SCA and JHA Conferences

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The sun has set on the first day of the first “normal” Society Society for Commercial Archeology conference since 2019. The 2023 conference started Wednesday, May 31, in Erie, PA. The 2023 Jefferson Highway Association conference begins next Wednesday. The JHA’s first post-COVID conference took place last year but the site of this year’s conference (Mason City, IA) is where the pandemically postponed conferences of 2020 and 2021 were to take place. The Lincoln Highway Association also broke out of the COVID pause last year and will have things ready to go this year in Folsom, CA, starting June 12. There was a brief moment when I thought I might make it to all three conferences but reality soon set in. The logistics of getting to California following the conference in Iowa were just too much of a challenge for me. With apologies and sadness, the LHA conference was dropped. I will be attending the other two and there’s not a whole lot of time between them. What time there is will be spent in a fairly direct crossing of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. They have separate journals with a switch to the JHA trip planned after the last day of the SCA conference.

This entry lets blog-only subscribers know about the trip and provides a place for comments. The SCA trip journal is here and the JHA trip journal here.

Book Review
No Crybabies Allowed
Terri Ryburn

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I know Terri Ryburn as the owner of historic Sprague’s Super Service in Normal, Illinois, and as a key ingredient in the Miles of Possibility Route 66 Conferences. I know the picture on the cover of the book from a copy hanging on the wall of the former gas station that Ryburn has turned into a Route 66 information center, gift shop, and photo op. I knew that was Terri seated on the fender with her dad and older brothers standing beside her because she told me when I spotted the photo on the wall. She may have told me that the photo contained only half of her total family but if she did I forgot. From reading No Crybabies Allowed I learned (or maybe relearned) that, while Terri was the youngest family member in this particular photo, she would be in the elder half of eight children after two more brothers and two sisters came along. None were crybabies.

I didn’t care much for the book’s title when I first saw it. I may have liked it even less after encountering it in the text for the first time. Terri’s brothers started a “boys only” club which she, of course, wanted to join. When being told that girls were not allowed brought on tears, they told her that there were no crybabies allowed either. I was still calibrating the book in my mind at that point and I seriously feared that I was in for many pages of the boys driving their sister to tears then laughing at her or her refusing to let tears actually form to prove she was no crybaby. By then I’d read enough to know better but I guess I just didn’t.

But it wasn’t long before an entirely different view of the title started to form. The Ryburns were poor. Often very poor. Often very very poor. They lived in an apartment when Terri was born but were soon living in a tent and carrying water from a neighboring house. It was quite a step up when her father built “a windowless 10′ x 16′ tarpaper shack”. I’ve read more than a few tales of people living in poverty. It often seems like the writers make lots of comparisons and toss around adjectives to stress just how poor someone is. That is infrequently the case here. Situations are described in enough detail that comparisons can easily be made but they are not forced. I don’t believe there is a single instance of “we were so poor that…”. I began to think of the book’s title as Terri’s instruction to herself. Tell your story accurately but don’t whine about it.

The family’s financial situation was not helped by Ray Ryburn’s wanderlust. Their frequent moves over the western two-thirds of the country were always instigated by Terri’s father, sometimes with apparent justification and sometimes not. A typical move had them downsizing their already meager belongings to fit into whatever timeworn vehicle was in their possession at the time then cramming themselves into what space was left while Hazel Ryburn counted her offspring as they boarded to make sure none were left behind. That seems a little like the Joads and I don’t doubt that there were times when the Ryburns in transit resembled people fleeing the dust bowl a couple of decades earlier.

No Crybabies Allowed is autobiographical. It covers the first dozen years of Terri Ryburn’s life in chronological order. However, it is done with anecdotes that, in many cases, could stand alone as short stories of life in the 1950s or of being a child in any decade. Some, like the neighborhood prayer meeting, are hilarious. Others are about as far from funny as it is possible to be.

