Cincinnati Christmas Traditions

Posted on December 22, 2013 by Denny

Among the many interesting pieces of information presented in Cincinnati Museum Center‘s most recent Brown Bag Lecture, “Cincinnati’s Winter Holiday Traditions”, was a listing of the city’s four oldest Christmas traditions.

4. Duke Energy Holiday Trains – 1946
Duke Energy gave its name to the trains in 2006 when it bought Cinergy Corporation. In 2011, it gave the trains to the museum. Before Cinergy was formed in 1994, the company name was Cincinnati Gas & Electric so these trains spent most of their lives as the CG&E trains and that is still how many people think of them.

The O gauge layout was originally constructed by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad as a training tool just prior to World War II. It came to Cincinnati in 1946 and for years was displayed in CG&E’s lobby each Christmas season. Today it is the centerpiece of the Cincinnati Museum Center’s Holiday Junction which includes several other model trains, the “Toys through Time” exhibit, Grif Teller railroad paintings, and more. Kids can ride a train or have a conversation with Patter & Pogie, the talking — and listening — reindeer who were a long time Christmas fixture at Pogue’s department store.

Holiday Junction and the Duke Energy Holiday Trains are are inside the fee required museum but free passes are available to all Duke Energy customers.

3. Boar’s Head Festival – 1940
I have never attended the Boar’s Head and Yule Log Festival and I won’t again this year. Tickets for the free event go fast and those for this year’s festival have long been gone. The first Boar’s Head Festival took place in Oxford, England, in 1340 which means it had been going on exactly 600 years when Cincinnati’s Christ Church Cathedral held its first. The locals have now added 70+ years of their own traditions to establish a unique event for the city. I confess to not even knowing of the festival before the lecture but, the more I learn about it, the more I want to go. There are three performances on January 4 and 5. Tickets were distributed, first-come, first-served, on December 14. Maybe I can snag one of those hot ducats next year.

2. W & S Nativity Scene – 1939
Officially known as Western & Southern Financial Group presents the Crib of the Nativity, this Cincinnati tradition has one year on the Boar’s Head Festival. Western & Southern’s President, Charles F. Williams, had the crib built in 1938 for display in the company’s parking lot. It went public and started the tradition during the very next Christmas season. Initially displayed in downtown’s Lytle Park, it was moved to Union Terminal after the country’s entry into World War II in 1941. It stayed there, a welcome sight to the train loads of GIs who passed through the station, until the war was over. It returned to Lytle Park in 1946.

With the upheaval and shrinking of Lytle Park that came with the construction of I-71, the nativity scene moved to Eden Park in 1967. It remains there, next to Krohn Conservatory, today.

Parking and visiting the outdoor nativity scene is free. Entering the conservatory is not. The conservatory’s Christmas display is not one of Cincinnati’s oldest but it is one of its most beautiful. If you have parked to visit the nativity scene, you should at least consider spending the $7 to see “A Cincinnati Scenic Railway”, a ton of poinsettias, and other holiday themed displays. The railway incorporates “botanical architecture” which uses “locally gathered willow and other natural materials” to build structures such as the Roebling Bridge, the Tyler Davidson Fountain, and the Christian Moerlein Lager House..

1. Fountain Square Tree – 1913/1924
According to the “Cincinnati’s Winter Holiday Traditions” lecture, Cincinnatians first put a tree on Fountain Square in 1913. A large crowd had gathered for the ceremonial lighting when someone yelled “fire” and the resulting stampede caused enough injuries to keep the city from trying again until 1924. Things went much better that year and, although the fountain and the square have moved around some, a Christmas tree has stood on Fountain Square every year since.

There was a snag this year when the first tree selected snapped in two at a weak spot in its trunk. A replacement was quickly obtained and the 55-foot Norway Spruce was placed on the square after a one week delay.

Planes and Things

Posted on November 24, 2013 by Denny

On Friday, November 22, 2013, a friend and I visited the National Museum of the US Air Force near Dayton, Ohio. Among the many historic items on display is the Boeing VC-137C that carried John F Kennedy to and from Dallas, Texas. The two pictures below were taken of the same general area of the plane just a few hours shy of fifty years apart.

johnsonsi sam26000_int

Another museum display recently in the news is associated with the Doolittle Raiders. A “Last Man Standing” pact had been established in which the last surviving Raider would drink a toast to all those who had gone before him.On the most recent anniversary of their 1942 bombing run over Toyko, the last four living Raiders decided not to wait but to have their final public reunion and drink their toast now. That toast took place at the museum on November 9 and can be seen here. Their eighty silver goblets, with the seventy-six belonging to diseased Raiders standing up side down, are displayed at the museum. My report on last year’s 70th reunion is here.

