Champaign County, Ohio

This was another of those trips I didn't think would work out. We've had a cold spell the last few days, after a ridiculously warm autumn, and it was supposed to snow Sunday and Tuesday, my two travel days. We were in New City, New York and Memphis, and I spent twenty-five hours in Centre County, Pennsylvania and an afternoon in Pittsburgh last month, and, in this county, more than sixty-nine per cent of the voters last year went for the Republican nominee.  That last has become more important to me this year, as this administration does more and more horrible things. Still, I've managed to visit sixty-five counties since we came to Morgantown in July of 2012, and it doesn't seem to be the time to give up.  The original plan was to get to know what this part of the country is like, for better or worse, and unless one is near Washington or Philadelphia, the people around here were likely to vote for that guy.

Champaign County is west and a little north of here, 248 miles from Morgantown to Urbana, the largest city in Champaign County. There is a Champaign-Urbana in Illinois, which I found confusing. The 2010 census lists about 40,000 people in the county, 12,000 in Urbana, 2,000 in St. Paris and 1,600 in Mechanicsburg. The rest live in smaller towns or on farms. This is a relatively small county in area, less than an hour west of Columbus and north of Dayton.

I didn't see a lot of African-Americans in Champaign County, although there is the A.M.E. Church, still active. There are historic markers around Mechanicsburg, about abolitionists who hid runaway slaves and how marshals from Kentucky who chased down slaves were themselves arrested.

I was surprised at how nice the people were here. Maybe I need to be less judgemental about people who would vote Republican (I hear Rabbi Joe say "Ya think?") Clerks in the stores were not only polite, but joked with me.

Sure, there were signs. At the motel, there were Jehovah's Witness pamphlets around, and many of the churches had big anti-abortion signs in front of them. There doesn't appear to be much of an economy in the county, and in Mechanicsburg particularly, a pretty and historic town, most of the center of the town was empty.

There is a Wal-Mart and a fancier Kroger store on the east end of Urbana. That's about it. Springfield, a city of 60,000, in Clark County, is only fifteen miles away. I plan to visit there next summer. I guess that's where everything is.

The snow Sunday fizzled, only leaving cold weather, 29-31 F. most of the way. I stopped at the Chinese buffet, one of the best of those, in Zanesville, Ohio, between Wheeling and Columbus. I arrived in Urban about 3 and decided to look around before checking in to the motel, the cheap one from the Usual Chain. I discovered a single-screen downtown movie theater, and thought to do that in the evening, only the last show was 5:30. I slept about 20 minutes at the motel, and headed out to see "Wonder" at the Gloria Theater. It was built for stage shows in the early twentieth century, became a movie theater in 1942, then a double theater, then closed. A foundation, partly faith-based, is restoring it .

"Wonder" is a tear jerker, with the unlikely pair of Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson living  in fantasy Brooklyn, in a brownstone that would be worth a zillion dollars, raising a teenage daughter and a son with facial deformities. It was entertaining, but sentimental pap, and there were a few holes in the story. Still, the kids were great, and I liked Mandy Patinkin as the school principal. Much of it was filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, which I guess looks better than Brooklyn.

 I stopped  at Kroger after the movie for some "Detox Salad," a bagel and a banana for dinner in the room. I had managed to find seven of the eight places on the National Register in Urbana, including Urbana University, founded by members of the Swedenborgian Church, and home to The Johnny Appleseed Museum, which was closed on Sunday.

I got out after nine Monday morning. It was alternately sunny and cloudy, and the temperature went above freezing. Not by much. I probably passed by a native burial mound without noticing it, then spent the rest of the morning in Mechanicsburg, ten miles southeast of Urbana, where there are twenty places on the National Register. I found all of them, then headed back to Urbana for lunch. Near my motel I had noticed a diner, called "Rockin' Robin." Since it was named for a great old soul song, and because December 11 is my sister Robin's birthday, I thought I'd give it a chance. It's small and shabby and was moved from a suburb of Dayton a few years ago. The current ownership is relatively new, and they close at 2 P.M. I opted for breakfast, and had two eggs with mushrooms and tomato, and toast. Bagels were on the menu, but no bagels. A skinny guy in a Notre Dame t-shirt cooked, there was an older woman setting up, and a young woman taking orders. The older woman asked if I had been there before, and when I told her I had never been in Urbana, she offered me a free sundae. The young girl is graduating from Ohio State in Columbus and is going back to grad school in January.

