I visited Columbus and Delaware in Ohio Sunday to Thursday. I don't expect anyone to change the name of these cities, but it's been suggested. Delaware is the name of both the city and county due north of Columbus and Columbus is the largest city in Franklin County, and the state capital of Ohio.
Columbus felt comfortable right away, a city that reminds me a little of my native Baltimore, with row houses and a large population of Black people and Jews. But Monday morning, listening to NPR in the car, the local news had a segment about how the Republican-dominated legislature had divvied up the four Democratic-voting cities (Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Toledo) to keep Democrats from representing Democratic voters. Part of Columbus was thrown into a district with Trumpian traitor Jim Jordan. Mike DeWine, the supposedly-moderate Republican governor, was on the redistricting commission and approved this plan. Maybe I should stay in Morgantown. As a friend said "Count on America getting meaner and stupider over the next ten years."
The weather in Ohio was beautiful every day I was there, in the sixties and sunny, perfect for touring, but at least ten degrees above the average high, so not good for the planet. I looked around downtown Sunday afternoon. I found the state capitol building and a historic house. There were lots of signs saying "Downtown Columbus is open!" I'm sure the worst of the COVID pandemic was devastating to business. There are lots of restaurants downtown, most closed on Sunday. I liked that there are porta-potties scattered around downtown.
U.S. 40, Broad Street east of downtown, is the main east-west local road, and I found a synagogue near downtown on Broad. Their website said they would have an online weekday prayer service Sunday night at 5:30. I tuned in, and they were excited that I was the tenth person, because they need ten to do a complete service. More people came in after me. They counted women for the ten and used a Conservative movement prayerbook. The afternoon and evening services run together, and they followed Conservative movement customs. My name was on my Zoom pic, and although I was glad to be there, I was disappointed that no one asked who I was.
The desk clerk when I checked in at The Usual Chain was a dark-skinned woman in a Muslim head covering. The motel was in an isolated spot, near The Ohio Expo Center, which hosts the state fair and, as their website says "five of the top 10 annual events in Columbus." It was idle when I was there, which made the motel cheap, but meant there was only a chain fast-food place within easy walking distance. The clerk recommended a place near Ohio State University, not all that far, but the directions were difficult. She and I got to talking, and I found out that she was a refugee from Somalia, got out to Kenya as a child with her family, and then to Prince George's County, Maryland, where my sister lives. She graduated from the same high school my nephew went to, probably ten years earlier. The restaurant was one of three similar places I visited around Columbus, large, with people mostly unmasked, televisions all around the walls tuned to sports events. At this one, this sport was football with the Los Angeles Chargers. Los Angeles Chargers? They were in San Diego. I looked it up. There is a new stadium where Hollywood Park Race Track used to be in Inglewood, where two football teams play. I had no idea. Los Angeles didn't have even one football team when I left, and I don't think most people cared. The Rose Bowl in Pasadena sold out for soccer games, but "fútbol americano" was never popular.
I decided to spend a day in the city of Columbus, visiting ten historic places, a synagogue and a shopping center. I also had an address for a bookstore, and some record stores, where I had hoped to score some of the seven CDs left to find from my project of collecting the two hundred top-selling CDs from 2000-2009, according to Billboard magazine. We all have our obsessions.
I started my day at Ohio State University, just west of my motel. It's a beautiful campus, lined with trees clothed in their fall finery. I found a paleontological museum in Orton Hall, with bones of dinosaurs and a description of how Central Ohio looked millions of years ago. I could have spent the whole day on campus.
Next, I headed to the south end of the city, looking for "Hartman Stock Farm Historic District." I wasn't sure I saw it. There were mines with ponds on the west side of U.S. 23, and what looked like empty land on the east side. There was one old building, a small brick house. I learned that this was once a 5,000 acre farm, and that what I saw was possibly a foreman's house, most of the other structures being torn down. I stopped at a Wal-Mart because I needed a bathroom, then headed back up into town,
I visited German Village, a beautiful restored neighborhood south of downtown. That's where the bookstore I looked up is located. I found The Midnight Library, a book I thought was on last year's "Best Fiction of 2020" from The Washington Post (it wasn't) and bought that. Goodreads voters called it the best novel of 2020, which is where I might have seen it. I've finished twenty-one of the fifty novels on The Washington Post's list, but the new list for 2021 may be out tomorrow or next week. Should I continue reading from this list or move on to the new list?
I found a few places downtown, then headed east. The older upscale neighborhoods are east of downtown along Broad Street. Some parts of the street are rundown now, but on some parts, the mansions are well-kept. I took some pics, and although I planned to go back to the Arboretum and walk around some of the parks, I didn't.
