And Now For Something Completely Different:
A Guest Post on the 1913 Flood

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Denny

There hasn’t been a lot of requests/offers to do a guest post on this blog but there have been a few. Until the most recent, all were from sites with nothing but contrived and flimsy similarities. They resembled shotgun “link swap” requests more than anything and that, of course, made them easy to ignore. The latest request was different. It came from some fellow Ohioans who call themselves “weekend history buffs”. Their recently launched website looks promising and their initial round of blog posts involves something that’s been on my mind of late. Exactly one hundred years ago today, water started spilling into the streets of Dayton, Ohio, from stressed levees. The flood that followed is the topic of this post from the folks at HistoricNaturalDisasters.com.

ADDENDUM 27-Mar-2022: Obviously my ability to assess new websites leaves much to be desired. HistoricNaturalDisasters may have been promising but it was not delivering. It is now gone and probably has been for quite some time. This nine-year-old guest post may be the only remaining online evidence that it ever existed.

HistoricNaturalDisasters.com Guest Post

The week of March 21st through March 26th marks the 100 year anniversary of one of the greatest natural disasters to ever hit the United States. A series of storms caused flooding and even tornadoes that ravaged the Midwest and parts of New England during this week in 1913 and left hundreds dead and thousands homeless, and caused billions of dollars in damage. One of the cities hit the hardest by the storm’s fury was Dayton, Ohio.

Located along the Great Miami River bend, Dayton had been prone to major flooding events every decade or so since its establishment in 1796. What happened during the storm of 1913, however, was a flood the magnitude of which was unlike anything Dayton had ever seen. Starting on March 21, storms dumped between 8 and 11 inches of rain on the already oversaturated Great Miami River watershed causing all the rivers in the region to swell far beyond their normal banks. At approximately 6 AM on March 25th, the levees holding back the Great Miami River broke and water began to rush into the Dayton streets at speeds approaching 25 miles per hour.

The waters filled the city so rapidly that most of the residents were trapped in their homes and many were quickly forced to take refuge on their roofs as the waters filled the first and second floors of their homes. Many people were faced with essentially camping on their roofs for days on end as they waited for rescue, which proved nearly impossible for relief workers in boats due to the incredibly strong currents of the flood water. The currents were so forceful in fact that many homes and business were literally ripped from their foundations and carried away by the waters, disappearing from the Dayton streets forever.

Downtown Dayton was among the hardest hit areas, with flood waters reaching a high of 20 feet in some spots. Unfortunately, the destruction was just beginning, as fire took hold where the waters receded, fed by natural gas escaping from broken stoves and gas lines and pushed along by strong winds. An entire block of businesses and factories in downtown Dayton was burned down to the water line, with the fire department unable to get men and equipment close enough to help due to the depth of flood waters.

By the end of the flood, March 26th, the damage was widespread. 14 square miles of the Dayton were underwater, and more than 360 people were dead. Some 20,000 homes were completely destroyed, an estimated 65,000 people were left homeless, and all told, the city had suffered close to $100 million ($2 billion in today’s dollars) worth of damage. The cleanup effort took more than a year to complete and Dayton’s economy didn’t make it back to pre-flood levels until more than a decade after the disaster.

1913: Fifth and Ludlow Streets in downtown Dayton during the worst of the flooding

1913: The ruins of the Lowe Brothers Paint Store on the Southeast corner of East Third and Jefferson Street in Dayton

2013: The corner of East Third and Jefferson Streets as it appears today

1913: Fifth and Ludlow Streets in downtown Dayton during the worst of the flooding

2013: Fifth and Ludlow Streets in downtown Dayton as it appears today

Thanks so much to Denny Gibson for letting us share a piece of this historical project on DennyGibson.com. We’re humbled by the interest in this project, and we really hope you enjoyed this snippet of history!

We’d also like to thank some of the great archives and archivists who have done so much work to preserve the amazing history of the 1913 flood, including the Dayton Metro Library and historian Trudy Bell. The amount of history compiled at these two websites is amazing. Lastly, thanks to Jason from InsuranceTown.com, who lent us some of the resources we used to help prepare content for the web and publish our blog and inspired our Mapping History Contest.