I visited St. Paris, a pretty town to the west of Urbana, and Mt. Tabor Church in Salem township, north of Urbana. I found the last of the eight historic sites in Urbana and was back at the motel just after three. I slept over an hour.

I looked at Trip Advisor to find a place for dinner and didn't find anything interesting. I looked up "Subway" and figured I'd go there. I stopped to get gas, and picked up snacks at Kroger.

I drove back Tuesday, leaving in snow before 8 A.M., because the weather forecast was for snow, wind and bitter cold.  Chanukkah started at sunset.I was home before 1. There were some flurries, but nothing threatening.

I have a lot of pictures. I'm just going to post a few of them. In addition to the places on the National Register, there are many beautiful old farmhouses and churches not listed.

Urbana Monument Square Historic District

Champaign County Court House, Urbana

Home of the Johnny Appleseed Museum, Urbana University

John Quincy Adams Ward House, 1820, Urbana

Gloria Cinema, marquee from 1942, Urbana

St. Paul's A.M.E. Church, 1866-77, Urbana

Mechanicsburg Baptist Church, 1858

Masonic Temple, early 20th century, Mechanicsburg

Mechanicsburg Commercial Historic District

Dr. Orem Nincehelser House, 1893, Mechanicsburg

Norvall Hunter Farm, 1850, just south of Mechanicsburg

Monitor House, about 1860, St. Paris

St. Paris Business District. Not much going on

Mt. Tabor Methodist Episcopal Church, church goes back to 1814, this building is from1881, Salem Township

Nutwood Place Farm Complex, Urbana. Round barn is from 1861

Cecil County, Maryland

It is 270 miles from Morgantown to Elkton, the county seat of Cecil County. You might think, from driving 240 miles through Maryland, that it was a big state. Much of the way, however, you can see West Virginia from the road, or walk to Pennsylvania from the exits. At Hancock, Maryland is only three miles wide.

I visited Cecil County this week, my sixty-fifth county to visit within three hundred miles of Morgantown since I moved here in July, 2012. These trips were my retirement project while playing spouse to the town's new rabbi, my husband, Joe Hample. Since July, I am out of retirement in my supposedly part-time job as representative for the Seventh Ward on Morgantown's City Council. Only three meetings a month, and committees, and demonstrations and events I'm asked to attend. I like it, but it makes it harder for me to get away. Our meetings are on three Tuesdays, and since October had five Tuesdays this year, I was off two of them.

I try to visit my parents' grave in Owings Mills before the High Holy Days. This year we were in Canada, and I didn't get there. It was only a few miles off the Beltway to go see them, so I did.

I grew up in northern Maryland, about sixty miles west of Elkton, and when I was a child, my family drove through Cecil County on our frequent trips to New York, where my grandparents and most of my parents' families  lived. What I knew as an adult was this: that Elkton, having the first courthouse in Maryland coming from the northeast, was a haven for quickie marriages, there being no blood test or waiting period required to marry before 1938. My grandmother's sister, Aunt Mary, told me that she and her Italian-American boyfriend were married in  Elkton, in what she called "Marry-land." The JFK Expressway, Interstate 95 from Baltimore to Wilmington, Delaware, was ordered built by President Kennedy because there was a scandal. Ambassadors from newly-independent nations in Africa driving US 40 from Washington to New York were not served in restaurants in Aberdeen and Havre de Grace in Harford County, nor in Elkton, in Cecil County. A state-owned restaurant was built in the median of the highway and everyone was served. President Kennedy attended the ribbon-cutting a week before he was murdered, and the highway was named for him. Cecil County also was home to a resurgent Ku Klux Klan chapter in the 1960s. In the last presidential election, the current president was favored with sixty-three per cent of the vote.

