Category Archives: Event

Butter and Beer, Buckeye Style

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I’ve trimmed the time between visits to the Ohio State Fair to four years. That’s much less than the multiple decades that separated my 2015 visit from the one that preceded it. A conversation with a friend who goes every year planted the seed then reading about one particular exhibit got me to seriously thinking about it. Some altered plans and great looking weather turned those thoughts into action.

As I did four years ago, I took advantage of free parking for members at the Ohio History Connection and entered the fair through the nearby gate 3. That brought me right to the north end of the midway. The Sky Glider travels directly over the Food Highway where fried anything, including bubble gum, can be found.

This is the exhibit involved in my decision to head to this year’s fair. In recognition of the fiftieth anniversary of the first moon landing, a butter sculpture of the Apollo 11 crew joins the cow and calf that are fair regulars. The calf is just out of frame in that first picture but both buttery bovines are there. Ohio’s contribution to the crew, Neil Armstrong, makes a second appearance along with what I suspect is a rather slippery ladder.

The moon landing also gets some attention in the chalk drawings outside the Fine Arts Center as does another event celebrating a fifty year anniversary. The Woodstock Music Festival took place less than a month after Apollo 11 flight. The third photograph presents its subject with better perspective because 1) it was drawn with that in mind and 2) I had instructions.  

I caught the All-Ohio State Fair Band in a performance in an open space called Central Park. While the band delivered some high energy tunes, the fellow in the second picture kept up some very impressive twirling, tossing, catching, and, as you can see, acrobatics.

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen any actual turkey judging but I watched just a bit today. I really had no idea what was going on but I have been around turkeys before and the folks attempting to control them certainly had my sympathy. I also watched a little calf judging and passed by three adult dairy cows. The cows were displayed by the Ohio Veterinary Medical Association and each had a sign with their name (this one is Louise) and the phrase “I’m pregnant and due any day now.”

The Ohio Beer and Wine Pavilion is new this year. I was about to leave after my planned one beer stop when it was announced that North High Brewing’s brewmaster, Jason McKibben, was in the building and about to give a presentation. I decided to stick around and, after he started talking about the brewery’s collaboration with the Ohio Farm Bureau, have one more beer. Here‘s something you don’t see on a beer can every day.

I emptied my can of Cover Crop and was once again ready to leave when I was once again enticed to stay. This time it was the start of the Human Cannonball show across the way that pulled me in. I failed to get any photos of the Cannonball’s daughter doing some impressive aerial acrobatics but I did catch his buddy on the tightwire. The announcement leading to the cannon firing included the claim that only about 700 human cannonballs have ever existed since the occupation was created by 14-year-old Zazel in 1877. I haven’t found any independent support of that but it does seem reasonable and it made me wonder if I had ever actually seen one before. I’ve seen a few circuses and a human cannonball seems like something I should have seen but I don’t have any specific memories. In any case, I’ve never seen one this close and I’ve never taken a picture of one exiting the cannon barrel.

With the Human Cannonball’s successful landing, I was again ready to depart and this time I made it. The midway was significantly more active as I passed through it on the way out than it had been on my arrival but nothing tempted me. I’ve now pretty much outgrown the desire to be tossed around or turned upside down, and some of those rides looked quite capable of separating me from my recently consumed Farm Bureau approved beverage. 

Memories of the Eagle

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My best guess of what I was doing exactly fifty years before the publication of this post is sleeping. I wouldn’t be sleeping much longer because it was Monday morning and I would have to wake up and go to work. And I would not have been asleep very long either. I would have stayed up way too long watching TV after a long drive home. Just having the possibility of watching TV late at night was unusual even at the very end of the 1960s. With the exception of Bob Shreve’s all-night movies on Saturday, all five Cincinnati channels went off the air around midnight. But the wee hours of July 21, 1969, were different. It was the day following the day when the Eagle had landed. There was news to be shared.

We — my wife, our son, and I — were visiting friends in Saint Louis over that weekend. Our plans were to be home at a decent hour but we were paying more attention to someone else’s travel plans than our own. While we were on our way to Saint Louis, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin, and Neil Armstrong were on their way to the moon. As we prepared to drive home, Buzz and Neil prepared to head for the Lunar surface. At 13:44 EDT on that Sunday afternoon, the pair separated from Michael and the command module Columbia and began their descent. At 16:17 EDT, Armstrong announced that “The Eagle has landed.”

The timestamps on my own recollections aren’t nearly as precise or reliable as NASA’s. Part of me thinks that we did not leave Saint Louis until after the Lunar Module was on the surface. Information currently available online says that a four hour rest period was planned between landing and exiting. If that was the information we had then and if we really did not depart until the Eagle landed, then I must have thought I could drive to Cincinnati in under four hours or maybe I was terribly confused by time zones. Or maybe we were counting on the astronauts sleeping for the full four hours then spending considerable time preparing to leave the lander. Whatever the reasons and reasoning, I know for certain that as we headed toward home, we believed we had a good shot at making it in time to watch man’s first step onto the moon.