Don’t forget to check out HistoricNaturalDisasters.com for more images and for information on our Mapping History Contest – help us figure out the locations pictured in historic photos from 1913 and you could win $100!

My Wheels — Chapter 3
1953 Chevrolet

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Denny

In rural Ohio in the middle of the last century, there was no event anticipated with anywhere near the level of intensity as a fifteen year old male’s next birthday. Mine was in the spring of 1963 and I planned for it like a general plans an attack. I’m a little surprised that I’ve forgotten some of the details that I once knew so well but I suppose that the passing of five decades could account for a little memory fade. There was a written test to get a learner’s permit that allowed you to drive with a licensed driver beside you. Then there was a driving test that included parallel parking to get your license. Some amount of time had to pass between the two. I no longer recall what that time was but I do know that I barely exceeded it. I took the test in Dad’s 1961 Comet then, as soon as we got home, pulled back onto the road in my own car. A couple of months before becoming a licensed driver, I had become an automobile owner with the acquisition of a 1953 Chevrolet four door sedan. I’m sixteen, you’re beautiful, and you’re mine.

The Comet was an automatic and a compact. I think it may have had power brakes but not power steering though I’m far from certain about that. In any case, driving it was easy compared to the 3-on-the-tree Chevy. Dad wasn’t fond of riding in the Chevy and, although he was one of the most patient people in the world, I think my lack of skill with the clutch was an irritant to him. Pretty much all of my “learning” had been in the Comet. Armed with my brand new license, I spent that first afternoon starting and stopping on empty country roads near home. I eventually reached the point where I could launch the Chevy on level ground without killing the engine or spinning the tires most of the time. Then I drove to a bridge I’d previously selected for its somewhat steep approaches. I drove back and forth across the bridge several times with a stop and start on the upward slope of the approach on every pass. By the time I returned home I felt there was a chance I could actually drive the Chevy in public without embarrassing myself too much.

1953 Chevrolet My car was a green and white Bel Air that looked a lot like the car at left. Exceptions were that mine was a 4-door and it never looked nearly that shiny while I owned it. Late in the summer I threw a rod and did my first engine swap with something out of a wreck. During the winter, the front got a little wrinkled when I was intentionally doing donuts in the snow and unintentionally found a guard rail in my path. When the rods in my junkyard engine started knocking in the spring, the Chevy was done.

This car was ten years old when I bought it for $150 and it was beat. I don’t recall how many miles were on it but there was a fair amount of rust and other signs of wear to go along with those short lived rod bearings. In those days, pampered garage kept vehicles could somewhat avoid the rust and there were rumors of engines that ran 100,000 miles but most people I knew didn’t believe them. Today there are plenty of good looking ten year old cars on the road and 100,000 is deemed break in mileage. Yep, they sure don’t build ’em like they used to.

Previous Wheels: Chapter 2 — 1948/9 Whizzer
Next Wheels: Chapter 4 — 1954 Mercury

Saint Paddy’s Eve

Posted on March 17, 2013 by Denny

Even though there was lots of rain Friday night and into Saturday morning, the weather guys were claiming it should stop in time for the noon start of Cincinnati’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. I believed them enough to head downtown and not only did the rain stop, the sun broke through the clouds more than an hour before step off time and some pretty serious warming got underway. At Arnold’s, the Guinness parade pictured at right was going on long before I got there and would continue throughout the day.

This parade has followed many routes over the years. Once upon a time, it actually started near Arnold’s but had not been very close is several years. Today’s route passed just a half-block away on Sycamore after running north on Eggleston and — quite briefly — west on Central parkway. The parade is always led by the statue of Saint Patrick seen in the first picture passing the recently opened Horseshoe Casino. The casino wasn’t the only “new” thing on the parade route. At the last minute, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which had marched in the parade last year, was booted. Well behaved but very vocal protesters stood at the turn onto Sycamore.