It took a long time to find Easton Town Center, my goal for lunch. I finally pulled over and looked at a map on my phone. There was a much easier way to go, so I caught up with that route. Easton is an enormous upscale center, somewhat like The Grove in Los Angeles, only much bigger, with upscale stores like Nordstrom, and also an indoor mall. It was close to one and I was hungry. I thought I would go into a Turkish restaurant, until I saw the prices on the menu outside. Around the corner was a fast food place, like Panera only fancier. I got a small chicken bowl with dressing and a grilled cheese sandwich. "Small" was inaccurate. Both the sandwich and salad were enormous, and they gave me a strawberry dipped in chocolate with my order. I walked down to the enclosed mall, where there is a Graeter's ice cream store. I was introduced to Graeter's in Cincinnati, when Joe and I visited that city for his rabbi convention in 2019. I only had a single scoop of pumpkin ice cream. I am unrepentant.
I noted the huge difference between Wal-Mart south of town, German Village, and Easton Town Center. The people at Wal-Mart were getting by, barely, I could tell from the attitudes, the old Pontiacs in the parking lot, and the way the store is basically a warehouse. It's huge and sells everything, so I can see going there for one-stop shopping. German Village is an old neighborhood, restored, with smaller stores, non-chain places, and gift shops. Easton is also huge, but expensive and upscale. It's a place to buy new designer clothes retail (the horror!) and to be seen as well-to-do. I don't shop at Wal-Mart, but I could see where I might have had there been one in central Los Angeles thirty years ago, and I used to put on one of my two good outfits and take the bus to Century City where I had saved up to have lunch outdoors, in a place like Easton Town Center. German Village is the kind of place I like to visit, and as I did, go to the discount book store.
I headed back to the neighborhood near Ohio State where two record stores were located. One didn't carry CDs at all, and the other had a few, but not what I was looking for. I can't buy more vinyl; I have no place to put more records, and barely room for CDs. I wonder sometimes what will become of my vast recorded music library when I'm gone, or how much I could sell or give away if we ever move.
I finally made it back to the motel around five and slept for an hour. I didn't want a big dinner, so I looked up where there was a chain subshop, or a chain donut place where I might get a bagel. The donut shop was a seven-minute drive, so I took that. It was in a convenience store which had both the subs and the donut place, which only had donuts, no bagels. I went for the sub. I tuned in at 6:30 to the Mon County Democratic Party monthly meeting. This is my natural peer group in Morgantown.
I didn't go out again when the meeting was over after eight, but plotted out Tuesday, where I planned to visit five other places in Franklin County, two historic places per city.
The places were Canal Winchester, Washington Township, Worthington, Dublin, and Westerville. These were the places with the most listings on the National Register of Historic Places. I could have picked one city or township and found ten or fifteen sites, but this seemed more interesting.
Barnhardt- Bolenbaugh House is from 1908 and on a quiet main street in Canal Winchester, at the southern end of Franklin County. Part of the town is in Fairfield County. The house looks like many of the house in South Park and Chancery Hill in Morgantown. I missed the second house, because I thought it was in Lithopolis, an even smaller, tourist-oriented town south of Canal Winchester. The address I had existed in both places.
Barnhardt-Bolenbaugh House, 1908, Canal Winchester
Canal Winchester is near US Route 33, as is Washington Township in the northwest corner of Franklin County. I followed US 33 north through downtown Columbus and along the Scioto River to Washington Township, just west of Dublin. Again, I only found one of the two places I was looking for, the J.L. Hamilton residence, built as a rural schoolhouse between 1860 and 1870.
There was lots of new commercial development out there on the edge of Franklin County. I stopped in to a chain Mexican place for lunch and a bathroom. Someone came out of the men's room, so I went in. The toilet was clogged with paper towels, so I walked out. They also had the system used by many places where they don't take your order at a counter, but you have to use a touch-screen. Not my style. Across the parking lot was one of those fancier beer-and-big-screen TV sports bars. I ordered a chicken parmigiana sandwich with spaghetti as a side instead of fries. The sandwich was enormous, and fried, but I ate all of it anyway. The booth had pictures of members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. My booth had Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith. The pictures were all at least fifty years old. The young man who served me was surprised to hear that the members of Aerosmith are all close to my age. He had only heard of Led Zeppelin. I wrote on napkin that he should listen to "Gold Dust Woman" by Fleetwood Mac to get to know that group. The piped in music was from the 1980s, including covers of 1960s soul music. I also recommended earlier versions of the songs to him. I can't help it.
