Joan’s 5th newsletter – August 7-31, 2005
When I traced my travels the past 3-1/3 weeks on the map, the route turned out to be not circuitous but banana-shaped. Starting in southern Minnesota, I went eastward as far as southwest Pennsylvania with all sorts of stops inbetween. I am now in Plymouth, MN (west of Minneapolis), about 80 miles from where I started in Pine Island, MN. Pat, whom I met at a crones meeting in Tucson, AZ in February, graciously invited me to stay with her a few days, so I have unlimited use of a computer with speedy Internet access and good company besides! Pat is another traveler and an inspiration to me.
When I went on the road August 10 after a week in Pine Island, I had only these stops in mind:
Hobo convention, Britt, Iowa, August 11
Willow Folk Festival, northern Illinois, August 12-14
Trader Joe’s, Indianapolis, Indiana (had to stock up on soy milk and carrot juice!)
New Beginnings Bluegrass Festival, Chillicothe, Ohio, August 16-21
Rock and Roll Museum & Hall of Fame, Cleveland, Ohio
I accomplished all of the above, and then some. Here are some of the unexpected places I visited and things I learned since my last newsletter which stopped on August 7.
Even a vegetarian can have a good time at the Spam Museum in Austin, MN. (www.hormel.com/ and scroll to the bottom to click on Spam Museum and Spam Gift.) Yes, they answer the ingredients question and show the Monty Python skit (http://home.triad.rr.com/spamchef/spamskit.html).
The Mall of America (south of St. Paul, MN) was a lot more interesting to this non-shopper because I went with an 11-year-old boy. That boy was Sam, the youngest son of Cheryl and Greg Finnegan – my Pine Island hosts. When I offered to take him anywhere he wanted, he chose the Underwater Adventures Aquarium at the Mall of America (http://www.sharky.tv/). Our first underwater adventure began on the 60-mile drive up there. We noticed a huge black cloud ahead of us, and I couldn’t drive fast enough to miss the rain. Vicious torrents pelted down for 20-30 minutes, fogging up the inside of the windshield and obscuring my vision quite effectively. I hadn’t yet mastered the defogger, but learned since that I should have turned on the heat. Heck, it was already so hot it felt like a steam bath! Anyway, the rain subsided, Sam kept the windshield clear with paper towels, and we got to the Mall. I can blame myself actually – I had washed the van that morning. The aquarium was pretty cool, if a bit pricy. It features a 300 foot-long curved tunnel, complete with a moving walkway, that simulates a scuba diving adventure – the fishies, sharks and turtles were on the other side of glass walls that surrounded us on both sides and above. Since we got armbands, we went through it again after dinner. Our visit ended with a ride on the seven-story ferris wheel (there’s an amusement park in the center of the mall) and yes, we got stopped at the very top while they unloaded passengers. We used this vantage point to take a good look inside the fake dinosaur exhibit and scope out where the Lego place was. Among other displays, the Lego Imagination Center has big (5 or 6 feet tall) Lego sculptures of Harry Potter, and many dinosaurs, some with flashing eyes. Oh, and the drive home was uneventful – no rain.
A few days later, I drove Sam to his grandmother’s house in Heron Lake, MN, where I met Marge Finnegan and one of Sam’s cousins. Marge, who raised five boys on a farm and had never met a vegetarian, served a delicious dinner that included black bean salad with fresh cilantro (the first time she met cilantro too) and fresh corn on the cob. Then she taught me how to play two-deck canasta and we whomped Sam and his cousin.
I could only be at the hobo convention for the opening campfire-lighting ceremony and open stage on Thursday evening, and unfortunately the rain really put a damper on things. It had been raining off and on for three days so the open stage was cancelled. That was what I really wanted to see, the songs, stories, and whatever the performers came up with. While there was great camaraderie in the box car and food tent at the hobo jungle, and several people started friendly conversations with me, I opted to get back on the road and look for drier digs. I wanted to be at Willow early the next afternoon.
I ended up in Charles City, Iowa at the Lamplighter Motel, $30 for a room with a full-sized refrigerator and morning coffee in the lobby. I looked through the phone book and lo and behold, I was within walking distance of one of Iowa’s nine known Frank Lloyd Wright buildings. The Alvin Miller house, 1946, is a single story home on the banks of the Red Cedar River and not easy to see due to the trees around it. But I saw enough to recognize that distinctive Wright Usonian look. If I were keeping count of Wright buildings this trip, I think this would be the fourth. (As of August 28, I was counting on my second hand, and after the upcoming Chicago trip, I’ll have to start counting on my toes.)
