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.

My Wheels — Chapter 8
1957 Austin Healey

Posted on December 8, 2013 by Denny

Why in the world would a couple of newly weds buy a ten year old British sports car in the middle of winter? I am, at present, as baffled as anyone though I apparently once knew the answer to that question. A month or so after our 1966 Boxing Day wedding, my bride and I purchased a 1957 Austin-Healey 100-6. The one pictured is a 1958 model but looks pretty much like our ’57. This was not a play car to park next to a dependable sedan. This was our only car.

The Renault‘s reliability had steadily decreased until I sold it to a friend who either rebuilt or replaced the engine and drove it for quite awhile. I almost bought a 1959 Plymouth an aunt had recently replaced and actually “test drove” the car for a few weeks before acquiring the Healey. Buying the Plymouth would have been the sensible thing to do. But we were 18 and 19, I was a full time student, she was just out of high school, and we had just gotten married. Why spoil it by doing something sensible?

The Healey lasted more than a year. It was a great summer car and an OK winter car. Climbing snow covered Cincinnati hills was not its strong suit but it got around as good as many other cars of the day and it was reasonably warm in slowish city driving. Things were a little different on the open road. It helped that it had a removable hard top. It was fiberglass and not heavily insulated but was infinitely better than the cloth top. But it was a true roadster with sliding Plexiglas side curtains rather than roll up windows. At highway speed on a cold day, the heater stayed on full blast trying to keep up with the air escaping through the side curtains.

That soft top I mentioned was on the car once while I owned it. Attaching it had much more in common with raising a tent than with raising a convertible top. The hard top came off in the spring and went on in the fall. In between, with the one exception to prove that erecting the canvas top was possible, we made do with a tonneau cover and, yes, we did get wet now and then.

It was called a 2+2 with a pair of padded depressions in a shelf behind the seats. I actually remember carrying someone in those “seats” for a short distance but the shelf was much better at holding a couple bags of groceries than a couple derrieres.

The 100-6 was produced for three years. In 1956 it replaced the four-cylinder 100 which immediately became known as the 100-4. The 100-6 had a 2.6 liter six-cylinder engine and a four-speed transmission with overdrive. In 1959, it was replaced with the 2.9 liter Austin-Healey 3000 which had a rather long run through 1967.

Cars are often remembered for the misadventures they were part of and here is a story that helps me remember the Healey. For reasons not quite remembered, there was no license bracket on the front for awhile. It had been damaged somehow and repairing it had slipped entirely off my schedule. We were driving home after a visit to my parents. On state route 49, near the town of Arcanum, we passed a state trooper headed the other direction. He turned around, turned on his lights, and pulled us over. There was no “serious” issue, like speeding, but there was no front license. After checking a few things, he gave me a written warning and went on his way.

A couple of weeks later, I was back in Darke County. The low slung Healey had suffered a few scrapes and bumps on its crankcase and had developed a minor leak. I arranged to meet a high school buddy who had a welder so we — actually he — could fix the leak. The repair was accomplished and I headed home. At just about the same spot as before, that same state trooper passed the Healey with the same license plate not there. When I saw his brake lights come on, I immediately turned off on a side road and, with a few quick turns on the narrow roads, made my getaway. Satisfied that my evasive maneuvers had worked, I was starting to slow when I saw it. The road ahead was unpaved. It had not been graded for awhile. A fairly tall gravel ridge stood in its center. Before I could stop, I was plowing that gravel. Then I was oiling it.

The gravel had ripped off the recently applied weld and the crankcase was leaking much worse than it ever had before. I lost a lot of oil by the time I made it back to the main road. At a little gas station and grocery store, I bought a five gallon can of used oil. I believe farmers sometimes used used oil in slow reving equipment so it was often available for sale. The leak was not quite as bad as I feared but I still lost close to another gallon getting back to the friend’s house. He had just been visiting from college and was already gone when I got there. His dad let me use the welder and I managed to plug the leak with one of the ugliest welding jobs ever. This was the first and last time anyone ever left me alone with a welder. Then I drove home and fixed the license bracket the very next day.