Next to the restaurant was a store from our phone carrier. Joe and I have new phones that will work on 5G, whatever that is. My new phone never worked right, and I suspected it was because they had transferred everything over from our old phones, practically relics from the Paleolithic. I had done some things that were not helpful to my old phone. I can't explain it. The problem was that when I pulled up "camera" or "messages" instead of just giving me those, it asked a lot of questions that I couldn't answer. The first young man who looked at it couldn't figure it out. We waited for the boss, also under twenty-five, to finish with another customer to help out. The background music in this store was from the 1950s, pre-rock and roll, and it turned out that was the boss's idea. He had slicked back light brown hair and a little moustache, a wool scarf around his neck. He looked like a Parisian roué from a French Nouvelle Vague film of the late 1950s. We chatted a bit while he figured out what the problem was with the phone, which he eventually did, and since then everything has worked. He told me he lives in Delaware with a wife, and said it is the best place on Earth. Delaware County was Day Three of this trip, so I was anticipating great things.
My next stop was Dublin, one of the larger suburban towns, which extends north into Delaware County. The Artz House was built about 1870 as a private home near the center of Dublin. It is now a restaurant. There is a beautiful modern branch of the Columbus library across the street with a café on the lower level. I'm jealous they we don't have something like it in Morgantown. I found the Asher Brand House, a large brick house with Victorian features, also from around 1870, on the edge of Dublin.
The Demas Adams House, from 1818, sits on the historic public square in the town of Worthington. The Aurora Buttles House seems to be off a Main Street and hard to find. Instead I walked down High St., an upscale commercial area in the center of Worthington and found Worthington Inn, part of the city's historic district. Built in 1810 as a home, there were additions and remodeling over the years. From the outside it looks late nineteenth century. There is a restaurant, condominiums and offices in the building now.
Westerville is east of the other towns I visited in the north end of the county. I found the Akire House, now used as office space. It was built by Garrit Sharp, a local Methodist, who was active in the Underground Railroad, smuggling escaped slaves north through Ohio. I also visited Otterbein University in Westerville. I photographed the Carnegie Library at Otterbein, from about 1904, now used as the college admissions office.
Carnegie Library, Westerville, 1904, now the admissions office for Otterbein University
I drove back through Columbus on Ohio Route 3, Cleveland Avenue, through some of the less affluent parts of Columbus. I'm always glad to see all of a city, even the parts you're not supposed to see. I napped briefly before my phone dinged me to tell me I had a meeting at 7. I visited our local chain supermarket, stocking up on cottage cheese, individual servings of less-sugary breakfast cereal, milk and an orange, and feasted on them as my meeting started. It was a campaign kick-off for a favorite state delegate. I got to sleep at a reasonable hour.
Wednesday was "Delaware County" today. This was the trip I canceled the second week in March 2020 as the first COVID-19 cases showed up. I picked 10 historic places from the National Register, plus the old county courthouse. I usually look for a synagogue, but in this county of over 200,000 people, there is no synagogue. Three places were in townships near the southern border, the part near Columbus, three were in the city of Delaware, three in Delaware Township, near Delaware City, and one in Ashley, a small town way in the northeastern part of the county.
I found all of them, although I didn't always get a picture. Two houses in Delaware Township and one in Liberty Township were on a busy street with no place to pull over to snap a shot. I started from my motel in Columbus and drove to the southeastern part of Delaware County, to Harlem Township, where I found the John Cook Farmhouse. I traveled I-270, lined with shiny new office towers and garden apartment complexes, across the northern part of Franklin County, before crossing north into Delaware County. There are signs saying "Stop Overdevelopment" in Harlem Township, which is rural once you get a few miles into the county. I found the house at the intersection of two quiet country roads and took a picture with the car stopped in the middle of the street.
John Cook Farm, 1863
Two townships west, on the border of Franklin County along US 23 was Highbanks Metro Park. The Register said "Highbanks Park Works." I had no idea what that was, so I drove through the park until I saw a historic marker for a mill along the Olentangy River. That wasn't it, and I wanted to get to Delaware City before lunch. I found a brochure in the park, that showed earthworks left by a Native American tribe 1,000 years ago, down a trail, 2.3 miles of hiking round trip. I thought I would get back if I had time, which looked doubtful.