As often happens, I hadn’t been paying attention. The first I’d heard anything about this was back at Arnold’s where I struck up a conversation with a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. The parade is organized by the AOH. Yes, he said, he would be marching but it was a “terrible route”. He decried the fact that the parade would not go through “downtown”, by which I assume he meant Fountain Square. Then he seemed to somehow blame this “terrible route” — a phrase he used several times — on the fact that “we won’t allow gays in the parade.” That could hardly be the case since GLSEN’s banishment became known only Friday but the move did not go over well with city officials. As reported by The Huffington Post, several withdrew from the parade in their own protest. I guess I should start paying attention as this clearly is not the end of the subject.

There was plenty of normal parade stuff including what must be one of the largest groups of Irish built cars in the world.

I’d climbed to the upper floor of a parking garage to get that shot of the DeLoreans and, while there, pointed a long lens toward Arnold’s. It obviously remained busy during the parade and was even busier after. The second picture is in Arnold’s courtyard where I managed to find a spot at the back to listen to the Cincinnati Glee Club perform a medley of Irish tunes. Sláinte!

On top of the parade, my weekend plans included a Saturday night concert in Oxford and a Sunday afternoon book presentation in Greenville. Between the parade and the concert, I stopped by the open house at Fifth Street Brewpub in Dayton. This is the first co-op brewpub in Ohio and only the second in the nation. I can now honestly tell people I own a brewpub.

Although I could have driven home between each of these events, I made it a little easier by spending Saturday night at one of my favorite independent motels. The Golden Inn is on the National Road near New Paris, Ohio, and more or less half way between Oxford and Greenville. Lea Ann Golden, who runs the place with husband Jeff, mentioned a new restaurant in town and I tried it out. No pictures but the meat loaf and okra were excellent.

The concert was at the home of Marc and Lisa Biales, a.k.a. The Big Song Music House. The performer was Michael Johnathon of WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour. I really do need to get to the show in Lexington but this will do for now. Lisa has appeared on the show and tonight she opened and returned near the end for couple of duets. Another great evening of music in the Oxford countryside.

Sappy Ohio

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Denny

I really goofed last week. I was in Greenville on Saturday, but didn’t realize it was syrup-making time at the Shawnee Prairie Preserve with demonstrations and a waffle! breakfast. It would have been perfect, but in my ignorance, I dawdled, ate breakfast in Dayton, and only reached town and learned of the event long after breakfast was finished and the whole shebang was pretty much over. I cast about for a way to make up for this missed opportunity and even briefly considered returning to Hinckley with the buzzards for one of the area’s big maple sugaring weekends as I did in 2011. But, in the end, I decided to stay closer to home and yesterday checked out the 47th Maple Syrup Festival at Hueston Woods.

I started out by standing in line for the very popular pancake breakfast at the park lodge. I realize that the breakfast isn’t all that photogenic, but it sure tasted good. Pure maple syrup does that.

Then I headed over to the Pioneer Village area to stand in line for a “hay ride”. Trucks pulling trailers with seats made of straw bales carried people to the start of a short trail leading to the “sugar shack”. A guide would then lead the way down the trail while providing information about the area and the syrup-making process. In chatting with some of the volunteers, I learned that a shortage of guides had resulted in a minor bottleneck. Even though our departure was delayed as long as practical and the ride to the trail was as slow as possible, we still reached the trail several minutes ahead of our guide.

The wait was worth it. I feel extra bad about not learning our guide’s name because he sure was an extra good guide. He spoke, in a most entertaining way, about both the natural and human history of the area and he talked of the social as well as technical aspects of sugaring. He explained that, since the sap contains only a percent or two of sugar when it comes from the tree, it doesn’t taste very much like syrup. At the guide’s invitation, several young tour members personally verified this by licking fingers that had caught a few drops.

There was another line at the sugar shack, but it wasn’t a long one. The original Hueston family shack burned in the 1980s, but the current one looks much the same and is on the same foundation. Maple syrup must be about two-thirds sugar, which means an awful lot of water has to be removed. This is accomplished by the wood-fired evaporator. The fog makes it hard to see, but the warmth is certainly welcome. After hearing an explanation of the evaporation process, there was one more short line for the shuttle back to the car at Pioneer Village. The well-run free festival is great fun and educational, too.