There was no radio in the car. Not even AM. The vehicle’s entertainment system consisted entirely of an under-dash 8-track tape deck. That was normally not a problem since no one in their right mind would want to listen to news or the top 40 when all seven minutes of Light My Fire was available in stereo with the click of a cartridge. But this drive was not normal and we really did want to listen to news. As I recall, the Bairds, who we were visiting in Saint Louis, loaned us a portable transistor radio which we propped atop the dash and fiddled with almost constantly as signal strength ebbed and flowed.

The details were forgotten long ago, but I remember that somewhere along the way we heard that the rest period was going to be shortened and the astronauts would be stepping from the capsule earlier than once thought. Whether or not we ever actually had a legitimate chance of reaching home before that happened seems doubtful to me now. But, regardless of how likely or unlikely that had been, it now became clear that it was pretty much impossible. If we continued our drive, human beings were going to be walking on the moon while our only connection was a tiny radio with temperamental reception.

We were still somewhere west of Indianapolis when that realization struck. Like so many other details of that day, I cannot recall our thought processes as we left the expressway in search of a television. We did this near the airport and I know that at least part of the reason was that we knew there were motels in the area. There surely was no money for rented lodging in our family budget so it seems unlikely that we planned on spending the night. On the other hand, this was a truly major event so it’s possible that we were at least considering it. Checking prices may have even been on my mind when I stepped into the hotel lobby. If so, I’m sure it vanished when I saw the TV playing in the furnished lobby. I left and quickly returned with the family.

I think of it as a Holiday Inn but, in reality, it could have been any of the slightly upscale (to a 22-year-old father) motels of the time. Whatever the brand, it was upscale enough that flight crews from multiple airlines regularly overnighted there. My wife and I found seats on a sofa with 5-month-old Crispian parked in front of the TV in a little plastic carrier commonly referred to as a “pumpkin seat”. The three of us became lobby fixtures while others watched the TV for a bit on the way to their rooms.

Time moved slowly as we waited for the astronauts to step outside the capsule. Multiple flight crews arrived while we waited and each followed the same procedure. One member went to the desk to check in the entire crew while the others stood behind the sofa staring over our heads at the glowing screen. When the paperwork was completed, the unlucky person who had somehow been chosen to perform it, distributed keys and everyone rushed off to their individual accommodations and personal televisions.

At 22:56 EDT, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Lunar surface. The picture at the top of this article shows his foot hanging from the Lunar Module’s ladder just before that happened. After Buzz joined him, Neil placed the camera on a tripod to provide a more panoramic view. The black and white images were dim and blurry and sometimes flickered away. And they were beautiful.

I halfway think we stayed in that hotel lobby during all of the approximately two and a half hours of Extravehicular Activity but I’m not at all certain. I am certain that Cris saw that first step because I checked to make sure his eyes were open. Of course, any memories he has of the event are almost certainly from repeatedly being told about it rather than from what he actually saw. My great grandfather had been dead just over eight years at the time of the moon landing but he had lived to see three humans (Gargarin, Shepard, Grissom) in space. He was born in 1875 and was almost exactly the same age as the kid in the pumpkin seat when Custer’s troops were annihilated at Little Big Horn. As my son watched dim images of men nearly 240,000 miles away and I watched him, I wondered what advances he would see in his lifetime. Fifty years in, the list is impressive and growing.

A ten-day 50th anniversary celebration in Wapakoneta, Ohio, Neil Armstrong’s hometown, wraps up today. The final event is a 7:00 Wink at the Moon concert featuring the Lima Area Concert Band. Other concerts and events have filled the ten days in downtown Wapakoneta and at the Armstrong Air & Space Museum at the edge of town. I visited Tuesday, the anniversary of the rocket launch that started Neil and his buddies on their way to the moon.

Two new statues of Armstrong had been unveiled at the museum on Sunday. It’s a bit disappointing that the white clouds and low light make the moon-like dome of the museum so hard to see. I photographed the statues before the crowd started to arrive but noted later that the statue of the young dreamer was — and I’m sure will be — a very popular place for families to pose their younger members for photos. A third statue, of Armstrong in his 1969 welcome home parade, was to be unveiled downtown on Thursday.

As 9:32 approached, attention was focused on a 22-inch replica of the Saturn 5 rocket that had lifted off in Florida at that time exactly fifty tears earlier. A recording of that half-century-old countdown was played to help coordinate the launch of the model. The model was a solid fuel-powered Estes much like the ones I helped build and launch even more than fifty years ago. When the count reached zero, I was quickly reminded that the acceleration characteristics of an Estes rocket are much closer to those of a bullet than to those of a 6.5 million pound 363 foot Saturn 5.

