Tag Archives: Museum

Trip Peek #118
Trip #151
Only Rock and Roll

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This picture is from my 2018 Only Rock and Roll trip. The picture is from part two of the three-part outing. It started with a day at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, OH, continued with a Tubes concert in Akron, OH, and concluded with a Little Steven concert in Wabash, IN. I had been to the Hall of Fame a couple of times, had seen the Tubes once, and had seen Little Steven Van Zandt several times. In the past, he had been backing Bruce Springsteen as a member of the E Street Band. This time he was fronting his own fifteen-piece Disciples of Soul and it was glorious.

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.

The Signmaker’s Circus

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The Signmaker’s Circus took place last night at the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio. The picture of Zoltar was not taken there which I realize might not seem quite proper to some. It was taken last week at Uranus, Missouri, but not used in the journal entry for the stop. I liked it and jumped at the chance to use it here when I realized it was a pretty good match for the event’s Save the Date card. The event is subtitled “A Decade of Camp” since its reason for being is to celebrate the museum’s first ten years in Camp Washington. The permanent full-time opening was on June 23, 2012, but two preview days occurred three weeks earlier. This blog was still fairly new then, and I had not yet stopped creating oddments. I did post a blog entry here that includes a link to the oddment and the oddment can be reached directly here.

All the rest of the pictures are from the circus, and there’s a bunch. I arrived about ten minutes before the scheduled start time and found a fairly close parking spot on the street. The museum’s parking lot was being used for valet drop-off and fire juggling. A line that had formed in the lot moved quickly to — and almost as quickly through — the doors when they opened.

The museum looked extra festive and drinks were available at multiple bars. A young lady (blurrily seen here) circulated through the crowd in a dress bearing cones of popcorn. The Burning Caravan provided music to party by from in front of the Rock City sign.

I knew from a Friday Facebook post that something would be revealed from behind a red curtain but I had no idea what. By the luckiest of coincidences, I was walking by the curtain when the ringmaster began his countdown. A proclamation from Mayor Pureval was read making today “American Sign Museum Day” in Cincinnati then the curtains parted. Others had paid better attention to the clues and some had been involved in the preparations. I was gobsmacked when I saw the great neon-illuminated space on the other side and we were invited to pass through the balloon arch.

I recall going to exactly one circus as a child. At ten or so years of age, I was naturally in awe of the exotic animals, people, and costumes as I watched the entrance parade from my bleacher seat. There were no elephants or tigers present last night and I’m over six decades more worldly and jaded than I was then, but I wasn’t watching a distant parade from bleachers last night. With carnival music accompaniment, I was doing the marching past exotic people and costumes. And there was neon everywhere. I did not magically feel ten years old but I was at least as awe-struck when I walked into that room as when those elephants entered the big top all those years ago.

The Burning Caravan played throughout the evening inside the museum while DJ Mowgli provided music for the circus. I’m pretty sure this is as close to a rave as I’ll ever get. People with turbans and tails chatted casually as people with neither lined up to confer with a real live Zoltar.

The ringmaster continued working and introducing acts both on and over the stage. Photos from later points in that on-stage performance can be seen here, here, here, and here.

A sign museum can always be counted on to have just the right marker for everything and that includes pointing to the two food trucks parked right outside the building.

I didn’t get my fortune told but I did get a tee shirt airbrushed. This was free with the purchase of an event shirt. The shirt was dropped off at the painting booth then picked up later when it was completed. The artist and the fellow who took down the instructions had a disagreement over whether it was “DEnny” or “DAnny” so the name was left blank until I returned. This gave me an opportunity to get a snapshot of the shirt getting its final touches.

What a wonderful way to celebrate the museum’s first decade in Camp Washington. I certainly enjoyed myself though I expect someone will ask, “Who was that bearded lady I saw you with last night?”

Our Shared Story at CMC

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Joseph Jonas is thought to be the first Jew to actually settle in Cincinnati. That was in 1817. In 1821, he was one of a handful of men who purchased land for a cemetery so Benjamin Leib’s deathbed request that he be buried as a Jew could be met. The creation of that cemetery, the Chestnut Street Cemetery, is recognized as the event that formally established the Jewish community in Cincinnati. It was renovated last year and its rededication on September 26, 2021, marked the official beginning of the Jewish Cincinnati Bicentennial.