Friendly Folks Everywhere
Willow Folk Festival is a very special event that I had previously attended three times with long-time friend Jon Calhoun, since passed away. I hadn’t attended since 1995, but I located the people we used to camp with, they welcomed me warmly, and I had a great time. Details to follow in a special edition newsletter just about music festivals. However, this observation fits in here. Willow is a very rural area between Galena and Rockford, Illinois, and whenever I drove or walked on the country roads here, the drivers in oncoming vehicles always waved. It’s so obvious I was a stranger – I drive a Honda and not a Ford or Chevy, it’s a van and not a pickup truck or big American sedan, and my antenna ornament is an alien head from Roswell, NM. The wave also happened in rural areas of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Ohio. It’s just plain friendliness.
The next evidence of midwest friendliness was at the Trader Joe’s in Indianapolis. I was on my last liter of soy milk, and this was the first TJ’s on this trip close enough to my route. While loading up my cart, an employee asked if I was finding everything I needed and I told him yes, that it was Trader Joe’s that I needed, and explained that I was from Santa Cruz, California yadayadayada. We chatted a bit, and when I was checking out, the store manager came over and said “So you’re from Santa Cruz, huh? I grew up in the bay area ... ” and we had a pleasant conversation, but most importantly, he gave me a list of all Trader Joe’s locations. I paid $1.49 for the TJ brand organic soy milk with no added ingredients except soy and filtered water (it’s $1.19 or $1.29 in California) but it was still cheaper and better than the name brand equivalent.
Upon arriving at the New Beginnings Bluegrass Festival in Chillicothe, Ohio on Tuesday, August 16 in time for the volunteer meeting and pizza feed, I was met with even more friendliness. They did not hold it against me that I was from California – in fact, California became my nickname for the duration of the festival. First Pete Peters, who is retired and works at bluegrass festivals almost every weekend (Florida during the winter), guided me to a primo campsite. He also kept checking on me throughout the festival to see if I was enjoying myself. Sure I was – I got invited to hang out at other camps, and to go out to dinner with a group of folks three nights in a row. At our last supper, I was inducted into the Broken String Club and presented with a broken guitar string from the band The Rarely Herd. And oh the delicious homestyle food – two firsts were fried green tomatoes (twice!) and sweet iced tea. More details about the festival in the aforementioned festival newsletter. My last festival will probably be the Bob Evans Farm Festival in southeast Ohio. (Bob Evans has a better-than-Denny’s restaurant chain east of the Mississippi.) Besides music, the demonstrations will include tractor square dancers, a lumberjack show, horseshoe tournament, border collie herding, and much more for three days. I’ll be meeting some of the Broken String Club gang there.
More Wright Stuff
When Dale Attias learned where I was in Ohio, she e-mailed back to say I was close to Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous Fallingwater, and that “As someone who has studied design for years, I can say unequivocally that it is the most beautiful home I’ve ever seen. Period.” When someone – especially Dale – talks like that, I listen. I was about 4 hours from Fallingwater near Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania, so I went there directly after the Chillicothe festival. On my way to the campground in Ohiopyle State Park (name means white frothy water for the whitecaps in the river), I passed a sign for Kentuck Knob, another Wright home. I saw them both. They were spectacular. Fallingwater, built in the late ‘30s, is the house built over a waterfall. See http://www.wpconline.org/ and click on Visit Fallingwater. Kentuck Knob is smaller, mid-50s Usonian style built of native fieldstone. The current owners are British royalty with lots of money, and the grounds are liberally sprinkled with their sculpture collection, including Claes Oldenburg’s Apple Core and a section of the Berlin Wall complete with original graffiti. See www.kentuckknob.com, also www.galenfrysinger.com/kentuck_knob_grounds.htm for splendiferous photos of the grounds and outdoor art work.
