Third Time Was Charming

Posted on August 8, 2021 by Denny

I finally got myself back to the garden. On Friday, I made my third visit to the Hartman Rock Garden in Springfield, OH. It took two nudges. One came from that source-of-many-things, Jim Grey’s blog. Jim makes a weekly “Recommended Reading” post that I always scan but confess to not clicking as many links in it as I used to. That’s no reflection on the quality of Jim’s recommendation but a combination of his (and his readers’) increased interest in film cameras and my decreased unallocated reading time. I clicked through on one of his July 24th recommendations and got hooked on a blog that I fully expect to quickly lead to at least one more post here along with a fuller story. I subscribed to the RSS feed which instantly brought me several recent articles, including one about a visit to the Hartman Rock Garden. That article is here. Thanks, Jim and Brandi.

The second nudge came from an issue of Echoes, the Ohio History Connection magazine, which I had received but not yet read. Inside, a six-page article titled “Channeling a Creative Spirit” told of Ben Hartman’s creative response to finding himself jobless in the 1930s during the Great Depression. I don’t credit that pair of nudges with anything magical or supernatural but I do credit them with making me think of Springfield when an idle Friday and an open blog slot came along.

The garden started with the cement fish pond in the middle of the first photo at right. Ben was an accomplished molder at the Springfield Machine Tool Company when the depression hit. He was laid off in 1932 at age 48 and built the pond to fill his suddenly empty days. He moved on from the pond to figures and structures made of stones and other found items. Once he started building, he never stopped. His creations came in all sizes. These pictures are of some of the largest. At fourteen feet, the cathedral at the back corner is the garden’s tallest structure. A model of Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” fills one of its many niches. The castle beside it is only a couple of feet shorter. It is believed to be based on a picture on a postcard that his wife, Mary, received.

Ben returned to the foundry in 1939 but died of silicosis just five years later. Mary maintained the garden until her death in 1997. What followed was about ten years of neglect. The deterioration was nearing its peak when I made my first visit in 2005. The picture at left is from that visit. The deterioration ended just a few years later when preservation-minded Kohler Foundation purchased the property in 2008. Following restoration, ownership of the garden was transferred to Friends of the Hartman Rock Garden, and a grand reopening was celebrated in June of 2010.

Two of the garden’s most iconic structures are the Tree of Life and the Hart(heart)MAN logo.

Today the Tree of Life was somewhat obscured — quite beautifully — by tall canna lilies. Here it is on my second visit in 2011. The cactus-like structure promotes the three things that Ben thought important in life. One arm holds a school and the other a church. In the center, the shield and eagle represent country. Ben estimated that this structure contains approximately 20,000 stones.

This is probably the most underappreciated structure in the whole garden. That’s because it looks exactly like an ordinary wooden picket fence but it isn’t. The entire fence — all 410 pickets — is concrete and Ben said it was one of the most difficult of the garden’s structures to build.

The structures in the garden look every bit as good as they did immediately following Kohler’s restoration and the landscaping looks even better. Those “friends” are doing a wonderful job. In addition to maintaining and enhancing the garden, they have produced an excellent “Guide Book and Map” that is available near the entrance. There is also a “Kids Tour” booklet available on site plus it and both pre- and post-tour worksheets can be downloaded. Admission is free but there is a donation box and this is certainly a place that deserves your support if you are able.

You may have noticed that the Hartman Rock Garden was not the primary reason I was in Springfield in either 2005 or 2011. Since I included some then-and-now garden pictures, I’m including a then-and-now of my reason for the 2011 trip. The 2005 trip was to see a temporary exhibit so there is no then-and-now. The 2011 outing was to check on the progress of the Ohio Madonna of the Trail monument’s move from its location at Snyder Park to downtown Springfield. In 2011 she was still at Snyder Park but was all packed and ready to go. I’ve since photographed her several times in her new home and today I did it again.

Book Review
Tracing a T to Tampa
Denny Gibson

Posted on August 4, 2021 by Denny

Just like all but one of my previous books, Tracing a T to Tampa is a travelogue. Unlike any of those books, it is not about following a specific road or reaching specific destinations. It is about following a single specific trip. That trip is one made by my great-grandparents in 1920 in a Model T Ford. Throughout the 1920 journey, my great-grandmother sent a series of letters to her daughter in which town names were often included in her reports of what they were seeing and doing. Those town names allowed me to roughly reproduce their route. There are multiple reasons why my reproduction is a rough one. One is that roads have changed in the intervening years and another is that I usually had to guess at the path they took between the towns my great-grandmother mentioned. Some of those guesses are almost certainly wrong but proving it, should you be so inclined, would not be easy. Parts of the 1920 trip were clearly on the Dixie Highway and National Old Trails Road although neither is identified by name in the letters.