Not far from Hueston Woods, the home of William Holmes McGuffey, the man behind the incredibly successful McGuffey Readers, is now a museum. It’s owned and operated by Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. McGuffey was part of the university faculty when he had the house built in 1833, then took on creating the first reader, published in 1836, as a way to augment his professor’s salary. The house is filled with wonderful period furnishings including several of McGuffey’s own pieces. Among these are the eight-sided rotating table and the tall desk behind it. I was accompanied as much as guided by a fellow named Steve who thoroughly answered every question I had. Like the festival, the McGuffey Museum is free and fun and educational.

Music Review
solo mono
Dirk Hamilton

Posted on March 6, 2013 by Denny

solo_mono_cvr I’ve never seen Dirk Hamilton in person with a band. I’ve seen him twice with another guitarist and twice with no one else on stage period. Conversely, I’ve never listened to him without a band. OK, maybe “never” is a stretch but a bold print seldom sure isn’t. I own just about everything Dirk has released and it’s the rare track that doesn’t have at least a few top notch musicians backing him up. That’s not a bad thing. The tunes are served well by the added layers and the folks Dirk chooses to play with always add something to the mix. But listening to solo mono is kind of like a “being there” I can relate to.

Depending on who is counting and how they do it, this could be Dirk’s eighteenth release or maybe “only” his fifteenth or maybe something else. Counting solo studio albums is a lot easier. This is it. Dirk is an excellent performer and a darn good front man but his song writing is what has captured most of his fans. solo mono contains thirteen new songs though they’re not all entirely new to me. The album, released in June of 2012, contains several tunes I’d seen Dirk perform the previous October. I put off ordering solo mono thinking that our paths might cross again in the fall of 2012 and I’d buy it at a show. That didn’t work out so I finally did the mail order thing a few weeks ago and not long after I popped the CD into the player I was struck with “that’s just the way I remember it” thoughts.

As with just about any collection of Dirk Hamilton tunes, the lyrics range from insightful to comical with Hamiltonian wit and romanticism everywhere. At this point I intended to quote examples of wit and insight and the rest but I found myself going around in circles trying to make my selections. Instead, I’m going to cheat big time and just point to the lyrics for the entire album. They’re here. All of Dirks lyrics are on his website; From the “First off let me say that I get sick and I get bored” that opened his first album in 1976 through the “Tommy gun placed on a polka dot gown” that opens this one. I’ve always appreciated the fact that, almost from the moment he and the internet found each other, Dirk has made his lyrics available online. With packageless downloads steadily increasing, that is ever more important and something I wish more artists would do

There is Dirk style social/political commentary — usually oblique and sometimes cryptic — in songs like “Delete Deletions” and “Slow Suicide” and there are genuinely fun songs like “Nobody I Know” and “Jan Jan Janet”. Smack dab in the middle there is a five line splash of silliness in “The Pygmy Forest”. And there are love songs; Several love songs. I don’t like love songs but I like Dirk’s. I don’t know the inspirations behind “She Calls Me Bello”, “Our Sweet Love”, “Unreachable”, and “Kalea” though I’d bet they are real. Dirk’s heart writes quite a few songs for him.

The only instruments on the album are Dirk’s guitar, harmonica, and voice and I confess to having lower expectations because of that. I shouldn’t have because I know, from seeing him live and alone, that many of his tunes work just as well without layers of sound as with. And there is, of course, a certain advantage to having less between ears and lyrics.

It is always a treat to hear new Dirk Hamilton material in any form. I know there will be more stuff with a band (a CD with the Italian boys is already in the works) and I hope there will be more stuff like solo mono.

You can order the CD here or purchase its contents here. You can watch Dirk and Don Evans do a song from the album here and Dirk do a song not from the album (it’s from 1978’s Meet Me at the Crux) at that October, 2011, concert here.

Trip Peek #5
Trip #26
Pair of Madonnas

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Denny

This picture is from the my 2004 Pair of Madonnas day trip. The trip was loosely organized around the Madonna of the Trail monuments in Springfield, Ohio, and Richmond, Indiana. From home, I headed northeast to intersect the National Road east of Springfield then more or less followed it west to Richmond. The photograph shows the Springfield Madonna in its nicely landscaped but hard to reach spot near Snyder Park on the west edge of town. In the fall of 2011, the statue was moved to a new park near the center of town. The new home is much more accessible but is even further from the statue’s original location a half mile or so west of Snyder Park.