Cecil County borders Delaware and Pennsylvania both, and Elkton is only about twenty-one miles from Wilmington, fifty-one miles from Philadelphia, and fifty-eight miles from Baltimore. It looks like Maryland as I remember it, a handful of colonial buildings, little suburban houses, and big trees, reminding me of the hay fever and asthma attacks I suffered through as a child. There is corn, lots of it, although this year the stalks were brown and wrinkled from a long, blazingly hot and dry summer. My sister, when I told her where I was going, thought she had visited a lighthouse on a trip from her senior center. Cecil County lies at the point where the Susquehanna River, traveling through New York State and Pennsylvania, and flooded with seawater, becomes Chesapeake Bay.

I booked a motel for two nights off I-95 near  North East, along the bay in the western part of Cecil County. My Usual Chain gave me two free nights based on accumulated points. The clerk seemed unhappy.

I napped a bit, then headed out to find two historic places in North East, one the lighthouse at Turkey Point in South Elk Neck State Park. It was farther than I thought it would be, and I got there just at sunset, 6:13, 16 minutes earlier than in Morgantown, when the park was to close. It was nearly a mile to walk on a trail, but I got there in time to snap a shot in the fading light. Walking back, people were coming out to the point in Quaker garb, in family groups.  I drove back up to town with the "low gas" light on and made it to a gas station where our ten-gallon tank car took ten and a half gallons. I stopped at a chain of pizza places, ate a chicken parmesan sub, and headed back to the hotel. I never found the other place, a covered bridge.

Turkey Point Light, 1833, South Elk Neck State Park

I still had fifty places on the National Register of Historic Places to visit, and plotted different ways to see all of them on Monday, my one full day in Cecil County. I finally gave up and picked every fifth one, giving me ten places to visit throughout the county. The other things I do: visit a mall, a college, a synagogue and a big park, would have to wait. I had already done the park, there is only a Messianic synagogue, which I saw, on US 40 in Elkton in a beige box of a building, and there is no mall. I passed Cecil College, the local two-year school, near where I stayed in Northeast, but didn't stop .

I was up too late and on my alternate day diuretic Monday, which made my day difficult, because I needed more bathrooms than available. Twice, I had to duck out somewhere to pee. I'm one step away from adult diapers.

I did manage  to find my ten places and photograph them. One place is a 17th century waterfront estate down a long country road, and posted with "No Trespassing" signs. This happens often in Tidewater Virginia and Maryland. I didn't get that picture. Also, some of the places on The National Register are archaeological sites that no one wants you to find. I skipped those.

It should no longer be surprising that the it reached into the 70s F. during the day in late October. 2017 will likely be the warmest year of the last 150 or so since records have been kept. West Virginia politicians, and the US government think climate change is a "hoax."

Here are the pics:

West Nottingham Meeting House, 1811, near Colora

Elisha Kirk House, 1813, near Calvert

Rock United Presbyterian Church, originally 1761, remodeled 1872 and 1900, near Elkton

Cecil County Courthouse, Elkton, 1939

Mitchell House, Main Street, Elkton, between 1769 and 1781

painted parking meter and Halloween decoration, Elkton

Painted elk. There are several of these throughout Elkton

Holly Hall, Elkton, 1810-1820, off a main street, surrounded by fast food places and shopping centers, abandoned

Elk Landing, about 1780, near Elkton, in a park

St. Francis Xavier Church, dedicated 1797, near Warwick

site of the wharf in Charlestown Historic District

Main St., Port Deposit

Paw Paw Building, 1821, Port Deposit, built as a chuech

Walkway along the Susquehanna River, Port Deposit, looking south to the I-95 and US 40 bridges

Cecil seems to be a depressed place. Bainbridge Naval Station was once a major employer near Port Deposit. It now lies abandoned behind locked gates. I didn't see much going on in downtown Elkton. There are wealthy people who own shorefront homes and it is possible to commute to Wilmington, Delaware. The last place I visited, Port Deposit, is an old town on the Susquehanna at the base of a cliff. I saw some tourist-oriented places there, but all of them were closed on Monday afternoon, and many of the historic structures are decrepit and/or abandoned. Across the railroad tracks that front the river, there are new condo buildings. A sidewalk along the water is open to the public.

