Tag Archives: Ohio

Military Vehicle Centennial Convoy

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Just months after the end of the First World War, a military convoy of about seventy vehicles spent sixty-two days crossing the United States. Setting out on July 7, 1919, it generally followed the young Lincoln Highway although there were several deviations. One of the most significant was that, rather than starting at the LH’s eastern terminus in New York, it began its westbound journey from a temporary marker near the White House in Washington, DC. A permanent Zero Milestone was erected there in 1923 with the intent that it would be the “POINT FOR THE MEASUREMENT OF DISTANCES FROM WASHINGTON ON HIGHWAYS OF THE UNITED STATES”. It hasn’t quite worked out that way.

For their observation of the 1919 convoy’s centennial, the Military Vehicle Preservation Association (MVPA) had originally planned on departing from that Zero Milestone but later decided to launch directly from their annual convention in York, PA. That happened on Monday, the 12th. On Wednesday, I caught up with them in East Palestine, Ohio, about a mile after they entered the state. East Palestine was a planned overnight stop and I had expected the convoy to already be in town and parked by the time I got there. It was delayed by an accident, however, and we ended up arriving almost simultaneously. Had I realized this and pulled over at the earliest opportunity, I could have photographed essentially the entire convoy. A few vehicles had already passed by the time I got stopped to grab the opening photo and photos of most of the vehicles following which included some pretty big gear.

A nearby park would be the convoy’s home for the night and I headed there to look over the vehicles. The trailered staff car is a 1918 Dodge. The Jeep is a 1943 model built by Ford. I imagine it’s a lot like the one my Dad drove around Belgium, France, and Germany in 1944-45. There’s a front view here and an interior shot here.

Before leaving, I asked one of the participants when they would be leaving in the morning. I was told between 6:30 and 7:00 but really thought that a bit ambitious. When I returned about 6:40 AM, I kind of expected to be killing time until everyone was awake and ready. Not so at all. The last vehicles were pulling into position when I arrived and the first Jeep rolled by at 6:47. The field was empty at 6:52. This is a military convoy.

That was the end of my planned contact with the convoy. I found an independent restaurant in East Palestine for breakfast (Heck’s, recommended) with thoughts of following it with a leisurely drive home. The path that the convoy was following is identified as an “Auxiliary route” on the online LHA map. Apparently, it was part of the 1913 Proclamation Route and the 1919 convoy likely followed it to dinner at Harvey Firestone’s place. I had never driven it before so decided it would be the first leg of that leisurely drive home. By the time I finished eating, I’d learned that the convoy was stopping along the route for breakfast at a place called Firestone Farms.

Their breakfast stop was considerably longer than mine which allowed me to catchup. Firestone Farms is a housing and shopping development on what was once Harvey Firestone’s farm. The original 1828 farmhouse was moved to Greenfield Village in 1983. This facade was built sometime later as part of the commercial development. During today’s stop, the screen on the right showed scenes from a movie of the 1919 convoy while the one on the left showed a movie about wartime manufacturing at Firestone. The tent beyond the clock tower contained displays of local history with an emphasis on Firestone.

The trailered Jeep was one of the vehicles involved in yesterday’s accident. Both drivers were taken to the hospital but are recovering. One of the participants told me that parts are on the way to repair one of the vehicles and the driver, though sore, expects to finish the trip in it. I’m thinking that this is the vehicle in question but do not know that for certain. The second picture shows how some convoy members proudly display Lincoln Highway signage.

When the convoy started getting ready to pull out, I headed to downtown Columbiana for one last encounter. I counted and snapped pictures of thirty-eight vehicles, including the three on trailers, as they passed through the roundabout. Here‘s a rear view of that Packard staff car I captured back at Firestone Farms.

I followed the auxiliary route to Canton and headed home from there. The convoy should be about ready to exit Ohio when this is published. The overnight for today (August 18) is South Bend, IN. A schedule has been posted to their Facebook page but I found it a little tricky to locate so have copied it to share here. Note that this is only a copy and more current information can be obtained through the Facebook page.

The Lincoln Highway Association has a separate centennial tour following the 1919 convoy route. That tour, described here, will be departing from Washington, DC, on August 31.

Butter and Beer, Buckeye Style

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I’ve trimmed the time between visits to the Ohio State Fair to four years. That’s much less than the multiple decades that separated my 2015 visit from the one that preceded it. A conversation with a friend who goes every year planted the seed then reading about one particular exhibit got me to seriously thinking about it. Some altered plans and great looking weather turned those thoughts into action.

As I did four years ago, I took advantage of free parking for members at the Ohio History Connection and entered the fair through the nearby gate 3. That brought me right to the north end of the midway. The Sky Glider travels directly over the Food Highway where fried anything, including bubble gum, can be found.