Trip Pic Peek #4 — Trip #60 — Crescent City Christmas

Trip Pic 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 trip journal it is from.

Wilmington’s Denver and Murphy

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Denny

I live about thirty miles from Wilmington, Ohio. It’s where my daughter lives as do some very close friends. The nearness of my own bed means there’s hardly ever a reason for me to spend the night there and the willingness of friends and family to put me up means there’s really no need to resort to commercial lodging in any case. In fact, when I first mentioned that I intended to spend a night at the General Denver Hotel, I was met with incredulity. Why would anyone, I was asked, want to stay in that old place when they could stay in a nice, warm, no-cost bed just a few blocks away? Fortunately, they know me well enough that there wasn’t a big fight when I explained that I wanted to stay there precisely because it was such an “old place.” I did realize, however, that the warmness of the available bed was stressed because my friend’s parents had once nearly frozen while staying at the GDH and that the temperature of my room would be a hot topic, so to speak.

I’ve mentioned the General Denver in this blog before. It’s where I’ve eaten, in addition to several other meals, my last four Thanksgiving dinners. I wrote of the one in 2011. It was built in 1928 by Matthew Denver who named it for his father, James Denver. James was born in Virginia and seems to have dropped off his parents, and eventually his own offspring, in Wilmington while he went out west to become the Governor of the Kansas Territory, a Civil War General, and enough other high-profile things to warrant having the city of Denver, Colorado, named after him.

The General Denver Hotel was certainly a high toned place when it opened but it wasn’t alone. The ten-year-old Murphy Theater stood across the street, and the nine-year-old courthouse was barely a block away. The courthouse and theater had cost $300,000 and $250,000 respectively. It was a pretty classy neighborhood and still is. All three buildings remain in use today. In fact, it was an event at the Murphy that allowed me to finally justify a night at the Denver on Saturday. Lisa Biales, who I’ve also mentioned in this blog, performed there as a New Lyceum Circuit artist.

The guy who the Murphy is named after was a pretty high-profile fellow, too, but he built the theater himself rather than waiting for the next generation to do it. Charles Murphy was born in Wilmington. He worked for the Cincinnati Enquirer and Times-Star newspapers and the New York Giants baseball team before becoming a team owner himself. The Chicago Cubs were his from 1906 through 1913. The Cubs have won exactly two World Series in their long history. Both — 1907 and 1908 — were on Murphy’s watch.

Matt and Jim and Chuck are still in town. I stopped by Sugar Grove Cemetery to see them before checking in to the hotel. There are large family markers — the Denvers have a truly impressive Washington Monument style obelisk — surrounded by smaller individual ones. Finding them took some luck in addition to the FindAGrave clues but I could now be a guide if the need ever arises.

Checking into the General Denver involved signing a real register. It’s hard for me to believe that I’ve never signed one before but I certainly can’t remember ever doing it. My friend, John, met me in the bar and, although I did eat dinner there and had good intentions, lively conversation made me forget to take a picture. I did get a picture of breakfast. I had the Denver Bake, which is simply a casserole version of a Denver omelet. It seemed super appropriate to eat, as I Tweeted at the time, a Denver omelet in the hotel named for the man that the city that the omelet was named after was named after. Both meals were good, and the from-the-menu breakfast is included with the room. That elevator is the original with manual controls that must be operated by a trained professional (i.e., essentially any member of the hotel staff). I took a ride before I left and found it very smooth. Like most hotels more than a few years old, the General Denver is reportedly haunted and I’ve mentioned the heating problems of the past. I saw neither ghosts nor frost during my stay and thought my room rather comfortable.