Having eaten too much at breakfast Monday at the motel, I skipped lunch, napped late in the afternoon, and went looking for a place to eat. I ended up at a chain buffet restaurant, located in a truck stop off I-95 north of Elkton at the Delaware line. The clientele may have been mostly travelers. There are now two state-owned restaurants on I-95, serving only several brands of fast food. In addition to the heavy-set people one might expect at a buffet, I saw many African-Americans and Spanish-speakers. I thought that odd, in a largely Caucasian-populated county. Still, anyplace in the South, including Maryland, that is a small restaurant, bragging about "family-owned" or "since (any date before 1965)" , were I African-American, I would be wary of how I might be treated. For me also, I like an anonymous sort of place where you can pick-and-choose what you want to eat.

I drove back leisurely on Tuesday, detouring off the Baltimore Beltway to drive through Pikesville, from Greenspring Avenue to Old Court Road., through Sudbrook Park and down Campfield Road past my elementary school to see the house where I grew up. I still often dream that I live in that house, sometimes waiting, alone, for my parents to come home.

Wendell-Washington House, 1953 (remodeled), Lochearn Census Defined Place, Baltimore County, MD

Buckingham County, Virginia

I wasn't sure about doing this trip. This is my forty-fourth county in this series, and I sometimes think "Enough already." Then, I'm trying to run a political campaign for state delegate, and Joe and I are going to Israel for the CCAR (Reform Rabbis) convention at the end of the month.

Buckingham County is between Lynchburg and Richmond and an hour south of Charlottesville. It's the geographic center of Virginia. To get to eastern Virginia from Morgantown means going over the high point of the Appalachians in winter. I learned when Joe went to Charlottesville with me in December 2012, that the weather can be fine in Morgantown and deep into Virginia, but it can be snowing, windy and cold in the mountains on the way. I don't know how people ever got from Morgantown to Richmond before the Civil War. Maybe there were passenger trains at one time, but before that?

The 2010 census reported 17,000 people in the county at a density of twenty-six per square mile. I found two motels in the county online. Both had terrible reviews. I broke a rule I made about staying in the county I visit, and booked my usual chain motel in Farmville, in Prince Edward County, twenty miles south of Dillwyn, the only town in Buckingham County. I had eleven places to find from the National Register of Historic Places. I came on the weekend because the weekdays are filled up with meetings about the election.

I followed Google maps to get here. They took me on back roads in Garrett County, Maryland to get to US 48 (Corridor H in West Virginia), a lovely four lane divided highway that at this point goes nowhere. It was in the low 20s F. with blowing snow. I stopped at a gas station just before 48 and got a bottle of iced tea and a pre-made turkey and American cheese sandwich on white bread. Local cuisine.

Farmville is a college town, like Morgantown. Longwood University is there and Hampden-Sydney College is nearby. I found a little coffee place and had a trendy salad for dinner.

Today was my day in Buckingham County. The National Register lists "Buckingham Court House" as a historic spot on "both sides" of U.S. 60. Buckingham Court House is the name of the village where the courthouse is located. There are a handful of homes and offices, some dating back to the eighteenth century. The original courthouse, designed by Thomas Jefferson, burned in 1869. The "new" courthouse dates from 1873. There is an Egyptian-style obelisk on US 60 with an inscription praising Confederate soldiers who "...fought for a just cause."

Buckingham County Courthouse, 1873

Buckingham Court House village, across US 60 from the courthouse

an inn, now used as a bed-and-breakfast and event center, west of Buckingham County courthouse

an 18th century house (porch and roof later?) just east of Buckingham County courthouse

The monument to Confederate soldiers and cannon across US 60 from Buckingham County courthouse

The James River forms the northern border of the county. I drove up State Road 56 looking for a house named Perry Hill. I found a sign saying "Perry Hill" and followed a long driveway up to the house- a privately-owned home. I turned around in the drive at the back of the house, and had started back. I thought I would take a picture from down the road and not disturb the owners.  A man came out and shouted at me from the house. He wanted to know why I was there. I told him I was looking for historic houses. He asked where I was from and I said "Morgantown" which seemed to work, because he asked me to come back. His name is Mark. He is in his early sixties, I guess, and was wearing sweats. He apologized for the shabby clothes, but said he was fixing up the basement. He told me the house was from 1851, built for a man who had fought with Admiral Perry in the War of 1812, hence the name. Mark lives in Richmond; this is his country home. He has a grown son who tried organic farming on the land for a time, but couldn't make it financially worthwhile. We talked for a half-hour or so.