This is the exhibit involved in my decision to head to this year’s fair. In recognition of the fiftieth anniversary of the first moon landing, a butter sculpture of the Apollo 11 crew joins the cow and calf that are fair regulars. The calf is just out of frame in that first picture but both buttery bovines are there. Ohio’s contribution to the crew, Neil Armstrong, makes a second appearance along with what I suspect is a rather slippery ladder.

The moon landing also gets some attention in the chalk drawings outside the Fine Arts Center as does another event celebrating a fifty year anniversary. The Woodstock Music Festival took place less than a month after Apollo 11 flight. The third photograph presents its subject with better perspective because 1) it was drawn with that in mind and 2) I had instructions.  

I caught the All-Ohio State Fair Band in a performance in an open space called Central Park. While the band delivered some high energy tunes, the fellow in the second picture kept up some very impressive twirling, tossing, catching, and, as you can see, acrobatics.

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen any actual turkey judging but I watched just a bit today. I really had no idea what was going on but I have been around turkeys before and the folks attempting to control them certainly had my sympathy. I also watched a little calf judging and passed by three adult dairy cows. The cows were displayed by the Ohio Veterinary Medical Association and each had a sign with their name (this one is Louise) and the phrase “I’m pregnant and due any day now.”

The Ohio Beer and Wine Pavilion is new this year. I was about to leave after my planned one beer stop when it was announced that North High Brewing’s brewmaster, Jason McKibben, was in the building and about to give a presentation. I decided to stick around and, after he started talking about the brewery’s collaboration with the Ohio Farm Bureau, have one more beer. Here‘s something you don’t see on a beer can every day.

I emptied my can of Cover Crop and was once again ready to leave when I was once again enticed to stay. This time it was the start of the Human Cannonball show across the way that pulled me in. I failed to get any photos of the Cannonball’s daughter doing some impressive aerial acrobatics but I did catch his buddy on the tightwire. The announcement leading to the cannon firing included the claim that only about 700 human cannonballs have ever existed since the occupation was created by 14-year-old Zazel in 1877. I haven’t found any independent support of that but it does seem reasonable and it made me wonder if I had ever actually seen one before. I’ve seen a few circuses and a human cannonball seems like something I should have seen but I don’t have any specific memories. In any case, I’ve never seen one this close and I’ve never taken a picture of one exiting the cannon barrel.

With the Human Cannonball’s successful landing, I was again ready to depart and this time I made it. The midway was significantly more active as I passed through it on the way out than it had been on my arrival but nothing tempted me. I’ve now pretty much outgrown the desire to be tossed around or turned upside down, and some of those rides looked quite capable of separating me from my recently consumed Farm Bureau approved beverage. 

200 Breweries

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I like beer. I like beer well enough to be a Supreme Court justice although my other qualifications are rather weak. I’ve had favorites from time to time. I was pretty much a Stroh’s guy in the 1960s and ’70s, then became a big fan of Christian Moerlein Select when Hudepohl introduced it in 1981. But I’ll confess to never being entirely faithful to a single brand. My roving tastebuds would sometimes be led into temptation by an exotic label or a shapely bottle. Today, encouraged and aided by the craft beer explosion, I’m downright promiscuous. Several years ago I began using Utappd, a phone app that allows me to track the various beers I’ve tried, and I’ve accumulated a decent score. I have, since January of 2014, consumed a measurable amount of 1202 different beers.

Yes, that’s decent, but it pales next to some others. Just within my small circle of Untappd cohorts, Brian is over 1600, Sara is pushing 1900 (and now only logs on special occasions), and Nick is well past 3000. I’ll never catch them, of course, and I’m OK with that. If nothing else, when someone accuses me of being too fickle in my drinking, I can point to Nick or Sara or Brian and say, “But not like them!”

Besides, as the title of this post indicates, I have other things to brag about. I enjoy logging different venues about as much as I like logging beers and that goes double for breweries. In the beginning, I didn’t watch closely. I was almost halfway to the current count before it registered with me that logging breweries was something I was doing more than most. I completely missed the 100 brewery milestone but did note number 115 with a weak joke about Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream. I’ve been much more attentive as I approached completion of the second hundred and my thoughts have been on Zappa rather than Dylan. It’s not only giving me an opportunity to brag but an opportunity to recount some of the breweries I’ve seen.

For starters, here are numbers 1 and 200. My first check-in of Lock 27 Brewing was on January 31, 2014. It was not, of course, the first brewery I ever visited. I have vague memories of being inside the recently departed Hudepohl brewery several decades ago and I toured the oldest brewery in the US, Yuengling, back in 2005. A blog post from just about a year before I joined Untappd (Something’s Brewing in Cincy) describes visits to five breweries and mentions a couple more. And there were others. Lock 27 was simply the first brewery I visited after joining Untappd. My 200th brewery was the part-circus part-brewery Bircus. It’s in a converted movie theater just across the river in Kentucky and is more upfront about their tumbling and juggling than most breweries.