Although our car must have looked just like the one in the picture when new, when we had it the paint had lost its shine and there was rust. Not major visible rust but hidden and interior rust in floor pans and such. The car was never garaged while we had it and I suspect that was true of much of its life. The rust and mechanical malaise led to the Austin-Healey being replaced before the next summer rolled around.

Previous Wheels: Chapter 7 — 1961 Renault 4CV
Next Wheels: Chapter 9 — Honda 65

Although this post is semi-random (I picked it from two possibilities) it appears during Cincinnati’s first snow event of the year (which is kinda why I picked it) and gives me an excuse to tell a semi-related story.

The 1959 Plymouth Fury at left is a dead ringer for the one I passed up to get the Austin-Healey. A rather spiffy ride, don’t you think? On one snowy night, my new wife and I were out with a friend in my borrowed car. The snow was not deep but the big Plymouth was not doing well on the slick streets. At one point, as we attempted to climb a slight incline, the friend and I got out to push while my wife took over driving. It did not take much to get the car moving but stopping to let us back in would have left the car stuck once again. Instead, my friend and I each grabbed a fin and “skied” alongside the Plymouth to the top of the hill.

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.

Flying Pumpkins

Posted on November 3, 2013 by Denny

What a clever way to get people to learn a French word and a little bit of history. Use trebuchets to hurl pumpkins high into the air and explain that their original purpose was to attack castles in the Middle Ages. Then, as the French would also say, voilà! Old and young are suddenly using the word trebuchet as if they’ve always known it though, to be honest, not everyone remembers the Middle Ages castle stuff.

Saturday was the 7th (or maybe 8th) Heads-Up Pumpkin Chuck at Stanbery Park in Mount Washington, a Cincinnati suburb. The event raises money to help maintain the park. People bring in no longer needed –or wanted — Halloween pumpkins and, with help from the “pros”, load them into the slings of the trebuchets, then pull a rope (bet the French say lanyard) to launch them into the air. All for three bucks.

Some of the carved and less fresh specimens burst apart mid-flight like exploding cannon balls while others smash into the ground with a solid thunk before scattering themselves about. The Real Mary Peale from my favorite radio station, WNKU, did her show live from the park with microphones strategically placed to capture the sounds of both launch and landing.

The event had been promoted as being the 7th but that is definitely in question. In an on-air interview, one of the trebuchet builders and operators said “…7th, 8th, 9th, whatever…” and Mary subsequently referred to it as 7th or 8th. An outdated but still online announcement for the 2010 Chuck called it the 5th. The counting of individual pumpkins also appears to be a little loose. In another on-air interview, the Pumpkin Queen (pictured at left) said, near day’s end, that “over 400” pumpkins had been chucked. Many pumpkins in view had numbers in the 5, 6, and 7 hundred range. There are, of course, aspects to chuck scheduling that I cannot know.

I believe that both of the big trebuchets are purpose built. One was completed about 1:30 AM on chuck day. The smaller one, which handles smaller pumpkins but gets as much distance as the biggies, is from a privateer. Its owner is an engineer at GE who brings it every year. There are just not that many places a guy can go to play with his trebuchet.

Au revoir.

Trip Peek #10
Trip #72
Christmas on the Alafia

Posted on August 4, 2013 by Denny

This picture is from the my 2008 Christmas on the Alafia road trip which was my third “Christmas Escape Run”. The Alafia is a river just south of Tampa, Florida, where my great-grandparents spent Christmas Eve in 1920. By sticking to expressways, I managed to get there on Christmas Eve 2008. I didn’t get to hang out on the river bank as they did but I did get to hang out with some of the wintering circus folk at the Showtown Bar in Gibsonton. I then drove the Tamiami Trail and a lot of Dixie Highway before reaching home on January 3. I slipped into Key West on the 27th but didn’t even spend the night. The END 1 sign was just about the last thing I saw before I started driving north looking for a vacant motel room I could afford. That didn’t happen until I reached Florida City back on the mainland.

Trip Pic Peek #9 — Trip #66 — 2008 Route 66 Festival

Trip Pic 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 trip journal it is from.