My 7th Wright building this trip was the Johnson Wax headquarters in Racine, WI. Yes I knew it was Sunday and they only gave tours on Saturdays, but I just had to see it. After all, I had never been so close before (18 miles round trip) even though I lived in Wisconsin the first 21 years of my life. I expected to be able to peek in the windows at the famous lily-pad columns and Wright-designed furniture, but the place was surrounded by a high brick wall and steel gates. Only the razor wire was missing. I got a few glimpses through the gates, snapped a few pics, and left with great disappointment. If you’re curious, google Johnson Wax and Wright – several sites have both interior and exterior photos.
A History Lesson
Driving into southwestern Pennsylvania from Ohio, through 12 miles of West Virginia and past Wheeling, was a real eye-opener. I hadn’t expected mountains in Ohio, but they began there and continued all the way to the Laurel Mountains south of Pittsburgh which is where I stopped to camp so I’m sure there’s more! That narrow strip of West Virginia between Ohio and PA was weird – there must be a good story there. I saw signs about the National Road, old toll houses, old taverns, old battlefields, and very old buildings. I saw mile markers – actually replicas of the old cast iron mile markers for the National Road. After some research, I learned that the National Road was begun in 1811 at Cumberland, Maryland, and finished in the 1830s when they ran out of funds near Vandalia, Illinois. It was built for horse-drawn wagon and buggy travel to the first American West region, which was what is now Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. This part of the country is so old that George Washington slept here – at Fort Necessity in 1754, where he also participated in the French and Indian War. The statehood coins have been out for a while now – you got Pennsylvania a few years ago, right? PA became a state in 1787. Ohio achieved statehood in 1803 – Chillicothe was the first capital and has some really old buildings and brick streets and sidewalks. So here’s some historical perspective. In 1803, Lewis and Clark began their expedition to see what was even further west. California became a state in 1850, and Colorado in 1876. Before I travel east again, I’m going to get me a good American history book and something about the ice age too. I want explanations for the Ohio mountains and the Great Lakes. P.S. I spent one night in a farmhouse built in 1843 that’s on the National Historic Register. It cost $16 and I had a private room. It was a hostel in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park south of Cleveland.
On this trip I also learned Ohio has islands and Indiana has a lakeshore. I’ve been to both. The Ohio islands are in Lake Erie – a village on one is named Put-In-Bay but no one knows why. A national monument there commemorates a naval battle there in 1813, during the War of 1812, between U.S. ships commanded by Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, and British ships. Perry and his troops won, after which he sent this message to General William Henry Harrison: “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.” Oh, and Indiana has not only a lakeshore but also lakeshore dunes. The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore on Lake Michigan is about 50 miles from downtown Chicago by train, and appears to be a popular weekend getaway place. The 84-space campground was full on Saturday night. I arrived on Friday and had to settle for a walk-in tent site, so quickly paid for two nights. Gave me a chance to read, write, and take some leisurely walks in the forest on the softest paths I’ve encountered because there’s sand below the grasses and leaves. I also climbed almost vertically up a dune named Mt. Baldy – that wasn’t leisurely but a darn good workout. Spectacular view from the top, though, of people lolling on the beach, swimming and boating in Lake Michigan, and hopefully staying far away from the nuclear power plant to the east.
Museums
The disappointing ones –
James Whitcomb Riley Museum, east of Indianapolis. Not much of an explanation of who he was or what he wrote, just copies of his books and some personal belongings. Riley (1849-1916) was known as The Hoosier Poet and wrote stuff like “When the Frost is on the Punkin,” “The Ole Swimmin’ Hole,” and “The Barefoot Boy.” There’s more about him on the Internet than in the museum.
Flatiron Building Museum, Brownsville, PA – their glossy brochure said it included a National Road Museum. It did not.
The really cool ones –
Merry-Go-Round Museum, Sandusky, Ohio. When I got to the center of town, I knew immediately which building this museum was in – the front was round! It had been the U.S. Post Office until it got outgrown. A docent gave a tour of the plentiful displays, and she was very enthusiastic and knowledgeable. A volunteer was in an open workshop painting a recently carved carousel horse that was to be auctioned off soon as a museum fund-raiser. And the tour ended with a ride on a merry-go-round. What’s not to love?