Half Century Gone

Posted on November 22, 2013 by Denny

Kennedy official photo On this day fifty years ago I was a high school junior. I do not even remember most of the day and some that I do remember is foggy and questionable. I remember some very small pieces all too well. I remember going to my chemistry class and taking a seat in the second or third row. It was the rightmost seat facing the teacher’s desk and the wall of blackboards. My memory is that the principal, Mr Pawlowski, entered before class actually started and gave us the news though it might have come from Mr Conrad, the instructor. In my memory, Mr Pawlowski quickly moved on to personally deliver his message in other classrooms so that every student heard the same version. It is logical and might indicate how important he thought the message — and its uniform delivery — was but I cannot be certain that my memory is accurate. The message was, of course, “The President has been shot.”

The remainder of the school day is blurred. I believe that no more classes were held and I have a vague memory that students who walked to school were allowed to leave. Maybe we all were. I’m fairly confident that I drove to school that day. I was sixteen with a car and a driver’s license. What else would I do? I do remember that by the time I left school, whenever and however that occurred, the message was no longer that the President had been shot; By then we knew that the President was dead.

The time between hearing that the President was shot and learning for certain that he was dead could not have been long. Other points of uncertainty were not so easily or quickly resolved. Who did it? Was the country under attack? Were we, in our tiny Ohio town far from both Dallas and D.C., safe? With the exception that New York replaced Dallas, those are the exact same questions I had on a September morning nearly thirty-eight years later. The world in which the terrorist attacks of 2001 took place was not, however, at all the same as the world of 1963.

The basement of the school building in which I heard the news had sealed containers of “rations” stacked along the walls. With their Civil Defense markings, they were visible reminders that this was a designated fallout shelter. The first anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis was not even a month in the past. I recall learning, only a couple of years before, a new prefix: mega. I didn’t need it to discuss megapixels, or megabaud, or even megabytes. I needed it to try to comprehend the power, in megatons of TNT, of hydrogen bombs being tested in the friggin’ atmosphere. The Cold War was not as nebulous as the War on Terror and I think it was somewhat scarier. Has there ever been a more accurate acronym than the one referring to Mutual Assured Destruction?

I do have some memories of the evening. A buddy and I went driving around because that’s what sixteen year old boys with cars did. The world was closed. Games and dances were canceled; Restaurants shut down. The buddy had a little battery powered tape recorder. This was well before cassettes or even 8-tracks. It used very small reels. It was pretty much a toy which we used to make Dickie Goodman style “break-in” recordings that were even worse than the ones Goodman did. That night, as we drove through the one city (1960 population 10,585) and some of the small towns in the county, we made comments and observations into the recorder. It is long gone, of course, but I’ve often thought of just how interesting it would be to listen to that tape today. It might offer a unique look at rural Ohio on the night of the assassination or it might just be filled with stuff like “Holy cow!. Even Frisch’s is closed.”

The weird uneasiness continued through the weekend as facts and rumors tumbled out. Lee Oswald was arrested. The shooting of a cop, J D Tippit, was somehow related but it was not at all clear how. Then Oswald was shot and things got even more confusing. I’ve convinced myself that I watched Jack Ruby gun down Oswald on live TV but the scene was shown so many times I can’t be sure. Two things helped; The eventual realization that the office of President of the United States had been transferred just like the rule book said and the fact that Walter Cronkite was in the newsroom. I think it a pretty safe bet that I’ll never trust any one the way I trusted Walter.

Ansonia High School 1964 yearbook President John F Kennedy was officially pronounced dead at 1:00 PM CST; The same time as the posting of this article. The scan at left is of an introductory page of my high school’s 1964 yearbook. I imagine something similar appeared in the yearbooks of thousands of schools across the country. I believe the picture is a closely cropped version, with the background removed, of the official one at the beginning of this article.

Book Review
Fallen Timbers 1794
John F Winkler

Posted on November 20, 2013 by Denny

Fallen Timbers cover Everyone loves a winner and, in 1794, the United States Army finally became one. In his earlier work, Wabash 1791, Winkler tells of the new nation’s first military campaign and the disaster that resulted. Fallen Timbers 1794, describes the campaign that led to a victory at Fallen Timbers and ultimately to the Treaty of Greenville.

