Book Review
Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy
Tim Hartford

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Although I have since figured it out, when I pulled Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy from my to-read list, I wasn’t sure how it got there. I was, however, quite certain that beginning it immediately after reviewing Cities of Gold was a real piece of luck. That’s not because of any overlap in subject matter. There is virtually none. It is because that review had ended with me seriously considering whether or not the invention of the automobile had been a good thing. I guess I was in the mood to think about inventions.

Harford leads us to think about inventions differently than we otherwise might. Of course, just considering their impact on the economy, the focus of this book, is new for some inventions and some readers. But Harford has us thinking about how they came to be, why some took so long to be created or accepted, and yes, good versus bad.

Some inventions create clear winners and losers, and that is the name of the book’s first section. A good example, and the one Harford talks about first, is the gramophone. As he does with all fifty of his chosen inventions, he tells its story through real-world examples that illustrate why it was chosen. In pre-gramophone days, top-tier performers made more money than those who weren’t quite as good, but second- and third-rate performers could do alright since the only way to hear a hit (or any sort of) song was via a live performance. Once it became possible for a star to record a single performance and sell copies, the market for not-quite-star performers dropped dramatically.

Several of the listed inventions require a large array of other inventions to even exist. The premier example of this is the iPhone and the other smartphones that followed. Harford notes that economist Mariana Mazzucato has identified a dozen technologies needed to make this device practical and useful. Several are specialized miniature electronic components, but things like analog-digital conversion, a cellular network, and the World Wide Web are also obviously necessary. I was reminded of those pictures of a guy weighed down by all the devices replaced by a modern smartphone, and made to realize that if all of those functions didn’t already exist, smartphones wouldn’t be very smart at all.

There are other inventions that do not require a bunch of prior breakthroughs but do require a lot of coordination. I have passed harbors filled with ships loaded with identically sized shipping containers and have watched trains carrying the big cubes pass me. It never occurred to me just how much coordination it took to create ships and railcars to hold the containers and cranes and other devices to move them. The story of how that happened is fascinating.

Naturally, a lot of what Harford has to say about an invention concerns its impact. The book’s purpose, after all, is to identify those that shaped the modern economy. Some of that impact is intentional, some is not, and some of the unintentional impact is not good. It was the negative environmental impact of the automobile described in Cities of Gold that got me to consider it differently, and there are plenty of negative unintended consequences described in Fifty Inventions…. But there are also plenty of positive unintended consequences connected with those inventions.

Air-conditioning is a great example. Its invention was driven by the effect of varying humidity on color printing. It solved the problem – but also led to a lot of comfortable and happy people in their cars, homes, and offices. Along with the safety elevator, reinforced glass and concrete, and a few other things, air-conditioning is one of the inventions that allow glass-covered skyscrapers to exist.

That the inventions Harford identifies have overall been good things is reinforced in the Epilogue, when he recounts economist Timothy Taylor asking his students whether they would rather be making $70,000 a year now or in 1900. The answer might seem obvious at first, but it requires just a little thought to realize that while that money would definitely buy more stuff in 1900, much of the stuff that makes life enjoyable today was not available in 1900 at any price.

Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy, Tim Harford, Riverhead Books (August 28, 2018), 5.5 x 8.21 inches, 336 pages, ISBN 978-0735216143
Available through Amazon.

Skirmish at Dogwood Pass

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I first heard of this faux town in southern Ohio a couple of weeks ago when someone reported on a visit there in an online travel group.  Dogwood Pass began as a man-cave-style retreat for Mike Montgomery and his buddies, but has grown to be a whole lot more. The place was used to raise funds for a seriously ill child in 2012, and the practice has been repeated annually, with an event benefiting a different child each time.

Ideas kept coming, and the place has become a year-round attraction, with something going on at least twice a month, and much more around Halloween and Christmas. When I learned that one of the big Civil War-themed events would take place on June 6 and 7, I thought it would be a good time to check it out. When it aligned with perfect weather, I knew it.

The three dozen or more buildings that make up the town sure look like authentic 19th-century structures, and there is even a boot hill for the truly permanent residents.