Rock and Roll Museum and Hall of Fame, Cleveland, Ohio. I spent 6 hours there, overloaded my brain with sights and sounds, and still didn’t see everything in depth. I liked the introductory film presentation so much I saw it twice. It began by asking the audience to imagine a time when there was no rock and roll music in America, then cut to a medley of bland ‘50s stuff like Que Sera, Hot Diggity (dog diggity boom what you do to me), Perry Como, Dean Martin – you get the idea. Then they show clips of performers singing blues and work songs, gospel, old-timey and bluegrass, Cajun, Texas swing, and so on. The segue to rock began with Elvis singing Mystery Train and Heartbreak Hotel, on through Buddy Holly, and ending with Chuck Berry singing Roll Over Beethoven (very appropriate!). It all simply emphasized to me why I am glad I came of age when this segue was taking place, and that I got so deeply involved in American roots music. We have a very, very rich musical heritage, and this museum displays a lot of it. I called son Michael after the Jimi Hendrix surround-sound experience just because I wanted to share what I was doing with someone I knew who would appreciate it. The visit was topped off by a special exhibit on The Who’s rock opera Tommy including a video of the 1970 performance at the Isle of Wight rock festival.
Religious Signs
Although the Menno-hof Amish-Mennonite Visitors Center in Shipshewana, IN is a museum, I’m including it in this category because it is about the history of Anabaptists – Amish, Mennonite and Hutterite peoples. Going there was a coin-toss for me – my other option was an RV/Motorhome museum in Elkhart, IN, but by mid-afternoon I knew I wouldn’t get there before it closed, so I stopped in Shipshewana. The subject interested me because, growing up in north-central Wisconsin, I often saw Amish families driving their horses and buggies. Also, my paternal grandfather’s family had been members of a related group, the Church of the Brethren (Dunkers). Well, I learned a lot in an hour and a half in the museum. The website is www.mennohof.org . If you think, as I did before visiting the museum, that these folks don’t use electricity – think again. It was a multi-media adventure, including a simulated tornado with wind blowing and the room shaking. Briefly, Hutterites practice communal living, Mennonites and Beachy Amish use modern conveniences (although they may use horses and buggies for economy – especially at today’s gas prices), and old order Amish are the strict non-electric folks. The Shipshewana, IN landscape is very flat, and everywhere I looked, I saw horses and buggies in parking lots and on the road (usually on the wide shoulder). They do all that they do, with the horses, clothes, and way of life, to show the world that they believe in their religion, which began around 1600 and includes pacifism.
More signs of religion on this trip –
In many small towns, the largest building is a huge church, sometimes built like a European cathedral. I couldn’t help wondering how it was paid for.
I heard Christian radio stations often, even commercials for Christian cruises.
Billboards with Bible verses, and Christian graffiti (Trust Jesus).
The group I ate dinner with at the Chillicothe, Ohio festival said grace before every meal.
Uncle Ray’s potato chip bags had uplifting stories and Bible verses on the back (www.unclerays.com) .
Things I would have missed if I’d taken the Ohio/Indiana Turnpike
In the book On the Road With Charles Kuralt, he writes: “Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.” In Blue Highways, William Least Heat Moon writes: “Life doesn’t happen along the interstates. It’s against the law.”
By traveling the “blue highways” from Cleveland to Sandusky, I accomplished the following:
Stopped at a laundromat and was engaged in conversation by the owner, a man who emigrated from Korea in 1967, liked classical music, played golf, and was very interested in my travels even though he couldn’t travel himself
Bought home-grown tomatoes from one of many stands by the side of the road
Drove through Ohio lakefront towns with big vacant brick industrial buildings (learned later this was steel mill and shipyard territory). Saw signs for social clubs for various ethnic groups such as Serbs and Slavs (learned later over 70 different nationality groups lived there).
Got Catherine the van’s oil changed by women (except for the guy in the pit). When I asked how it happened that mostly women worked there, the answer was “We just got hired on.”
Missed the billboards but saw these two signs:
Gorilla playing saxophone
with balloons
at your party
Convenience store sign: It’s a boy – 7 lbs 9 oz
People I would have liked to meet
The owner of the Duke of Oil in Hammond, Indiana. It’s an oil change business that was closed when I drove by.
The woman about 50-something driving a really big U-Haul truck with a dog in the passenger seat and towing a car with the bumper sticker “Dog is my co-pilot.”