But it wasn’t a visit to the cemetery that led to this post. It was the “Our Shared Story” exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center that led to a visit to the cemetery. In 1821 Cincinnati really was a frontier town and the Chestnut Street Cemetery was not just the first Jewish cemetery in the state but the first west of the Alleghenies. In 1824, K.K. Bene Israel was established. Now known as Rockdale Temple, it is the oldest Jewish congregation west of the Alleghenies. Cincinnati’s Jewish community experienced great growth and had significant impact on the religion in the U.S. with things like major support for Reform Judaism and the founding of Hebrew Union College. The exhibit tells of this influence but has even more examples of the impact Cincinnati Jews had on the world at large.

Quite a number of community and business leaders are recognized. This picture is of a wall where several of those business leaders are identified. Some of the businesses are Manischewitz, Frank’s, Fleischmann’s, and Frisch’s. I got a kick out of seeing a “Jewish Cowboy” promotional record put out by Manischewitz. I got an even bigger kick out of listening to it on YouTube.

As befitting a place that started professional baseball, one Jewish business found success in sporting goods. The Cincinnati Red Stockings began play in 1869, the P. Goldsmith Sons Company was founded in 1875, and a Jewish player named Lipman Pike joined the Reds in 1877. Of course, there are now Jewish players in every professional sport and Jewish fans too as this Bengals yarmulke shows.

Chestnut Street Cemetery is less than a mile from the museum. A double-sided plaque contains information about the cemetery and the two centuries of Jewish history. The information panel visible in the opening photo says that Benjamin Leib’s grave is unmarked but believed to be “in the back left corner”. I’m guessing that means it’s in the left rear of this picture.

Buddy, Can You Lend Me a Sign?

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When the American Sign Museum announced its “first-ever traveling exhibit” at the National Museum of the Air Force, I felt pretty confident that I would see it someday. I was less certain that I would see the signs the museum had loaned to the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company. Then, with almost no planning and a fair amount of luck, I saw both borrowed batches of brightness this week.

On Saturday, I learned that my previously made plans for the week had fallen through then almost immediately recalled an email about a museum member discount for the play featuring the loaned signs. I went to the CSC website looking for something later in the week but was surprised to find that a front-row seat was available for the next day (Easter Sunday) and that the performance was one followed by a Q&A with some of the performers. I snatched it up.

CSC’s production of The Comedy of Errors has a modern setting with the play’s Ephesus presented as a Las Vegas-like city. Wanting to add some Vegas-style glow to the stage and realizing that an outstanding repository of neon and such was just a few miles away, the CSC reached out to the ASM, and here (with permission and a phone camera) is the result. The play is hilarious and the cast is superb. In addition to the neon, modern touches include a number of songs to make it a sort of Shakespearean musical. All my roadie friends will be happy to learn that among those songs is a version of “Get Your Kicks on Route 66”. The production runs through April 30.

With some pictures of one set of borrowed signs in my pocket, it wasn’t long before I began thinking about a blog post on the subject, and almost immediately realized that any such post would benefit greatly by also including the other set of current loaners. On Tuesday, I headed to Dayton and, after breakfast at the nearby Hasty Tasty, the Air Force Museum.

Using the life of real sign maker William H. Hahn as inspiration, placards displayed with the signs tell the story of the fictional Joe Signman. On display are examples of the lightbulb, neon, and plastic signs Joe would have dealt with during his career.

My birthday has been the subject of a couple of recent blog posts so you might already be aware that the United States Air Force and I were established the very same year. I have about five months seniority on the Air Force and am all done celebrating. The museum, however, intends to talk up the big anniversary throughout the year. “The Signmaker’s Journey” will be there through October 10.

Leo da Vinci and the Forty Machines

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I’ve read that, once upon a time, ordinary people rarely needed to count past forty and that forty became another way of saying “a whole bunch”. That implies that Noah and family might not have watched it rain for precisely forty days and nights and that Ali Baba may not have encountered exactly forty bad guys. We have outgrown that, of course, and today use numbers like gazillion when we are tired of counting even though that probably occurs long before we reach forty. That is not, however, the case with this post. The Leonardo da Vinci: Machines in Motion exhibit currently at the National Museum of the Air Force in Dayton contains exactly forty of Leo’s “machines”.