Dayton, Ohio, where Lock 27 Brewing is located, is also home to some truly unique producers of beer. Carillon Brewing Company (#24 12/8/14) is part of Carillon Historical Park and brews beer the old fashioned way. I mean the 160-year-old fashioned way. With the exception of piped-in water, the operation duplicates a brewery of the 1850s. I did a full blog post, History by the Pint, on my first visit. Pinups & Pints (#– 4/8/15) is a tiny 15-gallon operation that offers one choice of beer at a time. Unfortunately, Untappd had not yet identified it as a brewery when I was there so it is not one of my 200 (It would have been #30). Even so, how could I not include “The World’s Only Strip Club – Brew Pub” in this post? And Untappd does now recognize it as a brewery. The third picture is of Ohio’s first and the nation’s second co-op brewpub shortly before it opened. Fifth Street Brewpub (#3 2/12/14) is the only brewery I currently “own” a tiny piece of (it’s a co-op!) and the one with the most Untappd check-ins. Here‘s a picture from the most recent of those check-ins.

I used the word ‘currently’ in the preceding paragraph because I once owned a few shares of the ahead-of-its-time Oldenberg Brewery in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky. Somewhere I have a beautiful and totally worthless stock certificate for the brewery that closed in 2001.

Two other visited breweries deserve shout-outs because of their locations. Silver Gulch Brewing (#79 6/29/16) and Kona Brewing (#123 4/7/17) are, respectively, the USA’s northernmost and southernmost breweries. I claim a bonus point for reaching these outposts within a year of each other. I have yet to reach the westernmost (Kauai Island) or easternmost (Lubec) breweries in the US.

Maybe I’ll make it to three or four hundred or beyond. I’ve started the second 200 like I started the first, with Lock 27. In 2017, a second location, which Untappd counts as a separate brewery, was opened just outside the Dayton Dragons ball field. The Dragons are an affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds who are celebrating 150 years of professional baseball this year. A few months ago, Cincinnati.com published an article listing fifty-one breweries in the area including fifteen I’ve yet to visit. There is also an unvisited-by-me brewery in the ten listed by the Dayton CVB. The Ohio Craft Brewers Association reports that there are now more than 300 breweries operating in the state which means I could reach the next multiple of a hundred without crossing a state line — but I doubt I will.

Memories of the Eagle

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My best guess of what I was doing exactly fifty years before the publication of this post is sleeping. I wouldn’t be sleeping much longer because it was Monday morning and I would have to wake up and go to work. And I would not have been asleep very long either. I would have stayed up way too long watching TV after a long drive home. Just having the possibility of watching TV late at night was unusual even at the very end of the 1960s. With the exception of Bob Shreve’s all-night movies on Saturday, all five Cincinnati channels went off the air around midnight. But the wee hours of July 21, 1969, were different. It was the day following the day when the Eagle had landed. There was news to be shared.

We — my wife, our son, and I — were visiting friends in Saint Louis over that weekend. Our plans were to be home at a decent hour but we were paying more attention to someone else’s travel plans than our own. While we were on our way to Saint Louis, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin, and Neil Armstrong were on their way to the moon. As we prepared to drive home, Buzz and Neil prepared to head for the Lunar surface. At 13:44 EDT on that Sunday afternoon, the pair separated from Michael and the command module Columbia and began their descent. At 16:17 EDT, Armstrong announced that “The Eagle has landed.”

The timestamps on my own recollections aren’t nearly as precise or reliable as NASA’s. Part of me thinks that we did not leave Saint Louis until after the Lunar Module was on the surface. Information currently available online says that a four hour rest period was planned between landing and exiting. If that was the information we had then and if we really did not depart until the Eagle landed, then I must have thought I could drive to Cincinnati in under four hours or maybe I was terribly confused by time zones. Or maybe we were counting on the astronauts sleeping for the full four hours then spending considerable time preparing to leave the lander. Whatever the reasons and reasoning, I know for certain that as we headed toward home, we believed we had a good shot at making it in time to watch man’s first step onto the moon.

There was no radio in the car. Not even AM. The vehicle’s entertainment system consisted entirely of an under-dash 8-track tape deck. That was normally not a problem since no one in their right mind would want to listen to news or the top 40 when all seven minutes of Light My Fire was available in stereo with the click of a cartridge. But this drive was not normal and we really did want to listen to news. As I recall, the Bairds, who we were visiting in Saint Louis, loaned us a portable transistor radio which we propped atop the dash and fiddled with almost constantly as signal strength ebbed and flowed.

The details were forgotten long ago, but I remember that somewhere along the way we heard that the rest period was going to be shortened and the astronauts would be stepping from the capsule earlier than once thought. Whether or not we ever actually had a legitimate chance of reaching home before that happened seems doubtful to me now. But, regardless of how likely or unlikely that had been, it now became clear that it was pretty much impossible. If we continued our drive, human beings were going to be walking on the moon while our only connection was a tiny radio with temperamental reception.