Storefronts and wooden crosses are definitely not the only thing to look at. Among the less static attractions are the Roy Rogers Memory Museum, the g-g-g-g-granddaughter of Little Turtle, Buildings, and a hard-working village smithy.

Two Civil War reenactments were scheduled, and as the time for the first one approached, Dogwood Pass founder and owner Mike Montgomery told spectators a little about his man-cave’s wild transformation and the upcoming visit by Morgan’s Raiders. Everyone should stay behind the safety rope, he explained, to avoid getting “run over, shot, or killed”. This was especially important today, he said, because “It’s too hot for anyone to dig a hole to put you in.”

The town folk remained calm and it was business as usual until word arrived that Morgan was on his way.

The town cannon was fired as the raiders reach the edge of town but it was just wasn’t enough. Confederate troops were soon in the town square.

In 1863, Morgan’s Raiders worked their way through many small towns in southern Indiana and Ohio looking for horses, food, or anything else the could use. On Saturday, reenactors did the same in Dogwood Pass, and for a time were in complete control of the town.

It was short lived, however. Before long, United States troops appeared and cleared the town of the intruders.

Of course, not all of them left. Then, after a moment to let folks take in the scene and consider what they had just witnessed, the command “resurrect” brought everyone dispatched during the melee back upright. The reenactors eventually joined in formation and all the participating units were introduced. I regret that I can’t recall and share their identities. Many had traveled quite some distance and every one of them added something to a very impressive operation.

An even bigger battle was planned for the afternoon but I left after peace was restored in the town. The event continues today, with what I believe are repeats of both reenactments. I’m sorry that this is being published too late for any but the nearest neighbors to use that information but encourage everyone to check out the Dogwood Schedule and plan a future visit. It’s quite impressive.

Trip Peek #155
Trip #181
SCA Conference 2024

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This picture is from my 2024 trip to the Society for Commercial Archaeology Conference in Nashville, Tennessee. I intended to go as soon as it was announced, then waited too long, and it sold out too fast. So I made other plans, although I did put my name on the waiting list. I was surprised when it reached the top, but took advantage of it and changed my plans again. I have been to Nashville multiple times, so I was familiar with many of the points of interest we visited, including the pictured Broadway, a.k.a. “neon canyon”, and Lane Motor Museum. But there were plenty of new-to-me places, too. Among them were the Willie Nelson and Friends Museum and Marathon Village.

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

Loveland at 150

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Loveland, Ohio, officially turned 150 a week ago Saturday. A celebration featuring a vintage base ball game with former Cincinnati Reds players was planned, but threatening weather caused that game to be canceled. Other parts of the celebration did happen Saturday evening, but I didn’t get to the party until Sunday, 150 years and 1 day after Loveland was incorporated as a village.

The area’s first settler was Col. Thomas Paxton, and he established a community bearing his name around 1795. In 1847, Col. William Ramsey laid out a town here, and in 1848, changed the name to Loveland after the first postmaster, James Loveland. A major post office connection still exists today. The Loveland postmark is quite popular around Valentine’s Day, and a remailing program started in 1936 is still going strong. The Village of Loveland was officially incorporated on May 16, 1876. It was incorporated as a city on July 25, 1961, so I’m guessing we’ll have another big party in 35 years.

Several activities, including live music and Loveland Frog appearances, were scheduled for Sunday, but about all I took in was the car show. Like any car show deserving of the name, there was a DJ playing hits from yesteryear. The Internet tells me that DJ still stands for “disc jockey” although I’m pretty sure that no discs of any sort were involved here.

There were no radical customs or heavily hot-rodded cars, but even without them, the cars on display covered a rather wide range. These three, among the very first I encountered, do a nice job of illustrating that range.

If called upon to describe the typical entry at the show, I’d say it was a nicely restored/maintained very drivable auto from the ’40s, ’50s, or ’60s. There were quite a few on hand that matched that description.

As is fairly common at car shows, attendees were asked to vote for a “People’s Choice” award. I wish I knew who won, but I don’t. I do know that this 1961 Studebaker Hawk got my vote. Read about it here.