While the Ryburns are living in San Francisco, a very young Terri is invited to a prayer meeting by a Spanish-speaking neighbor. As the adult women pray loudly with hands in the air, a non-Spanish-speaking Terri joins them. For the most part, she relies on copying the other voices with a syllable or so lag but she also tosses in a few phrases of her own (e.g., caballero dog) that she learned by watching Zorro on TV. Some of the emotional women had begun to cry but the tears stopped as they opened their eyes to look at the enthusiastic visitor. Ending the crying, she decided, was proof that her prayers were working.

For an example of something at the other end of the scale, the bonfire scene as they prepare to leave Illinois for California is one that sticks in my mind. The bonfire is the final step in downsizing. Useless furniture and other items not making the trip go into the fire. The boys make a game of tossing their few toy cars and trucks into the fire. The same fate has been decreed for Linda, Terri’s doll. Terri at first refuses but eventually tosses the doll into the flames while tears flow. Linda has been through some rough times including the brothers using her head for a ball just a few pages earlier. She’s in pretty bad shape and somehow considering the doll’s sorry condition makes the toss acceptable. Maybe it’s just rationalizing the inevitable but that’s not a bad skill to master when dealing with the inevitable crops up so often. Ryburn didn’t write the following and maybe she didn’t even think it but I did. Sobbing over a doll does not make you a crybaby.

Terri (actually Theressa, I learned) Ryburn and I are about the same age so some of her childhood experiences parallel my own. I remember learning to read with Dick and Jane and I remember ordering books from the Scholastic Book Club. I remember weak Kool-Aid and peanut butter sandwiches. I suppose the familiar bits that brought back my own memories are one reason I enjoyed this book. But Ryburn and I don’t remember these things exactly the same way. I don’t recall ever having a problem getting a few quarters for my Scholastic Book Club order and our Kool-Aid almost always had some sugar in it. And we never moved beyond a few miles and not at all during my school years. Maybe — and I feel a tiny tinge of guilt saying this — I enjoyed the book because it made me appreciate the circumstances of my childhood even more.

The book can be purchased from Amazon via the link at the end but a better way would be to get an autographed copy direct from Terri at Ryburn Place, 305 Pine St, Normal, IL. Terri would also be happy to mail copies. Call (309-585-4103) or email (ryburnplace66@gmail.com) to arrange.

No Crybabies Allowed: The Past as Told by Me, Dr. Terri Ryborn, Independently published (December 9, 2019), 7 x 10 inches, 405 pages, ISBN 978-1093973686
Available through Amazon.

Golf Manor Grand Prix

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I once attended a Cincinnati Soapbox Derby event and I know I took some pictures but apparently I did no reporting of it on this site. This post will keep last Sunday’s Golf Manor Grand Prix from suffering the same fate. The Golf Manor race is an International Soap Box Derby® sanctioned event but it is not a qualifier for the big derby in Akron, Ohio. For Cincinnati, that role is assigned to the Cincinnati Local Derby held in June. That means the Golf Manor event is something of a practice session with a sizable percentage of first-time drivers. Both Stock and Super Stock races are held but I attended only the Stock event that filled the morning. Stock car drivers are between 7 and 13 years old and under 5’3″ and 125 pounds. Super Stock cars are a little bigger with drivers between 9 and 18 years of age and up to 6’0″ tall and 150 pounds in weight.

When I arrived, the pit crews (a.k.a., parents) were hovering around the cars and confering with the drivers. I snapped these pictures of the unattended cars when the drivers meeting was announced.

The drivers meeting was much like others I’ve seen or attended although the drivers were somewhat shorter than what I’m used to seeing. And I think they were less impressed with greetings from Mayor Stefan C. Densmore than were the pit crews and officials. Golf Manor is an independent municipality completely surrounded by the city of Cincinnati.

At 180 meters (about 200 yards) the track here is considerably shorter than the one in Akron (301 meters) but it has the advantage of an uphill slope beyond the finish line. This does slow the racers a bit to the benefit of young rookies who don’t always remember to apply the brakes appropriately.

On-track action started with a number of solo runs which I guessed were to give first-timers a run with minimum distractions and no chance of interference. In reality, though, I don’t think these drivers were about to let anything distract them.

Precision electronic timing gear automatically picks and announces the winners. Elapsed time is not important meaning only the time between the two racers need be measured. Of course, very high-resolution measurement is required as just fractions of a second separate the cars. Math is just one of the things Soapbox Derby racing teaches its participants.