I took in the exhibit on Friday. It is set against the wall farthest from the entrance which means there is some walking involved. Not only does this provide an opportunity for a little exercise, but there are also plenty of opportunities for getting distracted on the way by the many other, mostly permanent, displays in this wonderful museum. I skipped my favorite gallery, Early Years, and focused on the da Vinci exhibit and still spent at least as much time getting to and from it as I did experiencing it. It’s simply impossible to ignore all those unusual planes and their engaging stories.

A fair number of the displayed machines have to do with flight. That is certainly appropriate for the Air Force Museum although the exhibit’s makeup was not tuned for the location. In fact, this appearance seems to be a recent addition that is not yet listed on the schedule at the Machines in Motion website.

The high ceiling at the museum allows some of da Vinci’s concepts to be suspended overhead as if in flight although they sometimes have to share space with flying things of more recent vintage. The overhead displays include the “parachute” in the opening photograph. The version here is not quite full size. A full-sized version and a description of a real-world use of the design were part of the Da Vinci the Genius exhibit I saw in Cincinnati in 2016.

Leonardo’s flying machines may not have been practical but many of his other ideas certainly were. I don’t believe it is a proven fact that he invented ball bearings but his design of a revolving stage using them might have been their first practical application. His designs for converting one form of motion to another (e.g., rotary to linear) were definitely practical. Check out the kid getting a real hands on education in the background of the second picture. The third picture shows a machine combining several devices to raise heavy pillars.

Seeing this machine for grinding concave mirrors was a real learning experience for me. The sign next to it talks about burning mirrors and mentions that one of their uses was welding. Believing that welding was at best an eighteenth-century concept, I had to look into that and discovered that the welding of soft metals like gold and copper goes back much further and was rather common in da Vinci’s day.

The exhibit runs through May 8 and, like the museum itself, is free.

Voice of America Museum

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I attended Airwaves Kite Fest in 2006 and 2010. 2006 was the second of eight; 2010 was the sixth. It was a cool way to greet springtime and I wish it was still around. It was held at the Voice of America Bethany Station site where a huge array of antennas once broadcast news and more to Europe, Africa, and South America. I believe that parts of the building were open in 2006 and I took some photos inside but the entire month of April 2006 has gone missing from my photo archives. The building held the beginnings of a museum in 2006 and in 2010 it was being renovated to improve the museum operation. Since then, it has gone from being open sporadically to being open every Saturday and Sunday. I’ve driven by it countless times since 2010 but Saturday was the first time I actually did what I told myself I should do on most of those drive-bys. I made it inside where those 2006 beginnings have turned into the impressive VOA museum.

I arrived just as a volunteer was wrapping up his introduction to a sizable group which turned out to be all one family. I accompanied them past a beautifully restored Crosley Hot Shot to watch a short orientation movie.

Then it was a stop at the “Ham Shack” operated by the West Chester Amateur Radio Association. Several members were present (and behind me in the photos) and we were given an overview of the operation. We also got to listen in on a conversation with a fellow in Finland while we were there.

The claimed purpose of the Volksempfänger (people’s receiver) was to make radio reception affordable to the general public but its real purpose was to make the general public accessible to Nazi propaganda. Of course, it could also be used to listen to the BBC and VOA although that was quite illegal. Knowing that Hitler sometimes referred to the VOA broadcasts as “the Cincinnati liars” was and is a source of pride for the locals.

Hitler was completely wrong. For one thing, from its beginning, VOA realized that broadcasting reliable and truthful news would have more impact than broadcasting false propaganda. Secondly, although transmission was from near Cincinnati, the content was not. It came from New York and Washington on telephone lines which were routed to one of six 200-kilowatt transmitters. There were no liars involved and definitely none in Cincinnati. Before it was shut down in 1994, Bethany Relay Station saw several upgrades in transmitters and antennas. People living nearby often reported receiving the station on the plumbing in their bathrooms and the fillings in their teeth.