Following the countdown and launch, the museum was opened — and filled. I waited outside for the initial rush to pass although the place was still pretty busy when I did go in. The first picture is a reminder that Armstrong’s career did not begin with the moon landing. It’s the suit he wore on Gemini 8. His partner on that flight was David Scott who made it to the moon himself on Apollo 15. The second picture is of Armstrong’s backup suit for Apollo 11. On the day I took this photo, July 16, the Smithsonian returned the suit worn on Apollo 11 to display after being out of sight for some time being repaired.

Just beyond where this piece of the moon is displayed, is a movie that runs every half hour. Many other artifacts and information panels are in that room where I spent fifteen minutes or so waiting for the next showing. It was there that I was struck by the fact that I was one of the few people in that museum who actually remembered the Apollo expeditions. Many were adolescents born decades after the moon landings, but it was clear from overheard comments and answers to youthful questions that most of the parents and even grandparents weren’t around in 1969 or were too young to have solid memories. I’ve since learned that only four of the twelve men who walked on the moon between 1969 and 1972 are currently living. Yeah, I guess that really was a ways back.

On the anniversary of the actual landing, I watched a movie. Apollo 11: First Steps Edition is a version of Apollo 11 created for OMNIMAX style theaters. Yesterday’s showings are the only ones planned for the theater at the Cincinnati Museum Center but I believe this is the same movie being shown elsewhere including the Air Force Museum in Dayton. Made entirely of archival footage, it gave everyone in the sold-out theater a glimpse inside the historic mission and refreshed memories for a few of us. Sometimes the images are so big or there are so many of them that it’s hard to take it all in. It was that way the first time, too.

That concert that will be happening in Wapakoneta tonight gets its name from a statement that Neil Armstrong’s family issued at his death in 2012. “… the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.” I did that last night shortly after the moon cleared the horizon. It was about the time when, fifty years earlier, Neil and Buzz’s time outside the capsule was a little more than half over. I thought of Neil and winked then winked two more times and thought of Buzz and Michael. Nicely done, fellows. Nicely done. 

Memorial Day Eve

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I know the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day and I’ve sometimes been critical of those who don’t. The publication date for this article is the day before Memorial Day which means it’s my official Memorial Weekend post. The article’s primary focus is the funeral of a U.S. Army veteran who died peacefully at the age of ninety. He clearly does not fit the definition of the folks that Memorial Day was created to honor. On one hand, I’m not completely comfortable having the subject of my Memorial Weekend post be someone who should not be connected to the holiday in any way at all. On the other hand, there’s a very good chance that I would not have attended Hezekiah Perkins’ funeral if it did not take place during Memorial Weekend. That statement is quite possibly true of almost everyone who did attend his funeral on Saturday.

I first saw his name on Friday afternoon. I’d been looking for Memorial Day related activities when local news sources posted a story from Spring Grove Cemetery. The Korean War veteran had purchased a plot and paid for his funeral twenty years ago. Arrangements were progressing to assure that the ceremonies included military honors. There was no question about a proper funeral and burial taking place; There was a big question about who would attend. None of Perkins’ family lived close enough or were healthy enough to come. The cemetery was asking people to join their employees and a small detachment of soldiers in saying a final farewell.

The response was impressive and heartwarming. I arrived about fifteen minutes before the scheduled ceremony and had to park roughly half a mile away. Others parked much farther away than that. Not only was the crowd large, it was racially and generationally diverse. As might be expected, the largest single category was definitely military veterans

Many of those veterans arrived on motorcycles in parade formation. My unscientific guess is that somewhere between fifty and a hundred motorcycles rolled by the grave site. The motorcycles were parked and their riders walked back to where the hearse that had followed them now stood. Friday’s announcement had said the Spring Grove employees would act as pallbearers but that was very much unnecessary. That chore was quite willingly handled by a pre-selected group of motorcyclists.

The ceremonies were brief but meaningful. A detail from Fort Knox removed and folded the flag that covered the coffin. Although the word “thousands” has slipped into a headline or two, most references to the crowd say “hundreds”. My own guess as to crowd size, made while I was part of it, is 400-500. A few, such as workers at the nursing home where he lived most recently, actually knew Hezekiah Perkins but the vast majority were complete strangers. There is certainly no reason to get too puffed up about standing in the grass for a few minutes on a nice spring day, but it’s an unquestionably nice thing that so many Cincinnatians did just that and made that final farewell quite a bit louder than it would have been otherwise.

The Spring Grove visit occurred in the afternoon. I started the day with the Butrims and breakfast at the Anchor Grill followed by traipsing around my favorite bridge. A previous visit had left the couple firmly split on Cincinnati chili but I got a 2-0 favorable vote on goetta. We have been digital friends for a while but this was our first meeting in the analog world. The visit came in the middle of a Kentucky focused trip which, like all of their many road trips, is being reported semi-realtime on Facebook. See Anna’s version here and Joe’s here.