The 1791 Battle of the Wabash, more commonly known as St Clair’s Defeat, essentially destroyed the United States Army. In 1792, congress created a new one. To lead this new army, The Legion of the United States of America, President Washington chose Revolutionary War veteran Anthony Wayne. Wayne did things quite a bit differently than did St Clair. He made sure his troops were trained and equipped before setting out and he placed a series of defensible forts so as to protect his supply line. Perhaps more importantly, he understood the Indian methods of combat and devised tactics to counter them. Like St Clair, Wayne had difficulties with supplies and contractors but it seems that now it was not only greed and incompetence that fueled them but an actual conspiracy aimed at causing his failure.

As he did in Wabash 1791, Winkler sets the scene for the campaign by describing the “strategic situation” and with chapters on the opposing commanders, armies, and plans. In many respects, the world situation was still much like it was in 1791. The United States was only a few years older and only a tiny bit more stable. Britain’s support and encouragement of the natives may have actually increased and neither France not Spain had vanished from North America. In fact, French elements were very much at play, often for the worse, inside the young nation. Of course, there were also plenty of homegrown problems. That previously mentioned conspiracy was one of them and, in the westernmost reaches, open revolt was a real possibility. These were the days of the Whiskey Rebellion. Less than three weeks before the Battle of Fallen Timbers, a crowd of 7,000 threatened to march on Pittsburgh. It was less than two months after the battle that President Washington personally went into the field to put down the uprising.

Three dimensional maps, like those that helped in understanding the Battle of Wabash, do the same for the Battle of Fallen Timbers. Other maps, along with period portraits and modern photographs, help understand the people and places involved. Peter Dennis’ wonderful paintings, one of which is used for the cover, provide realistic visualizations of specific battle scenes.

Winkler’s book on the Battle of the Wabash had nowhere near the shortcomings of the battle it described but he did manage to improve on it a little with Fallen Timbers 1794. I resorted to the word “scholarly” in describing the front end of Wabash 1791. It was justified, I offered, because it presented a lot of information that made later portions of the book flow more smoothly. But in this latest book, I never did get the feeling of slogging through mounds of dry facts that I had before. I have no way to quantify this and it may be simply that less preliminary facts are required or that they are less dry or that I am better prepared. Any or all of those could be true but my gut feel is that Winkler has refined his language and maybe even the structure to produce something more easily read.

During the last few years, any time that the average person felt like devoting to history was spent, more than likely, on the Civil War sesquicentennial. I have absolutely no disagreement with that but still thought it nice that, here and there, the bicentennial of the War of 1812 got some attention. The territory in dispute in 1812 was not all that different than what was being fought over in 1791 and 1794. Some of the nations and even some of the individuals involved were the very same. To the War of 1812 and especially to the Battle of the Thames, the battles at Wabash and Fallen Timbers were “prequels”.

Fallen Timbers 1794: The US Army’s first victory, John F Winkler, Osprey Publishing, February 2013, paperback, 9.8 x 7.2 inches, 96 pages, ISBN 978-1780963754
Available through Amazon.

One Last Flash

Posted on November 17, 2013 by Denny

Flash cover This Flash is not a fleet-footed tights-wearing superhero. It is, or was, a publication, though saying it was about superheroes would not be wrong. The Flash‘s banner reads “A publication of the 78th (Lightning) Infantry Division Veterans Association dedicated to the preservation of the friendships established in 2 world wars”. The association is disbanding. There just aren’t that many friendships to preserve anymore.

There were 1542 members at last count; 1011 veterans and 531 associates. I was one of the associates. My dad had been a member. After his death in 2011, I wrote to arrange my own associate membership and was warned that the association might only continue another year or so. It lasted for a bit more than two. The note that cautioned me about the possible end of the association mentioned a couple of reasons. One was obvious. At that time, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, an average of 670 World War II veterans were dying every day. Another, though related, might not be so obvious. Veterans in the association ranged in age from 85 to 95. They remained very much in control of their association but recognized that increases in age are often accompanied by decreases in faculties. In the words of that note, “They want to decide what to do before they are no longer able to do that.” Just one more example of how “The Greatest Generation” doesn’t want to have someone else finish their business for them.