After completing a pass through all the cars, I walked a couple of blocks away to my favorite bottle shop, Cappy’s. In recognition of Loveland’s 150th, Cappy’s collaborated with Jackie O’s in Athens, OH, to produce a Legend of Loveland hazy IPA. Note that there are two really good breweries in Loveland, but neither really distributes outside of their own taproom. The beer arrived on Thursday and by mid-afternoon Sunday, all the cans were gone. I try to drink an IPA every ten years or so and think I might have been falling behind. Fortunately, even though no cans were available, draft Legend of Loveland was still to be had, so I’m OK.

Book Review
Cities of Gold
Douglas Preston

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When I published my review of The Last Ride of the Pony Express, a friend suggested another book I might like. That book was Cities of Gold, and he was right. I did enjoy the book, and it’s pretty obvious why the one book reminded him of the other. Both tell of journeys on horseback through the American West that attempt to follow a path once ridden by others. The stories, though certainly not identical, are similar. The authors could hardly be more different. Will Grant, who set out to retrace the route of the Pony Express, had been around horses most of his life. Douglas Preston, whose goal was to retrace the sixteenth-century travels of Coronado, was essentially a standard-issue city slicker from Boston, MA. If the mere existence of the book didn’t prove that he had survived, I would have really had my doubts as I read the opening pages.

But even before my doubts about Preston as a horseman started to form, I had decided I was probably going to like him as a writer. In “A Note to the Reader,” which precedes the actual start of the tale, Preston notes that it “is not a comprehensive history of the Southwest.” It is, he explains, “a narrow slice through the bedrock of time.” He might not (yet) know how to judge a horse or properly stay atop one all day every day, but he did have a way with words. For my purposes, that was definitely the more important ability of the two.

Preston, recognizing his own limitations, arranged for two others to accompany him on his big ride. He apparently was not as astute at recognizing limitations in others. A fellow hired as a wrangler, to handle the horses, had clearly oversold his experience and capabilities. He returned home after the trio had covered maybe a third of the total distance, and he didn’t contribute a whole lot while he was there. Preston was more familiar with the group’s third member, Walter. Walter turned out to be much more adept at packing the horses than the hired hand had ever been. He also seems to have been a better judge of capabilities than Preston. He had never been happy with the pretend wrangler, and when the pretender left, he commented, “This is more like it.” That was when, in his opinion, the real adventure began. Walter and Doug actually seemed to make a pretty good team whose relationship included a fair number of odd couple” style spats and recoveries, which doesn’t hurt the story at all.

On the surface, this is a story about a couple of guys spending seventy days on horseback to travel a thousand miles. It would be a good story if that’s all there was. Its protagonists have to track down runaway horses, navigate through trackless desert, and keep an eye out for rattlesnakes. They nearly run out and desperately search for water on multiple occasions, while on another, they encounter so much water that their tent floats. Like any decent travel tale, this one is populated with interesting characters met along the way.

There is, of course, a lot more to it than a log of a long ride. The travels that Preston sets out to trace took place in 1540, and an awful lot of history occurred in the intervening four and a half centuries. Some of that history is shared through the interesting characters Doug and Walter meet. Ranchers, shepherds, and tribal members often have memories passed down through generations. Sometimes the sharing of history is triggered by a location. It might be something from 1540, involving Coronado’s initial contact with the people he encountered, or it might be something from more recent times, such as the days of cowboys, cattle, and outlaw gangs. Preston clearly researched his subject well, and he shares what he learned in an easily digested manner.

I came to this book because of another horseback travelogue, and since I read the two fairly close together, I find I can’t stop comparing them. There are the obvious differences between looking for a not well-documented path followed once 450 years previous and looking for a commercial path traveled repeatedly 150 years previous. But I was also struck by the differences between the two modern journeys separated by just thirty years. When Preston made his trek in 1989, there was no civilian use of the Internet or GPS, and cell phones were in their infancy. By the time Will Grant tackled the Pony Express route, all three of these technologies were well established, although Grant may have spent more time without a cell phone signal than with. I don’t say this to diminish the risks Grant faced. By traveling alone, things that might have been just a problem, perhaps even a really big problem, with a buddy along, could be fatal. I think I say it because it was often on my mind as I read Cities of Gold. I suspect it was often on my mind because those technologies play such a large role in my own travels.

