In mid-May 2014 I had to travel to Chicago for work. I brought my camera with me so that, on the way home, I might be able to take a few photographs once I crossed back into Ohio. As I actually did so, I found myself in front of a major spring storm heading east from Indiana into Ohio. I wasn’t storm-chasing—the storm was chasing me. As I drove home, this game me some nice opportunities to turn around and take some photographs of the oncoming storm. Which I now present to you.
Here we pick up midway through my trip to western Ohio, hugging the Indiana border closely without accidentally crossing over and touching something Hoosierish. Actually, on this beautiful April day in 2014, I was just about to start circling back to the northeast. It was great driving weather, especially since in Ohio April showers are indeed a thing. Birds were chirping, groundhogs were grunting, and even bales of hay seemed to have their own personal message to me…
Western Ohio is essentially the stereotypical place that non-Ohioans tend to think of when they envision Ohio: a flat expanse of farmland punctuated by the occasional town or city. Most of Ohio doesn’t actually look like that, but western Ohio does fit the bill. If you like plenty of sky in which to view approaching thunderstorms, western Ohio is your destination. It is not that populated; really, you have Dayton to the south and Toledo way up in the northwest, and that’s about it in terms of cities (Cincinnati is another world). In 2014-2015, I would have opportunity to traverse chunks of western Ohio because I had to travel a lot to Chicago for work. Each time I would go, I’d take another route so that I could try and find some things to photograph. On April 19, 2014, I was travelling in the region on a Saturday, just to see what sights were to be seen.
It is a shame that Appalachian Ohioans cannot replicate some of the successes that West Virginians have had bringing federal money to help their struggling state. But the problem is that all of West Virginia lies in Appalachia, while only part of Ohio does. None of the power centers of Ohio, all urban or suburban, are in Appalachia; the region does not have the population to have political clout nor money to purchase politicians’ attention. With no real economy, plus underfunded and under-attended schools, the region cannot attract money from the state of Ohio, to say nothing of the federal government. The region is a fairly equal mix of “red” and “blue” counties, but neither party pays attention to them, Republicans because they care nothing for the poor and Democrats because they know and care little about the rural white poor.
In which our intrepid hero chances upon the manse macabre…
A is for Amy, who fell down the stairs.
B is for Basil, assaulted by bears.
C is for Clara, who wasted away.
D is for Desmond, thrown out of a sleigh.
Those are the first few lines of the Gashlycrumb Tinies, an alphabet book consisting of 26 different children meeting untimely ends. The Tinies are the work of Edward Gorey, a rather amazing author and artist, whose distinctive visual style was a sort of goth Edwardiana. I first encountered Gorey in high school and fell in love with his dark wit and unique artistic style.
Little did I know that a bit more than 30 years after I discovered Gorey that I would encounter a mansion that looked as if it came right out of one of his books.
In which our intrepid ventures out on Christmas morn…
In November 2013, I finally purchased my first DSLR camera, a Canon EOS 70D, something I had been itching to do for several months at that point, although the Canon Powershot SX50 HS superzoom camera that I had been using is in some ways better suited for roadside photography. But I felt it was time for me to step up.
Work and the Polar Vortex combined to prevent me from taking the camera on a test ride for some weeks, but one possibility did intrigue me: going on on Christmas day.
In which our intrepid hero passes motorcars and motor hotels to reach the shores of Lake Erie…
One day, when my sister and I were little, we were playing in the backyard of my grandparents’ house in El Paso. We got a little bored and were wondering what to do when I had a brainstorm. I went inside and brought out a spiral notebook—I almost always had one with me, because I loved to draw, even at that early age—and on a page of that notebook, I drew a treasure map, snaking around the outside of my grandparents’ house. It had a dotted line for the adventurer to follow and even a big X at the place where the treasure would be. When I was done, my sister and I started following the map, tracing that dotted line until finally we came to the place on the map marked by the X.
And you know what? There was no treasure there! Despite the fact that it was clearly marked on the map, there was no treasure in the actual spot. And I learned a valuable lesson that day: you make your own treasure.
In which our intrepid hero gets to dwell on dwellings…
Are you a home orphan? By that, I don’t mean homeless, but do you no longer have ties to the home in which you grew up? Some of us can easily go back to the home of our youths, because other relatives, typically parents, may still live there. You can revisit your old room, for example. But not me. My parents sold my childhood home in 1988 or so, the year I graduated from college and moved to Ohio.
I grew up in a house on 2624 Hawick, El Paso, Texas. This was a subdivision with streets named on Irish themes built in the late 1950s. My house was built in 1959. It was a tiny house, three bedrooms but only around 1,000 square feet or so. My mother was from El Paso, my father from Pennsylvania. They lived in Pennsylvania after getting married but in 1970 they moved back to El Paso. I was four years old. We stayed at my grandparents’ house until my parents bought the home on Hawick.
In which our intrepid hero looks at the past and the passed…
Death comes to us all in the end, but you never know how news of the deaths of others will affect you. Although I mourned their passing, the actual deaths of neither of my maternal grandparents caused me true sorrow, because in both cases, the circumstances of their passing meant that death, when it came, was something of a blessing. The relief of their suffering outweighed the sorrow of their absence.
The circumstances of death thus play a large role in how deaths affects us.
Unearthed Ohio 