Coming Attractions
September 2-5, visit Chicago with Meagan Finnegan
September 15-18, Starvy Creek Bluegrass Festival, Conway, MO
October 6-8, Roxboro, North Carolina, bluegrass festival
October 14-16, Bob Evans Farm Festival, Rio Grande, Ohio
Head back to California with many stops, to arrive back “home” perhaps mid-November
When I went on the road August 10 after a week in Pine Island, I had only these stops in mind:
Hobo convention, Britt, Iowa, August 11
Willow Folk Festival, northern Illinois, August 12-14
Trader Joe’s, Indianapolis, Indiana (had to stock up on soy milk and carrot juice!)
New Beginnings Bluegrass Festival, Chillicothe, Ohio, August 16-21
Rock and Roll Museum & Hall of Fame, Cleveland, Ohio
I accomplished all of the above, and then some. Here are some of the unexpected places I visited and things I learned since my last newsletter which stopped on August 7.
Even a vegetarian can have a good time at the Spam Museum in Austin, MN. (www.hormel.com/ and scroll to the bottom to click on Spam Museum and Spam Gift.) Yes, they answer the ingredients question and show the Monty Python skit (http://home.triad.rr.com/spamchef/spamskit.html).
The Mall of America (south of St. Paul, MN) was a lot more interesting to this non-shopper because I went with an 11-year-old boy. That boy was Sam, the youngest son of Cheryl and Greg Finnegan – my Pine Island hosts. When I offered to take him anywhere he wanted, he chose the Underwater Adventures Aquarium at the Mall of America (http://www.sharky.tv/). Our first underwater adventure began on the 60-mile drive up there. We noticed a huge black cloud ahead of us, and I couldn’t drive fast enough to miss the rain. Vicious torrents pelted down for 20-30 minutes, fogging up the inside of the windshield and obscuring my vision quite effectively. I hadn’t yet mastered the defogger, but learned since that I should have turned on the heat. Heck, it was already so hot it felt like a steam bath! Anyway, the rain subsided, Sam kept the windshield clear with paper towels, and we got to the Mall. I can blame myself actually – I had washed the van that morning. The aquarium was pretty cool, if a bit pricy. It features a 300 foot-long curved tunnel, complete with a moving walkway, that simulates a scuba diving adventure – the fishies, sharks and turtles were on the other side of glass walls that surrounded us on both sides and above. Since we got armbands, we went through it again after dinner. Our visit ended with a ride on the seven-story ferris wheel (there’s an amusement park in the center of the mall) and yes, we got stopped at the very top while they unloaded passengers. We used this vantage point to take a good look inside the fake dinosaur exhibit and scope out where the Lego place was. Among other displays, the Lego Imagination Center has big (5 or 6 feet tall) Lego sculptures of Harry Potter, and many dinosaurs, some with flashing eyes. Oh, and the drive home was uneventful – no rain.
A few days later, I drove Sam to his grandmother’s house in Heron Lake, MN, where I met Marge Finnegan and one of Sam’s cousins. Marge, who raised five boys on a farm and had never met a vegetarian, served a delicious dinner that included black bean salad with fresh cilantro (the first time she met cilantro too) and fresh corn on the cob. Then she taught me how to play two-deck canasta and we whomped Sam and his cousin.
I could only be at the hobo convention for the opening campfire-lighting ceremony and open stage on Thursday evening, and unfortunately the rain really put a damper on things. It had been raining off and on for three days so the open stage was cancelled. That was what I really wanted to see, the songs, stories, and whatever the performers came up with. While there was great camaraderie in the box car and food tent at the hobo jungle, and several people started friendly conversations with me, I opted to get back on the road and look for drier digs. I wanted to be at Willow early the next afternoon.
I ended up in Charles City, Iowa at the Lamplighter Motel, $30 for a room with a full-sized refrigerator and morning coffee in the lobby. I looked through the phone book and lo and behold, I was within walking distance of one of Iowa’s nine known Frank Lloyd Wright buildings. The Alvin Miller house, 1946, is a single story home on the banks of the Red Cedar River and not easy to see due to the trees around it. But I saw enough to recognize that distinctive Wright Usonian look. If I were keeping count of Wright buildings this trip, I think this would be the fourth. (As of August 28, I was counting on my second hand, and after the upcoming Chicago trip, I’ll have to start counting on my toes.)