Oddly enough, I didn’t think nearly as often about the much larger difference between the technology of the horse and the technology of the automobile. That might be because that difference is just too big to grasp easily. I did think about it once, however. As the riders approach Albuquerque, NM, Preston writes about how much of the world has been arranged to accommodate the automobile. That is a bit different than noting various individual changes brought on by cars. For the first time, I realized that accommodating cars is central to almost everything that humans do. Also, probably for the first time, I considered the question of whether the invention of the automobile was good or bad a legitimate one. That wasn’t the only time that Cities of Gold prompted me to think about something differently, and that, in my opinion, is a good thing.

Walter, Preston’s traveling companion, was a photographer. He toted a goodly amount of gear, including an 8×10 Deardorff view camera. The majority of the photos in Cities of Gold are Walter’s, and I think they significantly enhance the story. The edition of the book that I read was also helped by Walter’s words. The adventure took place in 1989, and Cities of Gold was first published in 1992. I read an electronic version of the 25th-anniversary edition, which includes an Afterword by Walter. Two people rarely see everything the same way, and it is pretty obvious from the original book that Doug and Walter were top-grade examples of this. Walter’s contribution begins with a summary of the trip from his point of view, which leads to the sharing of two dozen memories that stuck with him for 28 years. If you intend to read this book, and I certainly think it is worthwhile, I do suggest going for a version with Walter’s Afterword included.

Although it has taken me decades to realize he existed, I guess my impression that Douglas Preston has “a way with words” was not wrong. I really enjoyed reading this book, and so, too, it seems, have many others. That it got a 25th anniversary edition is evidence of that. Further evidence of his “way with words” is that he has now written or co-written more than 40 books, including several that have appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. Cities of Gold was his second.
 
 
 
 

Cities of Gold: A Journey Across the American Southwest, Douglas Preston, UNM Press (March 1, 2019), 6 x 9.25 inches, 480 pages, ISBN 978-0826320865
Available through Amazon.

USS Cincinnati Memorial

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The USS Cincinnati Cold War Memorial Peace Pavilion officially opened yesterday. It’s an addition to Voice of America Park in West Chester, OH. There was a reception at the site on Friday evening, and a flag-raising ceremony on Saturday morning, with about 140 sailors who once served aboard the boat present. Both were private events. 1:00 was the announced time for the public opening, but that seems not to have been strictly enforced. I arrived about a quarter till and there were plenty of people already walking around the skeleton-style full-size replica of the submarine. It had rained most of the morning and it seems likely that things were a little wet at the earlier ceremonies, but around noon the clouds started to clear a little and it was dry all the time I was there.

The nuclear-powered USS Cincinnati (SSN-693) was commissioned in 1978 and was in service until 1996. She was nearly 362 feet long and displaced about 6,250 tons. That is big enough to be called a ship and that is the word I initially used in the previous paragraph when referring to past crew members. But something made me question that, and an online search let me know that submarines are, by tradition, typically referred to as boats.

I have some vague (and apparently false) memories of talk about parking the complete submarine on the Cincinnati riverfront, but that was never a real possibility. A request was made, but the Navy wasn’t about to put a nuclear powered ship (or boat) into private hands. However, when the sub was scheduled for scrapping, memorial organizers did manage to get the rudder (in the previous paragraph), the conning tower, the auxiliary engine (a.k.a. Big Red Machine), and a piece of the hull.

There is some impressive signage throughout the site explaining the project and the workings of the submarine. There are plans to add educational interactive displays in the future.

There was evidence of the previous night’s reception (e.g., leftover very tasty cookies) inside the site’s only building along with several USS Cincinnati related artifacts and photos. I have a hunch that many of these will be included in more permanent displays as time permits.

Unsure of what crowd and weather conditions would be this weekend, I grabbed some pictures when I drove by about two weeks ago. Everything was pretty much in place except the signs. Until the rain stopped while I was on my way to the park, I thought there was a pretty good chance they would be all I would have for this post. I am sure happy that’s not the case, but figured I might as well share a couple shots without tents or people.