It also teaches sportsmanship. At the start of a race, the drivers are encouraged to wish each other luck before the starter triggers the mechanism that simultaneously releases both cars. Then the drivers get to learn about gravity, friction, aerodynamics, and lots of other things including just how cool a steering wheel and a burst of speed feels.

The racing was mostly without incident and I saw no reason to photograph the few incidents that did occur. A couple of drivers were still learning the mysteries of steering and shortened their runs by angling into the curb and one driver verified the brakes were working by stopping about halfway down the hill. One car veered into the other lane and ended up slamming into the straw bale protecting the timing sensors. I later overheard comments that something in the steering may have broken. Whatever the cause, it was a traumatic experience with some extra learning that was harsh but injury free.

I’m seriously thinking about going to the big show in Akron this year although there are no firm plans in place. The Cincinnati qualifier would be a nice prelude to that but at the moment that looks to be something I’ll have to miss. If that’s the case, this driver’s practice will be my practice too. 

I Went Back for Bach

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I did better this year than last, and last year I did better than in any of the preceding 148. As explained in a blog post (My First May Fest), by the time I got serious about ending my string of May Festival misses last year, only one of the four major performances fit into my schedule and it was one that would not have otherwise been my first choice. This year I made my move much earlier. My schedule was not yet cluttered and good seats were available for all four performances at Music Hall. I picked the one I did because I like Bach but that’s hardly the date’s only attraction. It was the first of the four main events which made it sort of a May Festival opener. Plus, while Bach’s Magnificat was the big draw, the evening also featured the world premiere of two pieces commissioned for the festival’s 150th anniversary.

The festival program (The front cover of which is pictured up top.) is a real keeper. In addition to details on all of this year’s major performances, it contains plenty of background and history. That history includes the oft-told tale of how thunder, rain, and a leaky tin roof at the second May Festival in 1875 led to the construction of Music Hall in time for the slightly delayed third festival in 1878. Before the festival became an annual event in 1967, it was normally held every two years. A model of the entire Music Hall complex is displayed not far from where I stood to photograph the lobby. 

Bach’s Magnificat had its American premiere at that 1875 May Festival as the opener for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. This year it was a headliner with the two commissioned works serving as openers. The full May Festival Chorus and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra were on stage for both new pieces. The Youth Chorus participated in the first piece and the Children’s Chorus participated in the second.

Breaths of Universal Longings was first and at its conclusion, Principle Conductor Juanjo Mena called its composer, James Lee III, on stage to be recognized. Similarly, James MacMillan came on following the performance of his composition, Timotheus, Bacchus and Cecilia. Mena then called Robert Porco, Director of Choruses, to come up. Porco seemed a little reluctant to step into the limelight but did eventually take a bow. 

An intermission preceded the Bach composition with fewer performers returning to the stage than had left it. Rather than the 130 or so vocalists of the full chorus, there were now about 50 plus five soloists. I can’t really quantify the orchestra’s reduction with the exception of one section. During the concert’s first half, there had been four percussionists on stage with one of them playing an array of five tympani plus a few other instruments. He was now the lone percussionist with just a pair of smaller tympani at hand.

As mentioned, in 1875 Bach had opened for Beethoven. Beethoven’s composition really impressed Cincinnatians but not so Bach’s. One newspaper described Magnificat as “possessing no dramatic character and incapable of conveying the magnitude of the labor that has been expended upon its inconsequential intricacies.” Maybe the current chorus simply did a better job than was done nearly a century and a half ago or maybe it’s just that my taste isn’t as cultivated as that 1875 critic. Whatever the reason, I enjoyed it all. Even the inconsequential stuff.

My post on last year’s May Festival visit included a description of dinner at  Scotti’s. This year I parked on the Central Parkway side of Music Hall which made Queen City Radio a most convenient spot for dinner. Scotti’s took its name from opera singer Antonio Scotti. Queen City Radio takes its name from former occupants of the building who installed radios in cars in the 1930s before every car came with an integrated multispeaker audio system. The Lübecker food truck currently calls this home and I treated myself to one of the day’s specials, käsespätzle.