We were still somewhere west of Indianapolis when that realization struck. Like so many other details of that day, I cannot recall our thought processes as we left the expressway in search of a television. We did this near the airport and I know that at least part of the reason was that we knew there were motels in the area. There surely was no money for rented lodging in our family budget so it seems unlikely that we planned on spending the night. On the other hand, this was a truly major event so it’s possible that we were at least considering it. Checking prices may have even been on my mind when I stepped into the hotel lobby. If so, I’m sure it vanished when I saw the TV playing in the furnished lobby. I left and quickly returned with the family.

I think of it as a Holiday Inn but, in reality, it could have been any of the slightly upscale (to a 22-year-old father) motels of the time. Whatever the brand, it was upscale enough that flight crews from multiple airlines regularly overnighted there. My wife and I found seats on a sofa with 5-month-old Crispian parked in front of the TV in a little plastic carrier commonly referred to as a “pumpkin seat”. The three of us became lobby fixtures while others watched the TV for a bit on the way to their rooms.

Time moved slowly as we waited for the astronauts to step outside the capsule. Multiple flight crews arrived while we waited and each followed the same procedure. One member went to the desk to check in the entire crew while the others stood behind the sofa staring over our heads at the glowing screen. When the paperwork was completed, the unlucky person who had somehow been chosen to perform it, distributed keys and everyone rushed off to their individual accommodations and personal televisions.

At 22:56 EDT, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Lunar surface. The picture at the top of this article shows his foot hanging from the Lunar Module’s ladder just before that happened. After Buzz joined him, Neil placed the camera on a tripod to provide a more panoramic view. The black and white images were dim and blurry and sometimes flickered away. And they were beautiful.

I halfway think we stayed in that hotel lobby during all of the approximately two and a half hours of Extravehicular Activity but I’m not at all certain. I am certain that Cris saw that first step because I checked to make sure his eyes were open. Of course, any memories he has of the event are almost certainly from repeatedly being told about it rather than from what he actually saw. My great grandfather had been dead just over eight years at the time of the moon landing but he had lived to see three humans (Gargarin, Shepard, Grissom) in space. He was born in 1875 and was almost exactly the same age as the kid in the pumpkin seat when Custer’s troops were annihilated at Little Big Horn. As my son watched dim images of men nearly 240,000 miles away and I watched him, I wondered what advances he would see in his lifetime. Fifty years in, the list is impressive and growing.

A ten-day 50th anniversary celebration in Wapakoneta, Ohio, Neil Armstrong’s hometown, wraps up today. The final event is a 7:00 Wink at the Moon concert featuring the Lima Area Concert Band. Other concerts and events have filled the ten days in downtown Wapakoneta and at the Armstrong Air & Space Museum at the edge of town. I visited Tuesday, the anniversary of the rocket launch that started Neil and his buddies on their way to the moon.

Two new statues of Armstrong had been unveiled at the museum on Sunday. It’s a bit disappointing that the white clouds and low light make the moon-like dome of the museum so hard to see. I photographed the statues before the crowd started to arrive but noted later that the statue of the young dreamer was — and I’m sure will be — a very popular place for families to pose their younger members for photos. A third statue, of Armstrong in his 1969 welcome home parade, was to be unveiled downtown on Thursday.

As 9:32 approached, attention was focused on a 22-inch replica of the Saturn 5 rocket that had lifted off in Florida at that time exactly fifty tears earlier. A recording of that half-century-old countdown was played to help coordinate the launch of the model. The model was a solid fuel-powered Estes much like the ones I helped build and launch even more than fifty years ago. When the count reached zero, I was quickly reminded that the acceleration characteristics of an Estes rocket are much closer to those of a bullet than to those of a 6.5 million pound 363 foot Saturn 5.

Following the countdown and launch, the museum was opened — and filled. I waited outside for the initial rush to pass although the place was still pretty busy when I did go in. The first picture is a reminder that Armstrong’s career did not begin with the moon landing. It’s the suit he wore on Gemini 8. His partner on that flight was David Scott who made it to the moon himself on Apollo 15. The second picture is of Armstrong’s backup suit for Apollo 11. On the day I took this photo, July 16, the Smithsonian returned the suit worn on Apollo 11 to display after being out of sight for some time being repaired.

Just beyond where this piece of the moon is displayed, is a movie that runs every half hour. Many other artifacts and information panels are in that room where I spent fifteen minutes or so waiting for the next showing. It was there that I was struck by the fact that I was one of the few people in that museum who actually remembered the Apollo expeditions. Many were adolescents born decades after the moon landings, but it was clear from overheard comments and answers to youthful questions that most of the parents and even grandparents weren’t around in 1969 or were too young to have solid memories. I’ve since learned that only four of the twelve men who walked on the moon between 1969 and 1972 are currently living. Yeah, I guess that really was a ways back.