Delaware is a pretty, old and old-fashioned town on North Sandusky Street, south of Marion and Sandusky. I scored two hours of free parking in front of the old courthouse, and snapped pics of the former court house, the historic library next door and the Jail and Sheriff's residence around the corner. I found a video game store that I hoped would have one of the seven music CDs I'm looking for to complete my collection. I spoke to the proprietor of the store, an unkempt man, who told me he was forty, although I would have guessed younger. We talked some about politics and he told me lived all over the world because his late father was a "black ops" contractor for the government. His mother died a year ago of COVID. He claimed to have every kind of video cartridge for games, and every device to play them back to the 1980s. I'm reading Ready Player One, and he said he had also read it, and was looking forward to Ready Player Two, which I told him was already out in hardback. Like Wade in Ready Player One, whose avatar is named Parzival, the man in the store has read lots of fantasy series, Harry Potter many times, others that I never heard of, and he's working on Tolkien. He suggested I try the store "Pat's Endangered Species" to find audio CDs. "It's across the street from a restaurant called 'Buns'," he said, "around the corner on W. Winter St."
I stopped for lunch at Buns. I sat in the back in an enclosed patio. It was crowded; no one was masked. I didn't see anyone masked in Delaware County. I had chicken kabob on a rice pilaf with a Greek salad, reasonably healthy and not too exotic. I fit in with the mostly elderly, all White crowd. The waitress was a young woman, skinny with tattoos on her arms, possibly dyed black hair, and lots of make up. I liked her right away. After lunch, I crossed the street to the record store. The proprietor there was an older man (my age) playing a jazz record, possibly John Coltrane, although I didn't recognize the specific tunes. I showed him my list. He said "These are things kids bought at Wal-Mart. I don't have them." Except he did have Macy Gray's CD "On How It Is," number 129 on my list, for three dollars. One down, six to go.
Ohio Wesleyan University is a few blocks south of downtown Delaware, a pretty, wooded campus, the older part east of Sandusky Street, with some newer buildings on the west side. There's a pedestrian-controlled traffic light to facilitate student movement across the busy street. I took pics of Elliott Hall, from 1833, built as a resort hotel before the school was established, and a few other buildings.
I headed south to the three places in Delaware Township. There are a series of mill worker houses along Stratford Rd., where I couldn't stop, and an 1859 farmhouse just down the street that I could see but I couldn't get a picture of either. Off U.S. 23 there's a stone church from 1842, that has a small parking lot where I could pull in and get a pic. Added bonus: an orange Porsche in the parking lot, probably from the early 1980s. The mill houses and the church, which is now an office building, were part of a town called Stratford. The surrounding area is increasingly suburban, with fast food places, big box stores, and office buildings, interspersed with new townhouse developments. A bit south, there is a stone house from 1850 in Liberty Township. I went by, but again, it was on a busy road and I couldn't pull off to take a picture.
I had picked a house on the National Register in the far northeastern part of Delaware County, in a town called Ashley.It was an exuberant pink Victorian, worth the trip.
That left me with the Native American mounds in Highbanks Metropark, way at the other end of Delaware County. It was a warm and sunny afternoon, especially for November, but already 4:30 P.M. I wanted to take a nap at the hotel by 4, but decided to give this a go, even though the hike was listed as "strenuous" and would take until after dark. I had my map of the park, and there were people out walking. The route was quiet, with tall trees with orange, red and brown leaves. I followed the map I had. I crossed wooden bridges over steep gorges and little streams. I spoke to the trees, and having become one of those old mystics you read about, I felt that the trees appreciated it. I thanked them for their beauty. The mound is just a hill of dirt, possibly an ancient fortification, but it's awe-inspiring to realize that the people who built it were settled on this land before the Natives the Europeans found. The trail ends at an overlook on a surprisingly high cliff over the Olentangy River. I got a pic which I think my phone's camera lightened, since it was almost dark out. I came back through the park to the road, but not exactly where I thought I would be. I couldn't find my car, but calmed down and walked toward the entrance to the park. It was black out, and I found a parking lot that seemed like the right place. My car is black, and I couldn't see if there was a car there, so I hit the unlock button, the car blinked at me, and sure enough, I was in the right place.
I should have looked at the map, but I thought I knew how to get back to my motel in Columbus. I was wrong, but after some delay, I got back. I had stopped at a Kroger on U.S. 23 and bought a pear, and had that with the remaining milk, cereal and cottage cheese for dinner in the motel. I had prunes and pistachios for a snack later that I had brought with me.
Thursday was another too-warm day, not that I was complaining. I had breakfast provided by the motel, and was out by nine. Google Maps was correct that it is 204 miles from the motel to our house in Morgantown. I stopped for gas at the station nearest to our house, and was home before one P.M. for a late lunch. It was 78 F. in Morgantown, a record high for the date.
This was the biggest trip in Year Ten, July 2021 to June 2022. I've now covered 204 counties since I moved to Morgantown in July 2012, and I hope to have 220, including eight more that I missed because of the pandemic, by the end of June 2022.
I apologize for getting my finger in so many of the pictures. My only excuse is that I wasn't good at using my new phone/camera.
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