Music Review
The Vevay Sessions
Ricky Nye

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Ricky Nye didn’t invent boogie-woogie, he just plays it like he did. I’m really bad at defining musical genre boundaries but even I know that not everything on this album is technically boogie-woogie. On the other hand, boogie-woogie is more than time signatures and bass lines. Like many other musical genres, it is partly attitude. Boogie-woogie is fun. It makes you smile. Maybe tap your toes. Of The Vevay Sessions Nye says, “The objective was to make a fun upbeat party record…” which to me means a record with a boogie-woogie attitude.

The album’s name comes from it being recorded in Vevay, Indiana. Some may need to be told that Vevay is “a small rural river town” but not me. I’m quite familiar with Vevay and the name was actually a big attraction for me. I can vouch for the accuracy of Karen Boyhen’s cover art which I suspect was largely done while standing at the front door of my favorite Vevay bar, Cuzz’s. The toe-tappin’ “Kay-Bee Boogie” that opens the album is named for Boyhen.

Backing Nye’s piano and vocals are Anthony Ray Wright on drums and guitar and Jerry King on bass and Eli Gonzalez adds some really nice saxophone on several tracks. The story goes that Ricky approached Jerry and Anthony about doing something together while at a show where the two performed with their regular group, Jerry King & The Rivertown Ramblers. The Ramblers’ forte is rockabilly and Ricky describes what he had in mind as “something a little rootsier than my previous releases.” I’d already heard the album when I read that and, although the word “rootsier” was a new one for me, I immediately knew what it meant and thought it a pretty good description of what they put together.

I think the tracks are about evenly divided between songs from Nye’s live repertoire and those newly worked up for these sessions. Among the latter group is one by Bob Wills (How’s that for rootsier?) and a couple from King Records. One of those King Records’ songs is an album highlight for me. “Train Kept A-Rollin'” was written by Tiny Bradshaw. He recorded it with his big band (with Philip Paul on drums) in 1951. In 1956, Johnny Burnette and the Rock and Roll Trio dramatically reworked it into one of the earliest guitar-driven rock and roll songs ever recorded. Since then, The Yardbirds, Aerosmith, and almost every garage band in the world have updated or covered Burnette’s version. Ricky covers Bradshaw’s version and it’s a glorious thing.

The rest of that quote about the objective being “a fun upbeat party record” is “…and I believe we delivered”. And I believe so too.

The Vevay Sessions and other Ricky Nye recordings can be purchased at
rickynye.com/music

The CD is available in Cincinnati at
Everybody’s Records, Shake It Records, and Mole’s Record Exchange.

A digital download is available at
bandcamp/the-vevay-sessions

But the best way to get it is direct from Ricky at one of his upcoming appearances.

Return of the Dummies

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Just a day shy of two years ago, I attended an open house at Vent Haven in Fort Mitchell, KY. My report on that visit is here. There would be just two more open house events before “the world’s only museum dedicated to ventriloquism” closed for a major expansion in September 2021. When I wrote about the open house, I was surprised and somewhat embarrassed to see that nearly ten years had passed since my one and only previous visit. I resolved to do better and have succeeded in returning almost as quickly as possible. There was a big invitation-only Grand Re-Opening on Saturday, tours for the general public resumed on Tuesday, and I joined the first tour of the day on Wednesday.

This picture of the new building sort of shouts out how one of the museum’s old shortcomings has been overcome in a big way. Previously, very little of the museum was truly handicapped-accessible. Now, not only are the museum’s exhibits accessible with wider doors, no steps, and space for wheelchairs, there is handicapped parking right at the front door. Not only that, non-handicapped patrons no longer have to seek an open spot on the street but can pull into the convenient lot in the back. Another change of at least equal magnitude is the absence of the “go before you get here” warning that used to be given to everyone registering for a tour.  Inside that door is a lobby, gift shop, and PUBLIC RESTROOM.

A couple of figures near the start of the tour were familiar to me. Tommy Baloney was the first dummy museum founder W. S. Berger ever owned. He was purchased in 1910. The McElroy Brothers made Jocko for Mr. Berger around 1940.