Dad never attended any of the reunions or other gatherings of the association but he “read” every copy of The Flash. Starting in the mid-1990s, I would bring home the issues he was done with and “read” them, too. We both went through the pages the way one does with a newspaper, scanning the headlines until something caught our eye. For Dad, it would probably be a place or a name he remembered. Increasingly, when he recognized a name it would be in an obituary or the “Taps” column. I looked for anything related to the 309 Field Artillery Battalion, Dad’s unit, but finding something was fairly rare. Mostly what I read were the remembrances that veterans or, as was also increasing the case, surviving family members, sent in. Sometimes it was a quickly written and possibly even jumbled memory of a single incident. Other times it was a longer memoir. Some were organized and well-written, others not so much. But all were interesting. All were glimpses of real history that I felt privileged to read.

The Flash was not a glossy magazine. It was printed on newspaper-like stock in black and white with just a touch of red on the front and back covers. It was well organized but not overly edited. Pretty much everything members sent in appeared in print. Even the last issue includes change of address letters mixed in with the obituaries, reports on recent happenings, requests for information on events of 70 years ago, and those remembrances that I look for. It was published quarterly although the final issue came out more than a year after the previous one. The June 2012 issue announced the planned dissolution and spoke of one more issue. When the end of 2012 came and went, I figured that was probably not to be. When the final issue did arrive, I was glad to see it and sad to read that this time it was — officially — for real.

The final issue reported on the 68th Jonah Edward Kelley Award ceremony that took place in Keyser, West Virginia, in April. Kelley was the 78th’s only Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, and the Veterans Association has annually given the award and a $6000 scholarship to a graduating senior at his former high school. The Association’s remaining funds are being transferred to the Ed Kelley Scholarship Trust so that this practice can continue.

The Association’s website will also continue. There is an active group of 78th reenactors, and two members of that group have taken on the work and expense of keeping the website, which includes a message board, alive at www.78thdivision.org, the same address it has always had. The website for the 78th Infantry Division WWII Living History Association is at www.78thinfantry.org.

ADDENDUM 30-Nov-2023: For the first time in quite a while, this post appeared in the statistics for this website. Just over ten years after its publication, someone had visited, and I’d like to think read, the article. The appearance prompted me to revisit and reread it myself, and I sadly realized that neither of the two links in the last paragraph remained valid. I have disabled them both. A Jonah Edward Kelley website, which appears to have been created around 2016, is active at http://jonahedwardkelley.com/. It includes a 78th Lightning Division reference but its “Read more” link (presumedly the same 78thdivision.org link appearing in this article) has been disabled. It is estimated that 131 World War II veterans are dying each day at present. That is fewer than the 670 per day reported in 2011 but only because less than 120,000 remain as opposed to the 2.1 million estimated to be alive in 2011. Preserving their memories is the best we can do and it’s one of the most important things we can do.

5K: The Ventures Way

Posted on November 10, 2013 by Denny

DAV 5K The Disabled American Veterans organization held a race Saturday. It was the inaugural running of what they called the National 5K Run/Walk/Roll/Ride. I first heard of it a few weeks ago when my friend, Dave, announced that he had signed up. Some people ran, some walked, some rolled on hand-cycles, and some rode motorcycles. Dave walked. So did I.

When the event came up in a conversation, Dave said something like “You ought to do it, too”. Then I said something like “Yeah, maybe” without really meaning it but the seed was planted. l’m a firm believer in the only-if-chased concept of running. There is absolutely no way I would ever consider running any farther than the last lane of a street crossing to avoid an approaching SUV on auto-pilot. But walking is a different story. I walk quite a bit. I’ve always done it on road trips where I will park the car and walk around a town or park or other attraction. This summer I’ve been doing more of it at home and even think I feel a little deprived on days when I don’t walk.

Five kilometers is about three miles; 3.106855961 to be be precise. I might walk that far a few times each week although there is usually a restaurant or bar somewhere near midpoint. I started to somewhat seriously consider doing the walk about the same time that another friend and I picked that day to take an underground Cincinnati tour we had been talking about for awhile. I assumed I couldn’t do both until a week or two later when I looked at the details. Start time for the “race” was 9:00; for the tour 1:00. That was plenty of time for even sluggish old me to finish the walk, which had awards scheduled for 10:45, and get to the tour.