The bartender had suggested that, if the concert audience was small enough, it might be placed entirely on stage as had been recently done at another show. I didn’t give it much thought, and John and I walked across the street as show time neared with me, thinking we would simply take our reserved seats. The bartender’s prediction had indeed come true, so our last-minute arrival put us in the last rather than the first row. That was hardly a problem, though, as the last row on the stage put us at least as close to Lisa and violinist Doug Hamilton as the front row on the floor would have and the setting was clearly much more intimate. Lisa was just getting over a cold she had been fighting for several days, but you would not have known that from her voice, which was spot on. I think this was probably the first time I’ve seen just the two of them perform, which may explain why Doug sang a bit more than I’m used to. Nice addition. Of course, both handled their instruments masterfully, and the duo delivered two great-sounding sets separated by a short break. Anyone with even slightly sharp eyes may have noticed that Lisa Biales is not listed on the marquee in my picture of the theater. That’s because I didn’t get around to taking the picture until Sunday morning after the sign had been changed. However, her name can be seen in an enlarged section of the photo at the beginning of this article.

My Wheels — Chapter 2
1948/9 Whizzer

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Denny

Whizzer It was 1962, I was 15 years old, and I was going mobile. Fourteen and fifteen year old Ohioans can still ride two and three wheelers with “helper motors” but both vehicle and and rider require a license. Plus the motor must be under 50 CC and 1 HP and incapable of moving the rig faster than 20 MPH. Shish!

Back in those comparatively lawless ’60s, anything that had pedals could be ridden by anyone fourteen or older without a license of any sort. I believe there was a displacement limit of 125 CC and there may have been a horsepower limit as well. My freedom machine was just under the size limit, produced 2 1/2 horsepower, and could reach 40 miles per hour. It cost me $35.

My Dad took me to pick it up. He followed me for a mile or so than got tired of poking along and pulled on by and headed home. I was on my own on the familiar State Route 49 moving along effortlessly at a pace that my most frantic pedaling could match for only a brief moment. Could life get any better?

Why yes. Yes it could. Even in those far distant times, motorcyclists (I don’t recall hearing the word “biker” until years later.) waved at one another when they passed. I passed one motorcycle on that first six mile ride. From a distance, a Whizzer looks much like a “real” ‘cycle. The approaching rider’s arm moved out and toward the road in a low salute. I mimicked him as best I could. He might have been a little embarrassed when we actually passed and he realized he had just waved at a kid on a moped. As for me, I tried to look manly and roadwise while almost certainly sporting a grin as wide as my handlebars.

The Whizzer lasted one summer but what a summer it was. My best friend, who lived about two miles away, had a moped. I think his acquisition came before mine and probably helped me convince Dad that I needed that Whizzer. We had often gotten together via bicycle but now we didn’t have to hang out at one place or the other; We could head off on far ranging adventures. Dale, with a tank of his Dad’s tractor fuel, and I, with some gas from my Dad’s lawnmower supply, would visit friends or go off for a root beer without a second thought. We traveled huge distances (like 10 miles) in (compared to pedaling) an instant.

allstatemp Dale’s moped had a capital ‘M’ — and a hyphen. It was a real Mo-Ped sold by Sears under the Allstate brand. They were made, apparently, by Puch in Austria. Our two mopeds did the same job but they sure had their differences. The Mo-Ped had a two-cycle 50cc motor with a two speed transmission and chain drive. Power from the Whizzer’s larger four-cycle reached the rear wheel through a belt. Belts and pullies slip; Chains and gears don’t. Compared to the Whizzer, the Mo-Ped was a jackrabbit off the line. The Whizzer would slowly lumber into motion usually helped by my feet on the ground or on the pedals. The Whizzer’s top end was well above the Mo-Ped’s so I’d usually whiz by, to show I could, before settling down for a side by side cruise. When first setting out, the Mo-Ped could be started on its stand with a little pedal pushing. The Whizzer could, in theory, be started by pedaling but it was a real chore. The method of choice was to start pushing it, release the clutch, (‘pop’ is not a word often associated with the Whizzer belt idler.), and jump on after the bike started but before it ran away.

My sister and I were still spending some of the summer with our grandparents but I could now get there and back by myself. It was on a long solo ride during a stay near summer’s end that I did in the Whizzer’s engine. The combined filler cap/dip stick had vibrated loose and all six ounces of oil had slowly blown off behind me. The engine suddenly locked up and a demonstration of the “safety” aspects of belt drive followed. Rather than the entire drive train locking and sending the bike into a skid or me over the handlebars, the belts started slipping and things came to a very rapid but controled stop.