Museum exhibits are not, in general, organized by age but it is a fact that some of the oldest dummies on display are among those encountered early in the tour. These are from the Vaudeville period (1880s-1920s) when figures and jokes based on racial and ethnic stereotypes were not uncommon.

Cecil Wigglenose is another museum resident that I recognized. In addition to a wiggling nose, he has eyes, ears, a tongue, and hair that a ventriloquist can manipulate as demonstrated by curator and tour guide Lisa Sweasy. Lisa has been involved in the museum since 2000; first as curator, then as a Board of Directors member, then as both. I met Lisa at that 2021 open house but there were no tours that day. My earlier visit had been during those few years she stepped away from the curator role so today was the first I got to benefit from her knowledge. That knowledge is not just of the items in the collection but of the whole broad world of ventriloquism past and present. It’s pretty obvious she loves her job. I don’t think it is possible to get this good at something otherwise.

This is the second exhibit room. The next room has even more dummies (100+) in shoulder-to-shoulder rows. But both rooms have a fair amount of open space plus the room that precedes them on the tour is not densely populated at all. That’s not the way it used to be. Spaces in the old museum were smaller, more densely packed, and entered directly from the outside. In 2011, I described my first step into the museum as feeling like I was “late to a meeting where a crowd had already gathered”. That was much less the case today. The “walls of dummies” are good. They help convey the popularity of ventriloquism and the variety of figures used but it is nice to approach them without a jolt. This “wall” is organized by builder with color-coded tags. Esky (the Monopoly-man-looking guy in the opening picture) was made by the  McElroy Brothers (yellow bordered tags). He’s near the center of this photo in the second row from the top.

Occasionally a dummy is made to resemble its owner but that old line about “any resemblance to real persons, dead or alive, is purely coincidental” can be applied to the vast majority of them. Notable exceptions at the museum include this group of U.S. presidents and personal favorites Penn and Teller.

Like most museums, Vent Haven has some temporary exhibits although, in light of the recent welcome but exhausting building project, at present “temporary” probably means at least a year and maybe two. One of the current temporary displays features the work of William Kirk Brown who specialized in low-cost entry-level ventriloquial figures.

As might be expected, Vent Haven has displays dedicated to the world’s most famous ventriloquists. Edgar Bergen, Señor Wences, Shari Lewis, Paul Winchell, Jeff Dunham, and others have their own spots. When I was there in 2011, I was able to view but not photograph a temporary display honoring Jimmy Nelson. Jimmy died in 2019 at the age of 90 and now has this permanent display in the new museum.

I believe Lisa said this was about half of the Class of 2023. In the past, I have read that the museum gets 10-15 donations per year. I’m guessing that there might not have been a Class of 2022 but I don’t know that. The picture shows one of many ways that the museum is taking advantage of technology. The archives contain enough photos to cover all of the walls many times over. Large monitors like the one shown here support viewing digitized versions of various large collections without using a large amount of physical space.

On the other hand, there is enough space in the new building to allow using a pretty good chunk of it in a theater. Lisa seemed to appreciate this bit of luxury as much as the parking spaces and restroom. Less obvious but equally important improvements include high-end HVAC to make the dummies feel good and museum-grade lighting to make them look good. Along with this major upgrade to the physical space there are some changes to the museum’s online presence. Tours can still be scheduled the old-fashioned way via telephone or email but they can also be scheduled directly via the museum’s website. That’s what I did and thought it worked quite well. Information and links for personally checking out the museum’s new digs yourself are here.

In my report of that 2011 visit, I told of stopping for breakfast a little less than three miles northeast of the museum so it seems appropriate to describe a stop for breakfast before this visit a little more than three miles southwest of the museum. I had tried stopping at The Hive once before but gave up after three passes through the completely filled parking lot. That reinforced all the good things I’d heard about the place and prompted me to get there a little earlier this time. Now I can say good things myself. In 2011, I had a goetta and cheese omelet at the Anchor Grill. Today I had a goetta and cheese and mushroom omelet.  