Trip Peek #7
Trip #59
Thanksgiving 2007

Posted on June 23, 2013 by Denny

This picture is from the my 2007 Thanksgiving road trip. It was my third Thanksgiving Escape Run and my second in Nashville. For a little variety, I began my trip on Thanksgiving day by heading west then entering Nashville on US-41A after spending a night in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. I had ample time for exploring which included a visit to the unfamiliar east bank of the Cumberland River where this view of the very familiar Bellsouth Tower, a.k.a. Batman Building, caught my eye. Also included in this trip were my first ever visits to Music Row, the Lane Museum, and the Bluebird Cafe.

Trip Pic Peek #6 — Trip #1 — Rt66in99

Ye Olde Flex-Master
A My Gear Extra

Posted on June 16, 2013 by Denny

Flex-Master camera I am not someone who delights in using old film cameras. I can appreciate that others do and I can appreciate the phenomenal engineering and manufacturing accomplishments embodied in high-end film cameras. But I like the convenience and economy of digital photography far too much to spend my own time and money on anything else — with one exception.

That exception is the camera at right. It’s certainly old and it uses film but it is about as far from high-end as you can get. The exact same camera was sold under a variety of names with prices around three or four dollars. An uncle won this one by investing a quarter in a punch-board in 1940. I never knew him. He went off to war and never came home. My Mom, his sister, ended up with the camera. I remember it being our family camera in the early 1950s.

There’s not much to it. It’s called a pseudo-TLR. TLR stands for twin lens reflex which means one lens for the photo and an identical twin for the viewfinder. I’m not sure that what feeds the viewfinder on this camera can properly be called a lens at all. It does somehow produce a dim right-side-up but reversed left-to-right image on an upward facing screen. There’s no focus or aperture control and not exactly any shutter speed control. There is a shutter release and a little lever that selects “INST.” or “TIME”. The length of an “instant” isn’t specified but I’m guessing it’s somewhere between 1/50 and 1/100 second. As you’d expect, “TIME” holds the shutter open as long as the the release is held down. The back is held in place by a thumbscrew. Remove it to thread the paper backed film onto the relocated empty spool from the previous roll then close it up tight. Turn the knob on the side to move a frame number into first one then the other red window.

I believe both of these pictures were taken with the Flex-Master. The first one is known to be from the winter of 1950. The other is probably from the next spring. It’s one I frequently use as an “on the road” Facebook profile picture.

I said I appreciate folks who work with film cameras and I know some, too. One in particular, Jim Grey, lives close enough that I’ve passed a few ~~junk~~ classic cameras his way. Jim not only gets a lot of pleasure from his cameras, he gets some very nice pictures from them, too. I recently asked Jim about the Flex-Master and he told me where I could buy film for the camera and also where to get it developed. There aren’t many choices. It’s tough enough finding processing for film from a still-in-production Canon or Nikon let alone something out of a seventy-three year old punch-board prize. Nor is it cheap. With postage, two rolls of 127 black & white film came within pennies of twenty-eight dollars. Processing, with postage but without prints (you get jpgs), is $16.50 a roll.

One of the first places I tried the camera was in front of the 1886 Hayesville Opera House after Cece Otto’s American Songline concert. I managed to totally botch two of the three pictures I took of Cece by doing double exposures (Now, there’s something you don’t hear of much in the digital world, Chauncey.) and the one that did kind of turn out has a building that looks like a reflection in a fun-house mirror. I’m guessing that the film wasn’t held flat but I don’t know why. The picture of the Roebling Bridge with Cincinnati in the background doesn’t seen so distorted so maybe the film got pulled tighter later in the roll… or something. Both pictures have a pair of vertical scratches that I think line up with rails molded into the camera back which I’m guessing are there to press the film flat. Matching scratches can be seen in some of the pictures taken with the camera in the ’50s. Just remember that “far from high-end” statement near the beginning of this article.

If the first roll had been a complete disaster, I’d have given the other one to a friendly Hoosier camera collector and saved my self $16.50 in processing. Since the disaster was less than complete, I’m going to take the “seventy-three year old punch-board prize” along on my upcoming ride in a fifty year old car on a one hundred year old highway and see what develops.

