I have probably known John Jackson for nearly ten years. John was instrumental in establishing the Lincoln Highway association’s “Bernie Queneau Coast-To-Coast Lincoln Highway Recognition Award” in 2014, and I know we met while he was actively working on that. Maybe before. He has continued to be quite active in the LHA including serving presently as treasurer. Several standout articles written by him have appeared in the association’s official publication, The Forum.
I realize that by telling you all of this, I’m really spotlighting just how late I am to digging into Trail of Trees. The book had existed for at least a couple of years before I met John and the events it tells of happened a decade or more before that. I think I may have heard something about John and his wife Joyce planting some trees but I’m not certain even of that. l am certain that what I heard — if anything — did not reveal that “some trees” equaled 252 and the planting involved all fifty states and the District of Columbia.
This book is important because the project it documents is important. It started as something to occupy Joyce’s mind as she underwent chemotherapy. That’s pretty important, of course, but the project soon grew to involve her immediate and extended family and small groups of strangers in every corner of the country. Some of those strangers were involved ever so briefly and no deeper than their official positions required while others took wholeheartedly to their piece of the project and stayed in contact with the Jacksons far beyond the day of planting and the planning that preceded it.
In terms of time, I’ve little doubt that planning was the biggest part of the project. The concept is deceptively easy to describe: plant some trees at a place with a Jackson connection in every state. But just identifying those places was far from easy. Sure, many states have a city named Jackson and there are a couple of Jacksonvilles but others seem to contain not even a hint of Jackson. There Joyce had to get creative and tie in the names of their children for plantings at places with names like Christina River, Robertsville, and Stevens Village. The names Joyce and John also got pulled into the mix.
Of course, picking a location was just the beginning. They weren’t the only challenges facing the Jacksons but finding someone in the area to coordinate with, scheduling travel, and arranging for the actual trees to be planted were the biggest. They tried to arrange plantings in clusters to get the most out of long trips and, of course, they had to schedule those plantings around all their normal real-life requirements. It’s an impressive accomplishment.
The book contains no huge surprises in the normal sense. The Jacksons set out to plant trees in fifty states and they succeed. On the other hand, I was somewhat surprised at how much I enjoyed reading it. The plantings are covered in individual chapters in chronological sequence. In addition to details of the actual planting and the leadup to it, the chapters typically include background information on the town or area including its history. Sometimes reaching a site was as simple as driving there from their home but more often it involved flying and renting a car big enough to hold five, ten, or fifteen trees. In Alaska, the final leg of the trip was by boat. There’s a little travelogue in every chapter.
The original ten-year target — which was met — is an indication of the project’s size. Its complexity is hinted at by the schedule and travel challenges I’ve mentioned. There really isn’t a similarly simple indicator of its long-term impact but a sense of that is available to some of us by thinking of trees planted by previous generations of our own families. There are trees planted by my father and grandfather without ceremony that can stir up memories. Imagine the memories connected with 252 trees whose planting involved thousands of miles and hundreds of people. It is, for certain, a legacy.
Of all those trees, only five were known to have perished by the time this book was published. Embarrassingly, those were the trees in Ohio, my home state and the Jackson’s current residence. I checked with John after reading the book and learned that they managed to get the trees replaced after moving to Ohio. That’s great news but I’m still embarrassed.
Trail of Trees, John and Joyce Jackson, Printing Arts Press (October 2010), 8.5 x 11 inches, 261 pages, ISBN 978-0615397146
Available through Amazon.
Missed it by that much. I had this really great idea for a book title, and even figured out the story that would fit it. I would drive one way across the country on the Yellowstone Trail and the other way on US 20. I would do this in the year 2020, and the resulting travelogue would be perfectly described by that catchy title: 20 in ’20 and the YT Too. But COVID-19 played havoc with 2020 travel plans and the wonderful title’s “best if used by” date came and went. I made the planned trip a year later and adjusted the title appropriately. It’s admittedly not quite the same but it’s not horrible. Is it? Well?
This post is a direct violation of one of the claims made on this blog’s “About” page. There the claim is made that “You will not be seeing a review of the latest novel…”. I suppose I could claim that, at the time of this review, The Lincoln Highway: A Novel is no longer the absolute latest novel, but the fact that it is a “#1 New York Times Best Seller” means it is precisely the sort of mainstream major publisher offering I had in mind when I made that claim. My primary defense is that I was tricked into reading it. Realizing that not everyone will see that as a legitimate justification, I will try to minimize the impact of the violation by not doing a very good job.
I got this book from Billy on May 7, 2015. I finished reading it on March 15, 2022. It is, as Billy himself admits and my elapsed reading time confirms, “a difficult read”. “Most people,” he says, “have understandably given up on it.” I was determined not to be like most people — no matter how long it took.
The book has been called a semi-autobiographical novel. According to Billy, it tells about his early life. “The best story I can tell in words is there if one really wants to know it”, he says. The writing style has been called stream of consciousness. In some manner, “stream of consciousness” and “semi-autobiographical” might also apply to the giant metal sculpture that is his life work. Its picture is on the book’s back cover. It is what initially made me and most others aware of Billy’s existence. When I first happened upon the sculpture in 2005, I thought its name, “Billy Tripp’s Mindfield”, might have been the title of a misplaced Beatles song, and learning that William Blevins Tripp is the artist’s real name has not entirely erased that image.