So I signed on. Dave and I were a little surprised by the size of the crowd when we arrived about a half hour before the start time. We later learned that the event had more than two thousand entrants. I registered late and in person and had picked up my stuff when I did. Dave had registered very early on line and was picking up his stuff today. An entrant’s stuff consisted of a long sleeve shirt, a “bib”, and four safety pins. The pins were to attach the numbered “bib”, with its attached timing chip, to the shirt. Shirts were black for veterans and white for civilians. Dave’s a Navy vet. I’m a civilian.

We did not have long to wait until the starting gun went off and, presumably, the serious runners up front went dashing away. Eventually the more casual crowd near us started moving and we were off. We started fairly close to the back and by the first turn had managed to work our way even closer.

There were several bands performing along the way and we were given water at strategic spots just like real runners. Near the end, we were even cheered and encouraged just like real runners. Dave was the target of extra cheering when some in the crowd recognized him as the model for a widely used street sign of which an example can be seen to his right.

We crossed the finish line to the sound of bells and cheers from an enthusiastic group who had probably come near to dozing off during the lull that preceded us. Two bicycles had been the first to cross the line with times of 14:44 and 15:07. The first place runner had a time of 16:26. Dave and I finished 2019th & 2020th in an hour and twelve minutes. There were 2033 finishers so we were denied last place but we were close. On the other hand, we were only about 56 minutes out of first.

The cheering and applause even for old guys finishing in the 99th percentile is intended to make you feel like you accomplished something and it did. Both Dave and I have walked 5 kilometers many times so neither of us felt any great affirmation but we did feel good and it sure was fun. In years past I’ve attended parades and concerts and other events associated with Veterans Day (I even remember Armistice Day.) but this is the first time since being in the high school band that I have participated. Maybe I really did accomplish something after all.

ADDENDUM 07-Nov-15: Here is a picture from the DAV website of Dave and I crossing the finish line.

The “Ventures Way” is, of course, walking rather than running. The Ventures first drummer had left the band and was on his way to becoming a veteran before Walk Don’t Run was released but did get to perform it with them again a few years later as captured here.

I made it to the tour in plenty of time and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was the “Queen City Underground Tour” from American Legacy Tours. Having done other tours of Cincinnati’s underground, I thought this might be something of a repeat but that was not so at all. Only the very last of the tour was familiar and by then we had been inside a 19th century tenement and an underground crypt and had been entertained and educated by a pair of knowledgeable guides. Plus, the familiar part led to the Christian Moerlein Tap Room which is hardly a bad thing.

Geeks in the ‘Hood

Posted on October 13, 2013 by Denny

I attended my third Road Meet on Saturday; This one in Cincinnati. The previous two were in Columbus and Dayton. I did a blog entry on the Dayton meet in which I tried to define “roadgeeks” and describe how they differ from “roadies”. That generated a little discussion on the blog post and more on a Facebook post pointing to it. The much condensed version is that I described “roadies” as liking old roads and “roadgeeks” as being attracted to new roads. The gist of the comments, mostly from those calling themselves “roadgeeks” was, “Hey, we like old roads, too.” And I know they do. As a result, I’ve been shying away from both names and mostly using “road fans” to describe folk who like roads and/or the stuff beside them. It remains true that members of Route 66 and Lincoln Highway groups often refer to themselves as “roadies” and that many of the Yahoo Roadgeek group postings concern new road construction but, as the discussion triggered on that earlier blog entry indicated, the old vs. new distinction really is just one of degree. On Saturday, a bunch of road fans, who are members of a group named Roadgeeks and who know a lot about the way roads are built and signed, met in Bellevue, Kentucky, just across the river from Cincinnati.

The Cincinnati meet had more of a mix of old and and new than the other meets in my limited experience. It started with drivebys of some old signs on a railroad overpass, which I did not photograph, and this embossed “END OF…” sign. We drove a bit further south before moving onto expressways to head back toward the river. That picture at the top of the article, taken in Devou Park, should have two more people in it. We lost them during on the expressway section and I am responsible for that.

The meet’s organizer, Jeremy Mose, was in my car so I was leading. Behind me, the other four cars shuffled a bit but I thought all were with me as we moved from I-275 onto I-75. But, when we left the interstate, I soon realized that a grey car I believed was part of our group was not. Before too long, I was feeling helpless as well as guilty. The lost couple were attending their first road meet. The first time any of the other attendees had met them was at the restaurant where the meet started. No one had a phone number for them. They had not been part of the group associated with the Facebook event entry for the meet which meant they had not received the cellphone number Jeremy had sent to everyone signing onto that event. They did have a set of driving instructions so it seemed a good possibility that they would find their way to Devou Park on their own but that did not happen during the hour or so we were there. There was only one car in the group which could be lost with no means of contact available and I did it.

