Tag Archives: History

Beside the Dixie Highway

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A recent Facebook post reminded me of some roadside markers I’ve been meaning to check out since 2012, and another post made me newly aware of some totally unrelated markers in the same general area. That area also happens to contain a restaurant that’s been on my to-do list for over a year. In these days of dissolved and dissolving travel plans, this trio of minor roadside attractions was sufficient justification for a correspondingly minor road trip. Although not one of the three has any real connection to the Dixie Highway, it once ran by all of them.

The restaurant came first. I first learned of the Fantasy Diner and Ice Cream Parlor from a January 2019 Ronny Salerno blog post. The name comes from its home in what was once the gift shop for the Fantasy Farm Amusement Park. Ronny’s post not only does a much better job than this one in documenting the restaurant but also provides some park history. There are a couple of reasons that I wish I had refreshed my self on Ronny’s post before I left home. One is that I’d have been shocked to find that the great looking wooden counter he photographed has been largely sacrificed for an ice cream cooler and would have at least asked about it. The second is that I might have changed the timing of my arrival in order to try the fried chicken he called “fantastic”. But I was there for breakfast and quite enjoyed my French toast with a view.

Following breakfast, I continued north on the former Dixie Highway to Middletown and made a stop at a marker I’d first noticed eight years ago. The marker is from 1920 when it was erected as part of a Road of Remembrance project. The Road of Remembrance was a proposal to plant a tree for every American soldier who had served in the Great War. A matching marker can be seen almost directly across the road in the second picture and up close in the third. The plaques on both markers look like this. These currently stand near Truth Tabernacle on OH-4, but originally marked the south end of Middletown’s Road of Remembrance a short distance away.

Another pair of markers once stood at the north end of the long rows of trees. Both are shown in the opening photo standing in front of the local American Legion Post. Identical plaques, bearing the names of twenty-four local boys killed in the war, are mounted on the front of both markers. The names of more than a thousand who served in the war are on six plaques mounted on the other sides of the pillars.

References to the Middletown Road of Remembrance often mention a thousand trees lining a mile of roadway. Both seem to have been considerably exceeded. The markers that now stand at the Legion, originally stood at 14th and Main. The southern markers originally stood about a mile and a half away at Oxford and Main. Plans to construct arches over the road where the markers stood were mentioned, but I’ve seen nothing to indicate that ever happened. Middletown’s Road of Remembrance was dedicated on Labor Day, September 6, 1920, and there are possibly legitimate claims that this was the nation’s first Road of Remembrance to be completed. The ad image is from American Forestry, Volume 26.

The day’s third set of targets was on a later Dixie Highway alignment which I turned south on when I reached the split near Franklin. This photo is not of an active target, but when you are looking for things on the DH and not in the least related to it, this marker certainly qualifies. I’ve previously stopped and photographed this salute to the Poland China hog, and I did it again.

The real goal of my drive on the later DH alignment was a couple of Great Miami Turnpike mile markers. The turnpike was constructed in 1840 so the markers have been waiting quite a while. I learned of them only recently through a Dixie Highway Facebook group post by road fan Karl Howat. I’d already located and taken a drive-by photo of the southernmost of the two and thought I knew enough to find the other one as I drove south. I was wrong. I visually scoured the roadside as I drove but came up empty. I eventually reached the marker I had already located and parked nearby to take some less blurry photos. According to the markings, C(incinnati) is 17 miles away and D(ayton) is 33 miles away. The current name of this path that has had many is Cincinnati-Dayton Road.

I headed back north in search of the other marker and found it with a fortuitous and pretty much accidental glance to the right. Karl had posted photos of both markers and I could see that both were made to be placed on the west side of the road. Northbound travelers would see the distance to Dayton and those headed south would see the distance to Cincinnati. It appears that this marker switched sides at some point in its past. But that’s not the most interesting thing about it. Perhaps understandably, when I first saw the marker, my mind registered D 26 and C 24. But I quickly realized that the 4 my mind saw was reversed and that it must really be the number 1 with some accidental scratches beside it. That, however, would mean this stone claimed that Dayton and Cincinnati were 47 miles apart rather than the 50 indicated on the other marker. I next tried to mentally convert that 6 to an 8 to make the distance a closer match at 49 miles. That didn’t work and I became pretty certain that the numeral was a 6. A one mile difference between the two stones seems possible if not likely. A three mile difference seems very unlikely and I’ve become convinced that the carver goofed and carved the 4 in backward. Form your own opinion from this composite or go check out the original at N39° 25.809′ W84° 21.947′. The other marker is at N39° 20.126′ W84° 24.144′.