It’s been said you should write what you know. Brian Butko may or may not believe that but there is reason to think he might believe even more in the corollary: Write what you want to know. I frequently get the impression that Butko enjoys the hunt as much as the kill, research as much as publishing, learning as much as teaching. Isaly’s Chipped Ham, Klondikes, and Other Tales from Behind the Counter gives me that impression in spades. This is Butko’s second run at the subject having published Klondikes, Chipped Ham, & Skyscraper Cones: The Story of Isaly’s in 2001. I’m not familiar with the earlier book but know that there is some unavoidable overlap. No surprise there. There is no doubt a multitude of reasons for the redo but I’ll suggest — and this is pure conjecture — that not only was it tackled in order to improve the story with knowledge learned in the intervening twenty years but as an excuse to learn even more.
In the middle half of the twentieth century, Isaly’s was a major regional presence whose farms, factories, and stores helped feed a whole lot of people in northeast Ohio and northwest Pennsylvania. The arc of that presence is not unique. It was a family business that saw the success and growth of the first few generations eventually fade away in corporate buyouts. I’ve lived in Ohio my entire life but we missed each other. My neighborhood has been the state’s southwest corner, and the closest Isaly’s ever came to my home was Columbus. Although a few Columbus stores remained in the late 1960s and it’s possible that I saw one, I have no memory of it. The company entered Columbus in 1935, peaked there in the 1940s, and officially began its exit in 1954. Everything I know about Isaly’s I learned from Brian Butko. Brian Butko learned from family members, former employees, company records, newspapers, and libraries. 
There were other innovations such as Skyscraper Cones, Party Slices, and Klondike Bars. Klondike Bars were the biggie. The only Isaly’s product to have success nationally, they are still available today although they are made by Unilever and no longer bear the Isaly’s name. They do, however, still bear the Isaly’s bear.
Unlike me, Brian has plenty of personal Isaly’s memories. He says that his earliest was of their macaroni and cheese. His excitement is evident when given access to a 3-ring binder of company recipes. He finds the sought-after Baked Macroni then writes, “I have yet to try the official recipe…”. The fact that the recipe yields 60 servings might be one deterrent but I think I also detect a little fear that today’s result might not live up to yesterday’s memories. I, for one, encourage Brian to face his fear and look that macaroni right in the elbow. Finding 59 mac & cheese eaters should be easy.
This History Press publication, as is their standard formula, is built around lots of photos both old and new. In this case, a few of those photos are mine. I won’t pretend that isn’t what made me aware of the book and triggered this review but will point out that the book does fit handily into the local-author-local-subject category that I’m fond of talking about. The local author, Wendy Hart Beckman, isn’t a native Cincinnatian but has spent much of her adult life here. I’m thinking that her New England background might actually help in recognizing what is unique or even just a little different about Christmas in Cincinnati.
“Things to Do” in Cincinnati around Christmas time include skiing, sledding, and ice skating on Fountain Square. Shopping and visiting Santa in the numerous downtown stores was once a major draw in the days leading up to the holiday but the stores and the shoppers slipped away to the suburbs some time back. In 2020, COVID-19 nearly put a stop to in-person shopping anywhere and only time will tell if it ever fully returns. The same is true of sitting on jolly men’s laps. Beckman includes “Donating” among things to do and writes about several Cincinnati signature campaigns like the Ruth Lyons Children’s Fund and Neediest Kids of All.
There are indeed plenty of things to do and hear in Cincinnati but there are even more “Things to See”. Beckman lists many Nativity scenes and light displays including some at private residences that have become must-sees over the years. The Cincinnati Zoo’s “Festival of Lights” and the tree on Fountain Square are in that must-see category. What might be considered the big three of Cincinnati Christmas events are on Beckman’s “Things to See” list. The oldest is Boar’s Head and Yuletide Festival which has been celebrated in Cincinnati since 1939. That’s clearly long enough ago to qualify as a true tradition but the festival’s history goes back another 600 years in England. Number two is The Nutcracker which the Cincinnati Ballet Company has been doing since 1974. The newest of the three is Playhouse in the Park’s production of A Christmas Carol which dates to 1991.
Jim Grey blogs, collects film cameras, uses those cameras, develops the film himself, walks, bikes, and observes. Put them together and what have you got? This book.
It is a story about the neighborhood in which he lives, and where he interspersed COVID-triggered working-at-home with some calorie-burning walking-near-home. We are introduced to the neighborhood as a collection of modestly priced homes in an area of pricier residences. A big attraction is access to very good schools at somewhat bargain prices. Although the location makes them bargains, they are hardly shabby and actually look quite attractive — from the front.
Construction is wood frame with vinyl siding and brick accents. Those accents, however, are almost entirely on the front of the houses. The other three sides are the focus of the story. Part of Grey’s story is about these sides being exposed by the curving streets, numerous retention ponds, and open spaces created by electric and gas lines.
The rest of the story is about those exposed surfaces and areas being a long way from handsome. The story’s name comes from the large expanses of vinyl siding exposed by those curves and ponds. Windows are few and from the outside often appear to be placed rather randomly and often awkwardly. Many side walls are unbroken by any windows at all.
There are few words but lots of pictures. The pictures are black and white and large. The most common arrangement is two 4×6 inch photos to a page. Where words do appear, they typically share a page with one of those 4×6 photos. Occasionally a photo gets a page all to itself which lets it grow to approximately 5 1/2 by 8 1/4 inches. Grey has changed publishing platforms (from Blurb to Amazon) for this project which results in some physical differences from the previous essays. The pages are slightly smaller (8×10 vs 8.5×11) and the paper used is uncoated rather than semi-gloss. Photo quality does suffer but again it is the subject of the picture that is important. The pictures are here to document the subject and illustrate Grey’s story, not to be admired in and of themselves. It’s an assignment they handle quite well.