There were multiple reasons for locating the station here including it being a safe distance from the coasts. But a possibly bigger reason was the existence of Powell Crosley and Crosley Broadcasting. After starting elsewhere at 50 watts, Crosley’s WLW (World’s Largest Wireless) was broadcasting AM from just down the road at 50,000 watts. Between May of 1934 and February of 1939, it had transmitted at an incredible 500,000 watts. Here’s a closeup and description of that pictured metal ball. Across the road from the AM station, a Crosley shortwave station was retransmitting its programming. This became WLWO (Overseas), increased power to 75,000 watts, and, as told here, begat VOA.

Crosley begat a lot of other stuff too. There were cars like the previously pictured Hot Shot. Radios, though, were the money makers. Some products were invented in-house and some were purchased patents. The purchased category included the Icyball and Shelvador. Although refrigerators with door-mounted shelves are commonplace these days, hardly anyone makes a fridge with a good built-in radio anymore. The Reado could deliver and print the news overnight but was done in by the Great Depression.

Crosley was the pioneer and long-time leader but Cincinnati’s TV and radio story goes far beyond that. The museum includes lots of memorabilia from others who spent some time living on the air in Cincinnati.  

Went to Gogh

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I drove to Columbus on Wednesday to immerse myself in Vincent Van Gogh. You might be aware that Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience will be opening in Cincinnati in June. If so, I’d expect you to ask, “Why not wait? It’s the same thing isn’t it?” Well, no. No, it’s not.

There are currently five different digital Van Gogh exhibits touring the United States and triggering a flurry of bad puns. The one I saw in Columbus is Immersive Van Gogh. It is also currently in Cleveland. The one in Indianapolis at present is called Van Gogh Alive. Beyond Indianapolis, Beyond Van Gogh: An Immersive Experience is playing in St. Louis. All four of these have appeared or will appear in several cities other than the ones I’ve mentioned. The fifth exhibit, Imagine Van Gogh: The Immersive Exhibition just opened in Boston and will open in Seattle in March. Those two cities are the only stops currently planned for that exhibit. AFAR has a rundown on all five here.

So which is best? Having seen only one, I have no idea. I went to Columbus for a couple of reasons. One is that I didn’t want to wait. Another is that I’d read a very positive report from a friend I haven’t met. It’s here. She immediately followed her Immersive Van Gogh experience by taking in a related display at the Columbus Museum of Art. That’s described here. I decided I should do that too although, because of ticket availability, I visited the two exhibits in the opposite order.

The picture at the top of this article is of the big ART sculpture near the Columbus Museum of Art. The picture at left is at the entrance to the Through Vincent’s Eyes: Van Gogh and His Sources exhibit inside the museum. The title comes from the more than 100 works from artists that Van Gogh admired and was influenced by. These include Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet, and many others. For me, however, the real draw of the exhibit was the seventeen pieces by Van Gogh himself.

I am neither an art connoisseur nor an art historian. I don’t doubt that there are several pieces in the exhibit that are more significant, but these three caught my eye for one reason or another. Bridge across the Seine at Asnieres caught my eye at least partially because it was both different from images I’d previously associated with Van Gogh and similar to images I’ve frequently captured myself with a camera. The bright gold of Wheat Field seemed even more different from the admittedly limited set of Van Gogh images that set my expectations. Neither of these paintings contains people and I think I’d really come to expect people in Van Gogh’s work. Undergrowth with Two Figures, which obviously does contain people, caught my eye through its reproduction in a jigsaw puzzle that passing visitors worked on now and then.

From the museum, I headed a few miles north to the Immersive Van Gogh Experience at Lighthouse ArtSpace. The exhibit opened on October 28 and was originally scheduled to close on January 2. It was sufficiently popular, however, to trigger an extension to February 27.

The 60,000 frames of video appear primarily on the walls but sometimes spill onto the floor and other horizontal surfaces. The giant images are far from static. For example, the purple irises slowly pop onto the green grass background until it is nearly covered and they are almost always in motion.

