The Morgantowner: Coshocton County, Ohio

It's been a few weeks since I visited Coshocton, so maybe my memory is already fuzzy. I left the weekend before the Morgantown City Council election. I was sick of the whole thing: the corruption that might never be investigated, that I had paid lots of money for ads hat were running on Rush Limbaugh's radio program, the snarkiness of the local talk show hosts, the candidates who ran as an informal group two years ago, but didn't want to work together this year, my opponent who signed up as a write-in six weeks into the process- all of it. Coshocton was my next county anyway, so I left town.

Cindy at the gym, who gave me my workout routine and has line dancing classes, told me that she and her husband had been to Coshocton on vacation, to see Amish crafts and be out in the country. There are fewer than 40,000 people in the county, and since it is 158 miles from Morgantown, it's worth one night out. I left Saturday, the 27th of April, technically the eighth day of Passover, but Reform Jews don't necessarily observe the eighth day. Anyway, traveling without Joe to another county where two-thirds of the people voted for the current President, I put on my white, possibly straight and Christian front. That's a privilege that others don't have, and I use it. Still, Coshocton is better than other places with similar voting patterns. Some counties are one-third African-American, especially in Virginia or Maryland, and if two-thirds of their voters pulled the lever for the President, it means all the white people voted for him. In this county, with an almost all-white population, it means things are more balanced.

I booked a hotel in a chain I had never heard of that seems to only exist in Ohio. It's near a river on the edge of downtown, so I thought it might be scenic, but it's mostly a commercial and industrial area with gas stations and fast food joints. They did have a bluegrass party Saturday night in the hotel meeting room. I didn't go, but it sounded fun.

It was warm and sunny when I arrived, but windy. A storm moved in and it rained later in the day and into the next day. My first sight in the county was near Plainfield, where a farm was up for auction. Cars were parked along the road, and I saw some bearded men in Amish clothing, white shirts, dark pants and suspenders.

There is a Main St. Historic District, mostly empty stores, as in much of Ohio, and a grand old courthouse. There was a furniture store across from the courthouse, with a table outside filled with stuff, including some CDs, cassettes, DVDs and VHS tapes. A sign said "Everything on this table 25 cents." I found a four-CD set from Reader's Digest called "Remembering the '60s." No rock and roll but hit records from Lawrence Welk, Pat Boone, Al Martino and The Letterman, but also Louis Armstrong, The Association, Brenda Lee and Mama Cass. I took it in to the woman at the register and said "This is four CDs." she said "It says 25 cents, so if you want it, that's it." A great bargain.

The former Newberry store on Main St., vacant for decades, has a mural with quotes from townspeople about there memories, things like "Me and my friends used to get tuna sandwiches at the lunch counter on Saturdays" or "My mom worked here for many years. She cried when the store closed."

Being my usual forgetful self, I didn't bring my phone cord or the notebook where I made notes on what to see in Coshocton. I found a shopping center, the closest to a mall in town, near the hotel. It is U-shaped, with lots of parking, no greenery, and several empty stores. I ducked into Subway for lunch, and as I was fumbling for change, the young woman at the cashier chatted me up in a surprisingly friendly way. There was a Verizon store open, next to the closed Radio Shack. I wanted to get a new phone cord, but instead I got a USB-USC cable. Long story. The HYM (handsome young man) who helped me wanted my name and email for their records, which I didn't want to give him. I paid cash, and he printed up a receipt with, as it turned out, his own name and address on it. He put the cash in his wallet, and said "I'll see you later." I thought it was flirtatious, although I know 22 year olds can't be flirting with me. Still I said. "It could happen." It didn't. I bought a new notebook at the dollar store in the same shopping center.

Roscoe Village is a historic district across the river and the old Ohio and Erie Canal. It looks like it predates Coshocton. There are touristy shops and people dressed up impersonating those from the early nineteenth century. You have to pay for a tour of that, which I didn't do. There is a highway separating the district from the canal now, which is too bad. I looked around there, but the weather was cooling and it was starting to rain. Since it ws getting to be nap time, I headed back to the hotel.

Many towns have Chinese buffet restaurants. The one in Coshocton is in the shopping center I visited earlier and I went there for dinner. It was not as good as most of them, but crowded anyway and I had enough to eat. I drove out before dark east and west of Coshocton, to Warsaw in the west, a settlement named for a rebellion by Polish patriots against Russian rule in the 1830s, and west to Lafayette, where there were two historic houses off the road that I couldn't find. I came back to Coshocton by way of Canal Lewis, a little suburb with a 19th century house.

I walked around town in the morning in cold drizzle looking for places on the National Register of Historic Places, many of which had been torn down. I found some interesting architecture, often vacant. Coshocton is a sad town.

I was as usual, glad to get away, however briefly. I found the few people I spoke to be friendly, and the area, surrounded by hills, but mostly flat with many flooded waterways, to be interesting. I had breakfast in the hotel Sunday and was home by 1 P.M., before Joe finished Hebrew school.