For the second consecutive week, here’s a diner tacked on to the tail of the primary subject. K’s Hamburger Shop isn’t exactly on the Dixie Highway but it’s less than two blocks away and that’s close enough for Mike Curtis to include it as a POI on his Dixie Highway Map. Plus there are some unverified rumors that a temporary DH alignment ran right past the location (even though it wasn’t K’s yet). DH or not, they celebrated their 85th anniversary Friday and I was there. They were totally closed for eleven days due to the COVID-19 pandemic, then open for carryout only. Three weeks ago, with the addition of some fancy plexiglass dividers, dining in became an option. Says Marcia, the owner, “My parents kept this place going through the depression and we’ll keep it going through this pandemic.”

Booths are separated by fixed panels and the panel separating counter customers and staff is fixed, but the panels between individual counter positions are hinged so that couples can chat and sneak fries from each other. Panels and everything else are sanitized frequently, of course. The only not-yet-cleaned spot in the counter picture is where I just finished this. Among the many articles written about K’s over 85 years is an American Road Diner Days installment from an unknown (both then and now) writer. Winter 2007 if you’re a curious collector of old magazines.

A Darke Drive

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A sixteen-mile long driving tour some fifty miles from home is what passes for a road trip when cabin fever and a coronavirus collide. Several years ago, the Arcanum Wayne Trail Historical Society folks put together a self-guided driving tour of the nearby area. That area is the southern part of the county where I was raised so the tour naturally interested me. As I recall, when the tour was first announced, there was some sort of museum event associated with the launch. I couldn’t make it but copied the tour description to my phone and plotted the route on my GPS. My intent was to combine driving the tour with a visit to the museum, but it never became a high priority and, with the museum open just one day a month, it never happened. The COVID-19 pandemic has eliminated even that single day of museum operation while elevating my need for some sort of outing. Road trips planned for April, May, and June have evaporated, those envisioned for July are all but gone, and August doesn’t look any better.

The tour passes one street south of the museum but I stopped by for a picture. The other pictured building is just up the block and some may remember it from this 2017 post. Sadly, the restaurant that was housed in the building and which triggered the post has closed. I’ve since seen a couple more Battle Ax Plus signs, but this was the first.

Arcanum’s Main Street runs north and south. I’m guessing that George Street, where the museum sits, was the original main east-west street since the first street north of it and the first street south of it are called, respectively, North Street and South Street. The tour begins at the intersection of Main and South and heads west, toward the water tower, on South Street. Arcanum isn’t a large town (population 2129 in 2010) so it doesn’t take long to reach open countryside.

South Street quickly becomes Arcanum-Hollansburg Road and intersects State Route 503 in just a few miles. At the corner, a church that was once part of a settlement named Beech Grove has been converted to a home. The tour turns south here, but I headed a short distance north to pause at the cemetery. Someone keeps the cemetery mowed but there is little evidence of any other sort of maintenance. A neighbor’s tractor display helps make the stop worthwhile.

I returned to the tour route and followed it to another cemetery. This is Ithaca Cemetery just north of the town by that name. Going backwards in time, we have veterans of the Civil War, Mexican War, and War od 1812. There are quite a few Civil War veterans buried here including one with a modern military plaque. That sort of plaque is common but I don’t recall ever seeing one for a Civil War vet. Sure is easier to read than weathered stone.

The tour description identifies four burials of significance here but I only managed to locate two. The first is Arcanum’s founder, William Gunder, who is buried next to his wife Nancy. The other is Revolutionary War veteran William Ashley although calling it a burial isn’t really accurate. Ashley was buried on a family farm nearby and when a new owner refused public access to the site, the marker was relocated here. Presumedly, Ashley himself was not moved. The other markers in the picture are for Revolutionary War veterans Ezekiel Farmer and William Walker. These are fairly recent additions and are not mentioned in the tour description. My guess is that these are also markers only.

The tour makes two passes through Ithaca. The directions discuss the impressive three-story I.O.O.F. building on the second pass but I paused for this photo when I entered from the north. The two passes actually overlap only at this intersection. This small crop of Corvairs, which look overly ripe and may have missed their harvest date, is at Ithaca’s western edge.

