This is the continuation of my recounting of my 38th excursion across Ohio in September 2014. The first half of my trip consisted primarily of an exploration of the southern Ohio town of Chillicothe. After I had my fill of the Chill, I headed southeast out of town into the rural Appalachian woods of Ohio, always a treat for me.
We humans are a social species, which I guess why one of the most comforting feelings we can experience is the feeling of belonging. I’ll give you an example of what I mean. I was born in northeastern Pennsylvania, where my father is from, but my parents moved our family to El Paso, Texas, where my mother is from, when I was only four years old.
From the time I was four until the time I was sixteen years old, I never saw any of my father’s family: my grandmother, my aunt and various uncles, their spouses and children, not to mention a variety of cousins, great-uncles and great-aunts, godparents, and the like. We simply couldn’t afford a cross-country trip like that. But when I was a teenager, I had an opportunity to go to West Point, New York, for what was essentially a week-long attempt by the USMA to recruit national merit scholars. We arranged the trip so that I could travel first to Wilkes-Barre and spend time with the family there.
I was nervous about that, as my only contact with any of these folks was through scratchy long-distance phone calls and the occasional holiday card. But to my relief, surprise, joy, call it what you will, from the moment I landed and reconnected with these long-lost relatives, I felt like they were family. I felt like I belonged. Is that DNA? Luck? Maybe we Pitcavages simply have charisma oozing out of our pores. In any case, it was a wonderful feeling.
In 2014, I made many trips to Chicago for work and, when possible, tried to bring along a camera in order to take photographs during the Ohio portion of the trip. In early September 2014, I made one such trip. Time pressures allowed me little time for back-roads journeying on the trip, but I did manage to take a precious few shots, most centered around an interesting abandoned homestead. I present them here, without any thematic or pseudo-philosophic commentary. Count your blessings.
One of the easiest ways to spot when a historian does not know something is to look for the language they use to try to hide that fact. For example, the sentence “Undoubtedly, George Washington was angry when he got the letter” actually means “I have no idea whatsoever how Washington felt, but I’m going with ‘mad.’” Undoubtedly is one of the most common ways historian admit ignorance, but they have many similar stock phrases, all of which basically boil down to “this is my guess.” The fact is, though, that it is hard to know stuff. Any historian worth his or her salt will be painfully aware of all the little (or not so little) gaps of knowledge in anything they write. Sometimes the line beyond the gaps goes pretty straight, so it is not too hard to leap the gap and still be on the right path. But sometimes you just fall into the gap.
Unearthed Ohio 