On the anniversary of the actual landing, I watched a movie. Apollo 11: First Steps Edition is a version of Apollo 11 created for OMNIMAX style theaters. Yesterday’s showings are the only ones planned for the theater at the Cincinnati Museum Center but I believe this is the same movie being shown elsewhere including the Air Force Museum in Dayton. Made entirely of archival footage, it gave everyone in the sold-out theater a glimpse inside the historic mission and refreshed memories for a few of us. Sometimes the images are so big or there are so many of them that it’s hard to take it all in. It was that way the first time, too.

That concert that will be happening in Wapakoneta tonight gets its name from a statement that Neil Armstrong’s family issued at his death in 2012. “… the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.” I did that last night shortly after the moon cleared the horizon. It was about the time when, fifty years earlier, Neil and Buzz’s time outside the capsule was a little more than half over. I thought of Neil and winked then winked two more times and thought of Buzz and Michael. Nicely done, fellows. Nicely done. 

Trip Peek #83
Trip #3
Corner to Corner to Corner

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This picture is from my 2001 Corner to Corner to Corner trip. As only the third trip I journaled, it certainly had its share of oddities, experiments, and learning. I consciously considered it something of a practice run for a major trip planned for later in the year. One odd aspect, which I hope never to repeat, was its division into three episodes. To help fit the bulk of the trip into one weekend, the initial miles of the northbound leg were covered on the preceding weekend and the final miles of the southbound leg were driven a couple of days after the big weekend segment. The target of the trip was the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (pictured) in Cleveland, Ohio. The name comes from the fact that travel was from the southwest corner of Ohio to the northeast corner, then back. The route north followed US-42 while the route south followed the 3C Highway which influenced trip’s name just a little.

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.

Portsmouth Road Meet

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I attended my fourth Road Meet on Saturday, and I still can’t quite explain what they are. I believe they started back in the days of Usenet, flourished when Yahoo groups were big, and continue today via Facebook groups. To be honest, though, they could, for all I know, predate Usenet and have seen significant MySpace history. The actual meets are informal gatherings of like-minded individuals to visit road related points of interest in a specific area under the guidance of one or a few volunteer organizers. All of the Road Meets I’ve attended have been in Ohio but they can be found through much of the eastern U.S. I’ve heard of meets in Michigan, Tennessee, New Jersey, and Missouri and I know there have been others.

The opening photo was taken as I drove east to the Road Meet on OH-32, a.k.a, the Appalachian Highway. The three at left were taken after I turned on the two-lane OH-73.

A meal is an important part of every Road Meet. The setting for this one was the Portsmouth Brewing Company which I’ve visited several times in the past. I knew maybe half the attendees from previous meets but I won’t attempt to identify anyone other than this meet’s host, Sandor Gulyas at the table’s far end on the picture’s left. Nice Job. The first two of those previous meets had included at least one person within a generation or two of my age. That wasn’t true of the Cincinnati meet and clearly wasn’t true of this one. I think I can take credit for single-handedly raising the group’s average age by at least half a decade.

Before taking to our cars, we walked to nearby Alexandria Point Park which allowed us to see both of Portsmouth’s Ohio River bridges. The cantilevered Carl D. Perkins bridge is to the west. The cable-stayed U.S. Grant bridge is to the east.

Our big drive began by crossing the Perkins Bridge into Kentucky, pausing at an overlook to study the Grant Bridge, then crossing it to return to Ohio. The Grant Bridge is indeed named for the Ohio born 18th president. The Perkins Bridge is not named for the blue suede shoe wairing rockabilly star but for a Kentucky politician. I’m still disappointed by that.

This is Ohio’s newest highway and the primary reason for having the meet here. Officially named Southern Ohio Veterans Memorial Highway, OH-823 was dedicated and opened in December. All three pictures were taken while driving OH-823 southbound after reaching the highway’s northern end using US-23.

After driving all sixteen miles of OH-823, we started working our way back north primarily on OH-335  We slipped off to pass through a railroad underpass on Stout Hollow Road and paused to photograph a collection of signs near the Portsmouth Regional Airport. We then returned to OH-823 and drove roughly ten miles of it northbound.

Near OH-823’s northern end, we picked up OH-348 and followed it through the town of Otway to the covered bridge just west of town. A sign near the bridge tells its story. It was decided that a group photo should be taken here and I won the job by having the only tripod present. Although I tried blaming it on the equipment, the problem was really with the operator. In order to assure that the whole bridge was in the picture, I placed the camera too far away and I believe the distance and bright sun combined kept the infrared remote from working properly. Then, when I got a good look at what I did manage, I saw that the focus kind of sucked, too.

We all returned to Portsmouth on OH-73 which I had arrived on earlier. We said our goodbyes and I headed home along the Ohio River on US-52. The Road Meet was over and I wasn’t looking for any more photo-ops but near Manchester I spotted an old friend. For years, the Showboat Majestic was an important part of Cincinnati’s riverfront but she was moved upriver in March after being sold. I don’t know when she’ll be back in action but now I know exactly where she is.