Neither proof of COVID vaccination nor a negative test is required for admission but a mask must be worn at all times. Circles are projected onto the floor to aid in social distancing. I had expected all of these to be “unfurnished” and many were but more than half contained a simple bench. I had anticipated sitting on the floor but was happy to see the benches. For those of us of a certain age, rising from a bench is much much easier than rising from a floor. Cushions, with a Van Gogh sunflower, are included in VIP ticket packages, and I believe they can be rented. I made do with self cushioning.

The space is basically open but it is large and there are a few pillars. They are covered with a mirror-like surface that avoids blank spots while adding some interesting variations of its own. I doubt you would have guessed and may not find it even after being told it’s there, but one of these pictures contains a funhouse-mirror-style selfie.

I suppose these are the sorts of images my mind tended to associate with Van Gogh in the past. I enjoyed seeing them but probably benefited more from being reminded that he produced some bright and pleasant images too.

These photos were taken with an exposure that makes the exhibit area look quite a bit brighter than it ever really appeared in person. Hopefully, they provide an idea of just how big the area was and how it was laid out.

Wow! The immersive exhibit was wild and entertaining. The original music was splendid and added considerably to the experience. At the end of the day, however, I think I liked the Van Gogh and His Sources exhibit more. The sequence that I saw them in could have something to do with that but I don’t think so. At Lighthouse ArtSpace, it was the presentation and the machinery behind it that held my attention. At the museum, my attention was pulled in by Van Gogh’s actual product and, on occasion, the stories behind it. Both exhibits were well worthwhile, and they do complement each other. It even kind of makes sense, perhaps, to end the day’s doubleheader looking at the eyes that I started the day by trying to look through.

Driving Lessons

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During the writing of Tracing A T To Tampa, the fact that I had never driven a Model T Ford began to bother me more and more with every passage that referred to some detail about the car that “put America on wheels”. I had seen plenty of Model Ts and had ridden in a few but every comment that I made about the T’s operation came from observation and “book learning”. I wondered about how accurate I was being.

The T that I traced to Tampa is believed to be the touring car in the first photograph which belonged to my great-grandparents. The coupe is a car they owned many years after the Florida trip. It is currently in the possession of an uncle and I considered bugging him for driving lessons but in the end, I went for the Model T Driving Experience at the AACA museum in Hersey, PA. That gave me access to multiple cars in an environment set up for novice drivers. I combined it with a few other items from my to-do list and made a road trip that is documented here. The driving experience is included in day 4 but not much is said about the actual driving. That’s what prompted me to make this blog post.

This picture is one I used in the trip journal. It shows the four cars that students were to drive. I drove the green, yellow, and red cars but the black car, actually a roadster pickup truck, conked out before my turn came. It was replaced by another black roadster pickup, but the top stayed up on the replacement. That’s it in the b&w photo at the top of the article.

The image at left was taken from the “Ford Model T Instruction Book”. Model Ts were often delivered by train or other means directly to a new owner with nothing resembling today’s dealer prep (and accompanying charge). The 45-page book provided all the information necessary to prepare, operate, and maintain what might be the very first powered vehicle the owner had ever seen.

Our cars had all been prepped, of course, and all were equipped with electric starters. Plus, we would have the advantage of a classroom presentation with visual aids. Against the open doorway, the visual aids weren’t a whole lot easier to see in person than they are in the photograph but we all had copies available in a handout. The use of the spark advance and battery/magneto switch in starting the engine was discussed but today the instructors would take care of those details. Students would be dealing with the hand throttle, the steering wheel, and three pedals.

It seemed everyone was familiar with a hand throttle from a tractor, lawnmower, or something similar. And everyone recognized the steering wheel. It is one of just two controls that have maintained the same function from Model T to Tesla although neither can be operated with modern instincts. Most modern cars have a steering ratio of 12:1 or more; the ratio for Ts is 4:1 or 5:1. It is essentially the only thing on a Model T that can be called quick.

This picture of a Model T’s three pedals appeared in the handout. The bulk of student brain activity would be focused on these. ‘C’, ‘R’, and ‘B’ markings identify them as clutch, reverse, and brake. The brake pedal is the other control that technically retains the same function in modern cars as in the T. However, like the steering wheel, how well it performs that function is dramatically different. Today’s brake pedals are mostly power-assisted and hydraulically connected to large disc brakes at all four wheels that will bring a 3,000-pound 60 MPH vehicle to a halt in forty yards or so. A Model T’s brake pedal is mechanically attached to bands that tighten around a shaft in the transmission that will bring a 1,200-pound 10 MPH vehicle to a halt eventually.