Perry Hill.1851, Saint Joy

The view from the front of Perry Hill. That's lavender planted in rows.

Up James River Road, there is a sign for a state park ten miles west. That would be James River Park, and much of the road was crushed gravel and not paved. At the Visitor Center, exhibits explain the importance of James River to commerce in early Virginia, how it runs from the mountain peaks in Alleghany County (visited February 2013), through the town of Buchanan (Botetort County, last summer), past Charlottesville (December 2012) to Richmond, where it becomes a tidal estuary heading out to the ocean by way of historic Williamsburg and Jamestown to present-day Norfolk. 

View across James River from the state park

Green Hill Pond, James River State Park

It was already after noon, and I was hungry. I thought I would head to Dillwyn, the only incorporated town in Buckingham County, just north on US 15 from US 60, east of Buckingham Court House. The census gives the town population as 447. I looked for a place where cars were parked, and that was Pino's Italian Restaurant. I almost didn't go in, because there was a car in the lot covered with stickers expressing how much the driver hated President Obama. There was also a sign in the window advertising some big church revival meeting. I went in anyway, and the place was homey-looking, the waitress friendly and upbeat. A big guy at the next table shot me a look. I smiled and said "Hi!" and that was the end of that. I had a mini-pizza with mushrooms and a salad. It was good, but I'm supposed to be watching my salt and fat content.

I visited the library in Dillwyn and asked the two librarians where they would go in Buckingham County if they had a day here and had never visited before. The two of them, a pretty young African-American woman and an older stylish European-American woman looked at each other and laughed. They couldn't think of anything. I told them I had been to Buckingham Court House and James River Park and the younger one said"You've pretty much seen it." They said they go to Appomattox (30 miles), Charlottesville (also 30 miles)  or to Lynchburg or Richmond (each at least an hour) to do anything. I asked about the antique trains across the street, and they thought they might run on Saturdays, just not today.

Dillwyn Town Hall

Buckingham Branch Railroad Station, Dillwyn

old passenger car, Dillwyn

I tried to find some of the other historic places in the county, but they were hard to find- country houses on confusing back roads. I found Guerrant House, now with another name, north off US 15 near the hamlet of Arvonia, and the Buckingham Female Collegiate Institute Historic District, in Gravel Hill, northeast of Dillwyn. The school there operated from 1837-1863. There was also a plaque honoring Carter G. Woodson, who was once a coal miner in West Virginia, and was the first African-American to earn an advanced degree from Harvard. Woodson founded African-American History Week (now month). He was born in Buckingham County.

Guerrant House, probably early 19th century, Arvonia

In the Buckingham Female Collegiate District, Gravel Hill

In Buckingham Female Collegiate District

I had seen a local drive-in in Dillwyn and stopped for an ice cream cone before heading back to Farmville. I purchased no-fat, low-salt, low-sugar, vegan stuff for dinner in my room. It was enough.

A friend said on Facebook today "Come back from racist Virginia." I did see some Confederate flags around, and there are monuments to Confederate soldiers in Farmville and Buckingham Court House. Some of the desk clerks and guests at my motel are African-American, as were some of the people eating at Pino's Restaurant and shopping in the grocery store. It looks more integrated than Baltimore when I was growing up. I remember watching on the news around 1960, about how Prince Edward County closed all its public schools in defiance of Federal orders to integrate. Not that long ago.

I also noted that the major industry here is forest products. There were factories along US 15 north of Dillwyn that processed wood into chips. I saw them loaded into trucks and rail cars. There are many acres of devastated land where every growing thing was ripped out to provide wood, and there were trucks carrying logs along the highways. In places, there are replanted trees, almost always white pine, although the natural forest is hardwood and a different pine mix. Like West Virginia, the land loses where there is money to be made from extraction.

I'm back home tomorrow, probably via I-64 over the mountains to avoid possible bad weather. Today the temperature ranged from 21 F. in the morning to 46 in the late afternoon. Average, according to weather.com, is 26 and 50, noticeably warmer than Morgantown (21-40) at this time of year.