Apparently I did not document that first Road Meet in Columbus but here are entries for Dayton and Cincinnati.

Trip Peek #82
Trip #138
Finding It Here

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This picture is from my 2016 Finding It Here trip. It was that year’s Christmas Escape Run. I wanted to keep the CER short in 2016 and, having enjoyed Christmases at state parks in West Virginia and Indiana, selected an Ohio park for this outing. The name came from the fairly new state tourism slogan, “Ohio, find it here”. Burr Oak, the chosen park, is in the east half of the state about halfway between Columbus and Marietta. Although technically a four day trip, the last day was an uneventful quick drive home from the park. The first night was spent in Athens and included visits to a couple of local breweries. Burr Oak Lodge sits near the south end of the Morgan County Scenic Byway, a section of which locals have nicknamed “Rim of the World”. That was my route to the lodge. On Christmas Day, I explored some of the park and the narrow roads around it. I also made it all the way to Cambridge which is taken over by a Dickens Victorian Village each year. The photo is of a huge chandelier in the lobby of Burr Oak Lodge.

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.

Horns Aplenty

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The 27th Bockfest parade has come and gone. There’s still plenty of festival left, but the Friday night promenade is the highlight for me. Precipitation of just about any kind will keep me away but this year was dry and the mid-40s temperature was downright balmy compared to some years. I drove, parked, and walked to the parade start point at Arnold’s Bar and Grill to meet a friend who works just a couple blocks away and can stroll over in a few minutes.

There was no shortage of folks in full-body Bockfest garb, but there seemed to be quite a few with nothing Bockish except fake (I assume) horns. It was only while editing pictures for this post that I noticed Clyde, the friend I’d just connected with, peering from behind the horned hat.

Clyde had stepped into the street to talk with some members of FC Cincinnati support group Die Innenstadt. He had marched with the club in last year’s parade and was seen in a story WCPO recently broadcast to promote this year’s event. When he spotted WCPO’s Evan Millward, Clyde approached the newsman and the two talked about the broadcast. For some reason, Evan was carrying Mayor Cranley’s Bockfest proclamation which I took advantage of by snagging a photo.

I was really just joking about the balmy temperatures but it appears that kegs, whether being carried on your bare shoulder or concealing your bathtub’s propulsion mechanism, will keep you warm.

Like Arnold’s self propelled bathtub, these three are long time parade regulars. By the time this is published, 2018 Sausage Queen Luis Balladares will have been replaced by a new queen selected on Saturday. Both the Sausage Queen and Beard Baron competitions are gender neutral. No one ever seems to follow the Whip Lady too closely but the same cannot be said of the Trojan Goat.

Some people may wonder why the Kentucky Chapter of the Association for Gravestone Studies has a parade unit and why they are participating in an Ohio parade promoting beer. But those are the same sort of people who question the presence of dinosaurs or a Krampuslauf group. Bockfest does not need those people.

I missed getting a picture of Aaron Sharp when he first passed in the parade vanguard. I’m glad he circled back. Aaron was one of the key individuals at the sorely missed WNKU radio station where good music could always be found. He is now part owner of Lucius Q where good BBQ and beer can always be found and often good music, too. I’ve never sorted out what his official role is with Bockfest but he’s been doing it a long time and I know he is really good at it — whatever it is.

Although they’ve been around since 2016, this is the first time I’ve seen Dance Flash Fusion and realized it. They have been in at least one previous Bockfest parade so I must have seen them but either they’ve improved considerably or I wasn’t paying attention. I was impressed. Die Innenstadt is the FC Cincinnati support group that Clyde belongs to. I’m pretty sure they set off one of their colored smoke bombs somewhere near MOTR on Main Street, but, even though I was moving with the parade at that point, I was way too far behind to hear or see it. Stuff like that does linger, however, and I put other senses to use as I passed through the area.

Here’s the group with the large goat head featured at the start of this article but I don’t know who it is. The base of the float is covered with album cover reproduction but I saw no identifying markings. They were preceded by a truck with banners reading “Crocodile Bock” and “Crocked on Bock” and this musical duo. I’ve no idea whether or not they’re connected. The Red Hot Dancing Queens have been favorites of mine ever since I first saw them in 2015 not long after they had formed. I think the RHDQ have a slight edge on DFF but it’s really exciting to have two dance troops having so much fun and so much talent.