A Glimpse of ASM’s Attic

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It’s not wrong to think of museums as simply organized — some much more than others — attics. Of course, almost all museums have attics of their own. It’s where they store stuff that exceeds the space available for displays but, like all that stuff in your own attic, is just too good to throw away. The American Sign Museum has always had multiple attics.

The situation became somewhat simplified when the museum moved into its current location in 2012. With the actual museum occupying about half of the approximately 40,000 square-foot building, the other half made a fine attic. I was once treated to a walk through the space when it really was an attic. I was also in the space for the incredible Signmaker’s Circus, a following Coffee With Tod session where museum founder Tod Swormstedt shared some of his thoughts on organizing signs for the Circus, and a presentation on some of the banners borrowed for the Circus (Sideshow Signage). Plans for expanding the museum were well underway when the circus came to town and the cleanup that preceded it could be considered an early step in the expansion. Most of the stuff that was in that section is now stored in other locations and a recent Coffee With Tod session provided a look at one of those locations.

Almost every available sign was pressed into service at the Signmaker’s Circus so I have seen some of the attic’s contents before. The clown and lion trashcan toppers were there. Tod has been on the lookout for the lion’s partners ever since he learned it was part of a Wizard of Oz set. The mortar and pestle hung in the museum’s main section until very recently. After leaving the attic, I stopped by to check out its replacement.

This sign from a closed New York restaurant was in the attached storage area when a retired sign painter stopped by the museum. Tod was there and took the fellow on a personal tour of the area. When they reached this sign, he stopped and stared for a long time then finally announced “I painted that”. “Made my day… my month,” Tod told us.

Letters, we got letters. We got lots and lots of letters. And walls full of neon skeleton signs, too. There are many more individual letters, some much larger than these, stacked around the area. Only about a fourth of the wall of skeleton signs is in the picture.

A couple of long tables were filled with billboard tags. Although I instantly recognized the name Lamar as something I’d seen on billboards, it had never occurred to me that it was something separate from the billboard or that it was collectible in its own right. Guess I never realized that there were so many companies painting billboards, either.

Tod is especially fond of items used by individual sign creators. Here he is showing us a couple of quite old and wonderfully personalized painters kits.

Tod also likes self-promoting signs. This one has the added attraction of being an example of bad design. It includes examples of pretty much every style of lettering the painter is capable of but picking out the painter’s name is quite a challenge and the curious spelling of “windos” makes one wonder if Mack didn’t really plan ahead.

The “ROOMS” and “I.O.O.F” signs are both backlit by candles. Tod opened each of them to show the candle holders but I was at the back of the crowd at the time and missed out on a picture. I am very confident that these unusual pieces will have a home in the museum’s new area.

Most people know that Mohammed Ali’s birth name was Cassius Clay but not everyone remembers that there was a “junior” at the end. The champion boxer’s father was a successful sign painter in Louisville, Kentucky. Cassius Clay, Sr. painted the sign that Tod holds.

Our last stop was outside at three bas-relief sculptures. They and an identical set were once part of Cincinnati Gardens sports arena. The arena was demolished in 2018 and the museum once had the letters from the arena’s name mounted outside the museum. They were removed in preparation for the expansion and will eventually reappear along with this, boxer, basketball player, and hockey player.

Much remains to be done before a completion date for the expansion can be determined. There are expectations that it will be this year and even hope that it might be around summer’s end but no one is foolish enough to make any promises or place any bets. Whatever the date, it’s pretty phenomenal to think the museum will soon double in size and will instantly be almost full. And there will still be an attic.

Bricktionary at Cincinnati Museum Center

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I’ve never had Legos. I’ve had Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs and even a hand-me-down Erector Set but no Legos. Both my Tinker Toys and my Lincoln Logs were made out of real wood but I had no Legos made out of anything. If having wooden Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs isn’t sufficiently impressive, consider that I also had a Mr. Potato Head that did not come with a plastic body but required a real potato and my family’s Clue Game had a real rope (string) and lead pipe. Knowing all that should make it abundantly clear why I had no Legos. My childhood occurred at a time so far removed from the present that Legos had not yet been invented.