Doyle Bankson, that camera winning uncle, is buried at Colleville-sur-Mer in France. His parents (my grandparents) placed his name between theirs on this tombstone in Ohio. Part of me felt really silly using the camera he won as a teenager to take a picture of a stone more than four-thousand miles from his grave. Part of me didn’t.

This article is being posted on Father’s Day. That’s somewhat, but not entirely, a coincidence. Dad took quite a few pictures with the Flex-Master. He was in some, too. Here’s a picture of Dad, my sister, and me that was taken with a twelve year old punch-board prize.

Memorial Day: Focus for Memory

Posted on May 27, 2013 by Denny

Cincinnati is my mailing address though
I definitely do not live within the city limits. The area where I live is governed by township trustees and not inside any city limits at all. The city of Mason is the closest and people even sometimes speak of where I live as “the Mason area”. I’ve been to a few Mason festivals and such but I don’t make a habit of it and I don’t consider my self a Masonite. When the subject of Memorial Day parades came up and a friend mentioned that Mason had one, it struck me that I’d never been and that it was where I ought to go this year.

That turned out to be easier said than done. The actual attending was easy enough but finding out when and where was a real challenge. Every town in the area seemed to have at least one Memorial Day related event on every news site’s calendar — except Mason. The friend who had first mentioned the parade eventually came up with the time and route but I’ve no idea from where and the information was accompanied with, “I swear, it’s like they don’t want people to know about it!” Armed with the hard earned information, I made it in time to walk to the staging area and make it back to a big bend in the route before step-off time.

The parade had Grand Marshalls (more on that later), twirling flags, and a marching band…

…lots of Girl and Boy Scouts — including one pretty big group carrying a really big flag — and beauty queens.

A sizable portion of the crowd, including me, followed the parade to Rose Hill Cemetery where a few ceremonies were scheduled. On the way we passed a fellow leaning back and watching the parade with a WW II veteran’s cap on his head. Someone a few spots in front of me reached out to shake his hand and say thank you. I was one of several people who took the cue and did the same. Yes, I know the difference between Veterans Day and Memorial Day and I sometimes chastise those who don’t. But most, if not all, of these thank yous were personal and exempt from any holiday protocol and they’re all too rare.

Today’s parade had three Grand Marshalls. Frank Weishaupt, who was in the white Mercedes and is in the first picture, represented World War II veterans. The next picture is of Frank Huffman, Jr., who fought in Korea. The third picture is of John Looker who served in Vietnam and who was also today’s key note speaker. John was wounded more than once. On the day that he received his last and worst wound, eleven men in his unit were killed. Most of his speech did not even reference his own experiences but he ended by reciting the names of those eleven men. Personal? Yes. Appropriate? Very.

When the speeches were over, two women came forward and placed wreaths on waiting stands. Seven uniformed men, who had been sitting to the side, then stood and fired three volleys as an eighth gave the commands. When they were done, a trumpeter standing next to them played taps as another, many years his junior, stood apart and echoed each note just a couple of seconds later. A benediction followed and brought things to a close. With my memory well focused, I walked back to town and to my car.

Doug Dickey was a high school classmate of mine who joined the Marines not long after graduation. In March of 1967 he gave his life to protect his comrades and for that was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. The citation is here. One of my recent trip journals included a photo of his inscription on the Medal of Honor Memorial in Indianapolis. On March 22 of this year, a portion of Ohio Route 47 was designated as the Pfc. Douglas E. Dickey Memorial Highway and just over a week ago, on May 18, signs marking the highway were unveiled. An article on the unveiling is here.

HBD2Me

Posted on April 7, 2013 by Denny

I turned sixty-six on Friday. Had I waited, I would now be eligible for full Social Security benefits. Sixty-six is what the Social Security Administration calls “full retirement age” for folks born between 1943 and 1954. But I started drawing my monthly payment about three years ago so nothing about that changed on Friday. Sixty-six is not a particularly exciting birthday. At sixty-two I became eligible for reduced Social Security and sixty-five brought me Medicare but there are no more birthdays with benefits in my future. There was a period, in the distant past, when every couple of birthdays brought something new and wonderful. Turning thirteen made me a teenager, I could drive when I reached sixteen and buy 3.2% beer at eighteen. Twenty-one brought the possibility of buying whiskey and voting. Twenty-two brought nothing. Thirty, forty, fifty, and sixty were all big deals with the first three being celebrated mightily but not one birthday between twenty-one and sixty-two brought new privileges and neither will any in the future. Sixty-six is like twenty-two with more aches and pains and a much earlier bedtime.