Although there is nothing quite like the reverse pedal in modern cars, its function is simple and easy to understand. With the car stopped and no other pedal pressed, pushing it to the floor causes the car to move backward. The idea of “no other pedal pressed” would really apply to all of the driving we would do on this day. The pedals would be pressed one at a time.

Clutch pedals in modern cars are becoming increasingly rare but they do exist and it’s tempting to think that knowing how to operate a modern manual transmission will help in operating a Model T. Not a chance. Almost every instinct developed by driving manual transmissions will only get in the way when driving a Model T. I will expand on this later but today we would be doing all of our driving in low gear which meant that the clutch was engaged with the pedal pressed and disengaged with the pedal released. Yes, driving in low gear did translate to driving at low speed and I don’t doubt that some readers will think that lame. Pshaw. With 4:1 steering in a fairly primitive car with totally unfamiliar controls, 15 MPH was plenty fast.

A Q&A session followed the presentation then we moved outside where instructors reviewed parts of what we had learned using the real Model Ts as visual aids. Next, an instructor climbed into the driver’s seat of each car and a student joined them for a lap around the course as a passenger. The “course” was an unmarked path around a closed-off portion of the museum grounds with an uphill section on grass and a downhill section on asphalt.

The green roadster was the first car I climbed into but I have no pictures of me as either a passenger or driver. Even though I’d read about it and had ridden with others doing it, the strangeness of holding that clutch pedal down to keep moving didn’t completely register until it was my foot doing the holding. I also was a little surprised at how much the throttle was used. It was positioned for easy fingertip access while holding the wheel and adjustments were required for climbing the small hill and at other points too. I also did a lap as a passenger in the yellow speedster. The instructor thought that prudent because of some play in the steering. I managed to hand off my camera for the speedster drive but only have a picture from that first lap. My drives in both of these cars went well in that I didn’t run into or over anything and I didn’t stall either one. That streak would not continue.

Helpful volunteers did snap pictures of me at the wheel of the other two Ts, both of which I managed to stall. In fact, I stalled the cool-looking furniture van twice. At ages of 94 to 108 years, these vehicles are entitled to some idiosyncrasies and they do indeed have them. For the speedster, it was steering. For the red van, it was a dead spot in the throttle. Twice, when I wanted a little more oomph, I moved the throttle a little when it needed to be moved a lot. I have a different excuse for stalling the black pickup. Model Ts have a parking brake of sorts but using it was not part of the day’s normal procedure. There was no need in the level lot. For some reason, the previous driver had seen fit to set it but that did not keep me from reaching the beginning of the hill before the combination of brakes and incline started to bog things down. The instructor figured that out just as the T’s engine chugged to a halt. With that exception, my drive in the little pickup was understandably the best of the day. Operating that strange clutch and using the hand throttle never became 100% natural but, as it is with most things, the more I did it the better I became.

I said I would expand on clutch operation and I’m going to use a detail from an earlier picture to help with that. I’m also going to take the opportunity to describe briefly what happened when I stalled those cars.

Until it is up and running, a Model T’s engine needs to get its electrical power from a battery. A switch on the dash-mounted wooden box controls that. Following a stall, the instructor would flip that switch to battery and maybe make some adjustments to the throttle and spark advance. They would then tell me to press the starter button. In the picture, it’s on the floor. In other cars, it was on the verticle panel below the seat. Once the engine started, the instructor switched things back to magneto operation and away we’d go.

As I’d recently been thinking of my great-grandfather driving a Model T to Florida and back, at some point I began to think about him with his foot pressed to the floor for the whole trip. That really wasn’t required and that lever that the instructor is holding in the picture above is part of the reason. Pulling it all the way back activates small drum brakes on the read wheels. That’s what was going on when I stalled the pickup. Moving it all the way forward enables high gear. With high gear selected, pressing the clutch pedal to the floor still engages low gear, releasing it partway disengages the transmission, while releasing it all the way engages high gear. So, when driving to Florida, push that lever forward, press and hold the clutch pedal until you’re moving at a decent clip, then slowly release it. Adjust speed with your fingers as necessary and let your feet relax.