Frank and Gertrude, my great-grandparents, headed south from their western Ohio home and entered Florida almost directly south of Valdosta, GA. They reached Jacksonville and Miami on the east coast then crossed the center of the state to check out Tampa. Despite the book’s title, Tampa was not their stated destination when they left home but it was more or less where their exploration of new Flordia territory came to an end. The rest of their time in Florida would be spent mostly revisiting places from just a few “base camps”.

I began the trip chronicled in this book on the exact 100th anniversary of the original: November 4, 2020. The original was four months long; the recreation a little less than four weeks. My great-grandparents reached Tampa after a little more than a month on the road. They would leave Florida a little more than two months later and spend just over two weeks getting home. Although they left Florida on the same path that brought them there, they would move away from it in the middle of Georgia to visit the nation’s capital in Washington.

Tracing a T to Tampa is illustrated with more than 100 photographs; primarily from the 2020 trip. There are, however, several historical photos mixed in. A transcript of the original letters is included.

1920 and 2020 can both be considered “interesting times”. Both contained a presidential election and were in a period of considerable racial unrest. 2020 was in the middle of a major pandemic and one had just ended in 1920. 1920 was also made interesting by the recent ending of a worldwide war and the passage of the 18th and 19th amendments to the U.S. Constitution. All of these are noted, but not dwelled upon, in the book.

Tracing a T to Tampa, Denny Gibson, Trip Mouse Publishing, 2021, paperback, 9 x 6 inches, 217 pages, ISBN 979-8739822550.

Signed copies available through eBay. Unsigned copies available through Amazon.

Reader reviews at Amazon are appreciated and helpful and can be submitted even if you didn’t purchase the book there. Other Trip Mouse books described here.

Trip Peek #114
Trip #159
Corner to Corner to Corner II

Posted on July 11, 2021 by Denny

This picture is from my 2020 Corner to Corner to Corner II trip. The corners involved are the southwest and northeast corners of Ohio and the II identifies this as a repeat of an earlier outing. The first Corner to Corner to Corner was in 2001. It was just the third trip documented on this site and was partially a practice run for a much larger trip that would follow in four months. Similarly, this trip, the first of the COVID-19 riddled 2020, could be considered a test run for a larger trip planned for two months in the future. Pretty much by coincidence, the larger trip being prepared for in both instances was a retrace of a trip taken by my great-grandparents in 1920. In what was perceived as a way to limit exposure to COVID, the trip was organized around two nights at a motel near Medina. I reached the motel on the first day by following US-42 north and returned home on the third day by following OH-3/3C Highway south. in between I followed those same roads in and out of Cleveland and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

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 #112
Trip #21
Impromptu PA

Posted on June 27, 2021 by Denny

This picture is from my 2004 Impromptu PA trip which was exactly what the title says. It started with an impromptu work trip that put me in the middle of Pennsylvania a few days ahead of the Memorial Day weekend and finished with a drive home that filled the weekend. On Friday, I headed north through some interesting small towns to reach US-6 which I would follow west until it crossed US-62. US-62 took me to Ohio where I hugged the north bank of the big river till I was back in home territory. The photo is of the Sterling-built diner in Wellsboro, PA, on Route 6. The just-completed World War II memorial was being dedicated that Saturday and a real treat was attending a ceremony in Smethport, PA, that was coordinated with the events in D.C. On Memorial Day, I saw the very tail end of the parade in Portsmouth, OH. In between, I checked out the reconstructed Fort Steuben and the Ohio River Museum in Marietta.

Trip Peek #111
Trip #4
Little Miami

Posted on June 20, 2021 by Denny

This picture is from my 2001 Little Miami River day trip. As this was only my fourth documented trip, I was still sorting out just how I wanted to handle things. In fact, this trip was undertaken primarily for practice and experimentation rather than for sightseeing and discovery. My starting point was near where the Little Miami River enters the Ohio River and I followed the smaller stream from there to its source. That source is not too far from the pictured Historic Clifton Mill.