This is Darke-Preble County Line Road and, since I’m on the south side driving east, I may actually be in Preble County taking these pictures. The trees and bridge mark Miller’s Fork which is, according to the tour directions, “the speculated location of the first settlement of white people in southern Darke County.” The second picture is of the intersection with OH-503 which once contained a toll house, a one-room school, and the aforementioned Ashley farm. The tour directions do not indicate where the farm was in relation to the intersection so the location of William Ashley’s remains may or may not be in the picture.

The tour heads north on OH-503 but turns off of it on the second pass through Ithaca. It then returns to its starting point on Arcanum-Ithaca Road which becomes Main Street at the city limits. It was great to get out and drive some back roads even if it was for less than two hours including graveyard loitering. It helped with road trip withdrawal for the very short term, but overall it may have aggravated it by reminding me of what I’m missing. 

Maya at the Cincinnati Museum Center

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March 14 was to be opening day for a huge exhibit of Maya artifacts at the Cincinnati Museum Center. March 9 was the day a state of emergency triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in Ohio. The opening did not happen. On Friday, nearly four months later than planned, I was among the first group of visitors to step into the exhibit. We all wore face masks and all staff members wore face masks in addition to clear plastic shields. We were all museum members as only members are allowed in for the first week. Our entry time was preselected which is pretty normal with major exhibits at the museum but the number allowed for each interval was considerably less than what it would have been in March. There were floor markings to encourage six feet of separation and a few interactive “experiences” were removed to eliminate contact. Touching the artifacts would be forbidden in any case and I don’t believe any were removed. All 300+ seemed to be right where they had been waiting for four months.

The Children’s Museum and the cave portion of the Natural History Museum are closed but most of the center is open. Entry, however, is now time-based and I had reserved a slot for checking other things out after the Maya exhibit. That was not to be as I immediately headed home. Missing an appointment with an AC service guy in July is not wise.

That scheduled service call did not actually make me rush through the exhibit but it did cause some shortcuts. As I entered, I learned that an audio tour was available through my phone, but in the probably mistaken belief that it might slow me down, I ignored it. No doubt that’s one reason I have so little information to share on specific items. I read every description but took no notes, not even with my camera, and my memory did not retain details very long.

I did not photograph many of the numerous small pieces in the exhibit and didn’t even do a particularly good job with the larger ones. The three items displayed here against the lighted and decorated pyramids can reasonably be called mid-sized. The picture at the beginning of this article is of the one at the front right of the wider view.

This stela is one of the largest items in the exhibit. It can be seen beyond the pyramids in the previous pictures. Created in 800 CE near the peak of Maya civilization, it documents some of the accomplishments of a Maya king. That’s something I happen to know because of some only slightly blurry photo notes.

Only four Maya codices, all written after the civilization’s peak, are known to exist. The Cincinnati exhibit includes this partial reproduction. It and the two stone carvings are among the items I wish I’d picked up more details on, and it’s likely they will become justifications for a return.

I have no details to share about the stone mask but I do have this for the jaguar man. The exhibit was originally scheduled to close on September 7 but the delayed opening has moved that to January 3, 2021. I hope to return and be better prepared with more time when I do.

As for the rest of the museum, I will definitely be returning, possibly as soon as this coming week, to see that. I sort of want to see what changes COVID-19 has triggered and I most definitely want to check out a special exhibit on women and the vote that is open through September 27. As everyone should know, this is the centennial of the first national election in which women were permitted to vote. 

Coincidence at Play (Again)

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This post originally appeared on April 3, 2016. A few weeks ago I predicted that I would be recycling more blog posts as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic restricted real-world interaction, but I didn’t think that would be the case this week. I had a pre-canned series post selected when coincidence struck. I was trying to figure out when I had visited a particular museum and resorted to searching this website for some record. The museum is one with many Civil War artifacts so I used those words in the search and this post appeared in the results. I had all but forgotten it but a reread made me think that a repost might be appropriate. As I wrote four years ago, “there’s still plenty of crap going on.” I did, incidentally, read “To Kill a Mocking Bird” within a couple of weeks of seeing the play.

tcamb1I’ve yet to read To Kill a Mockingbird. I have seen the 1962 movie multiple times and now I’ve seen the play. I had hoped to read the book between learning that the play would be performed this season at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and actually seeing it but that didn’t work out.

