues appeared with newer Garmin products. MAD Maps once offered a selection of guides that worked with those same Garmin products to provide turn-by-turn directions. When newer Garmin products caused problems, they were dropped and plans announced to replace them with guides for smartphones.

I was kind of excited when Touch Media announced this Route 66 Navigation app in early 2018. Combined with MAD Maps’ smartphone plans, it made me think that I might soon be able to use my phone for the sort of path following that most dedicated GPS receivers weren’t very good at. But I couldn’t check out Touch Media’s product myself since it required being on the route and MAD Maps products required waiting. Then the COVID-19 pandemic pushed aside most travel and any chance to test the Route 66 Navigation app. Maybe it also pushed aside MAD Maps app development. Something did. The MAD Maps website still mentions “apps for iPhone and Android platforms (Fall 2021)” but I can find no product listed in Google’s Play Store.

There were a couple of near misses and at least one false start but I finally got to give Touch Media’s Route 66 Navigation a try during my 2022 Christmas MOP trip. A winter storm interfered a bit with my plans so I made my trial headed northeast rather than southwest as intended. That really didn’t matter since the app supports travel in either direction. I began with a drive from Tulsa, OK, to Carthage, MO. The app offers two alignments and I went with the recommended “A” alignment. This appears to be the more “mainstream” of the two. The app uses current position and selected direction to determine a list of cities from which to pick start and end points.

The route appears as a line on the map and it is never recalculated. That was my first real evidence that this product might be different from the rest. A circular green pointer tracks current position in real-time. The next driving instruction is displayed at the top of the screen along with its distance. Each instruction is announced vocally immediately after completing the one previous and at various points that follow. A final “Now turn left” or something similar is spoken with just enough time to complete the maneuver provided you are in the correct lane. These vocal instructions are quite important to me since I mostly travel alone. My phone or GPS receiver fills the role of navigator without arguing about turning back to photograph an old barn, complaining about me making the same wrong turn three times in a row, or decimating my snack supply.

There is a gap in the app’s audible offerings that I think is kind of serious. It has knowledge of somewhere around a thousand points of interest along the historic highway. A visual notification appears when one of them comes near. That’s useful if you’re actually watching the phone but is almost always missed if you’re watching something else like the road. A spoken name or other identifier would be wonderful but even a simple beep, which is what the River Pilot Tours Garmin app did, would be enough. In fact, I initially thought that the beep I heard occasionally might be a POI alert but was unable to associate it with actual attractions. I eventually learned that it is a speed limit alert than can be disabled.

Of course, that brief visual announcement is not the only way to learn of POIs. Markers for them are displayed on the map and there is a list organized by state. Details, such as those shown for Gay Parita, are accessed by clicking a marker or list entry and are available whether or not you are anywhere near Route 66. Navigating directly to a POI can be initiated from its detail page.

For me, how the navigation aspect of the app behaves when a traveler veers off of the route is arguably the most important question related to this product. Although veering off route is something I did many times (both intentionally and not), I somehow failed to grab a single screenshot of it. The short description is that it does pretty much what I think it should. For starters, it does not recalculate the main path. The line that represents Historic Route 66 remains in place. The app automatically calculates a path back to the nearest point on that line. This secondary path is constantly recalculated — as turns are missed and the nearest on-route point changes — until you are back on course. Excellent!

There is much to this product that I haven’t explored or even touched on. I don’t even know for certain that my biggest negative, the lack of audible POI alerts, isn’t solvable by some setting that I haven’t found. I do know that the answer to my biggest question is yes. Yes, Route 66 Navigation will keep you on course along Historic Route 66. It will do it in both directions and will let you choose between a recommended and alternative path for your travels. Of course, there are many more than two possible paths on Route 66 and it is really impossible for any guide to offer them all. Identifying every possible point of interest is also near impossible and I can’t say for sure that one or more haven’t been missed. But the version I have installed lists 1,154 so it couldn’t have left out very many. Each entry contains a photo, a description, the location, and contact information if appropriate. The Touch Media staff has done an impressive job in pulling all this information together and Route 66 authority Jim Hinckley has supplied much of the descriptive text. In another stick-with-the-experts move, the RSS feed from Ron Warnick’s Route 66 News is used for the app’s own news section.

The app can be downloaded free from Apple’s App Store or Google Play and many of its features accessed at no cost. However, access to its real reason for existing, real-time navigation, requires a paid subscription. Because I have an active subscription, I cannot currently see the in-app pricing but do know that I paid $30.09 for a one-year Android subscription. Online sources show varying rates but all are somewhere around $20/week or $40/year. The price has triggered some negative comments and the fact that it is a subscription has triggered even more. Some of those comments are from people who think that all things digital should be free because no steel, gold, or vinyl is physically transferred. Those can be completely ignored.

I’m no different than most folks in instinctively preferring a one-time purchase over a subscription but I also understand that the purchase model might not be the best for products subject to frequent changes from outside sources. Route 66 Navigation is clearly one of those products. Over time, businesses and roads open and close, and reflecting the real world is key to this app’s value. Although “subscription” is an accurate label, thinking of Route 66 Navigation’s period-based payments as “rent” might work better for some people. Many Route 66 travelers rent vehicles for the trip. Renting or hiring a guide is not terribly different.

Regarding the price, everyone has to evaluate that for themselves. For this solo traveler, having a reliable navigator tell me when and where to turn without criticizing my driving or raiding my cooler is nearly priceless. I personally think Route 66 Navigation is priced right. Now, if I only had a way to make my phone behave similarly for routes I’ve plotted myself, I could ditch my Garmin or at least get by with a cheaper one. 

Trip Peek # 122
Trip #84
Finding Holland

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This picture is from my 2010 Finding Holland trip. It was my first time seeing two musicians that I’ve since seen many times and whom I now consider friends. That’s Josh Hisle on guitar and Michael G Rondstadt on cello. At the time they formed a duo named “Lost in Holland” which is where the trip title came from. I did not then realize that Holland is the name of Josh’s son. Although ostensively a shake-down outing for the duo’s about-to-launch tour, many other musicians were on hand and contributed to a great evening of music. The concert was in Rising Sun, IN, which I took advantage of by booking a room in a historic hotel I’d long had my eye on. In the morning, I drove west to Madison before turning east to my home.

Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.