I really got a kick out of reviewing the twenty-year-old trip to produce this Trip Peek. Of particular interest were glimpses of the abandoned Peters Cartridge Company and the rustic-looking Train Stop bar. The long-empty factory was recently given a new life with the opening of Cartridge Brewing and the Train Stop got a new owner and major improvements a few years ago and is now a popular riverside stop called the Monkey Bar.

The Wall That Heals

Posted on May 30, 2021 by Denny

I have seen the real Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, DC, multiple times and a traveling version once. When I heard that a wall replica would be on display in Columbus over the Memorial Day weekend, I didn’t really feel an overwhelming need to see it. However, when I woke up Saturday morning, that’s exactly what I wanted to do.

The Columbus display is hosted by the National Veterans Memorial and Museum. I have long been annoyed by people confusing Veterans Day and Memorial Day, and arrangements such as this may inadvertently contribute to the blurring of the two. They are not, of course, completely separable. They are two sides of the same coin or two branches of the same path. Everyone who joins the military will someday be honored by one — but not both — of these holidays.

“The Moving Wall” is a half-sized replica that began touring in 1984. At some point, a second copy was created. It was one of these that I saw in 2008. The replica displayed in Columbus is a different one called “The Wall That Heals”. At 3/4 the size of the original, it provides a rather realistic experience. The openness of the museum grounds combined with the fact that I was there before much of a crowd appeared, allowed me to get the entire wall into a single photo. These pictures were taken a little before 9:00 AM. The museum opens at 10:00 and I’m sure the number of people on site picked up considerably then.

I visited the museum shortly after it first opened in 2018 and described the visit here. I did not enter the museum today. I did walk some of the paths and ramps that surround it. Although officially a place for and about veterans, even without the wall, the museum has several reminders that many who set out to become veterans never make it.

Any morning in Columbus is a good time for breakfast at Tommy’s Diner, but that seems especially true when the day’s destination is less than a mile away.

Trip Peek #104
Trip #102
South from the Wrong Turn

Posted on February 21, 2021 by Denny

This picture is from my 2012 South from the Wrong Turn day trip. In 2017, the Robert E Lee – Dixie Highway marker in the picture was moved to private land a couple of miles to the north but in 2012 it stood where two Dixie Highway alignments separated just south of Franklin, Ohio. I was aware of both alignments and thought I had driven them both but I had not been aware of the marker and had not seen it. Learning of the marker led to me realizing that my idea of where the alignments split was incorrect. I had made a wrong turn when I’d driven the Dixie Highway in this area, and I made this trip to correct that.

Trip Peek #103
Trip #41
Zane’s Trace

Posted on January 31, 2021 by Denny

This picture is from my 2006 three day trip over Zane’s Trace in southeast Ohio. Now called the Olde Wayside Inn, the pictured building was named the Bradford Inn when it opened in 1804. It’s where I spent the first night of the trip. East of Zanesville, the National Road generally followed the 1797 Trace when it entered Ohio in 1825. Even so, there are many remnants of Zane’s Trace that are distinct from the National Road. I scheduled this outing to coincide with an open house at the National Road Museum east of Zanesville where a new guide to the road, written by Glenn Harper and Doug Smith was introduced.

A Cosmic Reason for the Season — Redux

Posted on December 20, 2020 by Denny

I was understandably alarmed when I first saw the news at right. However, reading beyond the headline reassured me that it was only the program planned for Fort Ancient that has been canceled and that the Sun and Earth and other heavenly bodies are to continue as is. The program was held last year and I attended. It was on a Saturday and the following article was published the next day as the regular weekly post. I am reusing it as a regular weekly post 364 days later, a day ahead of the 2020 Winter Solstice which will occur at 5:02 AM December 21.

Calendars come and calendars go and Earth just keeps on turning. And it keeps on orbiting, too. The turning bit creates what we call days. The alternating periods of light and dark impact almost all life on the planet and humans adopted the day as a basic unit of measure pretty early on. What we call years comes from Earth orbiting the Sun. There was plenty of time for early humans to stare at the sky and not a whole lot to keep them from doing it. They couldn’t help but notice that things in the sky moved around. In time, some of the more observant among them realized that not all that movement was random and eventually some patterns were noted. I can’t imagine how exciting it was when some smart guy figured out that the sun popped up at the same point about every 365 days. Of course, that “about” would be very important.