Of course the lack of new privileges did not keep me from enjoying the day. I got it started with some phenomenal pecan pancakes at one of my favorite breakfast spots, The Original Pancake House. I hung out at home for a bit then headed out again in the early afternoon. My first stop was at the place pictured to the left and at the top of this post. Not only was it my first stop of the afternoon, it was my first stop ever at Weber’s Cafe and, unless I get back there one of three days next week, it will be my last. Weber’s is closing next Wednesday and it was a news article about the closing that brought the neighborhood bar to my attention. The place couldn’t have been more friendly and welcoming but it really is a place where friends gather. I drank a couple of PBRs and had delightful chats with both George and Nancy (who appear in the article and accompanying video) but in the end I was a tourist who could admire the comradery of the regulars but who was certainly not part of it. Those guys are really going to miss this place. Heck, I’m going to miss the place and I was only there once. There’s a nice blog post from a few years back here.

Next up was a drive to Wilmington to meet buddy John. We met at Daluca’s Dugout and I really should have grabbed some pictures there because Deluca’s (perhaps better known as Sal’s) is a blue collar place with its own set of regulars and its own set of sports memorabilia though its memorabilia isn’t quite in the same class as that at Weber’s. John is a regular and I’m becoming a semi-regular and it’s a very comfortable place to down a few brews. From there we headed to MacD’s Pub with intentions of having one beer and ended up splitting a pitcher while chatting with John’s boss, Norm, who graciously bought a round of Woodford for the three of us. This had developed into a bit more of a celebration than I had anticipated.

My next move was partly, but not entirely, spontaneous. John and I had devoured a couple of baskets of chips at Sal’s but the idea of seeking out some real food seemed a good one. Over the last several days, the thought of a special meal for my birthday had occurred a time or two. One of the places I’d thought of is in Dayton. I can reach Dayton from Wilmington in about the same amount of time as I can reach home. Of course I’d still need to get home from Dayton but I saw that as a detail that could be dealt with later. Dayton was where I headed.

The Pine Club is an old school steakhouse with a mile high reputation. Though the restaurant and I are the same age, I’d eaten there just once. On that one visit, however, I was served what I believe was the best steak I’ve ever eaten. I certainly do intend to enjoy another one someday but that’s not what was on my mind this time. In addition to a variety of steaks, the Pine Club offers a nice seafood selection and some sandwiches including hamburgers. I really was surprised when I first saw Pine Club and hamburger mentioned together but it seems the restaurant has been showing up on best ‘burgers lists for quite awhile. I’ve lusted after one of these babies for a long time. The lust was justified and the drive rewarded. This is a high quality and tasty hamburger that is neither over-priced nor over-hyped. Happy Birthday to me.

Happy Eostre

Posted on March 31, 2013 by Denny

Eostre Beer, Howard Town Brewery The Christian holiday called Easter may or may not be named after the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre who may or may not be related to the Germanic goddess Ostara. It is not, despite what you may have read, named after the Babylonian goddess Ishtar. Ishtar was, by all accounts, a really fun lady and probably deserves some sort of holiday but Easter isn’t it. It’s not 100% certain that Easter is Eostre’s either but it is certain that this beer was named for her. That’s her picture right there in the middle of the label. Eostre — the beer — is brewed by the Howard Town Brewery in Glossop, England. HTB’s website lists the quantity of each beer currently available and for Eostre that amount is zip. Bummer. No way to have a Happy Eostre just now, I guess.

Ishtar, Babylonian goddess of love and war Until the folks in Glossop get around to brewing another batch of Eostre, I suggest we work on getting this divine Babylonian her own holiday. We could celebrate it by wearing wings and leaving our hats on.

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