Portsmouth Road Meet

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I attended my fourth Road Meet on Saturday, and I still can’t quite explain what they are. I believe they started back in the days of Usenet, flourished when Yahoo groups were big, and continue today via Facebook groups. To be honest, though, they could, for all I know, predate Usenet and have seen significant MySpace history. The actual meets are informal gatherings of like-minded individuals to visit road related points of interest in a specific area under the guidance of one or a few volunteer organizers. All of the Road Meets I’ve attended have been in Ohio but they can be found through much of the eastern U.S. I’ve heard of meets in Michigan, Tennessee, New Jersey, and Missouri and I know there have been others.

The opening photo was taken as I drove east to the Road Meet on OH-32, a.k.a, the Appalachian Highway. The three at left were taken after I turned on the two-lane OH-73.

A meal is an important part of every Road Meet. The setting for this one was the Portsmouth Brewing Company which I’ve visited several times in the past. I knew maybe half the attendees from previous meets but I won’t attempt to identify anyone other than this meet’s host, Sandor Gulyas at the table’s far end on the picture’s left. Nice Job. The first two of those previous meets had included at least one person within a generation or two of my age. That wasn’t true of the Cincinnati meet and clearly wasn’t true of this one. I think I can take credit for single-handedly raising the group’s average age by at least half a decade.

Before taking to our cars, we walked to nearby Alexandria Point Park which allowed us to see both of Portsmouth’s Ohio River bridges. The cantilevered Carl D. Perkins bridge is to the west. The cable-stayed U.S. Grant bridge is to the east.

Our big drive began by crossing the Perkins Bridge into Kentucky, pausing at an overlook to study the Grant Bridge, then crossing it to return to Ohio. The Grant Bridge is indeed named for the Ohio born 18th president. The Perkins Bridge is not named for the blue suede shoe wairing rockabilly star but for a Kentucky politician. I’m still disappointed by that.

This is Ohio’s newest highway and the primary reason for having the meet here. Officially named Southern Ohio Veterans Memorial Highway, OH-823 was dedicated and opened in December. All three pictures were taken while driving OH-823 southbound after reaching the highway’s northern end using US-23.

After driving all sixteen miles of OH-823, we started working our way back north primarily on OH-335  We slipped off to pass through a railroad underpass on Stout Hollow Road and paused to photograph a collection of signs near the Portsmouth Regional Airport. We then returned to OH-823 and drove roughly ten miles of it northbound.

Near OH-823’s northern end, we picked up OH-348 and followed it through the town of Otway to the covered bridge just west of town. A sign near the bridge tells its story. It was decided that a group photo should be taken here and I won the job by having the only tripod present. Although I tried blaming it on the equipment, the problem was really with the operator. In order to assure that the whole bridge was in the picture, I placed the camera too far away and I believe the distance and bright sun combined kept the infrared remote from working properly. Then, when I got a good look at what I did manage, I saw that the focus kind of sucked, too.

We all returned to Portsmouth on OH-73 which I had arrived on earlier. We said our goodbyes and I headed home along the Ohio River on US-52. The Road Meet was over and I wasn’t looking for any more photo-ops but near Manchester I spotted an old friend. For years, the Showboat Majestic was an important part of Cincinnati’s riverfront but she was moved upriver in March after being sold. I don’t know when she’ll be back in action but now I know exactly where she is.

Apparently I did not document that first Road Meet in Columbus but here are entries for Dayton and Cincinnati.

It’s Easter

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Today is Easter. I know that because I looked it up on the internet. It was easy. It was easy in the early days, too. Easter was originally simply the Sunday of Passover week. Since most early Christians had once been Jews, they just naturally knew when Passover was. Even those that had converted to Christianity directly from Druidism probably had some Jewish friends they could ask. Easy, peasy. Too easy, it seems, for some.

Things changed in 325 at the First Council of Nicaea. Maybe the priests felt threatened by pretty much everybody knowing when Easter was without asking. Or maybe the astronomers, who might have been the same guys, were feeling left out. Or maybe the priests just weren’t all that happy having a Christian holiday tied so tightly to a Jewish one. So, they tied it, instead, to the moon and the sun.

Their starting point was the vernal equinox when the sun is directly above Earth’s equator and day and night are of equal length. Next was a full moon which occurs when the surface visible to Earth is completely illuminated by the sun. These two events are not synchronized. A vernal equinox happens every 365.24 days; A full moon every 29.53 days. But even the most radical of the Nicaea councilors dared not mess with the idea that Easter was a Sunday thing. That meant that a mostly arbitrary period of seven days and the completely arbitrary selection of one of the seven were overlaid on the two asynchronous sun and moon events. Henceforth, Easter would be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

That probably sounds a bit involved and confusing to many people today let alone 4th-century peasants. Come spring of 326, priests were no doubt busy letting the laity know when they should hide their eggs and have relatives over for baked ham.

In the centuries since, alternate sources of the information have proliferated. Asking a priest continues to be an option, but one that has been unnecessary since sometime in the 20th century when the majority of refrigerators became covered by calendars — with Easter marked in red — from every merchant and insurance agent in the area. The time saved has been put to good use finding ways to enhance the Easter experience. A Lego bunny and never before seen colored and flavored Peeps are available for 2019. And scheduling egg hunts has become even easier. “Hey Google. When’s Easter?”