When I got it home and looked inside, I discovered that the cap had actually been torn loose from the connecting rod and the crank had made at least part of a revolution before slamming back into the free floating rod and bending it into a shallow ‘S’. It was incredibly ugly.

I acquired some used parts including another whole motor but I never got around to repairing the bike. I’ve no doubt that one of the reasons was that I would turn sixteen in the spring and my mind was already on vehicles with more wheels. I sold it to a slightly younger friend who tinkered around with the spare motor, put it in the bike, and was himself mobile by the next summer. He used it for at least a couple of years because I remember loaning him my car while I rode the Whizzer on a summer of 1965 afternoon. It was still pretty cool.

ADDENDUM 21-Dec-2019: A recent discussion led me to thinking I might have overstated the Whizzer’s engine displacement so I checked it out. Turns out I was understating it. Apparently all, or nearly all, Whizzers were 8.45 cu. in. (138.47 cc) which means I really have no idea what, if any, size restriction existed on mopeds in the 1960s.

Previous Wheels: Chapter 1 — 1960 J. C. Higgins Flightliner
Next Wheels: Chapter 3 — 1953 Chevrolet

Although we’ve long lived much more than a mile apart, I’m still good friends with Dale of the Mo-Ped. It was Dale who traveled with me along Indiana’s Lincoln Highway in 2009.

My Gear – Chapter 15
Garmin nüvi® 2460LMT

Posted on February 17, 2013 by Denny

Garmin 2460 This product took me to within one U-turn of abandoning Garmin completely. It replaced a Garmin Quest which was, in my opinion and for my purposes, nearly perfect. I talk about that here. I could plot routes on my computer then transfer them to the Quest where they were used to guide me along the route just as desired. I would still be using a Quest today if Garmin hadn’t stopped providing map updates around 2005. It wasn’t the roads as much as the POI (Points of Interest). A rerouted expressway or a new exit probably won’t affect any of my routes which tend to follow old roads that haven’t moved in years. But I was using the Quest to find places to eat and sleep and, as time went on, more and more of the mom ‘n’ pop establishments in its data base closed down while the Quest continued to believe them very much alive.

The wild goose chases were aggravating and not being able to depend on there being a functioning motel where the GPS reported one was even more troublesome. With a west coast trip planned for 2011, I decided early in the year to update my guidance system. I did not feel tied to Garmin but some internet searching and forum combing indicated it was still probably my best choice.

Since being able to accept and play back a pre-plotted route is critical for me, I did my best to assure that I got a unit capable of that. It turned out that my best wasn’t good enough though it was awhile before I realized that. Through internet searches, GPS forum exchanges, and email conversations with vendors and Garmin employees I came to believe the 2460LMT would do the job. This unit was at or near the top of Garmin’s line of “automotive” products and, before too long, at or near the top of the “Most Irritating Things I’ve Ever Owned” list.

I ordered directly from Garmin and soon the 2460 was in my hands. After a little playing I tried downloading one of my pre-planned routes. The unit “froze”. Cycling power brought it back and I tried again. In time I realized that the freeze would eventually end on its own and tried various sequences of power, connect, and download but none produced a route on the nüvi. Through a series of emails and phone calls I reached someone at Garmin who seemed to really care. She tried her best. She ran experiments and asked questions and passed information back and forth with untouchable engineering personnel. Her best wasn’t quite good enough either. I did manage to get a tiny test route to appear but my real routes seemed to disappear. In what I took as a lame brushoff but which turned out to be a sorry truth, the engineering folks passed along that “some routes take a really long time.” I’ll skip the rest of the gorey details and let it be known that I did eventually get all of my routes loaded but it was always hours and sometimes days before a route was processed and usable on the nüvi.