Not long after the RHDQ passed by, I headed north with the parade. The sun was setting faster than I was traveling which contributed to none of the pictures I took along the way amounting to much. These three were taken at the last turn to the parade’s conclusion at the Moerlein Malt House. With little light, I notice even fewer details through the camera viewfinder than I do in the light. I failed to see a rather major feature of the “Bock on with Your Bock Out” float. It’s pretty obvious but even easier to see here. The name I used comes from the shirts being worn though I’ve no idea whether there is any connection with the beer by that name from a Chattanooga brewery. The Rabbit Hash General Store float is always near the end of the Bockfest parade and I have several pictures of it at this corner. There was a large gap in front of the entry in the last picture and, if it hadn’t been for people staring down the parade route, I’d have assumed the parade was over. A large plastic tarp was carried by a van with walkers holding up the edges and fog filling the space under it. The combination made for extra slow travel and thus the gap.

I walked on down to the crowded Bockfest Hall where bands were playing and bocks were flowing. I had one from the Alexandria brewery then, after meeting up with an out of town friend, another from Hudepohl. I’d had a single Moerlein Emancipator back at the parade staging area. Apparently my current Bockfest beer quota is three. 

Time of Pharaohs

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The renovated Cincinnati Museum Center takes another step at getting back in the swing of things by hosting the U.S. debut of Egypt: The Time of Pharaohs. The exhibit is new but the objects in it are anything but. Some of the 350+ artifacts on display are more than 4,500 years old. 4,500 years isn’t old like a colonial era cabin, or a New Mexico pueblo, or even a European castle. No, we’re talking old like a pyramid which is, of course, where some of these items come from.

I was there Friday evening for a members only event. It was a well attended members only event. Part of me was really happy to see that lots of people support the museum with their memberships and that same part was really happy to see that lots of those members also support special extra cost exhibits such as this one. Another part of me kind of wished all those people would just get out of my way.

I was smiling when I wrote that last sentence. Timed entries kept the exhibit from being overrun but attendees were not being hustled through it. The crowd simply meant I had to occasionally wait a bit to read a placard or study an artifact up close. It also meant that most photos I took had one to twenty people in them but just about every one of those people was seriously curious and that’s a very good thing.

Based mostly on Hollywood movies, my idea of Egypt includes a lot of gigantic stone things like the Sphinx and those pyramids. But, almost immediately I found a wooden jackal, a bronze cat, and a clay cup. A sign next to the cup dates it to the 1st half of the 3rd millennium BCE. The 2nd half of the 3rd millennium BCE started 4519 years ago. By comparison, the cat is almost modern. It’s from the 3rd century BCE. The jackal is from around 1000 BCE.

These bronze statues are just a few inches tall and quite detailed. That’s Amun-Ra on the left and Isis on the right with a sun disk on her head and Horus on her lap. I didn’t catch a date for the Amun-Ra statue. The Isis statue is from the 6th to 3rd centuries BCE.

My Cecil B. DeMille based ideas weren’t entirely wrong; The Egyptians did do a fair amount of stone carving. The first stele features the crocodile god Sobek. It was carved sometime between roughly 1290 and 1190 BCE during the 19th Dynasty. I screwed up and got no information on the second stele. The third picture shows a plaster cast of a carved wall of the Temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak. The plaster cast is 135 years old. Like the first pictured stele, the wall was carved during the 19th Dynasty. The casting is a solid grey. The colors are from a projector that cycles on and off to show the wall as it was originally. A replica of a 13th century BCE chariot stands in front of the wall.

Of course, you can’t have an Egyptian exhibit without a sphinx and some mummies. This limestone sphinx is a baby just a couple of feet long. It’s from the 3rd to 1st centuries BCE. The coffin is from the 14th or 15th centuries BCE. It’s a mix of wood and plaster with gold trim. The mummified cat comes from the same time period as the sphinx.

There is actually plenty of modern technology mixed in with the multi-millennium old artifacts. An audio guide is available that provides commentary keyed to specific displays. There are several interactive exhibits that help explain timelines, hieroglyphics, and more. The final display is pretty high-tech. High resolution CT scans have recorded the details of every layer of a mummy from about 750 BCE. Holography is used to project a rotating 3-dimensional image inside a clear pyramid. The image cycles through the layers as it rotates. It’s a time warp that even Doc Brown might appreciate.

Egypt: Time of the Pharaohs is at the Cincinnati Museum Center through August 18.  

The Holocaust and Humanity Center is Open

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The Cincinnati Holocaust and Humanity Center reopened in its new location last Sunday on the 74th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. I had seen the space it moved into on a “hardhat tour” during the Cincinnati Museum Center’s member’s preview in November. At the time, I noted my failure to visit the center in its current location despite it being on my list and relatively near my home. I once again resolved to get there “before they start carrying stuff out” but I failed. I tried after about a week had passed, but it was already too late. The move had already begun and the operation at Rockwern Academy in Kenwood had already closed.