Seventy-Seven Years After

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On Tuesday, Richard Eugene Cole, the last of the Doolittle Raiders, died at the age of 103. The following post first appeared on April 19, 2012, one day after the seventieth anniversary of the Doolittle Raid. That was long enough ago that Oddments, eventually made obsolete by this blog, were still a thing here. An Oddment page contains the bulk of my reporting on the seventieth reunion. There is a link to it in the blog post as well as here.

Doolittle Raiders Special DeliveryOn April 18, 1942, sixteen B-25s launched from carriers on a one-way bombing raid over Japan. The physical damage it caused might not have been all that significant but it delivered a much needed lift to moral in the United States and prompted some rethinking and altering of plans by the Japanese commanders. Four of the surviving raiders continue their week-long reunion today and tomorrow in Dayton, Ohio. On Tuesday and Wednesday, airplanes like the ones that made the raid were on hand at the reunion. I was there both days and have an Oddment entry here. Pointing to that entry and providing a place for comments are the primary reasons for this blog entry but…

…I also revisited a couple of interesting eating establishments.

Hasty TastyHasty TastyBreakfast was at the 60 year old Hasty-Tasty Pancake House just a couple of miles from the Air Force Museum. I’ve eaten here before but don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it in either a blog post of a trip journal. A wonderful Dayton eatery where the waitresses that don’t call you “Honey” call you “Sugar”.

Many of the B-25s headed back to Urbana after the flyover and so did I once the memorial service had concluded and traffic cleared a bit. Several of the planes are staying at Grimes Field for a day or two and there is a nice museum that includes a DC3 cargo plane you can climb inside. I took pictures there that could have been included in the Oddment page but I feared that would be overkill.

Crabill's Hamburgers

Crabill's HamburgersCrabill’s Hamburgers, at the west edge of Urbana, is even older than the Hasty Tasty although it has moved once. I did mention it when I stopped last summer and none other than David Crabill praised crisp hotdogs. I resolved to try one on my next visit and this was it. Andy cooked the ‘dog just right while I downed my dinner then the friendly but unnamed (Oops, sorry.) waitress obliged me by putting relish on just one half so I could taste it both ways without buying two. The Tootsie Roll is the reward everyone gets for cleaning their plate waxed paper.

Wonderful Day, Pitiful Timing

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I’m embarrassed, angry, and disappointed. I missed the 2019 Findlay Market Opening Day Parade. I was close but no cigar. More accurately, no parking place. I left home slightly before 10:00. Traffic was a little heavy on the expressway but not really an issue. I was where I wanted to be around 10:30. It’s a spot a few blocks from the parade start point where I intended to grab a breakfast sandwich before walking to and strolling around the parade staging area.

In prior years, I’ve found street parking within a couple of blocks at this time of day. Not this year. I started checking parking lots and struck out there, too. The few that weren’t completely packed had “Monthly Only” or “Permit Only” signs with guards posted. I slowly expanded my search range with no luck. A big reason for expanding my range so slowly was that congestion was really starting to be felt. Those filled lots were bordered by rapidly filling streets. I eventually headed to an area east of downtown where I’d managed to snag a spot in years gone by. It is far enough from the city center that spaces were once plentiful and cheap. I only recently learned that this area has a name. I’ve heard that name, Pendleton, quite a bit recently because it has become home to several restaurants and a brewery. Apparently, other employers have moved in too, because even lots signed by the restaurants for evening use are monthly or permit only until 4:00. Congestion was now severe. Downtown Cincinnati was about one Honda away from gridlock. I finally accepted that there would be no parade for me and escaped at the earliest opportunity which wasn’t very early at all.

Escaping from downtown Cincinnati, when you are nowhere near a bridge or expressway ramp, means north toward the Clifton neighborhood. Happily free of bumper-to-bumper traffic, I headed to a bar I once frequented. The small parking lot was completely empty. I walked to the door but the empty lot and somewhat dark interior convinced me it was closed. A sign on the door said, “Open at 1:00”. I turned back toward my car and checked the time on the way. 1:03. I’d been in my car for three hours!

I returned to the pub door, actually tried it, and became the day’s first customer. I’d found my parade-watching spot, and I’d soon learn something very cool. There were numerous reasons for the extra large crowd downtown. It’s the 150th anniversary of professional baseball which began with the Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1869. That fact has been talked up around here along with the fact that today’s was the 100th Findlay Market Parade. Those don’t line up as nicely as it might initially seem, but that’s OK. The first parade was in 1920. This is the 100th parade. The 100th anniversary of that first parade will be celebrated next year and maybe I’ll get to see it.