EDIT 14-OCT-2013: I have just learned that the missing couple received a phone call from a son in need of a ride and, in their words “had to bolt the meet”. My guilt is gone but I will make more of an effort in the future to see that anyone following me can contact me.

We eventually headed across the river and through what Jeremy called the 6th Street viaduct project and which I, in my few encounters, thought of as a US 50 project. It apparently has an official name which is neither of those though, unless my memory surprises me by tucking away Valdvogel Viaduct, I may continue to use US 50 as the identifier. Valdvogel Viaduct is kind of fun to say so it could happen. We also got a view of part of the project and a lot of Cincinnati from Olden View Park near where the Price Hill Incline once terminated.

This is a view of the “Lockland Canyon” that I had never seen before. In fact, I don’t recall ever before hearing this section of southbound I-75 referred to by that name though it is apparently fairly common. The canyon aspect of the road comes largely from the fact that locks of the Miami & Erie Canal once occupied this space. Widening the “canyon” is part of a project planned for 2016. Although this was my first time at the “scenic overlook”, I have driven through here countless time. I have also ridden a motorcycle here and can attest to the buffeting that a semi-truck and those concrete walls can create.

Our last stop was near the Kennedy Connector project. I couldn’t get much of a picture of the project itself so here is a picture of a sign assembly associated with it. The photo illustrates two things. One is the odd mixes that can show up on roadside signs. The right hand panel contains button copy (reflective “buttons” on sign elements). Ohio was one of the last three states to use button copy (The last was Arizona in 2000.) so it is not as rare here as elsewhere but it is an old technology. The left hand panel contains Clearview Font which is sort of the leading edge of highway sign lettering. The second thing the photo illustrates is that roadgeeks notice these things — and the orange “detour arrow”, too.

I had visited another construction project on Monday. A few days earlier, a Richmond, Indiana, newspaper published a story about a repair crew uncovering an 1832 stone culvert underneath US-40 (a.k.a., National Road). The uncovering was temporary and the culvert would again be hidden when the repairs were complete. I headed over for a look but it was already too late. Although the article had appeared just days before, the project it described had taken two months and was very near completion when I visited. The culvert was likely out of sight before the article was printed. Still, it’s nice to know it is intact even though it is out of sight and it is a wonderful thing that pictures were taken during the culvert’s brief appearance.

Now That’s Art

Posted on September 8, 2013 by Denny

Cincinnati got a new statue Saturday. There was a big unveiling ceremony with an estimated 3,000 people in attendance. Most of those 3,000 people were standing directly in front of me. I’d heard of the planned unveiling some time ago and probably even considered attending some time ago. But it never really made it onto my agenda until Friday night.

The statue is of Joe Morgan, second baseman of the Big Red Machine. If you didn’t already know that, I’m not sure I even want you reading this, but maybe you just forgot, so here’s a little refresher. The Big Red Machine was the remarkable Cincinnati Reds team of the 1970s. Between 1970 and 1976, they won their division five times, their league four times, and the World Series twice. Those World Series wins were back to back in 1975 and 1976. In both of those years, Joe Morgan was the National League MVP. So seeing a statue of him unveiled would certainly be a cool thing, but on the other hand, I didn’t think it cool enough to fight a crowd to see something I could probably have all to myself on most afternoons in a month or so.

Then, on Friday, I’m out playing trivia with the Reds game on TV. It’s live trivia so the TV sound is off. It is the start of a Joe Morgan weekend, and there is a pregame ceremony. I’m watching it out of the corner of my eye and eventually realize that, one by one, Joe’s old teammates are trotting out on the field. Soon the entire Big Red Machine starting lineup is there. The most astonishing thing about this is that it includes Pete Rose who has been banned for life from participating in any aspect of Major League Baseball. He was being permitted on the field so that Joe’s celebration could be complete. Seeing the Great Eight, as that group was called, was cool enough to justify dealing with a crowd.

So I fought the crowd and the crowd won. My resolve to go wasn’t nearly as strong when I woke up as when I went to bed. I alternately talked myself into and out of going until it reached the now-or-never point. It once again sunk in that seeing the Great Eight together just might not ever happen again. I left home with just enough time to get there before the unveiling. The first picture is what I saw when I arrived. The second is what I saw after I had worked myself to the other side of the crowd. When things actually started, I realized that, not only were all those heads between me and the speakers, so was the tent. I had incorrectly assumed they would be in an open space to the left. I could, every once in a while, see one of the speakers under the tent covering and over the bobbing heads and I’ve included a picture of Joe to prove it.