I would not get inside the Center today, either, but it wasn’t because I was too late. I arrived about half an hour before the 1:00 opening ceremony when the space around chairs provided for holocaust survivors and family members was wide open. I could have staked out a spot right next to them but didn’t. By the time the procession of survivors and descendants began, my best view was via the giant screens at either side of the stage. The processional was quite moving not only for those participating or watching familiar faces enter the rotunda, but for folks like me who recognized no one. Some in the procession may have been experiencing memories of when they first saw Union Terminal. This was where many people escaping Europe or recently freed from Nazi concentration camps arrived in the 1940s to begin a new life in Cincinnati. The last picture shows the center’s Executive Director Sarah Weiss cutting the ceremonial ribbon along with Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley and Nancy and David Wolf for whom the center is named.

Entry to the Holocaust and Humanity Center was free on Sunday via time stamped tickets. I doubt that people were actually being forced out of the center after fifteen minutes, which was the interval on the tickets, but it was pretty obvious that this was not the day for a leisurely stroll through the exhibits. I thought it absolutely wonderful that the opening had attracted so many people, but quickly decided to take advantage of one of the perks of being retired and come back sometime during the week.

Incidentally, the HHC opening wasn’t the only thing bringing people to the museum center on Sunday. The picture at right, taken long before the crowd appeared for the opening ceremony, shows a line of people stretched across the front of the rotunda waiting to get museum and movie tickets. There probably wasn’t a lot of overlap with the HHC crowd; Most of the groups in line included young children. I noted in my post about the theater reopening that families with school age children were flocking to the renovated Union Terminal during the holiday break, and it looks like that flocking continues on weekends. I bet it’s the dinosaurs.

I made it back on Tuesday. Entry to the Holocaust and Heritage Center is not included in Cincinnati Museum Center membership, but tickets are sold through the CMC kiosk in the rotunda and there is a discount for CMC members. These sculptures were at the front of the rotunda and usually surrounded by people on Sunday. At present, they are near the stairs leading down to the HHC. The HHC is right next to where the Cincinnati History Library and Archives was and will be. The library closed in 2016 along with the CMC and has not yet reopened.

We were given a peek at a small portion of this mural on that November “hardhat tour” and I had been looking forward to seeing the whole thing. It didn’t disappoint. The 63 foot mural covers more than one wall of the center’s lobby area. I had some time to look it over as I waited to enter the “Winds of Change” theater that separates the lobby from the museum galleries but know I have some more looking to do. I believe all of the mural’s twenty-six scenes come from stories that are told, at least partially, inside the museum. Inside the theater, holocaust survivors now living in Cincinnati tell pieces of their stories in a video. The local connection appears throughout the museum in the display of artifacts and quotations from local survivors.

The first gallery beyond the “Winds of Change” theater begins with the story of the rise of Nazism. It’s a story of relatively small steps that go from Jews being valued members of their communities to their extermination being seen as a solution to something. The HHC utilizes two types of interactive exhibits. One uses touch screens to allow selection from a small set of recorded first person accounts related to the display they are part of. The second uses sliding panels operated by push-buttons. This not only provides more surface area for images and text but involves visitors ever so slightly. At first I thought this was a little hokey but I quickly became a fan. If you don’t press the button, you will miss out on something, and when you do press it, you’re kind of committed to studying what is revealed. 

In addition to the big mural, I believe that every description of the center I have seen mentions the bullet picture and the train window. The bullet picture is an image, reproduced with empty shell casings, of Jews being gunned down in a burial pit they had been forced to dig themselves. The train window is simply a window in the museum wall that opens onto the active tracks behind the building. Only a tiny bit of passenger traffic trickles through Union Terminal but freight traffic passing through the yard is quite significant. Visualizing human beings stuffed into box cars isn’t difficult.

The aftermath of the holocaust is also examined. I was on the leading edge of the Baby Boomer generation. The war was over and the death camps liberated before I was born. Some of the war crimes trials occurred in my lifetime but I certainly don’t remember them. However, I do remember seeing the movie Judgement at Nuremberg in a theater during its first run and same day TV coverage of the Eichmann trial. This was in 1961 when the events they dealt with were less than twenty years in the past. The holocaust was just outside of my own memory but was rather fresh in the memories of the adults in my world.

The “Points of Light” theater marks the end of the Holocaust Gallery and the beginning of the Humanity Gallery. From here on out, the exhibits deal more with today’s world. People called “upstanders” are identified and their stories of resisting hate or doing something else to improve their part of the world are told. The last picture is of the “Make Your Mark Wall”. Visitors can leave their thoughts and impressions via the touch screens and add their selfie to the wall if desired. On the day I was there, a portion of one of the large screens was blacked out, but I’m guessing that was just from someone leaving their coffee in front of a projector or something similar.

The Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanities Center is an impressive and welcome addition to the Cincinnati Museum Center. I entered the “Winds of Change” theater by myself, but took my time going through the galleries, and found myself in the presence of several other visitors by the time I exited the museum. Even so, I know I need to go back. It is really impossible not to see similarities between the increasing hatred seen in some corners today and some of the events described in the center. The centers’ creators were certainly aware of these similarities, and I don’t doubt helped make them more apparent here and there. That sure doesn’t seem like a bad thing to me.