The Lego company and something called “Automatic Binding Bricks” did exist during my childhood but it would be the late 1950s before the sort of plastic brick we now know would appear. Initially seen only in Lego’s home country of Denmark, they would not show up in the USA until 1961. That was a little too late for me but Legos were part of my sons’ toy collections. They were not a big part although they were around enough for me to experience stepping on them barefoot in the dark. The experience is certainly a memorable one but the pain level does not, in my opinion, equal that of stepping on a Barbie high heel under similar circumstances. Legos really took hold a generation later and at least one grandson dived pretty deep into the phenomenon.

Others took even deeper dives to become LEGO® Certified Professionals. One of those professionals, Ryan “The Brickman” McNaught, is responsible for “Bricktionary: The ultimate LEGO® A-Z” exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center that I visited Friday. It is based on a book of the same name. Learning that A is for alligator is a good start.

The Seattle Space Needle just beyond the alligator had me stumped until I figured out it was part of the ‘B’ section. B is for buildings like the Space Needle and the Sydney Opera House.

There are several hands-on stations in the exhibit where lots of Lego elements are available to experiment with. At the earthquake station, visitor-built structures can be tested for stability on adjustable shaking platforms.

It took me a second to realize that G is for garden but knowing that H is for Harley Davidson was immediate. I was pretty impressed with the spokes made out of bricks and I thought the giant flower so cool that I used a shot of just the bloom for an Instagram/Facebook post.

I found this hands-on station extra interesting and spent some time talking with the two people operating it. In the end, I participated myself. It has some similarities with assembling a jigsaw puzzle except all of the “puzzling” has already been done. Screens display random sections of the big image for visitors to copy onto 6×6 panels. The pattern I followed to assemble my section is here. Completed sections are placed in their proper position by one of the station workers. The image being assembled here is a frontal view of the Museum Center. There are others including an awesome view of the Grand Canyon. It takes a number of days to complete an image but several have already been assembled and disassembled since the exhibit opened in March. There is talk of the Museum Center image remaining in Cincinnati when the exhibit moves on and I briefly had visions of my little panel becoming part of a permanent museum display. I quickly realized, however, that the Museum Center, the Grand Canyon, and every other image will likely rise and fall many more times before the exhibit closes in August.

This Lego model of the Museum Center, a.k.a., Union Terminal, sits at the line separating the big exhibit from the obligatory gift shop. One of the items available in the shop is the Bricktionary book mentioned earlier. I should have checked to see if it gives instructions for building all 150+ models in the exhibit. If so, then anyone could duplicate the exhibit with a little free time and about 3,000,000 Legos. If only my condo was a skosh bigger.

Three Days of Peace and Music

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Although it was not an actual goal, I was entertained by live music each of the last three days. It was just like Woodstock except that I only saw one performer each day and didn’t have to sleep in the mud. The picture at right exemplifies the peacefulness that prevailed. It was taken at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden where my musical adventure began.

I’m not sure when the zoo held the first Tunes & Blooms event. The earliest online reference I found was from 2018. The current setup has the music starting at 6:00 with free admission starting at 5:00. There is not much animal activity at that time but there is some and a few buildings remain open. One of those is Manatee Springs which has three residents at present. In the photo, one of the three is seen chasing some of the nearly 300 pounds of lettuce the trio consumes each day.

I have thought of attending Tunes & Blooms in the past but Thursday was the first time I actually made it. The artist of the day was the Carriers. They delivered very good original rock material that I quite enjoyed.

I stopped by Fibonacci Brewing last month to see Vernon McIntyre’s Appalachian Grass but bad weather caused the show to be canceled. I got much closer on Friday. Appalachian Grass performed but without Vernon. He wasn’t feeling well but sent a very capable guitarist in his place. The group is scheduled to be at the brewery monthly and I will be back.

Between 1956 and 1968, Covington, Ohio, was home to Rogers Drum Company. I even picked up a kit there in 1964. For the last few years, fans of the drums have been gathering in Covington to buy, sell, and reminisce as they did on Saturday. Potential buyers would sometimes take kits for a “test drive” and multiple simultaneous drum solos in a high school gymnasium sound exactly like what you’re thinking. The second picture is of Anthony Amodeo’s presentation on some Rogers history. The third picture is of a display in the local museum.