Now for that cool thing I learned. Back when I expected to actually see the parade and anticipated it being the complete focus of this post, I tried to come up with something that started in Cincinnati in 1969. I figured I’d throw in some line about 50, 100, and 150. I almost immediately hit on the Ludlow Garage and went no further. Ludlow Garage was the concert venue operated by Jim Tarbell that hosted national acts like Santana and the Allman Brothers. As I sat at the bar, I saw a shirt advertising the fact that the recent Saint Patrick’s Day was Murphy’s 50th. Murphy’s Pub also opened in 1969 and I have a lot more memories of Murphy’s than the Garage.

Doug Bailey, who changed a neighborhood bar named Mahoney’s into Murphy’s, was a very close friend of John Nawrocki, a very close friend of mine. I became pretty good friends with Doug and even met Noel Murphy a few times. I remember when the bar first opened and some of the changes since then. Although my visits have hardly been frequent in recent years, they do continue.

I wasn’t Murphy’s only customer for long. Among the later arrivals was a group of three guys whose reason for being there was nearly the same as mine. They were in town for the 4:10 game, and thought they might as well take in the parade, too. They too escaped the near gridlock to recover at the first bar they came to. They left their car in the lot and took an Uber to the game.

I really am happy about the massive turnout for the parade. Sorry I missed it but that was my own fault. I can deal.  

I came. I saw. I’m sorry.

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Saturday’s weather was quite nice. Temperature in the mid-40s. Dry. Lots of sun. It was a great day for a parade so I went to one. Back in 2013 when the anti-LGBTQ slant of Cincinnati’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade first surfaced, I noted that, “I hadn’t been paying attention.” I can honestly make the same claim this year, but I cannot claim the same ignorance I possessed six years ago. The post where I spoke about not paying attention is here. I returned the next year although I paid a lot more attention to events leading up to the parade. I think I hoped that 2013 was an anomaly but by the day of the parade I knew it wasn’t. I wrote a fairly normal post about the actual parade, but it had become apparent that the parade’s organizers, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, had views different than me and a lot of other people. My 2014 post is here.

I hadn’t forgotten my 2013 and 2014 thoughts, but I did kind of push them aside. The Saint Patrick’s Day Parade used to be one of my favorite Cincinnati events. I attended Saturday’s parade with a certain amount of curiosity but I also had some hope of just enjoying things like I used to. There was plenty of the familiar like pipe and drum groups and people being silly. I did not see any of the protests I saw five and six years ago. They may have been some — I did not go to the parade’s start point and there was a lot of the route I did not see — but I didn’t see any.

There were also plenty of differences. A shifting of the route had been a topic of discussion in 2013. It is now even farther from the city center and closer to the river on Mehring Way and Freedom Way. Some of the other changes can be measured. In 2013 and 2014 at least fifteen Irish built DeLoreans had participated. This year there were four. Multiple groups of Shriners in miniature cars have appeared in past parades. Each group might have ten or so cars of the same type such as Model Ts, Mustangs, or racers. This year there was only one group with just a few of each type and a total of ten or or so. Maybe that’s just normal attrition or maybe car owners are staying away on principle. I have no way of knowing.

I could not put numbers on other changes and can’t even say with certainty that they were real. I had a sense of fewer commercial entries and more informal groupings. There were quite a few families like the Donnellons and the Flynns. I think that their number was increased but I can’t be certain. Even if it’s true, I can’t say whether it comes from a desire to promote families and family values or a desire to maintain the size of the parade. It remains a respectably sized event with a length of about an hour. Maybe I’ll check on it again in five or six years. Maybe not. Articles like this make me sorry I was there this year.

My after parade activities included catching a little of the entertainment on Fountain Square, briefly watching a street juggler, and downing my annual Guinness at Arnold’s. As you can see, the parade day crowd at Arnold’s has not diminished even the slightest.

I also visited a place where the crowd has temporarily, I believe, diminished. Following Terry Carter’s, retirement amid some unpleasant publicity, Terry’s Turf Club has become The Turf Club and has been stripped of almost all of the neon signs that covered the building and the lawn beside it. When Terry sold his previous business, the very appropriately named Neons, all of its electric trim went with him and it became Neons Unplugged. It’s tempting to think of this place as Turf Club Unplugged, but that would be quite wrong. Including all those outdoor signs would have made the purchase financially impractical for new owners Tom and Marc Kunkemoeller, but that’s pretty much where the changes end. Inside all of the eye catching decor remains along with the menu and most of the staff. I was torn between a ‘burger or the ham sandwich I’ve come to love on my first post-Terry visit, but ultimately decided to test what they’re best known for. The Kunkemoellers know what they’re doing and retaining staff was crucial. The neon will be missed; The quality’s still there.

Horns Aplenty

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The 27th Bockfest parade has come and gone. There’s still plenty of festival left, but the Friday night promenade is the highlight for me. Precipitation of just about any kind will keep me away but this year was dry and the mid-40s temperature was downright balmy compared to some years. I drove, parked, and walked to the parade start point at Arnold’s Bar and Grill to meet a friend who works just a couple blocks away and can stroll over in a few minutes.