The Friday night performance would be the biggest event of my week but I didn’t expect it to lead to a blog post. I anticipated that a canned Trip Peek would be published this morning. A Friday morning email got me to thinking differently.

The email was the April E-News from the Smithsonian. One of the topics was “The Scottsboro Boys” with this two sentence tease: “The case of the Scottsboro Boys, which lasted more than 80 years, helped to spur the civil rights movement. To Kill a Mockingbird, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee, is also loosely based on this case.”

I read the article referenced in the email and could easily see similarities between the 1931 real world incident and the fictional one Harper Lee set just a few years later. Both involved black men accused of imaginary crimes against white women and both occurred in a world where color mattered a whole lot more than truth. Later I read that in 2005 Harper Lee said this was not the incident she had in mind when writing To Kill a Mockingbird but that it served “the same purpose”. Despite there not being an official connection between the Scottsboro Boys and To Kill a Mockingbird, reading about the incident and its repercussions served a purpose for me, too. It provided an unpleasant picture of this country near the midpoint between the Civil War and today. The accuracy of that picture is reinforced by a contemporary pamphlet, They Shall Not Die!, referenced in the Smithsonian article.

tcamb2I took my seat on Friday with the Scottsboro story fresh in my mind. The stage was bare except for a single light bulb which would actually be removed at the play’s start although it would return later. The stage consists of a large circular center and a surrounding ring both of which rotate. Sometimes they rotate in opposite directions which can seem to expand the distance between actors or the distance they travel. Set Designer Laura Jellinek states that “our main goal was to eliminate any artifice between the audience and the story” and this set certainly accomplishes that. As one audience member observed during the discussion that followed the play, she briefly looked around for the jury during the courtroom scene before realizing that “we were the jury”. At its most crowded, the stage holds nine chairs for the key figures in that courtroom scene.

The discussion I mentioned happens after every performance. Anyone interested moves close to the stage to listen or participate. There were naturally questions about this specific production but there were also questions about the story. There is a sign in the lobby that I now wish I’d taken a picture of. “Don’t read books that think for you. Read books that make you think.” might not be 100% accurate but it’s close. Friday night’s discussion was evidence that this play is prompting some thinking and I’ve no reason to think that discussions following other performances are any different.

tcamb3There is also a set of blackboards in the lobby. As I assume is true at every performance, the blackboards started out empty except for a question at the top of each. By the time people started heading home, the boards were full. It’s pretty clear that some thinking is going on here, too.

It was the coincidence of the Smithsonian email showing up on the day I was set to see the play that nudged me towards making it a blog entry. There is another coincidence of sorts that I find interesting.  Each week, the blog This Cruel War publishes an article on lynchings. The article is published on Wednesdays but, since I subscribe via RSS and I seem to always be behind in my RSS reading, it is often a day or more after publication before I read a specific article. I read this week’s post the morning after my Playhouse visit. In it, the source of the series’ title, “This Disgraceful Evil”, is given. It comes from a 1918 Woodrow Wilson speech in which he calls upon America “…to make an end of this disgraceful evil.”

We don’t have to deal with actual lynchings now as much as in 1918 but there’s still plenty of crap going on. “It cannot live”, Wilson continues, “where the community does not countenance it.”

Originally scheduled to end today, April 3, To Kill a Mockingbird‘s run a Playhouse in the Park has been extended through April 9.

My Caboodles — Chapter 1
Corps of Discovery Forts

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With the “My Wheels” series coming to at least a temporary end, this series about collections of things I’ve visited is being launched to take its place as something to be posted when my real-time world fails to produce an article. The word “caboodle” occurred to me as I was brainstorming titles and I knew it was right the instant I checked the Merriam-Webster definition. The initial chapter concerns a very small caboodle that I didn’t even think of as a group until I had completed it. During its existence, the Corps of Discovery (a.k.a. Lewis & Clark Expedition) endured three winters hunkered down inside some fairly sturdy fortifications. It was while visiting my third, their second, that I realized I’d been to all of them. As the current list of potential subjects for this series is quite small, I’m hoping some memories or realizations will magically appear to lengthen it. Especially since it is being launched during a statewide Coronavirus related “stay at home” order that prevents most of the activities that usually spawn articles here.