Drum solos were not the only music I heard on Saturday. I ended the day at Devil Wind Brewing where I knew Nasty Bingo would be performing. I had heard of the group but had never actually heard them. They did not disappoint and made a great finale for my three (generally) peaceful days of music.

2023 Ohio Road Meet Columbus

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I attended my sixth road meet yesterday which provided a good topic for this week’s post while simultaneously removing any possibility of completing a post about it by 6:00 AM today. Rather than posting a canned article to meet the 6:00 schedule, I decided to defy the self-imposed deadline and post this report on the Columbus Road Meet at whatever time it was complete. Whether or not it is worth waiting for is not for me to say.

The group gathered at Tommy’s Diner for a pre-tour meal. Sandor Gulyas, the meet’s organizer, and I are pretty familiar with Tommy’s but it was something new for the other four attendees. Being there for lunch was also something new for me since I believe all of my previous visits had been for breakfast. I was prepared to order a sandwich when the menu reminded me of the “breakfast all day” policy. It was not quite noon when I tackled a 3-cheese omelet.

Our first stop was at the Dodge Skatepark from where we could see some of the ongoing construction of a new ramp to I-70/I-71. I’m always something of the odd man at these meets since they lean toward the new and my interest leans toward the old. Of course, it’s really a continuum and I always find something that interests me. However, it might explain why my pier picture includes kayakers and I have a skyline picture facing away from the construction entirely.

While stopped at the skatepark, we walked over to an art installation named The Slingshot for a group photo. I don’t yet have access to that photo (I’ll add it when I do.) but I do have this picture of Sandor about to be launched in the direction of downtown and the opening photo shows Sandor’s final pre-launch view. ADDENDUM 16-Apr-2023: The group photo has been added at the end of this post.

We then circled through downtown for a view of the construction from the south side of the Sciota River. I was quite impressed with the stationery supervisor watching over things from the hilltop with the tip of the LeVeque Tower peeking up behind him. There’s a closer look here.

The brick house is where author James Thurber grew up. It is now a museum and the area around it is called Thurber Village. A parking lot there was our base for a walk to the murals on the Long Street I-71 overpass.

This pair of bridges bracket a brick-paved section of Iuka Avenue running through Iuka Ravine. The Summit Avenue Bridge (least cars) was built in 1916 and restored in 2001. The Indianola Avenue Bridge was built in 1996 to replace one built in 1912. Kudos for retaining the original appearance of both bridges.

Here are outside and inside pictures of Glen Echo Bird Tunnel on Indianola Avenue. The inside shot should make the difference between art and graffiti quite clear to anyone. If I was younger and lived closer, I’d definitely be making plans for the next Bird Tunnel Party. I’ll probably give it some thought anyway. There are photos of some individual birds here, here, and here.

Remnants of the old pavement can be followed to a still-functioning Glen Echo Drive on the other side of Arcadia Avenue. I again gripped the handrail returning to Indianola despite having a different opinion of that bottom column than I had coming down.

Formally named Rustic Bridge, this structure was part of a short-lived zoo and amusement park more than a century ago. The zoo was pretty much a failure and closed in 1907 after just four years of existence. My joke about the bartender not being in till later was pretty much a failure too. From the vantage point of the bridge, I thought this looked exactly like four guys hanging out at a bar but I guess it didn’t make the same impression from ground level.

Following our return to Tommy’s, I headed west on US-40/National Road to the recently reopened Red Brick Tavern. After being closed for nearly four years, this historic tavern had a Grand (re)Opening on Valentine’s Day and less than two months later it appears to be off to a great start. I didn’t catch the musician’s name but I did enjoy his mix of music and I also enjoyed my salmon Ceasar salad. Welcome back!

Apparently, I did not publish a report on that first road meet in 2011 but here are the others:
2012 — Dayton, Ohio
2013 — Cincinnati, Ohio
2019 — Portsmouth, Ohio
2019 — Delaware County, Ohio

ADDENDUM 16-Apr-2023: Here is the Slingshot group photo plus one on Long Street that I had not mentioned. Thanks, Brandon.