Loveland Museum Center

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Saturday was not the first time I’ve visited the Loveland Museum Center, but earlier visits happened long enough ago that this website did not exist. They were, in fact, long enough ago that I remember almost nothing about them. To be entirely honest, I don’t remember half as much as I should from Saturday’s visit. To illustrate, I met three extremely friendly and helpful staff members while I was there, but the only one whose name I remember is the lady who guided me through the exhibits and supplied tons of information: Nancy. The main museum building is known as the Bonaventure Hoise. It was built in 1862 by Dr. John S. Law. It was the home and office of Dr. Frank S. Lever into the 1950s. Apparently, Bonaventure was the name of an owner between the two doctors.

I don’t believe any of the building’s current content is original, but what is there is appropriate and interesting. A placard identifies the refrigerator as a General Electric “Monitor Top”, and says the name came from its resemblance to the gun turret of the Civil War ironclad, USS Monitor. I’d heard the name before, though not the explanation. I had my doubts, but it does make sense, and the internet seems to support it.

There is an impressive collection of guns and a display about a log cabin that I’ll have more on later. The large document on the left side of the third picture grants eleven hundred acres of land on the Little Miami River to Colonel Thomas Paxton. It is signed by President John Adams. This led to the founding of the village of Paxton, which eventually became Loveland.

During restoration, the name of paperhanger R.W. Prendergast was uncovered and preserved. It was placed there in 1872. It was apparently uncovered and again papered over in 1932 when S.G. Tufts added his name. Upstairs, a bit of wallpaper, thought to possibly be original, is similarly preserved.

That previously mentioned cabin is now on the museum grounds. It was built in 1797, covered over the years with numerous additions, then rediscovered in the 1980s when some remodeling was planned. A placard from that previously pictured display is here, and one from inside the cabin is here. Although they are not directly connected to the cabin, quite a few historic items are displayed inside it. The covered wagon bows against the wall caught my eye, and I snapped a picture, partially so I could mention that I once read that wagon bows were the first commercial product exported from Darke County, OH, my home.

Here is a different view of the cabin and the museum, along with a shot of the modern building containing museum offices and an event space. 

Salty Dog Museum

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I have known of the Salty Dog Museum for several years, but had it in my mind that it was open by appointment only. I think it may very well have started out that way. But I recently learned that it is pretty reliably open on Thursdays and Saturdays. On those days, the crew is very likely on site, busy restoring something, with the doors to the two museum buildings unlocked. There’s a decent chance of it being open at other times, and a slight possibility does exist that it won’t be open on a particular Thursday or Saturday. In other words, even though the museum has settled into a fairly consistent two days or more a week schedule, everything on the sign out front remains true.

Had I tried one more door beyond the two I found locked, I’d have been able to step into the museum building filled with cars. As I contemplated my next move, Dan stepped into the sunlight to get a better view of something in his hands. I approached and asked about the museum, and he invited me into the workshop. After casually noting that I was starting at what was the normal end of a museum tour, he told me about the 1917 Cincinnati Fire Department ladder wagon currently being restored along with the “tractor” that eventually replaced the horses that pulled it originally.

Then Dan introduced me to museum co-founder Mark Radtke, who gave me a tour of highlights before letting me loose to wander at will. I’ve seen Mark in a video or two with Ron Miller, the museum’s other founder and the founder of Ron’s Machine Shop. Ron died in 2023, and I really regret not getting here while he was still around. As you can see, Mark graciously agreed to a photo after leading me through the proper door into the auto section. Before we stepped out of the workshop, I got to watch Mark and some of the others dig through a foot-thick catalog, then do some back-of-the-envelope calculations involving IDs, ODs, and probably some other Ds, too, to determine exactly which fitting to order for some piece being restored. Seeing how much that group enjoyed what they were doing, then seeing Ron’s enthusiasm for the collection of vehicles and paraphernalia he and Ron have put together, sure put me in the right mood for looking it over.

We returned to the other building, where Mark went back to work, and I went off exploring. The museum started with cars, with the fire engines coming along later. Apparently, however, once they started coming along, they really came along. The number and quality of the firefighting vehicles here is phenomenal.