1. All three Corps of Discovery winter encampments functioned as forts and that’s how two of the three were identified. The one that most closely matches our common concept of a frontier fort was not. The place where the corps spent the winter of 1803-4 was named Camp River Dubois. I’m guessing that the word “fort” was not used because the location was near Saint Louis in relatively civilized territory. It was here that they prepared for the journey that would begin in earnest in May of 1804. I visited the site less than a month after the two-hundredth anniversary of that beginning. This structure, as well as the others, is a modern recreation. The originals rotted away long ago.

2. In 2008, I found myself on the Oregon coast where the expedition spent its third and final winter away from home. Like many travelers today, Lewis and Clark would spend less time returning from their destination than reaching it and avoid a fourth winter lockdown. In their case, more downstream travel and less getting lost helped considerably. They had traveled as far west as they could and turned their footsteps to the east when they departed Fort Clatsop in the spring of 1806.

3. It was nearly eight years later when I unexpectedly realized that I was only about thirty miles from Fort Mandan and an associated Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center. I made the short detour, of course, and was able to look over an accurate reproduction of the expedition’s quarters during the winter of 1804-5. The explorers found the fort had been burned to the ground when they passed by here on their way home.

While studying a timeline of the expedition at the Fort Mandan site, it struck me that I had now visited all three of the Corps of Discovery’s wintering locations. Now, three-plus years later, when I needed a new supply of posts that could be made without regard for the date, I chose this set of visits, spread over a dozen years, as the subject for the first of the series. The actual visits are here (Camp River Dubois), here (Fort Clatsop), and here (Fort Mandan).

Trip Peek #94
Trip #69
Labor Day 2008

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This picture is from my 2008 Labor Day trip. Although the trip eventually included wonderful experiences in Point Pleasant, WV (Mothman), and Marietta, OH (Lafayette Hotel), the highlight of the trip occurred right at its beginning. I took the photo at right about fifteen miles from home at the Crabfest in Blanchester, OH. That’s Gene Sullivan landing next to the spike of a 68-foot horseshoe crab after jumping over its body and through the “flaming gates of Hell”. Crabfest is no more, and neither, apparently is the church that sponsored it. But Gene and the crab survive. The crab has been moved about twenty-five miles east to Hillsboro, and Gene, at 73, has, or at least had, a 50th anniversary “Jump for Jesus” tour planned for the summer of 2020. I could find no current information on the tour so do not know whether it has been canceled or postponed by the coronavirus pandemic or has been affected by something else.

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.

Trip Peek #93
Trip #114
Battle of Lake Erie Bicentennial

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This picture is from my 2013 trip to the Battle of Lake Erie Bicentennial. Even though the anniversary of the battle was the trigger for the trip, it would be over and I would be back home before the date actually arrived. The battle took place on September 10, 1813. A reenactment occurred on September 2, 2013. Watching the reenactment required a ticket that I’d waited too long to buy so I did a “bicentennial light”. I took two ferry rides to Put-In-Bay checking out Perry’s Victory Monument on one trip and a reproduction of the Niagara, Perry’s flagship, on the other. Onboard for the second trip was a Commodore Perry reenactor who provided considerable history. There was a day between the rides which I spent exploring Sandusky, Ohio. The picture shows both the Niagra and the monument.

When I left Sandusky, I headed to Canada to explore some of the sites connected with the Battle of the Thames in which Tecumseh was killed less than a month after the Battle of Lake Erie. I returned to the states to cover the bits of Michigan’s Dixie Highway that remained undriven by me. All of that had been planned before I left home. The trip’s unplanned bonus (Every trip should have at least one.) was in Canada. I stayed at a very nice B & B near Buxton National Historic Site. That this was “A Terminus of the Underground Railroad” was cool enough, but the fact that the 90th annual reunion was taking place while I was there was an extraordinary piece of luck.

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.

Book Review
Headley Inn and Cliff Rock House
Cyndie L. Gerken

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Cyndie Gerken’s third big helping of National Road knowledge was served up a bit more than a year ago, and I have no good excuse, or even enough bad ones, to account for waiting so long to take a look. Of course, once I did, the same accuracy and thoroughness that marked her earlier books were instantly apparent in this one. In 2015, she documented Ohio’s National Road mile markers with Marking the Miles Along the National Road Through Ohio.  In 2018, Taking the Tolls Along the National Road Through Ohio told of the toll gates that operated after the federal government rid itself of the highway by giving it to the states through which it passed. Both books took a deep and wide look at their subjects although that phrase did not occur to me until I was well into the current volume.