The opening photo shows the sun rising yesterday over a “gateway” in the earthen enclosure at Fort Ancient. The photo at left was taken a bit later and includes a small mound inside the enclosure in the foreground. When the mound, gateway, and sunrise align, sunset will follow sooner than on any other day of the year. This is the northern hemisphere’s Winter Solstice. It is the day when the sun is above the horizon for less time than any other day of the year, and yesterday that amounted to 9 hours, 25 minutes, and 9 seconds. Although we talk about Solstice being a day, it is technically just an instant. It is the moment when the Sun is farthest north or south of Earth’s equator. It happens twice each year and happened yesterday at 23:19 EST.

Serpent Mound, another ancient earthen structure containing solar alignments, is a little more than forty miles southeast of Fort Ancient. The serpent’s head is aligned with the Summer Solstice sunset. Body coils align with Summer and Winter Solstice sunrises. For several years, a modern event known as Lighting of the Serpent took place there at Winter Solstice. It was discontinued in 2017. The picture at right is from 2014 which is the only time I attended.

Long before they knew anything about orbits and equators, humans knew the day of Winter Solstice was special. It is the point where each successive day receives more rather than less daylight. It’s the big turnaround that will eventually lead to the warmth of spring and summer. It is clearly a day worth celebrating and it has indeed been celebrated in many different cultures in many different ways.

During their existence, humans have developed a slew of calendar systems. Several actually remain in use today, but the Gregorian calendar is the one most widely accepted. In the late sixteenth century, this started replacing the Julian calendar which had been around for all of those sixteen centuries and then some. The Julian calendar had been created by folks who calculated that a year was 365 and 1/4 days long which was a lot more accurate than an even 365. They came up with the rather clever idea of adding an extra day every four years to balance things out.

We now know that a year is 365.2422 days long. A year is the length of time it takes Earth to orbit the Sun, a day is the length of time it takes Earth to rotate, and neither is adjustable. When the Julian calendar was first adopted, the northern hemisphere’s Winter Solstice fell on December 25 but it slowly drifted away. Someone in authority thought to put an end to this nonsense by declaring December 25 the official solstice. But those non-adjustable orbits and rotations kept doing what they were doing and the official solstice and actual solstice just kept getting farther and farther apart.

The Gregorian calendar, which we have used for roughly 400 years now, put an end to that. Like the Julian calendar, it considers most years to be 365 days long but has a more involved system of “leap years” that add an extra day. The result is that over a long enough period our years will average 365.2422 days in length. Not only did the new calendar eliminate future drift, it tried to correct for some of the previous drift by throwing away ten days. The calendar’s namesake’s full-time job was as Pope of the Catholic Church. Ditching those ten days moved the solstice to December 22 which is where it had been in 325 when the church was founded. Of course, some holidays that had been tied to the official solstice (which hadn’t been anywhere near the actual solstice for some time) would continue to be celebrated on December 25.

Anyone wanting a more complete discussion of calendars, solstices, and holidays will find one here. Additional information on Fort Ancient is available here.

Here’s the Beef

Posted on August 23, 2020 by Denny

Cincinnati Burger Week number six is almost over. Today is the final day of an event that is now part of a statewide Ohio Burger Week. Maybe it has been in the past although I always thought it was local. For 2020, special hamburger deals were/are to be found in five cities — Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, and Toledo — from August 17 through August 23. I’d seen claims of fiftyish participants but that turns out to be rather low. Nearly seventy restaurants are now listed on the Cincinnati Burger Week website. With this blog in mind, I picked six to try on the six days preceding publication. The number six also fit in with the sixth year for the event and the six dollar (up from $5) burger price. I picked places based on location, the availability of outside seating, and how strongly a specific offering appealed to me. One of the goals of Burger Week is to try something new so half of the places I picked were places I’d never been to before.

The first day went swimmingly and that included perfect weather. Two of my selections were within walking distance but one is closed on Mondays. I headed to the other. At deSha’s American Tavern I enjoyed a Ducking Good Burger at one of the well-spaced tables on the waterside deck. A Ducking Good Burger is described as ground beef, fontina cheese, roasted tomato-garlic aioli, topped with shredded potatoes tossed in duck fat, served on a brioche bun. The only thing keeping this from being the perfect Burger Week experience is that I’m quite familiar with deSha’s (and Belhaven Scottish Ale) so the sandwich itself was the only thing new to me.