Drat! I had not actually seen the Great Eight. However, there would be another ceremony of some sort preceding the afternoon game with the Los Angeles Dodgers. The game was sold out but I got a ticket for a bad seat for a so so price from a scalper. I walked around the area and grabbed a sandwich. The crowd that initially hid the statue (shown at right) eventually thinned out so I could take the picture at the top of this article.

I misjudged the time and the ceremony was already underway when I entered the stadium. I made it just in time to see Pete being introduced and Joe soon followed. The other six were already on the field. There was, of course, more to the Big Red Machine than these eight players but they were the heart of it. Of the 88 games that all of the Great Eight played in 1975 and 1976, they won 69 or nearly 80%.

There were a few speeches and even the unveiling of a miniature of the life size statue outside the stadium. The ever classy Morgan talked much more about his teammates than about himself.

When it was time for the ceremonial first pitch, all eight players moved to their positions. The 69 year old Morgan had no trouble getting the ball to the plate and the 65 year old Johnny Bench had no trouble catching it. Then, as they walked toward each other, Bench flipped the ball back to Morgan who casually one-handed it. Then the Big Red Machine gathered for one more meeting by the pitcher’s mound.

At the end of the day, when I looked through the pictures I had taken, I noticed that Bench’s star, in the line where the Great Eight had stood, was turned sideways. Had someone goofed when they laid them out? Had it been accidentally kicked around as the players waved to the crowd? Nope. A check of earlier photos revealed the truth. Bench had turned the star himself when the players moved to their chairs. Johnny is a joker.

There is an awful lot of Cincinnati history in these two murals at Great American Ball Park. For one thing, the mosaics are reminiscent of those that once hung in Union Terminal and have since been moved to the airport. Sadly, those are once again in danger as the building they are in is slated for demolition. Secondly, there is the suspension bridge in the background. The bridge officially opened January 1, 1867. It’s still there and can be seen from the current ball park. One mural is of the 1869 Red Stockings, the world’s first fully professional baseball team. Note that the bridge is correctly shown without the steel trusses that were added in the 1890s. The other is of the Big Red Machine, the same eight men who were on the field today. The Red Stockings had a 65-0 record in 1969. In the seven seasons between 1970 and 1976, the Big Red Machine had a record of 683-443.

With the game tied 3-3, I left after eight innings. The Reds won in the tenth. That’s when the Reds latest speedster, Billy Hamilton, scored from second, which he had stolen, on a Todd Frazier single. Today was the thirty-ninth anniversary of another Reds win over the Dodgers. During the 1970s, the Reds-Dodgers rivalry was one of the biggest in baseball. Joe Morgan was playing with a sprained ankle on September 7, 1974 so wouldn’t be stealing any bases. Instead, he beat the Dodgers with a two-run eighth-inning homer.

1940s Flashback

Posted on August 11, 2013 by Denny

Cincinnati Museum Center held its first “1940s Day” in 2011. It became “1940s Weekend” in 2012 and is again a two-day (Aug 10 & 11) event this year. The Museum Center occupies Union Terminal, which saw its heaviest use in the 1940s. It opened in 1933 with a capacity of 17,000 passengers per day; A number that not only seemed adequate but, with rail travel already on the decline, major overkill. It was World War II, of course, that changed that. The terminal became a hub for the movement of troops, and as many as 34,000 passengers, twice as many as it was designed for, passed through it daily.

Though it doesn’t completely ignore them, “1940s Weekend” doesn’t focus on the horrors and hardships of the war years but on the bright spots they contained and the brighter years that followed. Music figured into many of the bright spots both then and now. The Jump ‘n’ Jive Show Band and several guest vocalists kept energetic attendees jumping, and the Sweet and Lows roamed the building with their wonderful harmonies. The picture shows an “on location” performance of The Trolley Song (a.k.a., Clang Clang Clang went the Trolley). The Sweet and Lows perform both days, but the Jump ‘n’ Jive Show Band gives way to the P & G Big Band on Sunday.

The rotunda was filled with vendors of, mostly, railroad memorabilia, and there were demonstrations of some of the grooming procedures of the day. The theater showed newsreels that were post-war or at least post-V-E Day. The picture I’ve posted is of General Eisenhower praising the rank and file members of every military branch for their war contributions. I also attended two live presentations in the theater.