Those other books were geographically wide because they involved the whole state of Ohio, and they were also wide in the variety of information they included on their subjects. Depth came from the layers of time and degree of detail covered. Headley… isn’t nearly as wide geographically (The two buildings in the title are barely 300 feet apart.), but it does include the passing road and nearby towns, and the information variety is every bit as wide as in the first two offerings. The detail component of depth is at least equal to that of the earlier books and the time component is considerably greater. The period covered by all three begins at roughly the same time but the story of the two inns has yet to end.

Physically the latest book is much like the others. All are largish paperbacks printed in color. All include a brief overview of the history of the National Road that provides context for the rest of the book. Headley…‘s introduction also includes information on the surrounding area and the role of early roadside inns and taverns.

Both of the book’s subjects appeared almost immediately after the National Road passed by the land they would occupy. The first section of the Cliff Rock House was completed in 1830 and the Headley Inn’s first section in 1833. Other dates have appeared in articles and even on signs but Gerken sorts through the various claims and presents a solid case for these dates. Both structures have been enlarged and modified over the years. Despite their nearness to each other, the inns were constructed and operated independently by two separate families. That has not always been the case although it is again today.

It is generally thought that the Headley Inn initially served as a stagecoach stop while the larger Cliff Rock House catered more to drovers herding sheep and other animals to market. That sort of division was never iron clad, of course, but that kind of thinking does serve to justify the two businesses being so close.

The two periods of glory experienced by the two taverns naturally coincide with the glory days of the passing road. They prospered in the early eighteenth century doing what they were constructed for: serving travelers on the new National Road. Gerken digs deep into public records and family histories to tell the story of this period. Prosperity ended with the coming of the railroad.

Prosperity returned in the early part of the next century when traffic returned to the road out front. This time the customers were carried by automobiles. Alexander Smith, who had built the Cliff Rock House, added the Headley Inn to his holdings in 1857. In 1922, two of his granddaughters opened a restaurant and tearoom in the former stagecoach stop. The old National Road had become part of the National Old Trails Road. Its traffic, and the sisters’ culinary skills, made the tea room a nationally known success. Like they did elsewhere, the interstates of the last half of the twentieth century pulled traffic from the old road and might have ended this second round of glory if the sisters had not already ended it by retiring and closing the restaurant in 1961.

Gerken also uses public records to tell of the tearoom period but they form a much smaller part of the story. There is considerable family documentation available, including photographs, and, more significantly, she has access to quite a bit of living memory of the era. The most important source of that living memory is the son of one of those sisters, Alexander Smith Howard. He not only shared stories that appear throughout the book, he also wrote its foreword.

Living memory provides even more input to the post-tearoom era and here the living memory is sometimes Gerken’s own although it is more often her personal interviews with the short series of owners. The book is heavily illustrated with historical photos, maps, diagrams, newspaper clippings, and more. Modern photos include many taken by the author herself.

For the third time, an era of glory early in a new century is a definite possibility. Major restoration of the Headley Inn was accomplished by Stephen and Bernadine Brown during their 1989 to 2006 ownership. It continued under Alan and Patricia Chaffee until 2015. The current owners, Brian and Carrie Adams, along with their daughter Ashley, have added their own historically sensitive improvements and now operate a bed and breakfast with facilities for weddings and other gatherings. In 2018, Cliff Rock House was purchased by Otto and Sally Luburgh and restoration work is now underway there.

I know that this book’s true value lies in its collection of facts, photos, and carefully researched history. It is unequaled in that regard. Much of its readability, however, comes from the stories that fill the background and cluster around the edges. From the story of the Headly Inn’s original owner verbally abusing federal troops early in the Civil War, and tales of tearoom employees drawing straws to determine who had to brave snakes in the attic to retrieve supplies, to reports of elephants appearing — both expected and not — in front of the inn, there are plenty of human interest style anecdotes to balance the solid and valuable historical facts.

Headley Inn and Cliff Rock House: A Storied History of Two Taverns Along Ohio’s National Road, Cyndie L. Gerken, Independently published, March 20, 2019, 11 x 8.5 inches, 378 pages, ISBN 978-1790228089
Available through Amazon.