Ahrens-Fox was a Cincinnati-based builder of fire engines. That no doubt accounts for many of their vehicles being displayed in the museum.

When there’s that much firefighting equipment around, there’s bound to be more than a few ladders. Many are displayed on engines and trailers, and there is also a wall filled with them. Those not lying flat against that wall could present something of a hazard, but Salty Dog does a good job of making them visible.

I noticed this rock waterer and asked about it when Mark and I were walking between the two display areas. It was their answer to the Genius of Water on Cincinnati’s Fountain Square, he explained. Then he demonstrated its remote control. I snapped this picture as I headed back to the car display building. Ain’t it wonderful what a group of engineers and mechanics can accomplish with just a few spare parts?

You may have spotted this car in the background of the earlier photo of Mark. Although it was not the start of building or collecting cars for either of them, this car might mark the beginning of the Miller-Radtke collaboration that led to the museum. In 2008, the pair went to Bonneville as spectators, but ended up as an impromptu crew. They also ended up hooked. They built this car and captured two Bonneville Salt Flats land speed records with it. There are some details on its Ault Park Concours placard.

There are several more race cars next to the Bonneville car, and a slightly different sort of race car sits a short distance away. It’s the 1915 Ford Model T that Ron Miller drove to victory in the 2001 Montana 500. The 1911 T in the third picture isn’t a race car, but it does look rather racy, and I’m rather fond of the after-market hood ornament.

Looking back from the other end of the building will give you an idea of just how many cars it contains, and it might give you an idea of just how much these guys like Fords. It’s not all Fords, though. Among the “off brands” on display are a 1908 Schacht, a 1902 Holsman, and a 1932 Chrysler. There are even a few motorcycles available for viewing.

Crosby, Stills, and Nash said it first:

Will you come see me Thursdays and Saturdays?
What have you got to lose?
          Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, 1969

Book Review
Aprons Away
Cheryl Eichar Jett

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I’ve commented before that “Why another Route 66 book?” is something I sometimes ask. I more or less thought I would be asking that question about Aprons Away: Women’s Work on Route 66, but found it wasn’t really needed. This is not, in my opinion, “another Route 66 book”. It is a book about women who made meaningful contributions to the world and who happen to have a connection to the route. For some, that connection is lifelong and one that defines their contribution. For others, Route 66 is associated with a smaller—sometimes much smaller—portion of their accomplishments. You won’t learn all that much about Route 66 from this book. You will learn a lot about a bunch of women who left their mark on the world. Route 66 is not the subject of this book; it is only the filter for selecting the subjects.

Jett divided those subjects into ten chapters, starting with “Blueprints” and ending with “The Documentarians”. Each chapter begins with a brief introduction of each of the chapter’s subjects, including some hints as to what each of them accomplished. Not so brief, but not overly long, biographies follow. Most are only a page or two, but each one makes it clear just made the woman stand out and what connected her to Route 66.

In interviews, Jett has said that the first stories in her collection about women and Route 66 were of women in “visible roles”. By that, she meant waitresses, motel operators, and others who were visible to travelers on the road. Neither of the categories I’ve mentioned, “Blueprints” and “The Documentarians”, is visible in that sense, but each contains someone quite visible to the world at large. The person whose biography begins the book, Mary Colter, is best known to fans of Route 66 as the architect of La Posada hotel in Winslow, AZ, but is highly visible to others for her wide-ranging design work on and off the route. Dorothea Lange, who appears on the cover of Aprons Away, is undoubtedly the documentarian in the book with the highest level of visibility. Her depression era photographs are some of the most recognized in the world.

“An Apron and a Coffee Pot”, “The Gas Station Girls”, “The Inn Keepers”, and “The Entrepreneurs” more closely match the “visible roles” Jett was referencing. Sometimes women waited tables, pumped gas, registered guests, or collected tickets for a business run by their husband or father, but not always. Lucille Hamons, Lillian Redman, and Ramona Lehman are names that nearly every fan of Route 66 will recognize for their major roles in customer-facing businesses along the route. The other categories, “Public Service”, “The Artists”, “World War II”, and “Design and Engineering” also have stars that are known to many who have traveled or studied the route.