The second day was hardly perfect, but it ended well. I decided to head to the farthest away of my selections trying to target a point where the rain that filled most of the day would let up. Not only did I mistime the rain, I really blew it with the ‘burger. I’d made myself aware of the days each restaurant would be closed but not of the time. I arrived at 4:15; They closed at 3:00. But I knew of another nearby Burger Week participant so headed over to Keystone Bar & Grill. The rain had more or less stopped but the outside tables were not yet being used. I sat near the door at a properly distanced table. It turned out that a choice of two hamburgers was offered. When asked, my waitress told me, “I think you should try the donut.” I was well aware that people have been making sandwiches out of donuts but considered them to be totally over the top and had so far managed to avoid them. I tried again today but the waitress and my own curiosity won out. In my defense, this wasn’t just any donut but a Holtman’s donut. I haven’t found a detailed description of the Maple Bacon Donut Burger, but it was delicious even though the touch of sweetness from the donut glaze was a little strange. The new-to-me Three Floyds Gumballhead was pretty good, too. When I went looking for that detailed description at the end of the day, I discovered an apology tacked to the front of the Keystone website. It was an apology for some slow service on the first day of Burger Week that was at least partly due to overwhelming demand for donuts. Henceforth, it said the donut ‘burger would be available for dine-in only.

Great weather returned on Wednesday making it a good day to head to the closest restaurant on my Burger Week list. I placed my order inside Frenchie Fresh Burger Bar then took a seat outside, near the Little Free Library in a phone booth, to await its arrival. Inside seating is available. Burger Week ‘burgers are usually enough to fill me so I tend to skip the extras but I decided to give “Frenchie Fries” with parmesan and truffle dust a try. Good but not necessary. As expected, Le Alpine ‘burger (swiss cheese, caramelized onions, & mushroom demi-glaze) would have been enough. As I ate, I noticed a familiar name in the storefront signage that I had not noticed when checking out things online. Beneath the sketch of a French Bulldog is the phrase “by Jean-Robert”. Jean-Robert de Cavel is a Cincinnati celebrity chef who gained fame at the Maisonette, Pigall’s, and his own fine dining establishments. Apparently, Frenchie Fresh Burger Bar is his move into more casual dining. The beer is Country Boy Brewing’s Cougar Bait which (fortunately, I think) doesn’t seem to work for a guy in his seventies even if he is eating truffle dust.

After starting the week with two places where I’ve eaten many times, I moved on to a pair of new-to-me restaurants. Wednesday was the first I’d been to Frenchie Fresh, and Thursday was my first visit to Brown Dog Cafe. It is one of several restaurants inside Summit Park on the former site of Blue Ash Airport. Both indoor and outdoor seating is available but I didn’t even consider eating inside on such a glorious day. I washed down my fontina cheese, bacon jam, and apple slaw topped ‘burger with Grainworks’ Blue Skies Hero Brew in a Fathead’s Brewery glass. Summit Park really is a park with an observation tower I need to come back and check out. On my way out today, I strolled by a playground I could see in the distance from my table. All distancing and mask protocols were carefully observed by the Brown Dog staff but that was not the case with all the kids playing on the equipment and sliding down hillsides on sheets of cardboard.

On Friday, I made it three new-to-me restaurants in a row by returning to the place where I’d arrived too late on Tuesday. Butler’s Pantry is on the inland side of a building on the south banks of the Ohio River. All COVID precautions are in place and there seemed to be plenty of outside seating. The tasty ‘burger was topped with pimento cheese, red onion, bacon, onion straws, and root beer bbq mayo although I gotta admit I didn’t pick up much root beer flavor. Maybe the real beer (Braxton Storm, brewed less than half a mile to the south) washed it away. Free parking across the street with validation at the Pantry.

Even though there were still candidates on my list, by Saturday I decided I’d consumed enough hamburgers for the week. I had penciled in the lone non-beef Burger Week participant for a possible dessert someday but used it to fill the last slot in my six-day moving feast. I learned that my impression that only carryout was available was wrong when I arrived and saw the tables out front. I carried my purchase back home as planned, but in hindsight, wish I’d ordered a cup of coffee and nibbled on my beignet sliders at one of those tables along the one time Dixie Highway (now US 42) in Reading. Très Belle‘s Burger Week page describes one of these treats as a berry-filled beignet bun with edible rainbow sugar cookie dough patty and the other as Nutella filled with edible chocolate brownie cookie dough. They only call one decadent but that doesn’t seem entirely honest in my opinion. Maybe advertising double-barreled decadence is against somebody’s rules.

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