The first was a recreation of an episode of the Seckatary Hawkins radio program. Seckatary Hawkins was the creation of Covington, Kentucky, native Robert Franc Schulkers. The mystery-solving character first appeared in 1918 in the Cincinnati Enquirer, then in novels and a radio program. Initially, the show was done in Cincinnati by Schulkers and friends and family, but it soon moved to Chicago, where professional actors filled the roles. Following the presentation of a little history, a volunteer cast was assembled and a fine performance delivered. The once huge Seckatary Hawkins Fair and Square club has been revived, and you can join for free. I did.

The second presentation stepped away from music and laughter. For the first time, each day of the weekend will feature a Holocaust survivor presenting their own story. Today’s speaker was Werner Coppel, who had been sent to Auschwitz-Buna as a teenager. He subsequently escaped during a death march. I have seen movies and read books and have had other personal Holocaust stories told to me directly, but none more insightful or delivered as articulately as what I heard today. Calling it a highlight may seem strange, but that’s what it was for me. There is a short video of a previous Werner Coppel talk here. Henry Fenichel will share his story on Sunday. He can be seen in a video here.

Book Review
The Lincoln Highway: Photos Through Time
Brian Butko

Posted on July 31, 2013 by Denny

Lincoln Highway Pictures Through Time - cover I was hesitant to post a review of this book because some of those “Photos Through Time” are mine but I decided that it would be a bad thing only if I rave about how marvelous the book is. No harm in simply describing it, right? So here are the facts.

The Lincoln Highway: Photos Through Time was created for the Lincoln Highway Association as part of its centennial celebration. One of the most visible parts of that celebration was the pair of car tours traveling the Lincoln Highway from its two ends to a meeting in the middle. A copy of the book was part of the tour package and it is also available for sale exclusively through the Lincoln Highway Trading Post.

It’s a sampler. Its purpose is to give an overview of a century of Lincoln Highway. It is not a guide book or a scholarly history book. It does not contain pictures of every scenic spot along the road or every notable building or every key association member. It does, however, contain a whole bunch of each of those.

Lincoln Highway Pictures Through Time - sample It is organized neither geographically nor chronologically. The first section following the foreword is titled “History”. Here, among pictures of collectibles and artifacts, Butko gives a very brief history of the road’s birth and short life. It is enough to give someone who knows little or nothing about the Lincoln Highway a starting point and someone who knows everything a quick refresher on key dates and events. It is a stripped down but adequate introduction to the pictures that follow.

Lincoln Highway Pictures Through Time - sample Those pictures are organized by their subjects. Butko identifies ten things that comprise the Lincoln Highway and gives each one a chapter. They are “People”, “Gas”, “Food”, “Lodging”, “Vehicles”, “Attractions”, “Signs”, “Markers”, “Bridges”, and “Roads”. The chapters are themselves samplers. Historic images from postcards and other sources are combined with modern photographs. Images of things along the road, which is every chapter other than “People”, are from locations spread over the road’s entire length.

The sources of the photos are pretty diverse, too. Butko lists more than fifty contributors. He supplied a large number of images himself and, at a presentation at the Centennial Celebration in Kearney, Nebraska, he singled out Russell Rein, Jeff Blair, and me as next in number of contributions. Many of the historic images came from Russell’s huge collection. Jeff and I are both amateurs who happened to be the the right place fairly often but our pictures get to appear alongside stuff from real pros like Michael Williamson, Drake Hokanson, Rick Pisio, Shellee Graham, and Jim Ross and Brian has made sure they all look as good as possible.

I described the “History” chapter of having value for two very different audiences. Maybe that’s true of the whole book. Most of its first recipients, members of those centennial tours, are probably somewhat familiar with almost everything in the book. For them and others like them, the book might be a memory booster or a chance to see an image of something they’ve only heard about. On the other hand, there is a large group of people who ask “What’s that?” when hearing of the Lincoln Highway. Flipping through the pages provides glimpses of what’s there today and some of what was there in times long past. Turn the pages slowly and read all the captions for an even better answer to the question.

The Lincoln Highway, Photos Through Time, Brian Butko, Lincoln Highway Association, 2013, paperback, 10 x 8 inches, 136 pages, ISBN 978-0989208000

Available at Lincoln Highway Trading Post.

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