There was no shortage of folks in full-body Bockfest garb, but there seemed to be quite a few with nothing Bockish except fake (I assume) horns. It was only while editing pictures for this post that I noticed Clyde, the friend I’d just connected with, peering from behind the horned hat.

Clyde had stepped into the street to talk with some members of FC Cincinnati support group Die Innenstadt. He had marched with the club in last year’s parade and was seen in a story WCPO recently broadcast to promote this year’s event. When he spotted WCPO’s Evan Millward, Clyde approached the newsman and the two talked about the broadcast. For some reason, Evan was carrying Mayor Cranley’s Bockfest proclamation which I took advantage of by snagging a photo.

I was really just joking about the balmy temperatures but it appears that kegs, whether being carried on your bare shoulder or concealing your bathtub’s propulsion mechanism, will keep you warm.

Like Arnold’s self propelled bathtub, these three are long time parade regulars. By the time this is published, 2018 Sausage Queen Luis Balladares will have been replaced by a new queen selected on Saturday. Both the Sausage Queen and Beard Baron competitions are gender neutral. No one ever seems to follow the Whip Lady too closely but the same cannot be said of the Trojan Goat.

Some people may wonder why the Kentucky Chapter of the Association for Gravestone Studies has a parade unit and why they are participating in an Ohio parade promoting beer. But those are the same sort of people who question the presence of dinosaurs or a Krampuslauf group. Bockfest does not need those people.

I missed getting a picture of Aaron Sharp when he first passed in the parade vanguard. I’m glad he circled back. Aaron was one of the key individuals at the sorely missed WNKU radio station where good music could always be found. He is now part owner of Lucius Q where good BBQ and beer can always be found and often good music, too. I’ve never sorted out what his official role is with Bockfest but he’s been doing it a long time and I know he is really good at it — whatever it is.

Although they’ve been around since 2016, this is the first time I’ve seen Dance Flash Fusion and realized it. They have been in at least one previous Bockfest parade so I must have seen them but either they’ve improved considerably or I wasn’t paying attention. I was impressed. Die Innenstadt is the FC Cincinnati support group that Clyde belongs to. I’m pretty sure they set off one of their colored smoke bombs somewhere near MOTR on Main Street, but, even though I was moving with the parade at that point, I was way too far behind to hear or see it. Stuff like that does linger, however, and I put other senses to use as I passed through the area.

Here’s the group with the large goat head featured at the start of this article but I don’t know who it is. The base of the float is covered with album cover reproduction but I saw no identifying markings. They were preceded by a truck with banners reading “Crocodile Bock” and “Crocked on Bock” and this musical duo. I’ve no idea whether or not they’re connected. The Red Hot Dancing Queens have been favorites of mine ever since I first saw them in 2015 not long after they had formed. I think the RHDQ have a slight edge on DFF but it’s really exciting to have two dance troops having so much fun and so much talent.

Not long after the RHDQ passed by, I headed north with the parade. The sun was setting faster than I was traveling which contributed to none of the pictures I took along the way amounting to much. These three were taken at the last turn to the parade’s conclusion at the Moerlein Malt House. With little light, I notice even fewer details through the camera viewfinder than I do in the light. I failed to see a rather major feature of the “Bock on with Your Bock Out” float. It’s pretty obvious but even easier to see here. The name I used comes from the shirts being worn though I’ve no idea whether there is any connection with the beer by that name from a Chattanooga brewery. The Rabbit Hash General Store float is always near the end of the Bockfest parade and I have several pictures of it at this corner. There was a large gap in front of the entry in the last picture and, if it hadn’t been for people staring down the parade route, I’d have assumed the parade was over. A large plastic tarp was carried by a van with walkers holding up the edges and fog filling the space under it. The combination made for extra slow travel and thus the gap.

I walked on down to the crowded Bockfest Hall where bands were playing and bocks were flowing. I had one from the Alexandria brewery then, after meeting up with an out of town friend, another from Hudepohl. I’d had a single Moerlein Emancipator back at the parade staging area. Apparently my current Bockfest beer quota is three. 

The Holocaust and Humanity Center is Open

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The Cincinnati Holocaust and Humanity Center reopened in its new location last Sunday on the 74th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. I had seen the space it moved into on a “hardhat tour” during the Cincinnati Museum Center’s member’s preview in November. At the time, I noted my failure to visit the center in its current location despite it being on my list and relatively near my home. I once again resolved to get there “before they start carrying stuff out” but I failed. I tried after about a week had passed, but it was already too late. The move had already begun and the operation at Rockwern Academy in Kenwood had already closed.