Friendly Folks Everywhere
Willow Folk Festival is a very special event that I had previously attended three times with long-time friend Jon Calhoun, since passed away. I hadn’t attended since 1995, but I located the people we used to camp with, they welcomed me warmly, and I had a great time. Details to follow in a special edition newsletter just about music festivals. However, this observation fits in here. Willow is a very rural area between Galena and Rockford, Illinois, and whenever I drove or walked on the country roads here, the drivers in oncoming vehicles always waved. It’s so obvious I was a stranger – I drive a Honda and not a Ford or Chevy, it’s a van and not a pickup truck or big American sedan, and my antenna ornament is an alien head from Roswell, NM. The wave also happened in rural areas of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Ohio. It’s just plain friendliness.
The next evidence of midwest friendliness was at the Trader Joe’s in Indianapolis. I was on my last liter of soy milk, and this was the first TJ’s on this trip close enough to my route. While loading up my cart, an employee asked if I was finding everything I needed and I told him yes, that it was Trader Joe’s that I needed, and explained that I was from Santa Cruz, California yadayadayada. We chatted a bit, and when I was checking out, the store manager came over and said “So you’re from Santa Cruz, huh? I grew up in the bay area ... ” and we had a pleasant conversation, but most importantly, he gave me a list of all Trader Joe’s locations. I paid $1.49 for the TJ brand organic soy milk with no added ingredients except soy and filtered water (it’s $1.19 or $1.29 in California) but it was still cheaper and better than the name brand equivalent.
Upon arriving at the New Beginnings Bluegrass Festival in Chillicothe, Ohio on Tuesday, August 16 in time for the volunteer meeting and pizza feed, I was met with even more friendliness. They did not hold it against me that I was from California – in fact, California became my nickname for the duration of the festival. First Pete Peters, who is retired and works at bluegrass festivals almost every weekend (Florida during the winter), guided me to a primo campsite. He also kept checking on me throughout the festival to see if I was enjoying myself. Sure I was – I got invited to hang out at other camps, and to go out to dinner with a group of folks three nights in a row. At our last supper, I was inducted into the Broken String Club and presented with a broken guitar string from the band The Rarely Herd. And oh the delicious homestyle food – two firsts were fried green tomatoes (twice!) and sweet iced tea. More details about the festival in the aforementioned festival newsletter. My last festival will probably be the Bob Evans Farm Festival in southeast Ohio. (Bob Evans has a better-than-Denny’s restaurant chain east of the Mississippi.) Besides music, the demonstrations will include tractor square dancers, a lumberjack show, horseshoe tournament, border collie herding, and much more for three days. I’ll be meeting some of the Broken String Club gang there.
More Wright Stuff
When Dale Attias learned where I was in Ohio, she e-mailed back to say I was close to Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous Fallingwater, and that “As someone who has studied design for years, I can say unequivocally that it is the most beautiful home I’ve ever seen. Period.” When someone – especially Dale – talks like that, I listen. I was about 4 hours from Fallingwater near Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania, so I went there directly after the Chillicothe festival. On my way to the campground in Ohiopyle State Park (name means white frothy water for the whitecaps in the river), I passed a sign for Kentuck Knob, another Wright home. I saw them both. They were spectacular. Fallingwater, built in the late ‘30s, is the house built over a waterfall. See http://www.wpconline.org/ and click on Visit Fallingwater. Kentuck Knob is smaller, mid-50s Usonian style built of native fieldstone. The current owners are British royalty with lots of money, and the grounds are liberally sprinkled with their sculpture collection, including Claes Oldenburg’s Apple Core and a section of the Berlin Wall complete with original graffiti. See www.kentuckknob.com, also www.galenfrysinger.com/kentuck_knob_grounds.htm for splendiferous photos of the grounds and outdoor art work.
My 7th Wright building this trip was the Johnson Wax headquarters in Racine, WI. Yes I knew it was Sunday and they only gave tours on Saturdays, but I just had to see it. After all, I had never been so close before (18 miles round trip) even though I lived in Wisconsin the first 21 years of my life. I expected to be able to peek in the windows at the famous lily-pad columns and Wright-designed furniture, but the place was surrounded by a high brick wall and steel gates. Only the razor wire was missing. I got a few glimpses through the gates, snapped a few pics, and left with great disappointment. If you’re curious, google Johnson Wax and Wright – several sites have both interior and exterior photos.