Book Review
Overground Railroad
Candacy Taylor

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“This is not a book about the history of road-tripping and black travel”, is the first sentence of the last paragraph of the introduction. That’s something I knew long before I read it. It was something Candacy Taylor said early in the presentation I attended in Indianapolis back in February. It may even have been something she said during another presentation of hers I attended back in 2016. I discovered Taylor the same way she discovered the Green Book. Well, not exactly the same way. She learned of the Green Book while doing research for a Moon Travel Guide on Route 66. I learned of Candacy Taylor as a mere attendee at a conference on the historic road. Research for the book was well underway when Taylor spoke at that conference in Los Angeles but Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America was still a concept. It was a reality when she spoke in Indianapolis, and that’s where I acquired my copy.

Another phrase that caught my ear at the Indianapolis presentation and which I subsequently read in the book is this: “I wasn’t interested in presenting the Green Book as a historic time capsule.” Maybe the reason I noticed the phrase was that, without actually being aware of it, that is exactly how I saw the Green Book. The book, published between 1936 to 1967, identified businesses where Negro travelers were welcome. A too often true assumption was that they were not welcome in any place not listed. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not make racial discrimination disappear, but it did make it illegal. By the time I became aware of the book, it had not been published for decades and I figured it had been more or less the same throughout the time it was published. In my mind, the Green Book essentially was a historic time capsule.

The book was no doubt historic, but it was not a sealed capsule. If pressed, I would have known that the book must have grown over the years and that listings and advertisers would have come and gone. Taylor meant much more than that. There were changes in the book’s overall tone that were related to changes in society and vice versa. She uses changes in the Green Book as a timeline to frame changes in the world at large. It isn’t a hard link and the two certainly don’t move in lockstep. Societal changes just aren’t that tidy. But the editions of Victor Green’s book pace the chapters in Taylor’s.

One of the bigger Green Book changes Taylor covers occurred with its return at the end of the Second World War. The guide was not published during the war, and when it returned in 1946 it was bigger and better than ever. Not only was the book enlarged, its tone was changed a bit, too. Serious articles about the situation of blacks in American society appeared along with information, such as a listing of black colleges, not exactly associated with travel. In a chapter based on the 1946 and ’47 editions, Taylor says, “This comprehensive list of colleges elevated the Green Book from a travel guide to a political weapon.”

Another big step came in 1952 when the guide’s name was changed from the Negro Motorist Green Book to the Negro Travelers Green Book. Train travel by blacks had already been included starting in 1950. Travel by airplane and other means would be covered in the future.

In a chapter linked to the 1957 and ’58 editions, Taylor addresses what is almost certainly a big reason she felt the need to stress that, “This is not a book about the history of road-tripping.” The chapter is titled “The Roots of Route 66”, and she uses Route 66 examples to explain why blacks have virtually no nostalgia for the classic American road trip, but the story is essentially the same for every other highway, too. While it’s very much an understatement, the following line does sort of sum up the chapter: “[T]he experience of driving Route 66 was not the same for everyone.”

Overground Railroad is heavily illustrated. Taylor’s research for this project included cataloging and visiting businesses listed in the Green Book, and several of her photographs of sites that remain appear throughout the book. She also includes some personal photos. Numerous historic photos along with reproductions from the Green Book accompany the text. A section in the back of the book lists surviving “Green Book sites” and includes Taylor’s photos of many. It is followed by a section with reproductions of every known Green Book cover other than the very first edition of 1936.

Victor Green hoped that “There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published.” That day came, technically, when the 1964 Civil Rights Act became law. There was just one more Green Book published before it shut down permanently. But reality has never quite matched the technical equality of the Civil Rights Act. The first chapter of Taylor’s book, in which she discusses the risks and difficulties of Negroes driving during the early years of the Green Book, is titled “Driving While Black”. It’s a title that could have come from yesterday’s newspaper. Maybe it did. In her introduction, Taylor asks the standard road trip question, “Are we there yet?” then answers with a whole book that tells of progress but ends up with a solid “No.” It is not, however, a hopeless “No”. The “Author’s Note” near the book’s end talks of the challenge and is followed by a “What We Can Do” list.

Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America, Candacy Taylor, Harry N. Abrams, January 7, 2020, 9.8 x 7 inches, 360 pages, ISBN 978-1419738173
Available through Amazon.

Movie Review
King Kong
Radio Pictures

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No, I’m not really going to review an eighty-seven-year-old movie that just about everybody has seen multiple times. But I am going to review the experience of seeing it on the big screen for the first time ever. The original King Kong was released on April 7, 1933, so it’s not quite eighty-seven years old but it’s mighty close. My first glimpse — and it wasn’t a whole lot more than that — was sometime in the mid-1950s.

It was on TV, of course, on what was decidedly NOT a big screen. It was probably in 1957 when the movie made its national television debut. The timing likely wasn’t considered “late-night” then and certainly wouldn’t be now, but it was late enough that I had to beg for an exemption to my normal bedtime. Although I was successful, I did not get the exemption’s full benefit. I fell asleep before the movie started, woke up to watch a few scenes through bleary eyes, then dozed off again before the big ending. Today I can’t even remember what portions of the movie I saw. I remember that I saw all of the giant gorilla, not just his face or hand, and I remember it was dark. Seeing Kong in his entirety narrows it down some. The fact that it was dark does not. The entire film was darkened to obscure, reportedly, some of the bloodier scenes and some details of Fay Wray’s femininity. Fay Wray had lots of femininity.

Since then, there have been several viewings that I did manage to stay awake for. Although the screens were considerably larger and clearer than the one parked in our living room sixty-some years ago, all were on a TV. I think the movie became a favorite the instant I actually saw it all. The story was fairly creative but not particularly complex, and the acting was only a few steps removed from the silent film era. Neither was what attracted me to the film. I appreciated its craftsmanship and the window on history it provided. Stop-action animation and rear projection on matte paintings were not invented for King Kong but they had never been used anywhere near to this extent.

The window on history I mentioned exists largely because the movie was made as a window on, if not the future, the leading edge of the present. The film’s exciting finish features the Empire State Building which had just been completed in 1931. It was then the world’s tallest and would hold that title for almost forty years. The armed airplanes that attack the doomed giant were seen as “the most modern of weapons”. Some were models built for the film but some scenes show actual state-of-the-art military planes from a nearby U.S. Naval airfield. From two decades into the twenty-first century, those bi-planes look pretty primitive. Realizing that they represented the most advanced technology of the day definitely helps generate a real appreciation for the film’s special effects created with contemporary tools.

On Sunday, I finally got to see the big guy on the big screen. Fathom Events put together a one day showing at Regal Cinema. Something I’d recently learned was that King Kong was the first movie with a thematic score. This means it was written to coordinate with and enhance on-screen actions rather than just provide some background music. Sunday’s showing included the opening and closing overture which had naturally been cut from every time-constrained TV version I’d ever seen.

The experience was nearly everything I’d hoped it would be. The wall-filling Kong was more frightening than any smaller version I’d seen, and Wray was every bit as alluring as I remembered, and her screams, with an assist from the theater’s sound system, were even louder. That thematic score, which I paid a little more attention to than usual, benefited from the sound system, too. If I ignored the fact that I was sitting in a wide well-padded recliner with NBA sized legroom, I could almost imagine I was watching like it was 1933.

The experience was only “nearly everything I’d hoped” for one reason. In the lead up to Sunday, I’d read a review of the movie which was really a preview of a 2011 screening. It’s here. My anticipation grew when it talked of “seeing it in a packed theater on a big screen with an audience”. I got the big screen but I did not get the packed theater. There were less than twenty people at the 1:00 show. I know that old B&W movies just generally do not draw big crowds but there was more going on here. COVID19, the disease caused by a Coronavirus, was growing. Large gatherings had been banned and the NBA, NCAA, MLB, and other groups had canceled events. In Ohio, schools had already been closed by the governor and within a couple of hours of me leaving the theater, he would close all bars and restaurants. Many museums and other institutions have closed on their own.

That’s why Sunday’s experience was about as far from a packed theater as is possible. Yesterday (Tuesday) the theater itself was closed and so was the Empire State Building observation deck. I’ve only been to the top of the Empire State Building once. It was in the early ’70s when King Kong was no more than forty years old. In a narrow space on an inside wall. there was a heart with the words “King Kong loves Fay Wray”. I’d like to think it’s still there but probably not.