Unearthed Ohio

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Excursion 7, Part 4 (The Tin Trojans)

In which our intrepid hero encounters Trojan horses of a most unusual kind…

Let me declare flat out that unexpected pleasures are the best pleasures. A gift is better if you don’t know what it is, better still if unanticipated. Case in point: twenty years ago, a local movie theater held a week-long series of Hong Kong films. This was long before Americans knew who Jackie Chan was and Hong Kong cinema was known primarily to cinephiles. I myself had never seen a Hong Kong film at that point, so I decided to go see one of the movies. This was the 1993 film The Legend of Fong Sai-Yuk. I knew absolutely nothing about this film—and this was before the World Wide Web—so I found myself in a situation that I pretty much never am in, going to see a movie completely blind about it. I didn’t know the cast, the plot, the concept, nothing. To my delight and surprise, the movie, an action-comedy, turned out to be extremely entertaining. Because I had no expectations for the film at all (I didn’t even know it would be a comedy), the fact that it turned out to be pretty decent made it even better, because it was so unexpected. Even the smallest pleasures get magnified when they come unannounced.

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July 21, 2013

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Excursion 7, Part 3 (Cafes on the Left, Left, Left Bank)

In which our intrepid hero discovers a saintly town…

One thing I discovered very soon after moving to Ohio was that Ohio is a state that steals place names. This is true of many areas of the country, no doubt, but it wasn’t true where I grew up. Place names near me included El Paso, Las Cruces, Canutillo, Anthony, Fabens, Alamagordo, Truth or Consequences (well, that was stolen from something, but not a place), and so forth. But in Ohio? We have Toledo and Moscow and Athens and Brooklyn and Cambridge and London and Dublin and Geneva and Macedonia and Ontario and Oxford and Toronto and many others—none of them even modest enough to throw a “New” in front of their theft. The one that gets me the most, though, is Rio Grande, Ohio, because locals don’t pronounce it the right way, they pronounce it “Rye-Oh.” As someone who used to ride a horse along the actual Rio Grande, that grabs my goat by the balls and twists.

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July 19, 2013

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Excursion 7, Part 2 (Urban Urbana)

In which our intrepid hero encounters a county seat…

What makes you love a place? I grew up in El Paso, Texas, and though I have not lived there in over a quarter century, I am still possessive and protective of the place. When I left Texas in 1988 to move to Ohio to go to graduate school, I really did not know what to expect. Having grown up in the west, I had a number of prejudices against the eastern United States. To the extent I knew anything about Ohio, I knew that it got very cold there in the winter and humid in the summer and that the state was part of the “rust belt.” I also knew that it had none of the grandeur of western geography. It had no mountains, no gorges, no big waterfalls. When I arrived in Columbus, Ohio, I was pleasantly surprised (except about the humidity, which is indeed nasty). But between then and now I somehow moved from being pleasantly surprised to loving the state. I can’t say how exactly Ohio started to grow on me, but I know it started early on and I was soon defending my adopted state from the disapproving remarks of some of my stuck-up fellow graduate students. I came to love the diversity of Ohio, the quiet beauty of the Midwest, the little places. Over the years, more and more, it just seemed like home.

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July 19, 2013

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Excursion 7, Part 1 (The Anchorhead of Ohio)

In which our intrepid hero embarks upon a journey to the mythical land of Troy…

Everybody who has ever seen the movie Star Wars knows the city of Mos Eisley, even if the name is not familiar. That’s the city on Tattooine that Luke and Ben and the droids go to that has the funky bar with all the aliens. It’s where they meet Han and Chewie and from whence they lit out on the Millennium Falcon. But you know what? It’s not the only place on Tattooine. Brief references in the movie tell the viewer about another place, a much less exotic place, called Anchorhead. It’s the place where all the moisture farmers go to buy a new clutch. It’s a farm town. Nothing happens there; it is only a place from which people depart. “I can take you as far as Anchorhead,” Luke tells Obi-Wan. “You can get a transport there to Mos Eisley or wherever you’re going.” It’s a Greyhound Bus stop. Well, Ohio has its Anchorheads, too.