A History Lesson
Driving into southwestern Pennsylvania from Ohio, through 12 miles of West Virginia and past Wheeling, was a real eye-opener. I hadn’t expected mountains in Ohio, but they began there and continued all the way to the Laurel Mountains south of Pittsburgh which is where I stopped to camp so I’m sure there’s more! That narrow strip of West Virginia between Ohio and PA was weird – there must be a good story there. I saw signs about the National Road, old toll houses, old taverns, old battlefields, and very old buildings. I saw mile markers – actually replicas of the old cast iron mile markers for the National Road. After some research, I learned that the National Road was begun in 1811 at Cumberland, Maryland, and finished in the 1830s when they ran out of funds near Vandalia, Illinois. It was built for horse-drawn wagon and buggy travel to the first American West region, which was what is now Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. This part of the country is so old that George Washington slept here – at Fort Necessity in 1754, where he also participated in the French and Indian War. The statehood coins have been out for a while now – you got Pennsylvania a few years ago, right? PA became a state in 1787. Ohio achieved statehood in 1803 – Chillicothe was the first capital and has some really old buildings and brick streets and sidewalks. So here’s some historical perspective. In 1803, Lewis and Clark began their expedition to see what was even further west. California became a state in 1850, and Colorado in 1876. Before I travel east again, I’m going to get me a good American history book and something about the ice age too. I want explanations for the Ohio mountains and the Great Lakes. P.S. I spent one night in a farmhouse built in 1843 that’s on the National Historic Register. It cost $16 and I had a private room. It was a hostel in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park south of Cleveland.
On this trip I also learned Ohio has islands and Indiana has a lakeshore. I’ve been to both. The Ohio islands are in Lake Erie – a village on one is named Put-In-Bay but no one knows why. A national monument there commemorates a naval battle there in 1813, during the War of 1812, between U.S. ships commanded by Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, and British ships. Perry and his troops won, after which he sent this message to General William Henry Harrison: “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.” Oh, and Indiana has not only a lakeshore but also lakeshore dunes. The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore on Lake Michigan is about 50 miles from downtown Chicago by train, and appears to be a popular weekend getaway place. The 84-space campground was full on Saturday night. I arrived on Friday and had to settle for a walk-in tent site, so quickly paid for two nights. Gave me a chance to read, write, and take some leisurely walks in the forest on the softest paths I’ve encountered because there’s sand below the grasses and leaves. I also climbed almost vertically up a dune named Mt. Baldy – that wasn’t leisurely but a darn good workout. Spectacular view from the top, though, of people lolling on the beach, swimming and boating in Lake Michigan, and hopefully staying far away from the nuclear power plant to the east.
Museums
The disappointing ones –
James Whitcomb Riley Museum, east of Indianapolis. Not much of an explanation of who he was or what he wrote, just copies of his books and some personal belongings. Riley (1849-1916) was known as The Hoosier Poet and wrote stuff like “When the Frost is on the Punkin,” “The Ole Swimmin’ Hole,” and “The Barefoot Boy.” There’s more about him on the Internet than in the museum.
Flatiron Building Museum, Brownsville, PA – their glossy brochure said it included a National Road Museum. It did not.
The really cool ones –
Merry-Go-Round Museum, Sandusky, Ohio. When I got to the center of town, I knew immediately which building this museum was in – the front was round! It had been the U.S. Post Office until it got outgrown. A docent gave a tour of the plentiful displays, and she was very enthusiastic and knowledgeable. A volunteer was in an open workshop painting a recently carved carousel horse that was to be auctioned off soon as a museum fund-raiser. And the tour ended with a ride on a merry-go-round. What’s not to love?