Of course, every one of those chapters has several sections on people much less famous than Lange or Colter or Redman, and that’s why we buy such books. In fact, I’m guessing that it’s pretty much why the book was written. I strongly suspect that Jett would have heard some complaints had she not included Colter and others of equal fame, but there are numerous places we can read about those folks. I did not count them, but understand there are more than eighty women profiled in Aprons Away. Every one of them deserves to be here, and their stories deserve to be told. Jett has uncovered some very interesting women and has done a nice job of sharing their collected stories. I was familiar with well under half, maybe no more than a quarter, before meeting them in this book. New knowledge is a good thing.

Aprons Away Women’s Work on Route 66, Cheryl Eichar Jett, Reedy Press (April 1, 2026), 6 x 9 inches, 224 pages, ISBN ‎ 978-1681066349
Available through Amazon.

History in Bloom at Spring Grove

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People I asked while there thought that Spring Grove Cemetery’s History in Bloom was about 15 years old. The earliest reference I’ve found online is from 2012, and it says, “It is one of our most popular events of the year!”, so 2012 wasn’t the first. Apparently, the event I attended for the first time on Sunday, April 19, was at least the sixteenth. My first impulse when something like that happens is to feel embarrassed because it took me so long to discover something so interesting. Of late, though, I’ve taken to being quite happy when it happens since it means there are still cool things to discover even for an old guy like me.

I do, however, regret missing out on previous events for one reason. In the past, I have enjoyed extended walks around Spring Grove Cemetery, and would certainly have enjoyed the guided walking tour available today. But long walks have become problematic for me over the last year or so, and I was happy to take advantage of the horse-drawn carriage rides, which, like the walking tours, were free.

It was nearing 1:00 when I arrived. This was probably near the busiest part of the day, and the line for carriage rides was rather long. My wait was a bit more than an hour, but the weather and surroundings were very pleasant. Neither I nor the others in line were much bothered by the wait. There was a group of five, including an extremely young baby, immediately in front of me. The first of the group had boarded a carriage when it became apparent they could not all be accommodated. When those on board turned to rejoin those on the ground, a couple already seated stepped off — with a smile — so mom and the others didn’t have to wait any longer.

We would get to visit with seven of the cemetery’s residents during the tour. All were important in the development of the city and region, but one was also extremely important in the development of the final home of all seven. Joseph Earnshaw assisted landscape designer Adolph Strauch considerably in creating the parklike layout of Spring Grove Cemetery.

Next up was Susan Pendleton Bowler, who, along with her husband, invited Adolph Strauch to design their gardens, which are now Mount Storm Park. John Robinson spoke to us from in front of the family mausoleum. The Robinson Circus, among the first to own its own railroad cars, wintered in Cincinnati for many years. Clara Dow was the only female in her class at pharmacy school, which she attended in order to take over her father’s drug store. Under her management, the store hired female pharmacists and added a soda fountain to create a place where women and children were welcome—and comfortable.

Thomas Hughes was a successful cobbler who willed his property to the city for the education of poor children. Hughes High School bears his name. Born into slavery, Henry Boyd became a skilled carpenter and was able to buy his freedom. His H. Boyd Company was a respected manufacturer of furniture. When Marianne Kauffman’s husband died, she stepped in to save and operate the John Kauffman Brewing Company. Because of her earlier success in real estate transactions, she was able to bring the company out of the heavy debt her husband had created.

This is Robert, our onboard narrator. He filled the spaces between stops with lots of information and an occasional joke. He also answered a fair number of questions, and it was clear he really knew his history. By tour’s end, we learned he had played several History in Bloom roles over the years. As I mentioned, the earliest History in Bloom references I found online were from 2012, and one of those contained a photo of Robert as Joseph Earnshaw.

There were three teams of horses pulling visitors around the cemetery. They all deserve to be recognized, and, although I did not get any of their names, I did get their pictures. The pictures near the beginning of the article are of the team that pulled me. Here are the other two teams as they approached the pickup point to load up and move on without me.