Not surprisingly, my opinion of Garmin products was pretty low at this point but it got lower. The unit seemed to work fairly well as I traveled around the area and I even used it to successfully follow a couple of short test routes. I acquired the unit at the beginning of May. In early June I set out for a Lincoln Highway Association conference near Lake Tahoe. The nüvi contained routes intended to guide me along some of the Lincoln Highway’s historic alignments. That the nüvi had flaws became apparent rather quickly but it took awhile to understand them.

The two most onerous nüvi shortcomings are the inability to turn off automatic recalculation and its treatment of each segment as an independent route. A route is a start and end point and some number of intermediate waypoints. At least that’s the way the Quest and I and most routing software sees them. nüvis, however, see routes as nothing more than a list of start and end point pairs. When one point is reached, the nüvi then calculates a path to the next. Since it is always ready to recalculate a route, it does this, not from the point just reached, but from the current position. Here is the sort of real world problem this creates:

Your pre-plotted route contains a right turn just beyond a waypoint. The nüvi guides you to the waypoint and begins calculating a path to the next one. This is hardly instantaneous and you’ve passed that planned turn before it is done. The nüvi is automatically recalculating from your current position so it simply tells you to turn right on some other road then guides you to that next point along a completely different route than the one intended.

If all you want to do is reach the nearest Starbucks as quickly as possible, this behavior is just fine. It is far from fine if you want to reach that Starbucks along a particular road — like the Lincoln Highway or Historic Route 66.

The nüvi 2460LMT is not a bad product. It and all the other members of the nüvi line do what they are intended to do quite well. They are, in fact, the right device for the vast majority of GPS users. The problem is the way Garmin classifies its products. There is a line of products that does routing properly; The way the Quest does and the way I want. But it (zūmo^®) is marketed as a motorcycle line and it took someone outside of Garmin to set me straight. I replaced the nüvi® 2460LMT in less than a year. When I tell of that replacement in a future My Gear installment, I may also tell you what I really think of those silly names.

My Gear – Chapter 14 — Lenovo T400

Video Review
Going My Way
Chuck Land

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Denny

Going My Way cover I am even less qualified to review DVDs than I am to review CDs and books. That won’t stop me of course. I just thought you should know. Going My Way is Chuck Land’s take on the story of Larry and Tim Goshorn’s musical adventures. Chuck Land is the guy behind Landman Productions, The Chuck Land Show, and, as often as possible, a Hammond B3. Larry & Tim are the guitar playing siblings who have powered a few decades of music in Cincinnati and carried a lot of Cincinnati music a long long way from home. Those album covers on the DVD jacket represent music from the 1960’s Sacred Mushroom, through Pure Prairie League and the Goshorn Brothers Band, to their most recent duo recording Acoustic. In case you didn’t notice, those album covers are posed along the center line of a two lane highway.

This is a Cincinnati story. The brothers have been back in Cincinnati for many years now and so has Chuck. He and the Goshorns are close friends these days but much of the brothers’ story is outside of Chuck’s personal experience. Those bits he covers through period photos and interviews with people who were there. Recent parts of the story include Landman Production performance footage.

The documentary opens with Sacred Mushroom bassist Joe Stewart praising his former bandmate. Joe appears in the video several more times and talks about making music with Larry long before the Mushroom even existed as well as filling in some of the Sacred Mushroom story. Other persons interviewed include concert promoter and former Cincinnati Vice-Mayor Jim Tarbell and retired radio personality Gary Burbank. Tim and Larry are recorded talking about themselves, each other, and individuals they’ve performed with over the years. Other musicians and fans are also interviewed but, somewhat curiously, Rick “Bam” Powell is the only Goshorn Brothers Band member, other than the brothers, to talk to the camera. More understandable is the fact that no other members of Pure Prairie League are interviewed, either.

The DVD is packaged with a CD containing eight songs from throughout the Goshorns’ careers. The Pure Prairie League years are well represented with songs penned by Tim or Larry and first released by PPL but presented here in post-PPL versions. It’s a nice sampler.

No matter where you live, it’s all but certain that you have heard some Goshorn music. If you’ve lived around Cincinnati, there is also a darned good chance that you have seen one or both Goshorns perform at a club, concert, or festival. Going My Way offers a look on the other side of the speakers and serves up a lot of history on this pair of talented and significant Cincinnati music makers. Find it here.

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