Rock and Roll Museum and Hall of Fame, Cleveland, Ohio. I spent 6 hours there, overloaded my brain with sights and sounds, and still didn’t see everything in depth. I liked the introductory film presentation so much I saw it twice. It began by asking the audience to imagine a time when there was no rock and roll music in America, then cut to a medley of bland ‘50s stuff like Que Sera, Hot Diggity (dog diggity boom what you do to me), Perry Como, Dean Martin – you get the idea. Then they show clips of performers singing blues and work songs, gospel, old-timey and bluegrass, Cajun, Texas swing, and so on. The segue to rock began with Elvis singing Mystery Train and Heartbreak Hotel, on through Buddy Holly, and ending with Chuck Berry singing Roll Over Beethoven (very appropriate!). It all simply emphasized to me why I am glad I came of age when this segue was taking place, and that I got so deeply involved in American roots music. We have a very, very rich musical heritage, and this museum displays a lot of it. I called son Michael after the Jimi Hendrix surround-sound experience just because I wanted to share what I was doing with someone I knew who would appreciate it. The visit was topped off by a special exhibit on The Who’s rock opera Tommy including a video of the 1970 performance at the Isle of Wight rock festival.
Religious Signs
Although the Menno-hof Amish-Mennonite Visitors Center in Shipshewana, IN is a museum, I’m including it in this category because it is about the history of Anabaptists – Amish, Mennonite and Hutterite peoples. Going there was a coin-toss for me – my other option was an RV/Motorhome museum in Elkhart, IN, but by mid-afternoon I knew I wouldn’t get there before it closed, so I stopped in Shipshewana. The subject interested me because, growing up in north-central Wisconsin, I often saw Amish families driving their horses and buggies. Also, my paternal grandfather’s family had been members of a related group, the Church of the Brethren (Dunkers). Well, I learned a lot in an hour and a half in the museum. The website is www.mennohof.org . If you think, as I did before visiting the museum, that these folks don’t use electricity – think again. It was a multi-media adventure, including a simulated tornado with wind blowing and the room shaking. Briefly, Hutterites practice communal living, Mennonites and Beachy Amish use modern conveniences (although they may use horses and buggies for economy – especially at today’s gas prices), and old order Amish are the strict non-electric folks. The Shipshewana, IN landscape is very flat, and everywhere I looked, I saw horses and buggies in parking lots and on the road (usually on the wide shoulder). They do all that they do, with the horses, clothes, and way of life, to show the world that they believe in their religion, which began around 1600 and includes pacifism.
More signs of religion on this trip –
In many small towns, the largest building is a huge church, sometimes built like a European cathedral. I couldn’t help wondering how it was paid for.
I heard Christian radio stations often, even commercials for Christian cruises.
Billboards with Bible verses, and Christian graffiti (Trust Jesus).
The group I ate dinner with at the Chillicothe, Ohio festival said grace before every meal.
Uncle Ray’s potato chip bags had uplifting stories and Bible verses on the back (www.unclerays.com) .
Things I would have missed if I’d taken the Ohio/Indiana Turnpike
In the book On the Road With Charles Kuralt, he writes: “Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.” In Blue Highways, William Least Heat Moon writes: “Life doesn’t happen along the interstates. It’s against the law.”
By traveling the “blue highways” from Cleveland to Sandusky, I accomplished the following:
Stopped at a laundromat and was engaged in conversation by the owner, a man who emigrated from Korea in 1967, liked classical music, played golf, and was very interested in my travels even though he couldn’t travel himself
Bought home-grown tomatoes from one of many stands by the side of the road
Drove through Ohio lakefront towns with big vacant brick industrial buildings (learned later this was steel mill and shipyard territory). Saw signs for social clubs for various ethnic groups such as Serbs and Slavs (learned later over 70 different nationality groups lived there).
Got Catherine the van’s oil changed by women (except for the guy in the pit). When I asked how it happened that mostly women worked there, the answer was “We just got hired on.”
Missed the billboards but saw these two signs:
Gorilla playing saxophone
with balloons
at your party
Convenience store sign: It’s a boy – 7 lbs 9 oz
People I would have liked to meet
The owner of the Duke of Oil in Hammond, Indiana. It’s an oil change business that was closed when I drove by.
The woman about 50-something driving a really big U-Haul truck with a dog in the passenger seat and towing a car with the bumper sticker “Dog is my co-pilot.”
Coming Attractions
September 2-5, visit Chicago with Meagan Finnegan
September 15-18, Starvy Creek Bluegrass Festival, Conway, MO
October 6-8, Roxboro, North Carolina, bluegrass festival
October 14-16, Bob Evans Farm Festival, Rio Grande, Ohio
Head back to California with many stops, to arrive back “home” perhaps mid-November
posted by Joan McCarthy at 8:49 PM
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