The museum does not call what they offer a school. It’s a Model T Driving Experience. The certificate I received simply acknowledges that I “completed” the experience with no indication of how good or bad I did or how badly I frightened the instructors. It does not authorize me to do anything whatsoever and that includes bragging about driving four different Model Ts in low gear without stalling two of them. I’m doing that entirely on my own.

Heritage Village Cincinnati

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Friday felt a little odd. It had absolutely nothing scheduled but it was surrounded by days that did. Noting strenuous or even particularly time-consuming, but there were meetings and appointments with specific times that had to be attended to. It would seem logical, I think, to want to just sit around the shanty on that uncommitted day, and that’s probably what I would have done if the day hadn’t promised sunshine and 80 degrees. I know it was my awareness that there would soon be a huge gap between 80 degree days that made me want to avoid wasting this one. I went out to breakfast at a place a little farther away than normal and which I hadn’t been to in a long time. Over a goetta and cheese omelet, I pondered ways to put the day to use. Museums weren’t high on my list because I did not want to spend a lot of time indoors, but I eventually used “museum” as an internet search term and got a near-perfect hit. Heritage Village Museum & Education Center is definitely a museum. It says it right there in the name. But it also says it’s a village which means there is some open space. It really did seem to be exactly what I was looking for.

It wasn’t far from the restaurant where I was eating, so I simply headed directly there when I was done. As I approached the building where admission fees are collected, I passed a sign stating that guided tours were scheduled for 10:00, 12:45, and 3:00. It was about 10:30. Inside the building, I joked that I’d timed my arrival quite badly for a guided tour. The attendant agreed and added something about the last one being yesterday. I eventually figured out that guided tours are given May through September, and that she meant the last one for the year. It was October 1. I somehow felt less foolish missing a tour by a day than by half an hour. I paid my admission. received a self-guided tour brochure, and set off to guide myself.

The first building encountered was also the first building moved into the village. Elk Lick House was from a spot in Clermont County that is now covered by East Fork Lake. The Chester Park Train Station and Crossing Tender’s Booth came from Winton Place across Spring Grove Avenue from Chester Park racetrack and amusement park. The McAlpin’s clock is one of the few things in the village I remember in its original location. It stood in front of the store on Fourth Street from 1992 to 1999. It was actually the fifth clock to stand there with the first four falling to “the elements and traffic mishaps”.

The Fetter Store came from what is now known as Owensville in Clermont County. It was built around 1866. Dr. Langdon’s Office was moved here in 1973 from the Linwood section of Cincinnati. Preparations for Halloween and trick-or-treating were in evidence behind the doctor’s office as well as in that tender’s booth back at the train station.

Myers Schoolhouse is the newest addition to the village and is actually still in the process of being restored. It was moved here in 2008. Its official name was Delhi Township District School #3. It was in use as a school from 1891 until 1926 when Delhi Township consolidated all of its schools.

After reaching the schoolhouse and turning around, the first building encountered is the Somerset Church. The Presbyterian church was built around 1829 and, until it was moved to the village in 1991, stood near Fields Ertel and Montgomery roads less than a mile from where I currently live. Next to the church is the Kemper Log House and a reproduction of its stone kitchen. The house that Rev. James Kemper built in 1804 is the oldest structure in the village. It originally stood near where Cincinnati’s Eden Park is today.

The Hayner House is both the beginning and end of the tour. It was built near South Lebanon in the 1850s. In the village, it faces Sharon Creek as it once faced the little Miami River. The entrance to the museum and gift shop, where tour tickets are purchased, is on the other side of the house. A glance down while walking between the creek and the house can provide a reminder as to just which state you are in.

PA Cars

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I pieced together a trip from odds and ends and leftovers then slapped on the name PA Cars because it includes a couple of Pennsylvania car museums. I’m going to learn to drive a Model T at one of them. The first day’s journal has just been posted despite it being the end of the trip’s fourth day in real life.

This entry is to let blog only subscribers know about the trip and to provide a place for comments. The journal is here.