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July 7, 2013

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Excursion 6, Part 5 (A Barn Doomed to Disappointment)

In which our intrepid hero is reminded that the world is always changing…

It’s amazing how very different we can feel depending on whether or not we are going somewhere or returning from somewhere. The leaving is filled with expectation—hopefully a happy, excited sort of expectation, but we all know we sometimes leave towards destinations we dread. The return, though, is usually completely different. Sometimes we are simply anxious to get home and it doesn’t even matter what is around us—we have only that one thought in mind: GET HOME. Sometimes we are more relaxed about it and can enjoy the journey, understanding that at its end is the comfort and familiarity of home. I remember once, when I was in high school, returning home in the darkness from some interminable bus ride from somewhere in west Texas. I had a Walkman with me and was playing Simon & Garfunkel’s Concert in Central Park. When the song “Homeward Bound” played, it hit me like a ton of bricks. As I’ve grown older (and am now pretty close to the half century mark), the song has only become more powerful to me and if I ever hear it while I am coming back from a long trip I get quite melancholic.

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July 7, 2013

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Excursion 6, Part 4 (The Return of the Urn)

In which our intrepid hero re-encounters a persistent mystery…

An interesting thing happened to me the other day. I was going on another excursion and had to pass through the town of Coshocton, Ohio, which happens to be a town in which I spent some time on this excursion as well (see Excursion 6, Part 3 as well as this post). I passed through Coshocton from a different direction and for a different purpose, and yet somehow the choices that I made in terms of streets to turn on managed to take me past the same old industrial buildings I had seen on my first trip and past the same urns (see below) I had passed by on my first trip. Although completely unintentionally, my brain had decided to take me on the same turns and I ended up in the same places. It occurs to me that this is a useful analogy to our own lives: all too frequently we think we are starting anew, but we end up back in the same old spots, despite all intentions.

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Mark

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July 7, 2013

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Excursion 6, Part 3 (Builders of Special Machinery)

In which our intrepid hero comes across a graveyard of industry…

It is my opinion that travel is infinitely better when you are in control of the travel. I hate being a passenger, whether in a bus, tax, train or plane. I don’t like not being able to make decisions, I don’t like not being able to choose my travel companions, I don’t like looking out the side of something, as opposed to looking out the front. When I was a kid, I did not like long trips at all—and why should I have liked them, stuck in the back seat for hours. But put me behind the wheel of a car and it is very different. Then, even when I am still not the master of my fate it still seems as if I have a role to play. Give me a traffic jam over a long runway wait any old day of the week.

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July 7, 2013

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Excursion 6, Part 2 (The Deception of Distance)

In which our intrepid hero encounters dead trees, dead cars and dead buildings…

One of the most interesting things about taking back-country drives is that the scale of everything changes. The distance scale, for example, grows enormously. Ohio is a relatively small state, and I am centrally located within it, so theoretically I can reach even the most distant parts of the state in three and a half hours. But that is making a bee-line on a highway. Once you start driving on curvy, back-country roads, especially driving relatively slowly to spot potential subjects for photographs (and stopping on occasion to actually take them), 20 miles somehow becomes a great distant, not a short jaunt. Sixty miles is a huge distance. On the other hand, the time scale slows down. Because you are in no particular hurry, and paying attention to your surroundings rather than the clock, time passes quickly for you. The combination of these two means that you can spend many, many hours in a vehicle and discover that you have really never driven more than 60 miles away from your starting point (though your total mileage may be much greater).

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July 7, 2013

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Excursion 6, Part 1 (Passing Through Linden)

In which our intrepid hero drives on Cleveland rather than to it…

My sixth excursion was a trip primarily in northeast central Ohio. Rather than take the quick way out of town, I deliberately headed north out of Columbus on Cleveland Avenue, so that I could take some pictures of Linden on the way out. Linden (a neighborhood in Columbus, divided into North Linden and South Linden) is considered one of the “worst” areas of Columbus (“the Bottoms” in Franklinton is right up there, too). South Linden is considered worse. Income levels are about half of the Columbus average and crime is higher, too. Cleveland Avenue is the main “drag” that passes north through and bisects Linden. One can readily see signs of blight driving up Cleveland Avenue. There have been various attempts to reinvigorate Linden, especially South Linden, but they have had mixed success at best. And yet, it is important to note that “blight” is relative. Let me illustrate what I mean.

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Mark

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June 19, 2013

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Excursion 5 (4/27/2013)

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Excursion 5, Part 3 (We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone)

In which our intrepid hero literally discovers the Theory of Everything…

One of the odd things about dilapidated or ruined buildings is how they juxtapose with the seasons. If you look at a ruined building in the winter, the landscape surrounding it is as grey and colorless as the building itself; lifelessness upon lifelessness. However, if you come across the same building in the summer (in Ohio), you will instead see a picture of contrasts: a gray, lifeless shambles of a building surrounded by vibrant greenery. Indeed, it may not even be surrounded but invaded by such greenery. In this case, lifelessness confronts life itself.