I would not get inside the Center today, either, but it wasn’t because I was too late. I arrived about half an hour before the 1:00 opening ceremony when the space around chairs provided for holocaust survivors and family members was wide open. I could have staked out a spot right next to them but didn’t. By the time the procession of survivors and descendants began, my best view was via the giant screens at either side of the stage. The processional was quite moving not only for those participating or watching familiar faces enter the rotunda, but for folks like me who recognized no one. Some in the procession may have been experiencing memories of when they first saw Union Terminal. This was where many people escaping Europe or recently freed from Nazi concentration camps arrived in the 1940s to begin a new life in Cincinnati. The last picture shows the center’s Executive Director Sarah Weiss cutting the ceremonial ribbon along with Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley and Nancy and David Wolf for whom the center is named.

Entry to the Holocaust and Humanity Center was free on Sunday via time stamped tickets. I doubt that people were actually being forced out of the center after fifteen minutes, which was the interval on the tickets, but it was pretty obvious that this was not the day for a leisurely stroll through the exhibits. I thought it absolutely wonderful that the opening had attracted so many people, but quickly decided to take advantage of one of the perks of being retired and come back sometime during the week.

Incidentally, the HHC opening wasn’t the only thing bringing people to the museum center on Sunday. The picture at right, taken long before the crowd appeared for the opening ceremony, shows a line of people stretched across the front of the rotunda waiting to get museum and movie tickets. There probably wasn’t a lot of overlap with the HHC crowd; Most of the groups in line included young children. I noted in my post about the theater reopening that families with school age children were flocking to the renovated Union Terminal during the holiday break, and it looks like that flocking continues on weekends. I bet it’s the dinosaurs.

I made it back on Tuesday. Entry to the Holocaust and Heritage Center is not included in Cincinnati Museum Center membership, but tickets are sold through the CMC kiosk in the rotunda and there is a discount for CMC members. These sculptures were at the front of the rotunda and usually surrounded by people on Sunday. At present, they are near the stairs leading down to the HHC. The HHC is right next to where the Cincinnati History Library and Archives was and will be. The library closed in 2016 along with the CMC and has not yet reopened.

We were given a peek at a small portion of this mural on that November “hardhat tour” and I had been looking forward to seeing the whole thing. It didn’t disappoint. The 63 foot mural covers more than one wall of the center’s lobby area. I had some time to look it over as I waited to enter the “Winds of Change” theater that separates the lobby from the museum galleries but know I have some more looking to do. I believe all of the mural’s twenty-six scenes come from stories that are told, at least partially, inside the museum. Inside the theater, holocaust survivors now living in Cincinnati tell pieces of their stories in a video. The local connection appears throughout the museum in the display of artifacts and quotations from local survivors.

The first gallery beyond the “Winds of Change” theater begins with the story of the rise of Nazism. It’s a story of relatively small steps that go from Jews being valued members of their communities to their extermination being seen as a solution to something. The HHC utilizes two types of interactive exhibits. One uses touch screens to allow selection from a small set of recorded first person accounts related to the display they are part of. The second uses sliding panels operated by push-buttons. This not only provides more surface area for images and text but involves visitors ever so slightly. At first I thought this was a little hokey but I quickly became a fan. If you don’t press the button, you will miss out on something, and when you do press it, you’re kind of committed to studying what is revealed. 

In addition to the big mural, I believe that every description of the center I have seen mentions the bullet picture and the train window. The bullet picture is an image, reproduced with empty shell casings, of Jews being gunned down in a burial pit they had been forced to dig themselves. The train window is simply a window in the museum wall that opens onto the active tracks behind the building. Only a tiny bit of passenger traffic trickles through Union Terminal but freight traffic passing through the yard is quite significant. Visualizing human beings stuffed into box cars isn’t difficult.

The aftermath of the holocaust is also examined. I was on the leading edge of the Baby Boomer generation. The war was over and the death camps liberated before I was born. Some of the war crimes trials occurred in my lifetime but I certainly don’t remember them. However, I do remember seeing the movie Judgement at Nuremberg in a theater during its first run and same day TV coverage of the Eichmann trial. This was in 1961 when the events they dealt with were less than twenty years in the past. The holocaust was just outside of my own memory but was rather fresh in the memories of the adults in my world.

The “Points of Light” theater marks the end of the Holocaust Gallery and the beginning of the Humanity Gallery. From here on out, the exhibits deal more with today’s world. People called “upstanders” are identified and their stories of resisting hate or doing something else to improve their part of the world are told. The last picture is of the “Make Your Mark Wall”. Visitors can leave their thoughts and impressions via the touch screens and add their selfie to the wall if desired. On the day I was there, a portion of one of the large screens was blacked out, but I’m guessing that was just from someone leaving their coffee in front of a projector or something similar.

The Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanities Center is an impressive and welcome addition to the Cincinnati Museum Center. I entered the “Winds of Change” theater by myself, but took my time going through the galleries, and found myself in the presence of several other visitors by the time I exited the museum. Even so, I know I need to go back. It is really impossible not to see similarities between the increasing hatred seen in some corners today and some of the events described in the center. The centers’ creators were certainly aware of these similarities, and I don’t doubt helped make them more apparent here and there. That sure doesn’t seem like a bad thing to me.